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Elizabeth Keckley
Born	February 1818 Dinwiddie County Court House, Dinwiddie, Virginia
Died	May 1907 (aged 88–89) Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Seamstress, Author
Children	George Kirkland

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (February 1818 – May 1907)^[1] (sometimes spelled Keckly) ^[2] was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civic activist and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady. Keckley had moved to Washington in 1860 after buying her freedom and that of her son in St. Louis. She created an independent business in the capital based on clients who were the wives of the government elite. Among them were Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis; and Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee.

After the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and considered controversial for breaking privacy about them. It was also her claim as a businesswoman to be part of the new mixed-race, educated middle-class that was visible among the leadership of the black community.

Keckly’s relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, the President’s wife, was notable for its personal quality and intimacy, as well as its endurance over time.

[edit] Early life

Elizabeth Keckly was born a slave in February 1818 in Dinwiddie County Court House, Dinwiddie, Virginia, just south of Petersburg. Her mother, Agnes, was a house slave owned by Armistead and Mary Burwell. ‘Aggy’ as she was called, was a ‘privileged slave’, as she had learned to read and write although it was illegal for slaves to do so. Elizabeth’s biological father, whose identity was revealed to her only late in life, was her master Armistead Burwell, a planter and colonel in the War of 1812.^[3] Keckley’s mother did not tell her the father’s identity until on her deathbed, although it was obvious by Elizabeth’s appearance that he was white.^[4]

The nature of the relationship between Agnes and Burwell is unknown. He later permitted Agnes to marry George Pleasant Hobbs. He was a literate slave who lived and worked at the home of a neighbor during Elizabeth Keckley’s early childhood. When his owner decided to move far away, Hobbs was taken away from his wife and stepdaughter.

Keckley lived in the Burwell house with her mother, and began official duties at age four. As the Burwells had four children under the age of ten, Mary assigned Elizabeth as the nursemaid for their infant Elizabeth Margaret.^[5] Forced into major responsibility as a young child, Keckley was subject to punishment for failing to care properly for the baby. One day, she accidentally tipped the cradle over too far, and the infant rolled onto the floor. Mary Burwell beat her severely.

[edit] Teenage years

In 1832, at age fourteen, Keckley was sent to live “on generous loan” with the eldest Burwell son Robert when he married Margaret Anna Robertson, in Chesterfield County, Virginia, near Petersburg.^[6] Burwell’s wife expressed contempt for Elizabeth, and made home life for the next four years uncomfortable for her. They moved to Hillsborough, North Carolina, where Robert was a minister and teacher at the Burwell School. Keckley mentioned that Mrs. Burwell seemed ‘desirous to wreak vengeance’^[7] upon her. Keckley still wrote letters to her mother during her time there.

Margaret Burwell enlisted a neighbor, William J. Bingham, to help subdue the girl’s “stubborn pride”. When Keckley was eighteen, Bingham called her to his quarters and ordered her to undress so that he could beat her. Keckley refused, saying she was fully grown, and you “shall not whip me unless you prove the stronger. Nobody has a right to whip me but my own master, and nobody shall do so if I can prevent it.”^[8] Bingham bound her hands and beat her, and Elizabeth was sent back to her master with bleeding welts upon her back. A week later, Bingham flogged her again until he was exhausted. During these beatings, Elizabeth suppressed her tears and cries. The following week, after yet another attempt to “break her”, Bingham had a change of heart, “burst[ing] into tears, and declar[ing] that it would be a sin” to beat her anymore.^[9] He asked for her forgiveness and said that he would not beat her again. Keckley claims that he kept his word.^[10]

In Hillsborough, for four years, Alexander M. Kirkland, a prominent white man of the community, forced a sexual relationship on Elizabeth, which she said caused “suffering and deep mortification.”^[11] She bore a son by Kirkland, naming the child George after her stepfather.^[12] After the boy was born in 1839, Keckley was returned to Virginia, where she served Ann Burwell Garland and her husband.

[edit] Road to freedom

Due to financial difficulties in the Garland family, they sold some slave children and “hired out” others, collecting the fees of their wages. Keckley and her mother remained with their mistress Anne Garland and her husband. Keckely’s sewing helped support the family.

