Kentucky Rebel Beauty or Lincoln's Gorgeous Sister In-LawCivil War Bummer

Kentucky Rebel Beauty, Emilie Todd Helm, was not only President Lincoln’s Gorgeous Sister-In-Law, but she was Mary Todd Lincoln’s half-sister. She was the youngest child of the Todd’s, half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln and wife and later widow of Confederate general Benjamin Hardin Helm, of Kentucky. Emilie was beautiful, vivacious, spirited, young enough to be the President’s daughter and in addition, was the perfect Southern belle. Emilie was eighteen years younger than Mary Todd Lincoln and was just a child when the Lincolns got married. For the rest of his life, Abraham Lincoln referred to Emilie as “Little Sister”.

Emilie Todd Helm was born November 11, 1836 in Lexington, Kentucky, one of nine children of Robert Smith Todd and his second wife, Elizabeth Humphreys. Robert Todd had seven children by his first wife, Eliza Parker, including Mary Todd Lincoln. Emilie was born into a wealthy family of exceptional advantages in both education and culture, which was afforded to few ladies of her time.

Emilie’s future husband, Benjamin Hardin Helm was born June 2, 1831 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the son of John Larue Helm, two-term Governor of Kentucky. Benjamin Helm attended the Kentucky Military Institute and the U.S. Military Academy, graduating ninth in his class at West Point in 1851. After brief service as a cavalry officer, Helm resigned his commission, due to illness, in 1852. He then studied law, first at the University of Louisville where he graduated in 1853, and later at Harvard. He practiced law in Elizabethtown and later in Louisville from 1856 to the outbreak of the Civil War. He married Emilie Todd in 1856. They had three children, Ben, Jr., Elodie, and Katherine.

Despite deep political differences, the Helms had a close relationship with her sister and brother-in-law, the Lincolns. The President had offered Helm an officer’s commission in the Union army, but Helm declined the post. In March 1861, President Lincoln had also offered her husband, Benjamin, a job as army paymaster, which he declined. He instead became a confederate general. He was briefly associated with Kentucky’s short-lived stance of neutrality as Assistant Inspector General of the State Guard. After neutrality was abandoned, Helm became a colonel in the Confederate Army with the First Regiment of Kentucky Cavalry. After the Battle of Shiloh, Benjamin received a promotion to brigadier general.

General Helm was wounded at the Battle of Murfreesboro and then at the Battle of Chickamauga, in September of 1863 Brigadier General Helm was hit in the left side by rifle fire and he was carried to the rear, inspected by a surgeon and his wounds were pronounced fatal. Helm lingered for a few hours and died in the early evening.

After Lincoln heard of Helm’s death, Illinois Senator David Davis related;

“I never saw Lincoln more moved than when he learned of the death of his young brother-in-law Ben Hardin Helm, only thirty-two years old, at Chickamauga. I called to see him…finding him in the greatest grief so I closed the door and left him alone.”

Benjamin Helms was only 32 years old when he was killed and Emilie had become the grieving widow and mother at 26. She applied for passage through the lines, in order to visit her in-laws at the White House in Washington. Emilie and her daughter Katherine had accepted an offer from Mary and Abraham Lincoln to spend the winter of 1863-1864 with them in Washington. The trip was very peaceful, there was no fighting or blaming the other over the sides each had taken. Emilie’s daughter Katie and Mary’s son Tad often argued over who was president. Tad insisted that his father was the president and Katie insisted it was Jefferson Davis.

Peaceful on most occasions, however while there, even though she kept a very low public profile, Emilie was labeled the “Rebel in the White House” with her presence causing the Lincolns some political discomfort. When General Daniel E. Sickles, had baited Emilie by stating that the Confederate soldiers were “scoundrels and ran like scared rabbits” at Chattanooga, Emilie responded that the Confederate soldiers had only “followed the example the Federals had set them at Bull Run and Manassas.”

President Lincoln eventually pardoned Emilie and allowed her to return to Kentucky. Emilie Helm became very active after the war as a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She also took part in many of the military reunions and was named “Mother” of her husband’s Kentucky Orphan Brigade. In 1881, her nephew,
Robert Todd Lincoln obtained for her an appointment as postmistress of
Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

Emilie Todd Helm would survive her husband by sixty-six years, dying at the age of 93 in 1930 of a heart attack. Just before her death, her daughter found her burning her diary and asked why she would do such a thing. Emilie replied,

“There is just too much bitterness in it.”

Emilie was laid to rest at the Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky, with other members of the Todd family.

Kentucky Rebel Beauty, Emilie Todd Helm, was not only Lincoln’s gorgeous sister-in-law and Mary Lincoln’s half-sister, but a true example of how the southern mindset permeated not only male secessionists, but included their unrepentant soul mates and beguiling Dixie vixens.

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