Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Mrs. Lincoln adamantly opposed his enlistment, as she often told her husband when they were alone—alone except for Elizabeth, sewing nearby and quietly listening. “We have lost two sons, and their loss is as much as I can bear, without being called upon to make another sacrifice,” Mrs. Lincoln declared one day in mid-February when the subject resurfaced yet again.

  “But many a poor mother has given up all her sons,” Mr. Lincoln replied mildly. At that, Elizabeth half expected them both to glance sympathetically her way, but they did not. It stung to think that they might have forgotten her loss, or forgotten that she was there. “Our son is not more dear to us than the sons of other people are to their mothers.”

  “That may be, but I cannot bear to have Robert exposed to danger. His services are not required in the field, and the sacrifice would be a needless one.”

  “The services of every man who loves his country are required in this war,” Mr. Lincoln replied. “You should take a liberal instead of a selfish view of the question, Mother.”

  Mrs. Lincoln was firmly resolved that Robert should stay in school, and since neither could persuade the other they let the matter drop for a while, perhaps wearily certain that it would not be long before Robert again implored them to permit him to enlist.

  Although the argument had ended for the moment, Mr. Lincoln’s words lingered in Elizabeth’s thoughts. The services of every man were required, he had said. Perhaps she was still hurt that it had not occurred to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln that one of those mothers who had given up all her sons to the Union cause sat among them, because she felt a strange, unfamiliar desire to rebuke the president. Every man who loved his country, he had said. She was tempted to inquire whether he included men of color in that calculation.

  Why did he not include men of color—every man of color, not only the newly emancipated slaves living in captured Southern territories—if every man who loved his country was needed so desperately?

  Elizabeth’s prediction that the Contraband Relief Association would be more essential than ever after emancipation proved true. The needs of the men, women, and children in the camps were so great that even the generous contributions of concerned friends were insufficient to supply everyone with the basic necessities of health and comfort. Throughout the winter, Elizabeth gave increasingly more of herself to the association—more of her time, and more, too much more, of her money. For the first time since she had established herself comfortably in Washington, she found herself struggling to make ends meet, and she could not endure the worry and uncertainty. For most of her life, she had served masters and mistresses who badly managed their finances, incurring debt and moving from one town to another in a futile pursuit of a better living. While a slave, she had promised herself that if she ever gained her freedom, she would never be so careless with money. Now it seemed that she was following her old masters down the same road of precarious economy. It made no difference that her debts sprang from altruism rather than reckless pursuit of a loftier style of living than she could afford; she would end up at the same miserable destination.

  She would have confessed her troubles to her friends, but she didn’t want to worry Emma needlessly about the state of the dressmaking business, and she was reluctant to upset Virginia, who was with child. Instead she brooded silently and secretly, or so she believed, until one day at the White House. She was sorting trims for Mrs. Lincoln to consider for a new dress and mulling over her worries when Mrs. Lincoln suddenly said, “Good heavens, Lizzie, why are you scowling at those ribbons? If you dislike them so much, we’ll send you to the shops for something else, although I don’t know what else they’ll have in black that we haven’t seen already.”

  “Forgive me,” said Elizabeth, embarrassed. “The ribbons are fine. I confess my thoughts were elsewhere.”

  “I knew something was wrong.” Mrs. Lincoln sat beside her and patted her hand. “Tell me. You’ve been sighing and frowning for days. Are you unhappy? Indisposed?”

  “Merely worried.” Elizabeth hesitated, but she felt cornered, and she had to offer some explanation. “I find that I am living beyond my means.”

  “You?” said Mrs. Lincoln, astonished. “I don’t believe it. You’ve never been a spendthrift. You are always reliably sensible.”

  Elizabeth managed a small, wan smile. “I don’t live lavishly, if that is what you mean, but lately I’ve been spending much of my earnings—whatever does not go to food and rent—on the contraband camps.”

  “Well, then…” Mrs. Lincoln thought for a moment as if tallying the ways Elizabeth might economize. “You must simply stop doing that.”

  “But the need is so great.” Elizabeth steeled herself and said aloud what she had been dreading to acknowledge, even to herself. “I must earn more money.”

