Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly - by Jennifer Fleischner (Paperback)

About the Book

A vibrant social history of the relationship between First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her black seamstress and confidante, Elizabeth Keckly, that recreates the lives of these two exceptional women and their remarkable friendship, set against the backdrop of 19th century America and Washington society.

Book Synopsis

A vibrant social history set against the backdrop of the Antebellum south and the Civil War that recreates the lives and friendship of two exceptional women: First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her mulatto dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly.

"I consider you my best living friend," Mary Lincoln wrote to Elizabeth Keckly in 1867, and indeed theirs was a close, if tumultuous, relationship. Born into slavery, mulatto Elizabeth Keckly was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker, confidante, and mainstay during the difficult years that the Lincolns occupied the White House and the early years of Mary's widowhood. But she was a fascinating woman in her own right, Lizzy had bought her freedom in 1855 and come to Washington determined to make a life for herself. She was independent and already well-established as the dressmaker to the Washington elite when she was first hired by Mary Lincoln upon her arrival in the nation's capital. Mary Lincoln hired Lizzy in part because she was considered a "high society" seamstress and Mary, as an outsider in Washington's social circles, was desperate for social cachet. With her husband struggling to keep the nation together, Mary turned increasingly to her seamstress for companionship, support, and advice--and over the course of those trying years, Lizzy Keckly became her confidante and closest friend.

Historian Jennifer Fleischner allows us to glimpse the intimate dynamics of this unusual friendship for the first time, and traces the pivotal events that enabled these two women to forge such an unlikely bond at a time when relations between blacks and whites were tearing the nation apart. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly is a remarkable work of scholarship that explores the legacy of slavery and sheds new light on the Lincoln White House.

Review Quotes

The improbable friendship of Mary Lincoln, daughter of a slaveholder, and Elizabeth Keckly, daughter of a slave, so ably recreated and documented in Fleischner's dual biography, challenges much of what we think we know about nineteenth-century American color consciousness, black as well as white. Without understanding Lincoln's attachment to Keckly, we can never appreciate the contradictions that made the First Lady so controversial. Without recognizing Keckly's role in the Lincoln family, our awareness of African American influence on the politics of nation in the 1860s remains incomplete.
--William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, editor of Classic African American Women's Narratives, and co-editor of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature

"An excellent, illuminating book that offers a fresh vision of Mary Lincoln, acquaints us with the exceedingly interesting Elizabeth Keckly, and provides new insight into race, women's lives, and American society in the 19th century."
-William Lee Miller, author of Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography

About the Author

JENNIFER FLEISCHNER was awarded a one-year Mellon Faculty Fellowship in Afro-American Studies at Harvard, where she researched and taught alongside such colleagues as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Also the author of Mastering Slavery and Nobody's Boy, she is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Adelphi University.