The First Ladies (5 page)

MARGARET TAYLOR (1788–1852)

Margaret Taylor (1849–50) came to the White House not only by surprise but against her will. If she is remembered at all, it is only by her prophecy: “It will shorten both our lives.”

Margaret Smith was born in Maryland to a good plantation family, and at twenty-one she married Zachary Taylor, a professional soldier who was destined to rise through the ranks. As a soldier’s wife along the frontier of the early nineteenth century, Peggy, as she was called, endured the hardships of military life, staying in garrison barracks, tents, lean-tos, shacks, and wherever camp was made. It was a simple, rugged life with few gracious amenities. She bore six children and buried three. When they were old enough for schooling, they were sent back east to live with relatives.

During the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor, now a general, became a national hero, and in those days of turbulent politics, the hero business bumped him up to a potentially viable Whig candidate in 1848. Taylor didn’t agree and said so. He knew and cared little about politics and never cast a ballot in his life (and that would include his own election). The Whigs thought differently. They told him to keep quiet and let them
handle things. He did and they did, and he was elected. Peggy issued her prophesy.

She was livid. At sixty, she had grown stout with the usual aches and pains of age and harsh living. It had only been a few years since the Taylors had finally been able to purchase their first home—a modest plantation in Louisiana where she wished to live out the rest of her days in peace and quiet.

The White House was no place for an aging woman whose social acumen and graces had long been eroded by hard frontier life. Unequipped and unwilling to be the leader of society, and perhaps fearful of criticism and ridicule, she asked one of her daughters to do the honors and retired upstairs to preside only at the family table.

ABIGAIL FILLMORE (1798–1853)

It is a pity that Abigail Fillmore (1850–53) chose to withdraw from most of the duties of First Ladyhood. She was an intelligent, bookish woman who was the first First Lady to have been employed outside the home. Abigail Powers had become a schoolteacher at sixteen in Upstate New York, obliged to help support her family. Millard Fillmore was a farm boy near her own age who became her student.

Their engagement lasted seven years, as Abigail continued teaching while Fillmore completed his education and began to rise as a lawyer and a mediocre Whig congressman. Of course, after they married and had children, Abigail was expected to stay home, so she did. Still, she remained intellectually active and became a founding member of their local library, not far from Buffalo. She also played the harp and the piano and managed to teach herself French.

The few documented items specifically connected to Abigail Fillmore are library wish lists of books that her husband would purchase as he passed through New York City and Philadelphia on his trips to and from Congress. She chose to remain at home during Fillmore’s congressional career, and she only joined him in Washington when he became vice president in 1849. She quickly learned to dislike Washington’s hypercritical, gossipy society. It also bored her. Then Zachary Taylor died.

Once again, the presidency was a total and unwelcome surprise for a new First Lady. A few years earlier she had fallen and broken her ankle, which was poorly set and caused
her chronic discomfort. Thus armed with a ready excuse for avoiding receiving lines and meeting and greeting a great many people she did not like, she participated as seldom as possible. Her twenty-year-old daughter usually pinch-hit.

Abigail Fillmore did leave one fine legacy. Once moved into the White House, she was dismayed to learn there wasn’t a book in the entire place—not even a Bible. She urged her husband to request funds for books for the president’s use, and Congress accommodated to the tune of $250, a substantial sum in 1850. Abigail the teacher-librarian was delighted to compile lists of all the books she thought appropriate, and it is said that when the packages arrived, she carefully opened each box and lovingly put the books on the shelves.

It would have been nice to know Abigail Fillmore a little better.

JANE PIERCE (1806–63)

A New England minister-educator’s daughter, Jane Appleton (1853–57) was consumptive and depressive by nature and “morbidly religious” by inclination. In other words, she embraced the gloomy side of everything, believing in a punishing deity, and that true happiness could only be found in the afterlife. This was the polar opposite of her outgoing, gregarious husband, congressman and later senator Franklin Pierce. He tried hard to please her, but as one biographer claims, Jane found it easier to criticize than to praise. The few historians who have concentrated on Pierce are generally sympathetic to him, perhaps understanding the reasons he was known to bend an elbow from time to time.

Jane stayed in Washington briefly while Pierce served in Congress. She hated politics, spent most of the time in her room, and it is believed was instrumental in her husband’s withdrawal from the national arena. He opened a mediocre law practice and concentrated his political activity solely in their small New Hampshire community and even declined a cabinet position in Polk’s administration.