  Mrs. Lincoln looked taken aback. “Lizzie, dear, as much as I would love to assist you, I cannot possibly pay more for my dresses than I already do. Mr. Lincoln already believes I spend too much—not on dresses, mind you, but on other things.”

  Elizabeth tended to agree with the president on that count. “Oh, no, Mrs. Lincoln. I didn’t mean to suggest that I intend to raise my prices. I wouldn’t dream of asking any of my patrons to pay more than is fair, especially not you.” She hesitated. “However, I do think I need to find some way to increase my income.”

  “Could you take on new customers, sew more dresses?”

  Elizabeth thought back to those hard, long years in St. Louis when she had worked herself almost to collapse from exhaustion and injury trying to earn the money to buy her freedom and George’s. She nearly shuddered from the memory of pain, of constant headaches and backaches and eye strain and sore fingers. “I don’t think I could possibly sew more than I already do.”

  “Well, there must be another way you could earn a little extra,” said Mrs. Lincoln confidently. “And there are surely other sources of funding for your association other than your wages. We simply haven’t given it enough thought. We’ll think of something.”

  Elizabeth thanked her, her spirits lifting even though she wasn’t truly any closer to a solution. It was good to see Mrs. Lincoln more like her old self again, briskly efficacious and intent on a new scheme.

  A few days later, Mrs. Lincoln rose to meet her when she arrived and clasped Elizabeth’s hands in her own. “Elizabeth, I think I have a solution.”

  “It would be very welcome news if you do,” Elizabeth replied, as surprised as she was relieved.

  Mrs. Lincoln explained that the Treasury Department needed employees for the cutting room, workers who trimmed the printed sheets of currency into bills. Seamstresses were highly desirable for these posts due to their proficiency with scissors. “The work is not arduous, and the pay is reasonable,” said Mrs. Lincoln, clearly delighted with herself. “Best of all, it should not take away time from your dressmaking business.”

  “I—I hardly know what to say,” stammered Elizabeth, overwhelmed. “It sounds ideal.”

  “Good! You’ll need to apply, of course, but I’m confident that with my recommendation you’ll have no trouble.” Mrs. Lincoln hesitated for a moment and seemed to steel herself. “There’s one small hurdle that you’ll have to overcome first—an ugly, unpleasant, dishonest hurdle.”

  The choice of adjectives was so bewildering that for a moment Elizabeth could only look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I think it would ease your way if you were introduced to Mr. Chase before you apply.”

  She meant Salmon P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury and the father of Mrs. Lincoln’s biggest social rival, the lovely and charming Miss Kate Chase. “But you despise Secretary Chase.”

  Mrs. Lincoln lifted her chin and inhaled deeply. “I shall put aside my revulsion long enough to arrange the interview.”

  And so she did. Later that afternoon, when Mr. Chase came to the White House to confer with the president, Mrs. Lincoln managed to be outside her husband’s office as he departed. Expressing delight at the
chance encounter, Mrs. Lincoln told him there was someone she would very much like him to meet, and she led him to the Lincolns’ private sitting room, where Elizabeth waited.

  Elizabeth had seen Mr. Chase in passing often, but they had never been formally introduced. She set aside her sewing and rose when Mrs. Lincoln escorted him in, keeping her features carefully composed even though the obvious annoyance and impatience in his expression disconcerted her. To his credit, he did his best to be gracious when Mrs. Lincoln introduced them. “Mrs. Keckley, of course,” he said, shaking her hand. “The renowned dressmaker. My daughter speaks very highly of you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied. “I think very highly of her as well.” She ignored Mrs. Lincoln’s raised eyebrows, which, fortunately, Mr. Chase did not observe.

  Mrs. Lincoln got right to the point, and when she finished explaining the purpose of the meeting, Mr. Chase gave Elizabeth an appraising look and said, “So, Mrs. Keckley, you’d like to give up sewing for a job in the cutting room? From what I’ve heard, that would distress a great many ladies throughout Washington.”

  “I would not give up my sewing, sir,” she said. “I simply wish to supplement the income from my business.”

  “There is no one in the district more qualified to wield a pair of shears than Elizabeth,” Mrs. Lincoln broke in. “The Treasury Department can certainly entrust the task of cutting paper in straight lines to her. She does far more complicated work than that every day.”

