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Robert Todd Lincoln was the eldest and the only surviving child of Abraham and Mary (Todd) Lincoln and was born on August 1, 1843 in Springfield, Illinois, United States. During his boyhood his father rose from insignificance to national importance.
Lincoln attended the Springfield schools, and then Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He was sent on to Harvard in the fall of 1859, carrying to the president a note of introduction from Stephen A. Douglas, which characterized him as the son of his friend, "with whom I have lately been canvassing the State of Illinois". He was kept in college while his associates entered the army, for his father, as he wrote to Grant, did not "wish to put him in the ranks". After graduating in 1864 he spent four months in the Harvard Law School.
In 1964 Lincoln was given an appointment on the staff of General Grant. On leaving the army Lincoln read law in Chicago and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He gained profitable clients among the railroad and corporate interests, and his name appears as a charter member of the Chicago Bar Association (1874). He was often mentioned by political leaders, who were not averse to profiting by his name, but he generally kept aloof. He went to the state Republican convention, however, in 1880, at the head of a Grant delegation from Chicago, and was in close sympathy with the effort of Senator Logan to procure a third term for Grant. Logan repaid him, when he had himself accepted defeat and had switched his allegiance to Garfield, by inducing Garfield to summon Lincoln to the War Department. Lincoln became secretary of war without enthusiasm and had an uneventful term of office, with the army dominated by his father's old generals, and with the Grant retirement bill as the most important controversial matter save for the perennial case of Gen. Fitz-John Porter. His management of the relief of the Greely Expedition evoked a public criticism from his subordinate, the chief signal officer, Gen. W. B. Hazen. He felt impelled to support Arthur for renomination in 1884, to the disappointment of Logan.
He resumed the practice of law in 1885 but was recalled to public service in 1889 by President Harrison who sent him to London as minister. Here the name did him good service, and he withstood the charms of British society so well as to earn the encomium of Theodore Roosevelt, who characterized "all of our ministers to England as pro-British except Bob Lincoln". He continued, however, to keep his name out of the papers and gained none of the distinction as spokesman for the people of the United States that has come to many of the ministers at the Court of St. James's.
For nearly twenty years after his return from England, Lincoln continued in his work as counsel for great business interests, and in his semi-seclusion upon which he would permit no intrusion. Among his chief clients was the Pullman Company; and when the founder of this company, George M. Pullman, died in 1897, he became first its acting executive and then its president. After the Pullman strike of 1894, and the use of the injunction in connection with this, it became common for radicals to compare adversely his apparent lack of interest in the common man and his father's humanity in the emancipation of the slaves, but he paid no attention to the criticisms. In 1911 he was forced to resign the presidency on account of his health though he retained a connection with the company as chairman of the board of directors.
In 1912 he moved to Washington, D. C. He remained almost unknown as he advanced in years. He had acquired a summer home, "Hildene, " at Manchester, New Hampshire, and there he found seclusion and the golf that he thought kept him alive. His father's papers, which Hay and Nicolay had worked over in the eighties, remained in his possession until near the end of his life when he deposited them in the Library of Congress to be sealed for twenty-one years after his death.
Lincoln built a successful law practice, becoming wealthy representing corporate clients. During his service as Secretary of War, he assisted Oscar Dudley in founding the Illinois Industrial Training School for Boys in Norwood Park in 1887; suggested the separation between the Weather Bureau and the Army; urged a pay increase for soldiers to reduce the risk of desertion, and recommended liberal appropriations to states to support the launch of volunteer militia organizations.
Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party.
Lincoln was married on September 24, 1868, to Mary, the daughter of Senator James Harlan of Iowa. They remained married until his death, and were the parents of three children.