After many moves, in 1847 the Garlands moved to St. Louis, taking Aggie and Elizabeth with them. They cared for the children and did all the family sewing. Living and working for nearly twelve years in St. Louis enabled Keckley the chance to mingle with its large free black population. She also established connections with women in the white community which she drew on as a free dressmaker.^[13]

Keckley met her future husband, James, in St. Louis, but refused to marry him until she and her son were free. She asked Hugh Garland if he would free her and her son, but he refused. Persistent, she worked for two years to persuade him to free them. In 1852, Garland agreed to release them for the price of $1,200.^[14]

Keckley considered going to New York to try to “appeal to the benevolence of the people.”^[15] According to Keckley, her patroness, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Le Bourgeois, said, “it would be a shame to allow you to go North to beg for what we should give you.”^[16] With the help of her patrons, Keckley collected the money to buy her and her son’s freedom, and was manumitted in November 1855.^[17] Keckley had promised to repay her patrons, and stayed in St. Louis until she had earned enough to do so.

Keckley worked hard in her business as well as personal life. Looking beyond life in St. Louis, she enrolled her son in the newly established Wilberforce University. She also made plans to leave St. Louis and James Keckley.^[18]

In early 1860 she and her son moved to Baltimore, Maryland. She intended to run classes for young “colored women” to teach her system of cutting and fitting dresses. She was not successful; after six weeks had hardly enough money to get to Washington, DC, which she thought might offer better chances for work.”^[19] At the time, Maryland was passing many repressive laws against free blacks.

[edit] Move to the Capital

In mid-1860, Keckley intended to work as a seamstress in Washington, but lacked the money to pay for the required license as a free black to remain in the city for more than 30 days. Keckley appealed to her patrons, and a Ms. Ringold used her connection to Mayor James G. Berret to petition for a license for Keckley. Berret granted it to her free of charge.^[20]

Keckly worked to establish clients and gain enough work to support herself. Commissions for dresses were steadily coming in, but a dress that she completed for Mrs. Robert E. Lee sparked her business’ rapid growth. Keckley found most of her work with society women by word-of-mouth recommendations.

Margaret McLean of Maryland, introduced by Varina Davis, requested a dress from Keckley and said she needed it urgently. Keckley declined, as she had heavy order commitments. Mrs. McLean offered to introduce Keckley to “the people in the White House”, the newly elected president Abraham Lincoln and his wife.^[21] Keckley finished the dress for McLean, who arranged a meeting the following week for her with Mrs. Lincoln.

[edit] The White House years

Elizabeth Keckley met Mary Todd Lincoln on March 4, 1861, the day of Abraham Lincoln‘s first inauguration. As she was preparing for the day’s events, Mrs. Lincoln asked Keckley to return the next day for an interview. When she arrived, Keckley found other women there to be interviewed as well, but Mrs. Lincoln chose her as her personal modiste.

In addition to dressmaking, Keckley assisted Mrs. Lincoln each day as her personal dresser. She also helped Mrs. Lincoln prepare for official receptions and other social events. For the next six years, Keckley became an intimate witness to the private life of the First Family. Known for her love of fashion, the First Lady kept Keckley busy maintaining and creating new pieces for her extensive wardrobe. Within four months, Keckley made approximately sixteen dresses. Mrs. Lincoln was known to be difficult. Rosetta Wells said that Keckley was “the only person in Washington who could get along with Mrs. Lincoln, when she became mad with anybody for talking about her and criticizing her husband.” Their friendship fostered Keckley’s lifelong loyalty to the First Lady.

During the Lincoln administration (and many years afterward), Keckley was the sole designer and creator of Mary Todd Lincoln’s event wardrobe. In January 1862, Mrs. Lincoln went for photos to Brady’s Washington Photography Studio, where she had images taken while wearing two of Keckley’s gowns. For several years to come, she wore Keckley’s dresses to many official events and had more portraits taken while wearing her work.

Within the free black community, Keckley enjoyed semi-celebrity status. She helped establish the Contraband Relief Association in 1862, to raise money for former slaves who had come to Union lines.

