The right side of Lincoln's face was animated and emotionally expressive, whereas the left side functioned more weakly, looked duller, and was out of harmony. The meaning of the duality and changes in his facial expression baffled everyone. Strangers, who estimated the man by his dull, perplexed face and sad, tired eyes, were always astonished at the quick change of his expression to alertness when he became interested in their conversation and wanted to make some contribution to it. Many strangers, including lawyers, generals, and members of his cabinet, upon first acquaintance, thought themselves superior to this ugly, dull, sad, weak-looking man, only to find themselves amazed and mastered by the ready wit, common sense, logical intelligence, and strength of character that became evident upon his being required to look out for himself.
As his law partner from 1843 to 1861, William Herndon was no doubt the most frequent, intimate, and interested observer of Lincoln's personality and physical constitution day after day. He has stated that Lincoln's most marked and persistent characteristic was a predisposition to become melancholy or sad and depressed. This attitude showed in his facial expression when he was sitting alone or when he was in a group and not taking an active interest in the conversation. Many other intimate friends of Lincoln were similarly impressed, as recorded in various biographies. Some of his friends thought, because of the muddy, leathery condition of his skin, that this facial lapse was due to indigestion and insufficient secretion of bile.
Herndon imagined that the morbidity was caused by some “occult” condition, which could not be explained by observation or reasoning. It was “ingrained,” he said, and “could not be reduced to rules or the cause assigned... It was necessarily hereditary... It was a part of his nature and could no more be shaken off than he could part with his brains. Simple in carriage or bearing, free from pomp or display, serious, unaffected, Lincoln was a sad-looking man whose melancholy dripped from him as he walked.” Herndon observed that “the look of sadness was more or less accentuated by a peculiarity of one eye (left), the pupil of which had a tendency to turn or roll slightly toward the upper lid, whereas the other one maintained its normal position equidistant between the upper and the lower lids.” He also noticed that the tip of Lincoln’s nose and his mouth turned toward the right. “Mr. Lincoln was a peculiar, mysterious man-had a double consciousness, a double life. The two states, never in the normal man, co-exist in equal and vigorous activities though they succeed each other quickly. One state predominates and, while it so rules, the other state is somewhat quiescent, shadowy, yet living, a real thing. This is the sole reason why Mr. Lincoln so quickly, passed from one state of consciousness to another and different state” (letter from Herndon to J. Weik, Feb. 2, 1891.
Josiah Crawford (Herndon and Weik) remembered that as Lincoln became occupied with reading, his lower lip stuck out. This, he thought, was only a lifelong “habit.” Actually, as his mask (1860) and photographs show, the right half of the lower lip always protruded more than the left half and was pulled with the other muscles of the mouth slightly to the right side. When he was reading quietly or thinking actively, the degree of dominance in neuromuscular activity of the right side of his face tended generally to increase. When he was mentally inattentive, the lack of nervous stimulation tended to let the right side of his face decrease in activity faster than the relatively hypotonic left side, giving his expression a perplexed quality, which was misunderstood by those who would read his face.
Most persons with hyperphoria learn to disregard the dimmer, overlapping visual image without being conscious of such work. However, when eye strain and fatigue or emotional excitement grow excessive, the visual decoordination increases until the two more or less distinct images tend to be seen with increasing mental confusion and uneasiness. Lincoln learned to cultivate a calm, humorous, kindly attitude, happy interpersonal relations, and a common-sense philosophy of life, which generally protected him from emotional provocation and an increase of this distress. Yet he needed to have certain qualities of sympathetic excitation in order to maintain his best working pressure.
His description of a particular experience shows how he mystically interpreted his first experience with complete diplopia. Upon learning of his nomination for the presidency, in 1860, by the national convention of the young Republican party, Mr. Lincoln returned to his home, after a strenuous day, tired, and nervous, and lay down on a couch in his wife's sitting room to rest. Directly across the room, facing him, was a large mirror on the bureau. In it he saw for the first time a double image of his face, and it perplexed him greatly. He described the experience as follows:
As I reclined, my eyes fell upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than the other. I arose and lay down with the same result. It made me feel quite uncomfortable for a few minutes, but, some friends coming in, the matter passed from my mind. The next day while walking the street, I was suddenly reminded of the circumstance, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I had never seen anything of the kind before, and did not know what to make of it. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position, and, if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and, as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of Nature might surely give a sign to me, if one of his chosen servants, even through the operation of a principle in optics.
Lincoln had been a devoted reader of the Bible since boyhood and superstitiously believed, as it taught by numerous episodes in many chapters, that God revealed his wishes and commands to chosen people by natural and occult signs, such as visions, voices, and dreams, as well as by the feelings of the heart and conscience. He said that he felt “to be aided and enlightened by One who is stronger and wiser than all others.”
Lincoln’s comments on his first experience with complete diplopia, as a double visual image of his face in a mirror, shows that, while he regarded it with common sense, it also excited him superstitiously, mystically, religiously, and wishfully. He hoped somehow to receive an inspiring sign, as a chosen servant of the people and of God, to think of a way of solving the violent conflict between the free and the slave states that would be acceptable to both sides and eventuate in the peaceful preservation of the Union. By his form of thought, feeling, belief, and faith in having received a definite sign and divine inspiration, he was able to maintain high, consistent integrity of purpose against the subconscious tendency to schizoid indecision and confusion.