Jane was generally contented in her tiny cocoon. They had three sons; two died as babies. Their third son, born when Jane was in her late thirties, was her last chance at motherhood, and she devoted herself exclusively to little Bennie, smothering him with attention, and replicating in him her own fears and religious convictions. Franklin Pierce’s nomination as president in 1852 was another surprise—to the entire country if not to Pierce himself. Having been out of the public eye for
a decade, he was another dark horse, electable
because
he was unknown. He was also considered one of the few Northern candidates acceptable to the South. When Jane found out, she fainted. When she came to, she was very distressed.

Then tragedy struck. Shortly before the inauguration, there was a train accident, and eleven-year-old Bennie was instantly killed. Jane would never recover. First she got it into her head that God was punishing them for leaving home; then she decided that their son was taken so Pierce would not be distracted from his presidential duties. Either way, the episode weighed heavily on both of them for the rest of their lives.

Jane opted out of the First Lady business, retreating into her deep mourning. Her aunt by marriage came to Washington to help an also-mourning president fulfill his social obligations. So did Mrs. Jefferson Davis, the wife of Pierce’s good friend and secretary of war. The one account of Jane at a social function cites her “woebegone expression” that made it impossible for anyone to enjoy themselves. Jane spent the next four years writing letters to her dead son, begging him to put in a good word for her in the afterlife.

HARRIET LANE (1830–1903)

Then came Miss Harriet Lane (1857–61), whose glittering social success was diametrically opposed to the failed presidency of her uncle, James Buchanan. When she was orphaned at the age of nine, Uncle Buck (or “Nunc,” as she called him) took Harriet as his ward. She was devoted to him and he to her. He made sure she was clothed and educated in the best possible manner. Since bachelor Buchanan was of comfortable means, this was not hard.

During the Pierce administration, elder statesman James Buchanan was appointed minister to England, where he and his twenty-one-year-old niece proceeded to charm everyone. Miss Harriet was pretty, innocent, conventional according to the customs and traditions of the day, and could curtsey gracefully to Queen Victoria. She was disinclined to make waves.

Like Pierce, it was precisely
because
of his absence from the scene for four turbulent years that Buchanan was elected president in 1856. On the plus side, he was a Northerner from Pennsylvania with a long résumé of competent public service, and he was acceptable to Southerners. On the other hand, he was nearly seventy, considered a “Miss Nancy” in his manners, and totally unequipped for the wrenching turmoil that awaited him. Harriet Lane, however, was completely equal to her task as White House hostess, if not de facto First Lady.

She was twenty-five and by then experienced in the details and nuances of gracious entertaining on a high level. Her clothes were fashionable, her manners impeccable. Thrust into a society where her companions were usually old enough to
be her mother, she glided through Washington with aplomb, charming everyone. She provided a sparkling social setting unseen since the days of Dolley Madison a half century earlier.

The young Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) danced with her at the White House ball she arranged in his honor, and the song “Listen to the Mockingbird” was dedicated to her. She accepted no gifts other than flowers or candy, offended no one, and was well thought of by everyone, even the harshest critics of the Buchanan administration and the carping dowagers of Washington society. Buchanan may have been a total flop, but Harriet was a whopping success!

FIRST LADY: 1861–65

The Born Diva

In an age when wives, not just presidential wives, were given passing if not glowing grades in deportment, Mary Todd Lincoln was the exception: she was overtly and strongly disliked by most of her contemporaries and most definitely by those who knew her best.

Born to whatever aristocratic purple early Kentucky could claim, Mary Todd was third-generation born in Lexington. Her large, pedigreed, well-heeled, and well-connected family provided her with an excellent finishing school education, complete with French, coquetry, and ambition. By the time of
her marriage to Abraham Lincoln in 1842, three sisters, a few cousins, and several kin of kin were making similar purple claims in Springfield, Illinois.

In a figurative sense, Mary brought the tablecloth to a very humble Lincoln table. If he were to rise in his profession, he would need the proper setting. His marriage to Mary polished his manners. She saw to it that his coat and hat were brushed, his shoes shined, and his shirts clean. She taught him to dance a little, to bow gracefully, and to balance a teacup on his lanky knees. She bore him four sons. One died as a baby. Their Springfield house was small in comparison to others, but it was decorated according to the tastes of the day. Mary did her own sewing and cooking, and she was happy to entertain Lincoln’s political friends. She had always liked politics, and she was intuitive and sharp in her observations. Whatever her failings, they were private within the family.