[edit] Contraband Relief Association

Keckley founded the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862, receiving donations from both Lincolns, as well as other white patrons and well-to-do free blacks.^[22] The organization changed its name in July 1864 to the Ladies’ Freedmen and Soldier’s Relief Association to “reflect its expanded mission” after blacks started serving in the United States Colored Troops.^[23] The CRA provided food, shelter, clothing, and emotional support to recently freed slaves and/or sick and wounded soldiers. The organization was based in Washington D.C., but the funds distributed and the services provided helped families in the larger region. The Contraband Relief Association became lost to history, but it set the standards and showed the need for relief organizations to provide aid to the poor and displaced black community. The work of the Contraband Relief Association within the black community helped create black autonomy. Through intra-ethnic networking, the Association created an organization by and for African Americans.^[24]

Keckley wrote about the contrabands in Washington D.C. in her autobiography. She said that ex-slaves were not going to find “flowery paths, days of perpetual sunshine, and bowers hanging with golden fruit” in Washington D.C., but that” the road was rugged and full of thorns.”^[25] She saw that “[their] appeal for help too often was answered by cold neglect.”^[25] One summer evening, Keckley witnessed “a festival given for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers in the city,” which whites organized.^[26] She thought the free blacks could do something similar to benefit the poor and suggested to her colored friends “a society of colored people be formed to labor for the benefit of the unfortunate freedmen.”^[26]

The CRA used the independent black churches for meetings and events, such as the Twelfth Baptist Church, Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Israel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Siloam Presbyterian Church.^[27] The organization held fundraisers, with concerts, speeches, dramatic readings, and festivals.^[28] Prominent black figures who spoke on behalf of the organization included Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, J. Sella Martin, and Wendell Phillips.

The CRA’s receipts were “$838.68 the first year and $1,228.43 the second year. 5,150 articles of clothing had been received during that time.”^[29] The CRA affirmed in its first annual report that “every effort made by us to obtain funds to alleviate in any way the distresses of our afflicted brethren has been crowned with success.”^[29] Out of the $838.68, approximately $600 was given by and raised by black ran and/or predominately black organizations such as the Freedmen’s Relief Association of District of Columbia, Fugitive Aid Society of Boston, Waiters of Metropolitan Hotel, and the Young Misses of Baltimore.^[30]

The CRA distributed clothes, food, and shelter amongst the freedmen and sent funds to many. Jean Fagan Yellin notes that the CRA sent $50 to the sick and wounded soldiers at Alexandria, Virginia.^[31] The CRA hosted Christmas dinners for sick and wounded soldiers.^[32] It distributed food to other organizations.^[33] The organization helped to place African-American teachers in the newly built schools for blacks.^[34] The entire community had recognized, valued, and thanked “the officers and the members of the Association for their kindness and attentive duties to the sick and wounded;” but it was overlooked in later histories.^[35]

[edit] Commonality through tragedy

When Keckley began working at the White House, the Lincolns had two young children, William and Tad. She sometimes was given domestic duties such as looking after the children, including during periods of sickness. Keckley was a source of strength and comfort for the Lincolns after the two boys died.

Her own son George Kirkland, who was more than three-quarters white, enlisted as a white in the Union Army in 1861 after the war broke out. He was killed in action on August 10, 1861. After difficulties in establishing her son’s racial identity, Keckley gained a pension as his survivor; it was $8 monthly (later raised to $12) for the remainder of her life.

Keckley also comforted the First Lady after the President’s assassination. Mrs. Lincoln became secluded, allowing only a few into her quarters. Finding Lincoln in a critically delicate state, Keckley stood by her to give comfort. Mrs. Lincoln gave away many of her husband’s personal items to people close to her, including Keckley. Keckley acquired Mary Lincoln’s blood-spattered cloak and bonnet from the night of the assassination, as well as some of the President’s personal grooming items.

Mrs. Lincoln insisted that Keckley accompany her to Chicago to assist her in her new life and myriad affairs. Roughly one month after the assassination, Keckley boarded a train with Mrs. Lincoln and the family en route to Chicago. She spent about three weeks with Mrs. Lincoln, as she needed to return to the capital to take care of her business. Mary Lincoln grew more dependent upon Keckley, writing her frequently, asking for visits, and lamenting her new conditions. This period was critical to their later friendship.

[edit] Behind The Scenes

In 1867, Mrs. Lincoln, who was deeply in debt because of extravagant spending, wrote to Keckley, asking for help in disposing of articles of value, including old clothes, by accompanying her to New York to find a broker to handle the sales. In late September, they arrived in New York, where Mrs. Lincoln used an alias for the duration of her visit. Keckley attempted to help by giving interviews to newspapers sympathetic to Mrs. Lincoln’s plight and wrote letters to friends like Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet, a highly respected minister in the black church community. The fund raising effort became publicly known, and Mrs. Lincoln was severely criticized for selling clothes and other items associated with her husband’s presidency.

