He then served on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant as a captain in the Union Army in the closing days of the American Civil War.

[2] Lincoln recalled, "During my childhood and early youth he was almost constantly away from home, attending court or making political speeches.

"[3][a] Abraham apparently realized that his being away had a potential impact on his sons as evidenced by the following quote from his April 16, 1848, letter to his wife: "don't let the blessed fellows forget Father".

[10] Admitted to Harvard, he graduated in 1864, having been elected vice-president of the Hasty Pudding Club,[11] and was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter) fraternity.

[12] Welsh author Jan Morris wrote that Robert Lincoln, "having failed fifteen out of sixteen subjects in the Harvard entrance examination, got in at last and emerged an unsympathetic bore.

[11] Lincoln attended Harvard Law School from September 1864 to January 1865, but left after four months in order to join the Union Army.

He served in the last weeks of the American Civil War on General Grant's staff, a status which meant, in all likelihood, he would not be involved in actual combat.

The exact date is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1863 or early 1864, before John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln.

[23] On the night his father was assassinated, Robert had turned down an invitation to accompany the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre due to fatigue after spending much of his recent time in a covered wagon at the battlefront.

[24][25] Ten days later, Robert Lincoln wrote President Andrew Johnson requesting that he and his family be allowed to stay in the Executive mansion for two and a half weeks because his mother had told him that "she can not possibly be ready to leave here".

[26] Lincoln also acknowledged that he was aware of the "great inconvenience" this would be to Johnson since he had become president of the United States only a short time earlier.

[35] Robert, Mary, and the children would often leave their hot city life behind for the cooler climate of Mount Pleasant, during the 1880s the family would summer at the Harlan home there.

Mary also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times and shortly, the embarrassment Robert had hoped to avoid came to the forefront, with his motives and character being publicly questioned.

Bellevue's director, who at Mary's commitment trial assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility, now declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister.

[48] Subsequent to serving as Secretary of War, Lincoln assisted Oscar Dudley to establish the Illinois Industrial Training School for Boys (now known as Glenwood Academy) in Norwood Park in 1887, after Dudley (a Humane Society employee) "discovered more homeless, neglected and abused boys than dogs on the city streets.

Pullman hid from the deputy marshal sent to his office with the subpoena and then appeared with Lincoln to meet privately with Judge Grosscup after the jury had been dismissed.

[57] A serious nonprofessional astronomer, Lincoln had an observatory built at Hildene, and a 1909 Warner & Swasey refracting telescope with a six-inch John A. Brashear objective lens was installed.

[60][61] His last public appearance was on May 30, 1922, at the dedication ceremony for his father's memorial in Washington, D.C.[62][63] Robert Lincoln was coincidentally either present or nearby when three presidential assassinations occurred.

[73] Robert had long expressed his intention to be buried in the Lincoln Tomb with his family at the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.

Two weeks after his death, his widow Mary Harlan Lincoln wrote to her husband's niece of an inspired thought: "...[O]ur darling was a personage, made his own history, independently of his great father, and should have his own place 'in the sun'".

[74] Lincoln's body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery[75][76] in a sarcophagus designed by the sculptor James Earle Fraser.

Weeks after Jack's death, Robert wrote to his cousin Charles Edwards, "We had a long & most anxious struggle and at times had hopes of saving our boy.

"[78] Nevertheless, he accepted the appointments and was very well-paid, becoming a millionaire lawyer and businessman, fond of the pleasures of the wealthy conservative Victorian gentlemen of his social circle.

[83] Robert Todd Lincoln as a character has appeared multiple times on film, in television programs, and in dramatic productions.