Good Friday, April 14, 1865
The president eased his six-foot-four frame out of bed so as not to wake his wife and stepped into a morning that felt, for the first time in years, curiously like joy. A long time ago she asked him to call her Molly. As if a softer name than Mary Todd might cover the moods that visited without warning. He tried to be her helpmate — frontier hands, bookish mind, a soft voice that carried hard truths when necessary — but consolation wasn’t her remedy. Nineteenth-century doctors called it “nervousness.” Today we would call it depression. The label didn’t matter.
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