Elizabeth Keckley donated her Lincoln memorabilia to Wilberforce College for its sale in fundraising to rebuild after a fire in 1865. Mrs. Lincoln was angry about her action, and Keckley changed her original intention to have the articles publicly displayed for fees in Europe. The publicity and criticism of Mrs. Lincoln strained their relationship, but they remained in contact, although not so close.

In 1868, Elizabeth Keckley published Behind the Scenes, to “attempt to place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world” and to “explain the motives” that guided Mrs. Lincoln’s decisions regarding what became known as the “old clothes scandal”.^[36] She gained the help of James Redpath, an editor from New York and friend of Frederick Douglass, to help her edit and publish her book.

Keckley described her own rise from slavery to life as a middle-class businesswoman who employed staff to help complete her projects. She was claiming a part in the educated, mixed-race middle class of the black community. She emphasized her ability to overcome difficulties and the development of her business sense. While acknowledging the brutalities under slavery and the sexual abuse that led to the birth of her son George, she spent little time on those events. This was in contrast to other women’s slave narratives, in which they revealed white men taking sexual advantage of them. Essentially she “veiled” her own past but, using alternating chapters, contrasted her life with that of Mary Todd Lincoln and “unveiled” the former First Lady, as she noted her debts.^[37]

Keckley wrote about the Lincolns, in a style of near hagiography for him, but with a cool, analytical eye for Mary Lincoln. Advertisements labeled the forthcoming book as a ‘literary thunderbolt’ and the publisher, Carleton & Company, joined in by declaring it as a ‘great sensational disclosure’.^[38] The editor included letters from Mary Lincoln to Keckley in the book, and the seamstress was strongly criticized for violating Mrs. Lincoln’s privacy.^[37]

At a time when the white middle class struggled over “genteel performance”, Keckley unveiled a white woman by the very title of her book, showing what went on behind the public scenes and revealing “private, domestic information involving, primarily, white women.”^[37] The Lincolns had been subject to criticism as westerners early in his presidency, and Mary Todd Lincoln’s anxiety about their position led to her trying to dress right and conduct the White House well. Critics such as Carolyn Soriso have identified Keckley’s unveiling of Lincoln as the reason that the book generated such a backlash. A reviewer from the “Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer declared that they were pleased that Keckley’s book was published, as it would serve as a warning “to those ladies whose husbands may be elevated to the position of the President of the United States not to put on airs and attempt to appear what their education, their habits of life and social position, and even personal appearance would not warrant.”^[37] By writing about Lincoln, Keckley transgressed the law of tact. Her relationship with Lincoln was ambiguous, as it drew both from her work as an employee and from the friendship they developed, which did not meet the rules of gentility. People felt as if Keckley, an African American and former slave, had transgressed the boundaries that the middle class tried to maintain between public and private life.^[37]

Joanne Fleischner writes of the reaction to Keckley’s book,

“Lizzy’s intentions, like the spelling of her name, would thereafter be lost in history. At the age of fifty, she had violated Victorian codes not only of friendship and privacy, but of race, gender, and class. Not surprisingly, the newspapers that attacked Mary Lincoln in the fall, in the spring now leapt to her defense… The social threat represented by this black woman’s agency also provoked other readers, and someone produced an ugly and viciously racist parody called Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman who Took Work in from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis and Signed with an “X,” the Mark of “Betsey Kickley (Nigger), denoting its supposed author’s illiteracy.”^[39]

Stunned and dismayed by the negative publicity, Keckley wrote letters to newspaper editors and defended her serious intentions, which was part of the model of gentility. The uproar over the book subsided, but it did not sell well. The writer Joanne Fleischner has suggested that Mrs. Lincoln’s son Robert, who was perpetually embarrassed by his mother’s behavior in private life (and would have her committed to an asylum in 1875), did not want the public to know such intimate details as appeared in the memoir.^[40] He may have been involved in suppressing the sale and distribution of the memoir.

