When Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency in March 1861, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln relished the prospect of presiding over elegant White House entertainments. But her visions of social triumph were soon marred by the grimness of the Civil War, criticisms of her extravagant ways, and the death of one of her sons. With much of her Kentucky family allied to the Confederacy, she also faced accusations of being an enemy spy. Mary Todd Lincoln's loyalty to the Union, however, was never in doubt. When a friend expressed astonishment at her hope that her brothers fighting in the southern armies would all be killed or captured, she answered, "They would kill my husband if they could, and destroy our government."

Mary Todd Lincoln's likeness was the work of Mathew Brady's Washington studio. According to Abraham Lincoln, it had been Brady's widely reproduced photograph of him taken in New York in 1860 that became one of the greatest vote-getting assets of his presidential campaign.