Among other things, she meddled in patronage matters, forcing her husband “to do things which he knew were out of place in order to keep his wife’s fingers out of his hair,” as Herndon put it. In June 1861, the journalist Murat Halstead wrote that some of Lincoln’s “most unfortunate appointments have been made to please his wife who is anxious to be thought the power behind the throne and who is vulgar and pestiferous beyond description.” He added that Mary Lincoln was “a fool—the laughing stock of the town, her vulgarity only the more conspicuous in consequence of her fine carriage and horses and servants in livery and fine dresses, and her damnable airs.” She herself told James Gordon Bennett in 1862 that although she had “a great terror of strong minded Ladies,” she nonetheless believed that “a word fitly spoken and in due season” might induce her husband to make some changes in his cabinet.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