[edit] The aftermath

With regard to Mrs. Lincoln’s reaction, Mrs. Lincoln felt betrayed and extremely disturbed by the work’s public disclosure of private conversations and letters that were written to Keckley. Keckley explained that she too had been betrayed; that James Redpath violated her trust by printing the letters he asked her to ‘lend’ him, as he promised not to disclose them and had not gained her consent for publication. The now destitute former First Lady permanently severed contact with Keckley.

In July 1869, during a European trip, Mrs. Lincoln was pleased to come across Sally Orne, a good friend from her Washington days. The two women spent every moment together reminiscing about the past and lamenting the present. Not since she had last seen Keckley had Mrs. Lincoln had the pleasant company and undivided attention of an old friend.^[41]

Elizabeth Keckley continued to attempt to earn money by sewing and teaching young women her techniques, while much of her white clientele stopped calling. Eventually she was in great need of money. In 1890 at age seventy-two, she made a drastic decision: to sell the Lincoln articles which she kept for thirty-five years. She sold twenty-six articles for $250, but it remains to be known how much she received from the transactions.

In the years following, she moved frequently, but in 1892 she was offered a faculty position at Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts and moved to Ohio. Within a year, she organized a dress exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair. By the late 1890s, she returned to Washington, where she lived in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children (an institution established in part by funds contributed by the Contraband Association that she founded), presumably for health reasons.

[edit] Later years and death

Toward the end of her life, Keckley suffered from headaches and crying spells, very much as had her estranged friend Mary Lincoln. She had the First Lady’s photograph hung on the wall of her room. Keckley led a quiet and secluded life. She told friends that Mrs. Lincoln had contacted her and they became reconciled some time after her book’s publication.

In May 1907, Mrs. Keckley died as a resident of the National Home, located on Euclid St. NW. in Washington, D.C. She was interred at Columbian Harmony Cemetery. Her remains were transferred to National Harmony Memorial Park in Landover, Maryland, in 1960 when Columbian Harmoney closed and the land was sold.^[42]

A historic plaque installed across the street from the site of the former home commemorates her life. Jennifer Fleischer wrote:

“Perhaps the most poignant illustration of the different fates of these two women is found in their final resting places. While Mary Lincoln lies buried in Springfield in a vault with her husband and sons, Elizabeth Keckley’s remains have disappeared. In the 1960s, a developer paved over the Harmony Cemetery in Washington where Lizzy was buried, and when the graves were moved to a new cemetery, her unclaimed remains were placed in an unmarked grave—like those of her mother, slave father, and son.”^[43]

[edit] Legacy and honors

• The dress that Keckley designed for Lincoln to wear at her husband’s second inauguration ceremony and reception is held by the Smithsonian‘s American History Museum.
• Keckley designed a quilt made from scraps of materials left over from dresses made for Mrs. Lincoln. It is held by the Kent State University Museum and is pictured in the book, The Threads of Time, The Fabric of History (2007), by Rosemary E. Reed Miller, which features Keckley among numerous African-American designers.
• The former school in Hillsborough, North Carolina, where Rev. Robert Burwell worked (and Keckley for him), has been designated as the Burwell School Historic Site. It addresses Keckley’s life and times on its website.

[edit] Posthumous notes

Her autobiography prompted controversy and questions about the truth of her portrayals. In 1935, the journalist David Rankin Barbee wrote that Elizabeth Keckley had not written her autobiography, and never existed as a person. He said that the abolitionist writer Jane Swisshelm wrote the slave narrative to advance her abolitionist cause. Many people who read the article challenged his claim, citing personal and/or secondary acquaintance with Keckley. Barbee modified his statement, saying that “no such person as Elizabeth Keckley wrote the celebrated Lincoln book.”^[43] She has been well-documented since then.

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Mary Todd Lincoln
First Lady of the United States
In office March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865
Preceded by	Harriet Lane
Succeeded by	Eliza McCardle Johnson
Personal details
Born	Mary Ann Todd (1818-12-13)December 13, 1818 Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America
Died	July 16, 1882(1882-07-16) (aged 63) Springfield, Illinois, United States of America
Spouse(s)	Abraham Lincoln
Relations	Robert Smith Todd (Father) Eliza Parker Todd (Mother)
Children	Robert Todd Lincoln Edward Lincoln Willie Lincoln Tad Lincoln
Religion	Presbyterian

Mary Ann (née Todd) Lincoln (December 13, 1818 – July 16, 1882) was the wife of the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865.

