An Unlikely Friendship (21 page)

A
FTER
L
INCOLN'S ASSASSINATION
Mary Lincoln stayed in the White House for six more weeks, refusing to move out. The new president, Andrew Johnson, stayed in a house on Fifteenth and Eighth streets and did not push her. Mary Lincoln was often uncontrollable in her grief and refused to face the world. Lizzy and twelve-year-old Tad slept in the same room with her.

Lincoln's body was returned to Illinois, but Mary would not make the trip for the burial. Robert had to take over. Everyone wanted her to go back to Illinois to live, but she said no; it held too many memories for her.

Finally, with the persuasion of Robert, now twenty-two, she packed up to leave the White House, taking five years' worth of gifts she had received as First Lady, even though technically they were not hers. She had decided to go and live in Chicago. In packing she gave away all of Lincoln's things. His hat, his cane, even his shawl, she gave to White House aides. To Lizzy she gave his comb and brush, a pair of his overshoes, and the cloak she was wearing when her husband was shot.

Late in May of 1865 Mary Lincoln, Lizzy, Tad, and Robert took the train to Chicago where they took some rooms in a hotel. Robert entered a law firm. Lizzy stayed in Chicago only two weeks because Mary Lincoln could no longer afford to pay her and she wanted to reopen her shop in Washington, which had been neglected. Back in Washington she bandied it about that Mary Lincoln "was practicing the closest economy" in her style of living.

Mary and Lizzy did not see each other again for two years. Mary had asked Congress for money. She hoped for $100,000, which represented her husband's salary had he finished out his term in office.

Lizzy made a trip to Virginia to see the Garlands, who gave her a joyful welcome. "Even to a slave," she said, "the past is dear." Many ex-slaves at the time were visiting old masters and having reconciliations with their former owners.

The two women, bonded by good times and bad times, stayed in touch and saw each other again over the years. In Lizzy Keckley, Mary Lincoln seemed to have found her "Mammy Sally" again and, indeed, turned to her in all her hours of need and loneliness.

As for Lizzy Keckley, she recognized what she had in the friendship. She perhaps saw in Mary her own white heritage, although she did not need it to continue leading a productive and happy life. She had her memories to carry her through lonely hours: the time spent on the Burwell plantation; her time with Robert and his wife and children; her rising above the status that whites in her life always wanted her to be satisfied with; and the knowledge that along the way she had purchased her own freedom, given a son to "the cause," known a president and his family, helped start an organization in Washington, D.C., to help the freedman, and been a solid and continuing presence in so many lives, both black and white.

I
HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED
with the tale of Elizabeth Keckley, the black woman born into slavery, who grew up in bondage and eventually purchased her own freedom and that of her son's.

The fact that she ended up in the White House, a personal dressmaker and confidante of Mary Lincoln, that the two women became fast friends, further intrigued me.

In looking at their childhoods, I thought: How utterly different. One a slave girl, mistreated and overworked; the other the daughter of a wealthy and influential family in Lexington, Kentucky, herself surrounded by slaves.

The idea presented itself. Why not explore the childhoods of each of these women who were buffeted by the turmoil of their times, whose mettle was tested every day? As I began to research the idea, it loomed even stronger.

I have depicted Mary Lincoln's childhood with as much accuracy as possible. A writer need not have to stray far from the truth to make an interesting story here. It had all the ingredients of a good novel, right down to the "evil" stepmother. I have had to, for the sake of story, invent some scenes and piece together others, for frequently in research, the pieces don't always fit.

But other pieces stand firm under the test of time. For instance, Mary Todd always did want to live in the White House and marry a president. She did get put into Ward's girls' school by her parents, and her Grandma Parker did live "up the hill" and refuse to accept the Todd girls' stepmother, Betsy. Grandfather Levi Todd's wife, Jane, did fashion a wedding dress from weeds and wild flax, and the incident about Mary Todd desperately wanting a hoopskirt, and of Betsy's disapproval, is true.

Liz Humphreys did come to stay and go to school with Mary.

Mammy Sally did have a sign painted on the fence to welcome runaways, and Mary Todd did find out about it and was a staunch supporter of the practice. Elizabeth, Mary's older sister, did invite her younger sister to Springfield, Illinois, to "stay a while," and both Frances and Mary Todd met their husbands that way.

It is a bit murky about what troubled George, Mary's brother, christened George Rogers Clark, but I have it down as an early drinking problem combined with feeling guilty because their mother died at his birth. (Having been in George's position, with my mother dying at my birth, I can relate to George's guilt, which only deepens, instead of lessens, as one grows older and begins to comprehend the full extent of what a mother's death means.)

It is also true that when she was older and went to Mentelle's School for Young Ladies, Mary Todd was fetched home only on weekends, making her feel even more alienated from her family. So it wasn't difficult for her to give up the ghost and go to Springfield, Illinois, to her sister Elizabeth's house when the time came for her to leave home.

What did I learn upon researching the childhood of Mary Todd? That her life was filled with a sense of loss (right down to the middle name—Ann—that was taken from her when a young sister was born and given the name) even before she married Abraham Lincoln. I learned that she was completely dependent upon their black nanny, Mammy Sally, to make things right when they went wrong. And so, in later years turned to Elizabeth Keckley, the black dressmaker, when she was hurting or worried.

I learned that when she was excessively worried, or feeling abandoned (as when her young husband went riding circuit as a lawyer), she turned to shopping to make her feel better.

When she got to be First Lady, there were plenty of occasions upon which she felt abandoned or at a sense of loss. And so, as First Lady, she shopped, excessively, and ran up a score of bills while in the White House.

But all the troubles Mary Todd had when she was a child, whether real or imagined, cannot be compared to those of Elizabeth Keckley.

It is true that Elizabeth was started on chores at about age four. And that she was cruelly whipped for trying to pick up the baby of the master's house, with a fireplace shovel.

Her half brother, Robert Burwell of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, did become her master and treated her with cruel indifference, even "farming" her out to the "slave breaker" next door in order to break her spirit.

It would not be broken. She had an indomitable spirit, and eventually both the slave breaker and Robert begged her forgiveness for their treatment of her.

The stories of other slaves being sold as children, of Jane being made to eat worms, only touch the surface of the mistreatment of slaves. And while most slaves were broken by such treatment, Elizabeth Keckley was only made stronger.

She did sew enough and work enough to support the whole family when she was grown. She did buy her own freedom and came to be known as a source of strength to many white people around her.

It is a fact, though surprising, that she was asked to be in the wedding party of several white girls. Research tells us this. Apparently the custom was practiced in the South, especially when the girl was as attractive and poised as Elizabeth Keckley.

Her dressmaking, soon recognized by the likes of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, wife of the future president of the Confederacy, was enviable, to say the least. All the cream of society had to have one of her dresses.

So, once ensconced in Washington City, she had a whole list of wealthy patrons, and just about that time Mary Lincoln came to play her part as First Lady. The rest is a wonderful, heartbreaking, true story.

I hope I have done it justice. The tale of this friendship between these two women is remarkable, indeed.

Baker, Jean H.
Mary Todd Lincoln, A Biography.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 1987.

Fleischner, Jennifer.
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave.
New York: Broadway Books, a Division of Random House, 2003.

Keckley, Elizabeth.
Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Leech, Margaret.
Reveille in Washington 1860–1865.
New York: Harper & Bros., 1941.

Lewis, Lloyd.
The Assassination of Lincoln: History and Myth.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1957.

Morrow, Honore.
Great Captain.
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1930.

Robertson, David.
Booth.
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1998.