Psychiatric problems ran throughout Mary’s family. Dr. George R. C. Todd, youngest of her biological siblings, was especially troubled. A fellow physician in South Carolina who knew him well said that Dr. Todd referred to himself as the “black sheep” of the family, that he did “not get along with people,” and that he was “very egotistical, and extremely jealous of his professional reputation. Very peculiar and eccentric. Drank whiskey to excess.” Dr. Todd’s lawyer recalled that he was “inclined to be abrupt almost to brusqueness in his manner to those whom he did not like.” He “took no pains to conceal his dislike for those who had incurred his displeasure,” and he “refused to consort with his own contemporaries to any great extent.” He was “given to moods of deep melancholy.” Like his sister Mary, he had an explosive temper that bordered on madness. He was described by a Union prisoner-of-war as “the most vicious wretch I ever knew” because he cruelly mistreated enemy patients. During the Civil War, he would, in “raving fits of madness,” assault sick and wounded Yankees under his care. When a young Union lieutenant from Kentucky irritated him, Dr. Todd “pulled him off the bunk to the floor and kicked him in the most brutal manner.” Upon the death of the prisoner the next day, Dr. Todd declared: “I am G-d d–d glad of it. I meant to kill the son of a b-h before he left here.” During the Gettysburg campaign, he infuriated Northerners by looting private homes. He told dubious tales about his role in divvying up the last of the Confederate treasury in 1865, and he also claimed, most improbably, that he had visited the White House early in the war and aroused the president’s suspicions about his loyalty. When ordered arrested, he said, he outwitted his pursuers and escaped.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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