Thus, when she became First Lady in early 1861, she was, at least in her own mind, well prepared to take up the duties of society leadership that had recently been ably filled by Harriet Lane. What Mary didn’t know, however, was that she already had three strikes against her, and whatever failings she may have brought along would now be public.

The Civil War, of course, polarized the country. Lincoln himself was unpopular; seven Southern states had already seceded, and four more were on the way. Actual warfare was within earshot. Washington had always been a Southern town in its manners and influences. To the Northerners, Mary was definitely a Southerner. After all, her family were
slave owners. Three brothers, a brother-in-law, a few cousins, and more kin of kin fought and some would die for the Confederacy. Many Northerners were convinced that Mary was a Rebel spy. She wasn’t.

To Southerners, Kentucky-bred and Illinois-wed Mary was a Westerner: a woman of low taste. Granted, she lacked the sophistication of some of her Eastern peers, but Mary
was not without breeding. Finally, it was no secret that Lincoln was a man of lowly origins. Many Washingtonians, particularly the society dames, assumed he had married a woman of his own station. Mary knew otherwise and let them know it. She did nothing to further her own popularity. Indeed, whatever she did, no matter how well meaning, only served to isolate herself from the very people who might have befriended her.

Now in her early forties, Mary had eagerly wanted to be First Lady, and she rejoiced at Lincoln’s election. She had been well educated, certainly more so than her husband, and in both Lexington and Springfield, she was considered the upper crust. Social pretensions were as much a part of the Todd family as the second
d
in their name (although one
d
was good enough for God, according to Lincoln).

Mary’s girlhood friendships, whatever there were, had fallen away, which is not uncommon when one marries and paths drift. Her relationships with her sisters yo-yoed throughout her life, but they were never particularly close. Much has been said and written about the volatile Mrs. L. and her angry outbursts, ill-tempered tongue, and nearly pathological spending habits, which became more apparent and certainly more public in Washington. Lincoln’s secretary John Hay called her a “Hellcat.” Most family members kept a safe distance. A fair-sized contingent of Todd kin came to the inaugural festivities, stayed briefly, and then went home. One cousin was prevailed upon to stay and keep Mary company, but after a few months that grew burdensome, and she secretly begged to be rescued
via a concocted family emergency. In a phrase common among Victorians, Mary’s husband had become “her all.”

So poor Mary, with no real friends and a desperate “I’ll show them” need, was left to her own devices. The president, her husband, “her all,” was beset by the growing crises of a civil war and had little time to devote to her. He also had little inclination toward women things, particularly social pretensions. Society matrons avoided Mary and were conspicuously absent from her soirees. She was imperious, self-centered, and disdainful of them. The men who did frequent her receptions were, for the most part, the wrong sort: those who hoped to profit from Mary’s supposed influence. They soon learned how susceptible she was to flattery, and they laid it on with a trowel, not knowing that her influence was negligible.

A year later, battered by a bitter war, snubbed by society, neglected by an overworked husband, and lonely beyond her own insights, Mary lost her second son. She completely fell apart and, abiding by Victorian customs for women, took up prolonged and intense mourning rituals. These customs also encouraged spiritualism, which Mary embraced wholeheartedly in an effort to find some comfort. Now at least, if Mary couldn’t have friendship or affection, perhaps she could have pity.

Pity is a funny thing. It works very well for a time and then it palls. By the time Mary emerged from her loss some two years later, a new and more dreadful loss would traumatize her: the assassination of her husband, “her all,” before her eyes. If she had fallen apart with the death of her son, this
tragedy would shatter her fragile emotions completely, and she would never recover.

The pity wore thin very quickly this time. After all, few families in the country were without lost husbands and fathers and sons. Officials in Washington were thoroughly drained by the angst of four years of war and wanted to move on. They had also grown to dislike this self-absorbed woman who wailed loudly and wept incessantly in a claim for center stage. Other women wept quietly, and then dried their tears and picked up the pieces. Not Mary. Since she would not go away, she was pushed away.

Mary was literally homeless. Her Springfield house held too many memories. It was sold. Mary couldn’t afford to keep a house of her own. She had monumental debts to pay to the merchants who dunned her relentlessly, and Congress was unforgivably stingy. Lincoln’s estate was decent enough, but Mary only received a third; her two remaining sons were entitled to their inheritance. Finally, her own disposition was such that nobody could live with her. So she was a wanderer.

The country, whether it liked her or not, treated Mary Lincoln shamefully. It would never again treat a presidential widow so badly.