{"id":50601,"date":"2026-10-09T15:38:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T15:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-to-remake-yourself-when-you-are-undone-lincoln-and-the-gift-of-his-suicidal-depression\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T15:38:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T15:38:52","slug":"how-to-remake-yourself-when-you-are-undone-lincoln-and-the-gift-of-his-suicidal-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-to-remake-yourself-when-you-are-undone-lincoln-and-the-gift-of-his-suicidal-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Remake Yourself When You Are Undone: Lincoln and the Gift of His Suicidal Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life-affirming inspiration from a man who knew intimately \u201cthat intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death.\u201d<\/h3>\n
\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI am now the most miserable man living,\u201d Abraham Lincoln<\/strong> (February 12, 1809\u2013April 15, 1865) wrote to his law partner three weeks before his thirty-third birthday. \u201cIf what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pensive, sensitive, and compassionate by nature, Lincoln felt life deeply. As a child, he told his stepsister that an ant\u2019s life is as sweet to the ant as ours is to us and ardently chided the other boys for setting sea turtles on fire with that unthinking cruelty children at play can have. As a teenager, he defied his family\u2019s tradition of considering basic literacy sufficient education for their line of work, sneaking away from his farm duties to read and study, so that a cousin would later remember him as \u201cvery lazy\u2026 always reading \u2014 scribbling \u2014 writing \u2014 ciphering \u2014 writing poetry &c. &c.\u201d As a young adult, he came to see himself as cursed with the \u201cpeculiar misfortune\u201d of dreaming dreams too large not to explode with disappointment. <\/p>\n

\"abrahamlincoln\"
Abraham Lincoln<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Five years after leaving his father\u2019s farm, the first detonation of depression shook the young man\u2019s world. His legal studies strained him beyond capacity. Reading day and night, he grew emaciated. Meanwhile, a typhoid epidemic swept the land with a tidal wave of death, taking with it the life of Ann Rutledge \u2014 a young woman who uniquely understood Lincoln\u2019s sensitivity and about whom he had come to care deeply \u2014 so deeply that no one around them quite understood the nature of their bond, though generations have taken the liberty of qualifying it, manufacturing an entire romantic mythos around a brittle skeleton of spare facts. <\/p>\n

Whatever the private reality of the relationship, it was in this period of strife and loss, surrounded by widespread death and stretched beyond his own creaturely limits, that Lincoln came to think seriously of suicide. The idea grew so intrusive, so actionable, that he no longer trusted himself to carry a pocket knife. Friends and neighbors watched his mental unraveling with growing concern, so alarmed to see him wander the woods aimlessly with his gun that they set up a suicide watch. <\/p>\n

Lincoln lived. But from that point on, like Keats<\/a>, like Tchaikovsky<\/a>, he suffered frequent visitations of deadly despair, the character-shaping power of which Joshua Wolf Shenk explores in Lincoln\u2019s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>). <\/p>\n

After that first rather public episode of suicidal depression, Lincoln learned to hide his heavy heart behind his famous humor, behind a facade of such cheerful levity that even those working most closely with him would never see him despondent or ill-tempered. But it spilled out obliquely, through the cracks of compassion: Reaching out to salve a friend\u2019s savaging depression with his great gift of consolation<\/a>, he wrote with a poignant familiarity of \u201cthat intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\u201cThoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death.\u201d Art by Margaret C. Cook from a rare edition<\/a> of Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass<\/em>. (Available as a print<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unbeknownst to anyone, in the summer of his thirtieth year, Lincoln penned an intensely sorrowful poem titled \u201cThe Suicide\u2019s Soliloquy,\u201d printed anonymously in a small Whig paper in Illinois alongside advertisements for whale oil and French cologne. It would take scholars 139 years to identify his authorship. With its haunting story-framing epigraph and its dramatic narration by a fictional character, it was Lincoln\u2019s way of safely rehearsing in the darkest recesses of his imagination what it might be like to enact the central pull of suicide \u2014 the tempting illusion that total self-erasure is the only way to terminate the mental anguish nothing else has allayed. <\/p>\n

\n

THE SUICIDE\u2019S SOLILOQUY<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following lines were said to have been found near the bones of a man supposed to have committed suicide, in a deep forest, on the flat branch of the Sangamon, some time ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, where the lonely hooting owl
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sends forth his midnight moans,
\nFierce wolves shall o\u2019er my carcase growl,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Or buzzards pick my bones.<\/p>\n

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Or where my ashes lie;
\nUnless by beasts drawn round their bait,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Or by the ravens\u2019 cry.<\/p>\n

Yes! I\u2019ve resolved the deed to do,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And this the place to do it:
\nThis heart I\u2019ll rush a dagger through,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Though I in hell should rue it!<\/p>\n

Hell! What is hell to one like me
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who pleasures never knew;
\nBy friends<\/em> consigned to misery,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By hope<\/em> deserted too?<\/p>\n

To ease me of this<\/em> power to think<\/em>,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That through my bosom raves,
\nI\u2019ll headlong leap from hell\u2019s high brink,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And wallow in its waves.<\/p>\n

Though devils yell, and burning chains
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0May waken long regret;
\nTheir frightful screams, and piercing pains,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Will help me to forget<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yes! I\u2019m prepared, through endless night,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To take that fiery berth!
\nThink not with tales of hell to fright
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Me, who am damn\u2019d on earth!<\/p>\n

Sweet steel! come forth from your sheath,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And glist\u2019ning, speak your powers;
\nRip up the organs of my breath,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And draw my blood in showers!<\/p>\n

I strike! It quivers in that heart
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Which drives me to this end;
\nI draw and kiss the bloody dart,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My last \u2014 my only friend!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This blackest despair was more than a poetic image for Lincoln. Three years later, when another acute episode of depression subsumed him and he came to see himself as the most miserable man on Earth, he arrived at the ultimate equation:<\/p>\n

\n

To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He did get better. He did remember what we so frequently and dangerously forget when pressed under the leaden lid of depression \u2014 that the light of being returns<\/a>. Like any great artist of life, Lincoln learned to transmute his suffering into fuel for building a more beautiful and light-filled world, turning the private anguish of his suicidal depression into a powerful political metaphor to mobilize his nation\u2019s spirit. \u201cIf destruction be our lot,\u201d he declaimed in one of his most powerful speeches, \u201cwe must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.\u201d (Whitman \u2014 who reverenced Lincoln as \u201cthe greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral personality\u201d \u2014 echoed the sentiment with redoubled conviction across the epoch-stride of the Civil War in his prescient essay Democratic Vistas<\/em><\/a>: \u201cAmerica, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without.\u201d) <\/p>\n

Living with his own depression, Lincoln understood intimately that what is true of the spirit of a person is true of the spirit of a people \u2014 our undoing always serves an invitation to learn new modes of making: making beauty, making meaning, making the life we want to live and the world we want to live it in. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Abraham Lincoln (Photograph by Abraham Byers)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Couple with two centuries of great writers \u2014 including Keats, Whitman, Thoreau, Carson, and Hansberry \u2014 on the surest salve for depression<\/a>, then revisit Tim Ferriss on how he survived suicidal depression<\/a>, Mary Oliver\u2019s spare and splendid antidote to melancholy<\/a>, William Styron\u2019s classic interior tour of what depression is really like<\/a>, and this tender illustrated meditation<\/a> on what it takes to unblue our sadnesses. <\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life-affirming inspiration from a man who knew intimately \u201cthat intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death.\u201d \u201cI am now the most miserable man living,\u201d Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809\u2013April 15, 1865) wrote to his law partner three weeks before his thirty-third birthday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 11:19:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}