A member of a large, wealthy Kentucky family, Mary was well educated. After living in the Todd House and a finishing school during her teens, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, where she lived for a time with her married sister Elizabeth Edwards. Mary was courted by Stephen Douglas before she married Abraham Lincoln. Later they debated in their campaigns for the presidency. She and Lincoln had four sons together, only one of whom outlived her. Their home of about fifteen years still stands in Springfield.

Mary Lincoln suffered from migraine headaches, may have had bipolar disorder and had other severe illness through much of her adult life. She supported her husband throughout his presidency and was next to him when he was fatally shot.

[edit] Life before the White House

Born in Lexington, Kentucky as the fourth of seven children^[1], Mary was the daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a banker, and Elizabeth (Parker) Todd. Her family were slaveholders and Mary was raised in comfort and refinement.^[2] When Mary was six, her mother died. Two years later, her father married Elizabeth “Betsy” Humphreys; they had nine children together.^[1][3] Mary had a difficult relationship with her stepmother.

From 1832, Mary and her family lived in what is now known as the Mary Todd Lincoln House, an elegant 14-room residence in Lexington.^[4] From her father’s two marriages, Mary had a total of 15 siblings, nine of them half siblings.

Mary’s paternal great-grandfather, David Levi Todd, was born in County Longford, Ireland, and emigrated through Pennsylvania to Kentucky. Her great-great maternal grandfather Samuel McDowell was born in Scotland, and emigrated to and died in Pennsylvania. Other Todd ancestors came from England.^[5]

Mary was sent at an early age to attend a finishing school owned by Madame Mantelle, where the curriculum concentrated on French and literature. She learned to speak French fluently, studied dance, drama, music and social graces. By the age of 20, she was regarded as witty and gregarious, with a grasp of politics. Like her family, she was a Whig.^[6]

Mary began living with her sister Elizabeth Porter (née Todd) Edwards in Springfield, Illinois in October 1839. Elizabeth, married to Ninian W. Edwards, son of a former governor, served as Mary’s guardian at the time.^[7] Mary was popular among the gentry of Springfield, and though she was courted by the rising young lawyer and Democratic Party politician Stephen A. Douglas and others, she chose Abraham Lincoln, a fellow Whig, from their courtship.^[6] They married on November 4, 1842, at the Edwards’ home in Springfield. She was 23 and he was 33.

Lincoln and Douglas eventually became political rivals in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates for a seat representing Illinois in the United States Senate in 1858. Although Douglas successfully secured the seat when elected by the Illinois legislature, Lincoln became famous for his position on slavery, which generated national support for him.

Historic home of Todd family, Lexington, KY

While Lincoln pursued his increasingly successful career as a Springfield lawyer, Mary supervised their growing household. Their house, where they resided from 1844 until 1861, still stands in Springfield, and has been designated the Lincoln Home National Historic Site.

Their sons, all born in Springfield, were:

• Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926) – lawyer, diplomat, businessman.
• Edward Baker Lincoln known as “Eddie” (1846–1850), died of tuberculosis^[1]
• William Wallace Lincoln known as “Willie” (1850–1862), died of typhoid fever while Lincoln was President^[1]
• Thomas Lincoln known as “Tad” (1853–1871), died of pleurisy^[1]

Of these four sons, only Robert and Tad survived to adulthood, and only Robert outlived his mother.

During Lincoln’s years as an Illinois circuit lawyer, Mary Lincoln was often left alone for months at a time to raise their children and run the household. Mary supported her husband socially and politically, not least when Lincoln was elected president in 1860.

[edit] White House years

During her White House years, Mary Lincoln faced many personal difficulties generated by political divisions within the nation. Her family was from a border state where slavery was permitted.^[8] In Kentucky, siblings not infrequently fought each other in the Civil War^[9] and Mary’s family was no exception. Several of her half-brothers served in the Confederate Army and were killed in action, and one brother served the Confederacy as a surgeon.^[10]

Mary staunchly supported her husband in his quest to save the Union and maintained a strict loyalty to his policies. It was a challenge for Mary, a “westerner”, to serve as her husband’s First Lady in Washington, D.C., a political center dominated by eastern and southern culture. Lincoln was regarded as the first “western” president, and Mary’s manners were often criticized as coarse and pretentious.^[11][12] It was difficult for her to negotiate White House social responsibilities and rivalries,^[13] spoils-seeking solicitors,^[14] and baiting newspapers^[12] in a climate of high national intrigue in Civil War Washington.

