Strange Fates of Lincoln 

“Mary Lincoln?” “She was crazy.”

“Elizabeth Keckley?” “Who?”

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The Mary and Elizabeth Museum Gift Shop displays mementos in a tribute to the unique friendship between Mary Lincoln and her dressmaker, the former slave, Elizabeth Keckley. It is in the interest of historical accuracy to release Mary Lincoln from the incorrect label of insanity. And to rescue Elizabeth Keckley from anonymity. In the mid-1800s, slaves were forbidden to read and write and even well-educated white women were supposed to keep quiet. Both women paid for their “offenses” of superior intelligence and independent spirit. Historical accounts repeat damaging misinformation about Mary and exclude Elizabeth.

   Mary’s staunch abolitionist views were formed when she was a child and witnessed chained slaves pass by her front door to the auction block. She was born into the wealthy, slave-owning Todd family in Lexington, Kentucky, the town founded by her forebears. When she was six years old her mother died and her father remarried. The grief-stricken child sought the comfort of the slave, Mammy Sally in a household that grew from six to 15 siblings.

   Unlike most girls in her milieu, Mary received a quality education. The precocious child would develop into a sassy, articulate and politically astute woman. An ambitious and influential force behind her husband’s ascent to the presidency, her choice to stay in his shadow was deliberate. 

   Elizabeth Keckley was a slave who purchased her own freedom and her son’s. Each was the result of rape by a white man. Elizabeth built a successful dressmaking business in the Capital city. When secession loomed, she refused to follow her most prominent clients, Mrs. Robert E. Lee and Mrs. Jefferson Davis to the South.

   Instead, Elizabeth sought out the new First Lady. She became a respected presence in the Executive Mansion where her duties extended beyond creating many of Mary’s gowns for the hundreds of required state-related events. The two women formed a deep friendship that crossed the color line—a rarity in the Civil War era. Each had sons the same age who were Union soldiers. When Elizabeth founded the Contraband Relief Association in 1862 to help former slaves become autonomous, the Lincolns donated. Mary additionally helped and solicited funds from acquaintances. Still mourning her son Eddie who died at age four, Mary would seek out the comfort of Elizabeth during two more tragedies: 11-year-old son Willie’s death and the President’s assassination.

   Enemies of the President turned on the First Lady. Newspapers stoked rumors of her extravagance that continued after the assassination. She was falsely accused of accumulating massive debt on her gowns and furnishings. In fact, she was extremely frugal, buying in bulk for the discounts. She was also an excellent seamstress who made many of her own gowns. Historian Betty Ellison examined check registers proving that William S. Wood, interim commissioner of public building, stole from the accounts and blamed Mary for the short falls. Northerners were suspicious of her because of her Confederate family and Southerners believed she betrayed them.

   With neither a government widow’s pension nor a will to provide for her, Mary felt desperate. Elizabeth neglected her dressmaking business when she tried to help Mary sell articles from her wardrobe. The ensuing, widely publicized “Old Clothes” scandal raised no money.

   To produce an income and salvage Mary’s reputation, Elizabeth wrote and published “Behind the Scenes”, a book about her personal history and her time with the Lincolns. Newspapers discredited her, insisting that a slave couldn’t write. The woman publisher not only didn’t pay Elizabeth but reneged on a promise and printed private correspondence between the two friends. Seeing that her family’s intimate life was exposed, Mary refused contact with Elizabeth including her gift of the quilt she made from Mary’s dress scraps. Unable to revive her business, the dressmaker sank into poverty. The meager pension she received when her only son was killed in the war wasn’t enough.

  Mary was overwhelmed by grief, her lowered standard of living and  isolation from friends. Robert, alarmed by her erratic state of mind, unduly influenced a panel of judges to commit her to a private mental institution. Although she was lucid enough to secure a wife and husband legal team who obtained her release and had her declared sane, history would not absolve her of the crazy label. After years of pressuring the unsympathetic Congress to create a widow’s pension, it finally came through. It was too late. Mary died on July 16, 1882, at her beloved sister Elizabeth’s home in Springfield.