04/18/2026
Robert Todd Lincoln spent his life trying to escape the shadow of his father’s name, only to find that history had a different plan for him. Born in 1843 as the eldest of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four sons, he was the only one to survive into adulthood. By the time he finished law school in Chicago and built a successful legal practice, he had already buried three brothers—Eddie, Willie, and Tad—as well as his father, leaving behind much of the world he had known as a child.
He had been invited to Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865, but declined, telling his parents he was exhausted after months serving on General Grant’s staff near the front lines. When the news of the assassination reached the White House, Robert remembered only a blur of faces and an immediate, desperate need to move. He crossed the street to the Petersen House, where his father had been taken after the shooting, and remained there through the night. John Hay, Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary and Robert’s lifelong friend, wrote that after an initial outburst of grief, the young Lincoln spent the rest of the night comforting his mother. He was by his father's side at 7:22 the following morning when the President passed away.
Sixteen years later, Robert was serving as Secretary of War in President James A. Garfield’s cabinet. On July 2, 1881, he was accompanying Garfield through Washington’s Sixth Street train station when Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker, stepped forward and shot the President twice. Robert was only about forty feet away.
He was close enough to see Garfield fall and reached him while he lay on the station floor. He remained by the President's side as the tragic medical mismanagement of the following weeks slowly took the life that the bullet had not. Garfield died in September, and Robert continued his service through the administration of Chester A. Arthur.
In September 1901, Robert and his family were traveling back to Chicago after a summer vacation and stopped in Buffalo to visit the Pan-American Exposition. As his train pulled into the Buffalo station on the evening of September 6, a Pullman employee was waiting on the platform with a telegram: President William McKinley had been shot by an anarchist at the Exposition that afternoon.
Robert went immediately to the home where McKinley was recovering from surgery and visited him twice over the next few days. He left Buffalo convinced the President would recover, but McKinley died of an infection one week later. History had placed Robert Todd Lincoln at the scene, or in the immediate aftermath, of the three greatest American tragedies of his era.