Mary Lincoln suffered from severe headaches, described as migraines, throughout her adult life^[15] as well as protracted depression.^[16] During her White House years, she also suffered a head injury in a carriage accident, after which her headaches seemed to become more frequent.^[17] A history of mood swings, fierce temper, public outbursts throughout Lincoln’s presidency, as well as excessive spending, has led some historians and psychologists to speculate that Mary suffered from bipolar disorder.^[18][19]

During her years in the White House, she often visited hospitals around Washington to give flowers and fruit to wounded soldiers. She took the time to write letters for them to send to their loved ones.^[20][1] From time to time, she accompanied Lincoln on military visits to the field. Responsible for hosting many social functions, she has often been blamed by historians for spending too much on the White House. She reportedly felt that it was important to the maintenance of prestige of the Presidency and the Union during the Civil War.^[1]

[edit] Widow and later life

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. From left to right: Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth

In April 1865, as the Civil War came to an end, Mrs. Lincoln expected to continue as the First Lady of a nation at peace. On April 14, 1865, as she sat with her husband to watch the comic play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Mrs. Lincoln accompanied her wounded husband across the street to the Petersen House, where Lincoln’s Cabinet was summoned. Their son Robert sat with Lincoln throughout the night, until he died the following day at 7:22 am. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered Mary from the room as she was so unhinged with grief.^[17]

Afterward, she received messages of condolence from all over the world, many of which she attempted to answer personally. To Queen Victoria she wrote:

“I have received the letter which Your Majesty has had the kindness to write., I am deeply grateful for this expression of tender sympathy, coming as they do, from a heart which from its own sorrow, can appreciate the intense grief I now endure.”

Victoria had suffered the loss of her husband, Prince Albert, four years earlier.^[21]

As a widow, Mrs. Lincoln returned to Illinois and lived in Chicago with her sons. In 1868, Mrs. Lincoln’s former modiste and confidante, Elizabeth Keckley, published Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. She had been born into slavery, purchased her freedom and that of her son, and become a successful businesswoman in Washington, DC. Although this book provides valuable insight into the character and life of Mary Todd Lincoln, at the time the former First Lady (and much of the public and press) regarded it as a breach of friendship and confidentiality. Keckley was widely criticized for her book, especially as her editor had published letters from Mary Lincoln to her.^[22][23]

In an act approved by a low margin on July 14, 1870, the United States Congress granted Mrs. Lincoln a life pension in the amount of $3,000 a year.^[24] Mary had lobbied hard for such a pension, writing numerous letters to Congress and urging patrons such as Simon Cameron to petition on her behalf. She insisted that she deserved a pension just as much as the widows of soldiers, as she portrayed her husband as a fallen commander.^[25] At the time it was unprecedented for widows of presidents, and Mary Lincoln had alienated many congressmen, making it difficult for her to gain approval.^[1]

The death of her son Thomas (Tad) in July 1871, following the death of two of her other sons and her husband, led to Mary Lincoln’s suffering an overpowering grief and depression.^[17] Her surviving son, Robert Lincoln, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed at his mother’s increasingly erratic behavior. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became unshakably convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to see him, but found he was not sick.

In Chicago she told her son that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a “wandering Jew” had taken her pocketbook but would return it later.^[17]During her stay in Chicago with her son, Mary spent large amounts of money on items she never used, such as draperies and elaborate dresses; she wore only black after her husband’s assassination. She would walk around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. Despite this large amount of money and the $3,000 a year stipend from Congress, Mrs. Lincoln had an irrational fear of poverty. After she nearly jumped out of a window to escape a non-existent fire, her son determined that she should be institutionalized.^[17]

On May 20, 1875, he committed her to a private asylum in Batavia, Illinois.^[26] Three months after being committed to Bellevue Place, Mary Lincoln devised her escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer, James B. Bradwell, and his wife Myra Bradwell, who was not only her friend but a feminist lawyer and fellow spiritualist. She also wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times. Soon, the public embarrassments that Robert had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question, as he controlled his mother’s finances. The director of Bellevue at Mary’s trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility. In the face of potentially damaging publicity, he declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister Elizabeth Edwards as she desired.^[27]

