The Forbes House Museum will sponsor a lecture by Rhode Island Chief Justice (retired), Frank J. Williams on Sunday, 19 October at 2pm in the Keys Room at the Milton Public Library, 476 Canton Avenue, Milton. The lecture is free and open to the public. Chief Justice Williams, a nationally acclaimed scholar and author, will present the lecture, “Lincoln’s Melancholia.”

Lincoln’s melancholy has been the subject of much research and speculation. He was known to have suffered from clinical depression, having written about suicide as a young man and experienced breakdowns on a number of occasions.

“Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life,” writes Joshua Wolf Shenk in his article, ‘Lincoln’s Great Depression’ (The Atlantic Magazine, October 2005), “and if he were alive today, his condition would be treated as a ‘character issue’- that is, a political liability. His condition was indeed a character issue as it gave him the tools to save the nation.”

The lecture is offered in conjunction with the exhibit, Mary Bowditch Forbes and the FHM Lincoln Collection, presently on view in the second floor Local History Gallery at the Milton Public Library.

The exhibit features 27 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and documents highlighting aspects of the American Civil War and the building of the FHM Lincoln Cabin. The artworks and memorabilia are drawn from the permanent collection of the Forbes House Museum, acquired over a fifty year period by Mary Bowditch Forbes. The exhibit is on view through January 2015.