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lashed out at Swett, advising him that he ought to attend to his own wife, a longtime invalid, and leave her alone. “I have heard some stories on that subject about [your wife],” she snapped, “and you my husband’s friend, you would take me and lock me up in an asylum.” Then, according to Swett, she threw up her hands and tearfully “prayed to the Lord and called upon her husband to release her and drive me away.” Finally, Mrs. Lincoln yielded and agreed to accompany Swett peacefully. She did, however, refuse any of his assistance in getting into the carriage. “I ride with you from compulsion,” she said, “but I beg you not to touch me.”
    Arriving at the courthouse a few moments later, the former First Lady was ushered into a courtroom packed with people eager to witness the unfolding spectacle. But the proceedings were briefly delayed when Isaac Arnold, another Chicago lawyer and friend of Lincoln’s, suddenly declined to serve as Mrs. Lincoln’s defense attorney. He had been retained by Robert’s camp as a reliable old boy who would not thwart their weak case by mounting an effective defense of the client they had assigned to him. Outraged by his defection, Swett confronted Arnold. “You will put into her head that she can get some mischievous lawyer to make and defend her,” he hissed. “Do your duty.” Although the reason for Arnold’s decision to withdraw from the case remains clouded—perhaps a pang of conscience?—he eventually came around, and the case against Mary Lincoln proceeded in this kangaroo court.
    Seventeen witnesses were produced by the prosecution, including the expert doctors who had never examined Mrs. Lincoln, but who had concluded she was fit for the asylum after hearing her symptoms described to them by Robert Lincoln and his lawyers. The court also heard from various hotel employees, including one housekeeper who proffered the damning testimony that “Mrs. Lincoln’s manner was nervous and excitable,” and a waiter who testified that she appeared “carelessly dressed and repeated ‘I am afraid, I am afraid.’ ” A number of salesclerks also were produced to show how dangerously extravagant she was. One of them described her efforts to “beat down” the price he was charging for gloves and handkerchiefs, and concluded she was “crazy.” Finally there was Robert Lincoln himself. “I have no doubt my mother is insane,” he told the court. “She has long been a source of great anxiety to me. She has no home and no reason to make those purchases.”
    The defense rested without ever raising an objection or offering a witness of its own. Robert Lincoln would not have stood for that. While the jury retired to consider the evidence, he approached his mother and tried to take her hand. Rejecting the transparent gesture, Mary Lincoln made her only statement of the day: “Oh, Robert, to think that my son would do this to me.” Ten minutes later, the all-male jury was back to deliver their verdict: insane.
    The day after her trial, Mary Lincoln was sent to Bellevue Place, a private asylum outside Chicago. She would spend all her time there trying to get out, while Robert worked every bit as hard to keep her in. He was furious when his maternal aunt Elizabeth offered Mary sanctuary in her Springfield home. He also complained loudly of “an extraordinary interference” by Mrs. Lincoln’s two greatest advocates, Judge James B. Bradwell and his wife, Myra. The couple, whom Robert condemned as “pests and nuisances,” engineered her release through a public campaign and the threat of an open hearing that would show the world just how sane she really was.
    Three months after entering Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln was released. But by order of the court that had convicted her, Robert still had control over her movements and possessions for at