Mary Lincoln was released into the custody of her sister in Springfield. In 1876 she was declared competent to manage her own affairs. After the court proceedings, Mary Lincoln was so enraged that she attempted suicide. She went to the hotel pharmacist and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself, but he realized her intent and gave her a placebo.^[17] The earlier committal proceedings had resulted in Mary being profoundly estranged from her son Robert, and they did not reconcile until shortly before her death.^[1]

Mrs. Lincoln spent the next four years traveling throughout Europe and took up residence in Pau, France. Her final years were marked by declining health. She suffered from severe cataracts that reduced her eyesight. This condition may have contributed to her increasing susceptibility to falls. In 1879, she suffered spinal cord injuries in a fall from a stepladder.^[1]

[edit] Death

Mary Todd Lincoln’s crypt

During the early 1880s, Mary Lincoln was confined to the Springfield, Illinois residence of her sister Elizabeth Edwards. She died there on July 16, 1882, aged sixty-three. She was interred in the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield alongside her husband.^[28]

[edit] Representations in other media

Biographies have been written about Mary Lincoln as well as her husband. Barbara Hambly‘s The Emancipator’s Wife (2005) is considered a well-researched historical novel that provides context for her use of over-the-counter drugs containing alcohol and opium, which were frequently given to women of her era.

Mary Lincoln has been portrayed in film, including by Mary Tyler Moore in the 1988 television mini-series Lincoln, Sally Field in Steven Spielberg‘s 2012 film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis;^[29] Penelope Ann Miller in Saving Lincoln (2012), and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), set during the Civil War.

______________

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Wells Andrews Hutchins
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio‘s 11th district
In office March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1865
Preceded by	Valentine B. Horton
Succeeded by	Hezekiah S. Bundy
Member of the Ohio House of Representatives from the Scioto County district
In office January 5, 1852 – January 1, 1854
Preceded by	Oscar F. Moore
Succeeded by	Samuel J. Huston
Personal details
Born	(1818-10-08)October 8, 1818 Hartford, Ohio
Died	January 25, 1895(1895-01-25) (aged 76) Portsmouth, Ohio
Resting place	Greenlawn Cemetery, Portsmouth
Political party	Whig Democratic
Spouse(s)	Cornelia Robinson

Wells Andrews Hutchins (October 8, 1818 – January 25, 1895) was a U.S. Representative from Ohio during the American Civil War.

[edit] Biography

Born in Hartford, Ohio, Hutchins was a first cousin to future congressman John Hutchins. He attended the public schools and then taught school. He later studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1841. He commenced practice in Warren, Ohio.

In 1842, Hutchins moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, where served as member of the State house of representatives in 1852 and 1853. He was a Whig while in Portsmouth.^[1] He was the city solicitor from 1857-61. He was an unsuccessful candidate in 1860 to the Thirty-seventh Congress. During the early part of the Civil War, he was the United States provost marshal for the state of Ohio in 1862.

Hutchins was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865). A War Democrat,^[2] he supported Abraham Lincoln‘s agenda at critical moments. Hutchins called the proclamation Lincoln issued on September 15, 1863 under the authority of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863 “necessary” in order to defeat the rebellion.^[3] He was one of only 16 Democrats in the House of Representatives who joined with the Republicans and voted to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on January 31, 1865. That amendment abolished slavery in the United States.^[4] By doing so, he became one of a group who had “”defied their party discipline, and had deliberately and with unfaltering faith marched to their political death”,^[5] according to abolitionist Congressman James Mitchell Ashley.

He was an unsuccessful candidate in 1864 for reelection to the Thirty-ninth Congress and again in 1880 to the Forty-seventh Congress.

Hutchins resumed the practice of law in Portsmouth and died there January 25, 1895. He was interred in Greenlawn Cemetery. He died of kidney disease.^[1]

On February 23, 1843, Hutchins married Cornelia Robinson of Portsmouth.^[1]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Evans, Nelson Wiley; Stivers, Emmons B (1900). A history of Adams County, Ohio: from its earliest settlement to the present time. West Union, Ohio: E B Stivers. http://books.google.com/books?id=na8CAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA314.

[edit] External links

• Wells A. Hutchins at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-04-29
• _____________
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Letters from a former slave to his former master

One the last civil war veterans: Julius Howell of Virginia (recording of interview included)