He did not really dismiss this double vision of his face as being caused by a law of optics that he did not understand. It continued to mystify him, and he often thought of it. When he was President, after a dream, a few days before his assassination, in which he saw himself dead in state in the White House, he confided to Ward Lamon how he finally interpreted its premonitional meaning for his destiny. He would have two terms as President, and in the second term, he would be killed.
The collected photographs of Lincoln published by Frederick Hill Meserve and Carl Sandburg, and by Stefan Lorant, show that in many of them he has a similar serious, solemn, dignified, unsmiling but kindly, reposeful, mentally inactive facial expression. In a few, the face is so moody, depressed, and unusually perplexed, and the eyestrain so pronounced, that many people doubt whether they are authentic reproductions. Not until one examines the lines of the eyes, mouth, and skin closely in such photographs is the identity fully established.
Lincoln’s usual facial expression, when not being photographed, was that of patient humility, kindness, and naturalness of attitude, honesty, simplicity, and serenity of thought, with the tendency to smile pleasantly or to burst into a good-humored laugh. His face also showed great self-reliance, courage, and firmness, with thoroughgoing dignity and repose, when he was not tending to lapse into dull conscious detachment. The left side of his face, being less mobile and not in completely harmonious affective tone with the right, and contributing less volitional kinesthesis to his brain, was less truly representative of his state of mind.
The differences in expression seem to have influenced Lincoln, or his photographers, to prefer photographs of the right side of his face, since most photographs were taken from the right quarter or the profile. Only a few were taken from the left side or from the front. Although a great laugher, he tended to keep his mouth closed firmly, with more protrusion of the right lower lip than of the left when being photographed. Even though Mrs. Lincoln chided him for persisting in looking too solemn, he could not be persuaded to smile freely before the camera. Herndon said that from the moment Lincoln faced the camera his face would grow serious and sad.
Nausea and headaches from exacerbation of such continuous malfunctioning of the eyes are not uncommonly attended by a depressed, dark, gloomy outlook on life. Many ophthalmologists hold on physio psychologic grounds that the mental state follows from the physical condition, constituting primarily an organic neurosis. Most psychiatrists hold that, although such organic causes of visual malfunction tend to increase headaches and depression upon mental fatigue and emotional discouragement or excitement, the tendency to visual decoordination is psychopathologically increased by internal mental conflict and emotional depression or excitement, with the formation of a progressive vicious circle. Abundant evidence from the biographical study of Lincoln shows that the organic and emotional neuroses formed a vicious circle and worked pathologically, daily throughout his life and that he cultivated a common-sense attitude to protect himself from himself and his personal relationships that were largely successful but not infrequently broke down.
It is impossible to understand the effects on the development of Lincoln's personality of the injury to his brain in childhood without considering their connections with the conditioning influences of the different members of his family and his social and professional relationships. Conversely, we cannot estimate soundly his personal adjustments to the great crises of his life without correlating them with the organic factors in his neurosis. The thousands of biographical studies and estimations of Lincoln in books, papers, editorials, and speeches published since his death have largely been based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the determining factors in the development of the man's personality and his great motives, although many have estimated ably the part he played in history.
The studies of Lincoln's facial expression made by physicians have related it to his ocular symptoms only as an auxiliary effort to control vision. The permanently destructive effects on his brain by the accident in boyhood, as the cause of his visual, facial, and vocal impairment and melancholic detachment, have been entirely overlooked. Of course, the definitive history of the accident and the dent in his forehead discredit the theory of cerebral injury at birth or of hereditary factors as the cause. A biography will be published soon giving special attention to the interactions of his organic and emotional neuroses with the origin and development of his great inspirations, leading up to and including his Presidency. It will show for the first time how the cerebral injury and family environment in boyhood influenced the development of his personality and mental convictions as a man.
Because of limited space, it must suffice here to add the well-known fact that Lincoln (born and raised in a wilderness log cabin) had an unusually attractive, intelligent, heroic, although semiliterate mother, to whom he was greatly attached in childhood. She died tragically of an epidemic fever when he was 9 years old, and his father married again when he was 10. His stepmother, an unusually intelligent pioneer woman, was very kind and devoted to her stepson and encouraged him to learn to read and write and to educate himself. He always retained a persistent, gloomy mother fixation, with interest in melancholy and tragic songs and poetry about the dead and the past.
His betrothed, Ann Rutledge, died in 1837 of an epidemic fever, and he reacted with suicidal melancholia, which lasted for several months. The following year he courted Mary Owens and proposed marriage but was unable to complete this obligation because of conflicting emotional revulsions against it.
In 1840 he courted Mary Todd and suffered such intense schizoid depression that he was unable to appear for the wedding ceremony. He again became melancholic, incoherent, and suicidal but recovered sufficiently in a few weeks to return to his office. He married Mary Todd in 1842; but, although she had four sons by him, he was never able to love her. He continued to have repeated attacks of emotional nervousness, with headaches and indigestion, for the rest of his life, particularly when forced to endure some grave political or military frustration.
Abraham Lincoln, throughout his maturity, until his death, was never free for a day from the tendency to melancholy from the combined interactions of an organic visual neurosis and a specifically, conditioned, emotional neurosis that worked in a repetitive, vacillating, vicious circle, against the miserable effects of which he protected himself by cultivating a practical, common-sense philosophy of humanism and humor.