Honest, Abe. We knew it was tough presiding over a divided nation during the Civil War. We didn't know how tormented your personal life was, with your wife's depression and her spending binges, documented on PBS' The American Experience (9-11 p.m. today through Wednesday, Channels 48, 54, 16).

        The six-hour dual profile, “Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided,'' debuts opposite a special called The Unfinished Civil War (9-11 p.m, History Channel) that illustrates that the divisive racial issue at the heart of the Civil War still rages 140 years later. (Thank goodness for VCRs!)

        Although hundreds of books and films have been produced about Mr. Lincoln, “A House Divided” looks at his presidency through his marriage to a southern aristocrat. Some Northerners thought her a traitor.

        “They think that she's a Confederate spy. Words go around because her brothers are fighting for the other side,” says David Grubin, writer-producer-director of the film.

        While federal troops were needing food and blankets on the battlefield, Mrs. Lincoln was being criticized in the press for spending thousands on redecorating the White House. Reporters quizzed Philadelphia sales clerks about her purchases of carpets, curtains, wallpaper and dishes.

        Historians have documented Mr. Lincoln's depression during the long, bitter war. The American Experience notes that Mrs. Lincoln suffered longer, darker bouts of depression. When their 11-year-old son, Willie, died in 1862, Mrs. Lincoln didn't leave her bedroom for a month.

        “She seems to behave almost like a manic-depressive,” says presidential scholar Doris Kearns Goodwin, interviewed in the film. “She falls into these terrible states of despair and gets out of them by spending . . . in kind of a frenzy of shopping, (buying) hundreds and hundreds of gloves.”

        This is the first husband-wife presidential profile by Mr. Grubin, who has produced The American Experience biographies on Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Teddy Roosevelt.

        “It takes getting to know her as a human being to begin to have real sympathy for her,” he says.

        “She struggled so terribly with problems that would have broken most of us. She lost a son before she got to the White House; she loses another son in the White House; her husband is assassinated and dies in her arms. And . . . it even gets darker,” he says.

        Tad, their third son, died of tuberculosis six years after his father. Mrs. Lincoln was briefly institutionalized after that, but lived another 17 years.

        Understanding the strain of their marriage will make Americans think differently about the president on the penny. The icon becomes a real person with real problems. Really big problems.

        As the film points out, Mr. Lincoln found himself directing a war when “he had never managed anything larger than his two-man law firm.” PBS portrays him not just as the chief executive, but as a married man with a family.

        “When you know his intimate life, he becomes more of a person,” Mr. Grubin says, “and not simply this great figure that is kind of a secular saint for Americans.”

        War stories: These are the real weekend warriors — the Civil War re-enactors.

        The Unfinished Civil War (9 p.m. today, History Channel) interviews electricians, steel workers, contractors and truckers who spend their weekends re-enacting Civil War battles from Maryland to Mississippi.

        Past meets present when the film crew documents the battle over the Confederate flag flying atop the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. The two-hour film was inspired by Tony Horowitz's book, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.

        VCR alert: Two Cincinnati sports stars will be featured on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury biography shows this week: Maurice Stokes of the old Cincinnati Royals (8 p.m. Tuesday) and Frank Robinson of the Cincinnati Reds (8 p.m. Thursday).

        Lawson move: Attorney Ken Lawson has jumped from WCIN-AM (1480) to WDBZ-AM (1230). His weekly law show airs 10 a.m. Saturday, says Lincoln Ware, who left WCIN-AM last summer for WDBZ-AM.

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