Abraham Lincoln’s fight with depression

The current issue of our email newsletter included this article, originally written for the Aware magazine, about Abraham Lincoln's depressive tendencies.

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"The Most Miserable Man Living"
by Louise Hogan

Born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is widely perceived to be the greatest ever American president. His most notable political accolades are the creation of a national banking system, leading the North to Victory during the American Civil War and freeing slaves under the Emancipation Proclamation. Quite impressive for a man who was prone to crippling bouts of depression and had suicidal tendencies throughout his life.

Tall, with an awkward appearance, Lincoln was not considered to be a very attractive man. He was gangly and thin with 'arms that stretched almost down to his knees', a sad face and a gloomy demeanour. Even in childhood, he had always felt awkward, although it was not just his appearance that set him aside from his peers. Isolated to a large degree by his love of books, poetry and politics, he was a deep thinker with a sensitive soul who spent a large portion of his youth being chastised by those around him.

At the age of 7, young Lincoln shot a wild turkey but felt so remorseful that he vowed to never hunt game again. His declaration as a child that an ant should not be killed because "an ant’s life was to it as sweet as ours is to us" shows him to have been a gentle, kind and caring individual no matter the social repercussions. He was not afraid to stand out from the crowd for something he believed in. His psychological pain and distress in childhood is one likely explanation for his depression in adulthood. However, he may also have been the victim of a biological predisposition to depression; it is thought that both his parents suffered from 'melancholy' as did several members of his extended family.

It was not until Lincoln was 26 that he experienced the first of two debilitating nervous breakdowns. The 'trigger' was the death of his good friend, and alleged fiancée, Ann Rutledge in 1835. Devastated by her passing, he was emotionally unable to deal with the grief and told friends at the time that he wanted to die. After her funeral, the weather turned stormy and he was bereft at not being able to prevent the rain falling onto Ann’s grave. He talked openly about suicide and was often seen wandering in the woods alone with his gun. This period of depression lasted several weeks. He feared its return so much that he told a friend he couldn’t carry a knife in his pocket for fear of what he might do with it if he was alone.

Lincoln’s sad, gloomy, dejected appearance prompted his friends and colleagues at the time to describe him as "the saddest man they had ever seen... his melancholy dripped from him as he walked". This account, although terribly sad, brilliantly describes a man for whom depression was a constant struggle. Spending his days fighting an inner battle with his demons must have been exhausting, and might explain why he looked gaunt, fatigued and drawn in official photographs. His destructive self didn’t want to achieve success, rather it tried to pull him down into the quagmire of deep depression and nothingness.

Paradoxically, his constructive self kept raging against these constraints, fighting to suppress the destruction within. He was a fighter who never gave up. During the civil war Lincoln wrote, "I expect to maintain this contest until successful or until I die." That is dedication. Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of "Lincoln’s Melancholy – How Depression Challenged a President and Fuelled his Greatness" argues that Lincoln’s lifelong struggle with depression was responsible for his becoming one of America’s greatest Presidents. This seems to be a fairly accurate assessment. He was indeed challenged by his depression. In spite of his lifelong affliction, he chose to believe that he was born for greatness and that is what he achieved.

Despite his strong depressive tendencies, Lincoln was well liked by those who knew him. He had an impressive ability to connect with people from varying social levels, telling jokes and stories with a great sense of humour, challenging people to like him. He had many friends who accepted and understood that his 'melancholy' was a part of who he was. It shaped his personality. These friends were compelled to watch over him and keep him safe when suicidal thoughts threatened his mind. This was especially true during fogs, storms and wet weather which seemed to set off an attack of depression. He himself wrote that in his own experience he found "exposure to bad weather... to be very serious on defective nerves."

Indeed the cold temperatures and bad weather of winter 1841 seemed to be a contributing factor to his second breakdown. He was 32 and had just ended his relationship with Mary Todd (whom he later married) when he fell into the depths of depression. A letter written to a friend in January 1841 shows how desperately bleak he felt at that time: "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the rest of the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible, I must die or be better, it appears to me."

Lincoln must have felt completely without hope when he wrote this letter but yet he managed to survive it, and learn from it. As he got older, he learned to cope with his 'melancholy' using various means to distract himself such as work, his sense of humour and focusing on others. He realised that no matter how depressed he got, no matter how long it lasted, it always came to an end. A sense of freedom came with the knowledge that it was not permanent and he took pleasure in giving this hope to other sufferers. Although he was never completely free of depression, he never suffered another breakdown.

Setting aside his numerous achievements and successes throughout his political career, perhaps his greatest achievement was learning to live with his depression. He spent his life being constantly challenged by it and each time he rose to the challenge to overcome it. This strength of character along with his sense of fairness, decisive thinking and compassion made him, not only a great President, but also a great human being.


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