  “I have no doubt she does.” Mr. Chase studied Elizabeth for a moment. “Very well, Mrs. Keckley. If this is what you desire, you should apply to the Treasury Department. I shall tell the assistant secretary that we spoke, and after that, I’m sure your qualifications will speak for themselves.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary,” Elizabeth said. He gave her a nod and strode from the room, with Mrs. Lincoln hurrying after as if to thank him with the courtesy of an escort. When Mrs. Lincoln returned, she told Elizabeth that she would write to Mr. George Harrington too, to add her own recommendation to Mr. Chase’s.

  Mrs. Lincoln immediately sat down with pen and paper, and before long she was blotting the ink on her composition. “I’ve assured him that you are industrious and will perform your duties faithfully,” she said, well satisfied with her work. “I also informed him that you will not be able to begin working for him until the middle of April, after the busy social season, when I will need you less frequently. I hope that suits you.”

  “The timing would be perfect,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Lincoln.”

  Beaming, Mrs. Lincoln summoned a servant to take the letter. “Now we await their reply.”

  It would only be a matter of time, Mrs. Lincoln assured her the next day, and again the day after that. Perhaps Mr. Chase had not yet found a moment to broach the subject with Mr. Harrington. Every department was managing the best it could with the war on, but sometimes even important matters were delayed.

  A week went by, and another. Elizabeth’s hopes diminished, but she did not complain. Mrs. Lincoln had shown her a great kindness in recommending her to Mr. Chase and Mr. Harrington, and Elizabeth did not wish to appear ungrateful. Mrs. Lincoln, however, had no reservations about complaining when she thought complaints were warranted. Indignant that the department had shown neither Elizabeth nor herself the courtesy of a reply, she declared that she would discover the reason why even if she had to go to the Treasury Department herself.

  Elizabeth knew she had found her answer when she arrived at the White House one morning to find Mrs. Lincoln waiting pensively by the window, her expression vexed and faintly embarrassed.

  “You’ve heard from the Treasury Department,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I didn’t get the job.”

  “I’m very sorry, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Lincoln. “All agreed that your qualifications are exemplary, but I’m told the cutting-room supervisor had some…reservations. He had his current employees’ feelings to consider.”

  Immediately Elizabeth understood, and she felt humiliated for ever entertaining the slightest expectation of being offered the position. “His other employees don’t wish to work side-by-side with a woman of color.”

  Mrs. Lincoln crossed the room and placed her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “It’s wrong, I know it, and I’m so very sorry. If it were up to me, you should have the post and anyone who does not care for your company would be free to resign.”

  “Regrettably, it is not up to you.”

  “No.” Mrs. Lincoln frowned. “It is not—although I believe it should be up to me, as I am the First Lady.”

  Nodding, Elizabeth turned away and sank wearily into a chair. She had not felt so hurt and discouraged and outraged all at once since her slavery days.

  “We’ll think of something else,” Mrs. Lincoln said, offering her an encouraging smile. “Don’t give up, Elizabeth.”

  “I am not in the habit of giving up,” she replied, but she had no idea what to do next.

  To celebrate Tad’s tenth birthday, Mrs. Lincoln proposed a family outing to visit the Army of the Potomac encampment near Falmouth, Virginia, on the north bank of the Rappahannock. At sunset on Saturday, April 4, in the midst of an unexpected spring snowstorm, the president, Mrs. Lincoln, Tad, and a small entourage of friends, administration officials, and trusted members of the press boarded the steamer Carrie Martin. They set off south down the river, passing Alexandria and Mount Vernon, where the ship’s bells tolled a salute to George Washington in keeping with the time-honored custom of the river. Blinding, swirling snow forced the captain to put in to a sheltered cove for the night, and although the storm worsened overnight, the next morning they continued on to the crowded supply port of Aquia Creek, arriving on Easter Sunday. The party transferred to a flag-adorned train and chugged through fierce winds past huge snowdrifts to Falmouth Station, where General Hooker welcomed them.

  The weather delayed their official plans for a day, but in the week that followed, the president and First Lady reviewed the troops, enjoyed a grand parade of cavalry, visited patients and staff in field hospitals, and ventured down to the shore of the Rappahannock, close enough to see Confederate troops waving to them from the other side. The family returned to Washington on April 11, their spirits much improved by the time away from the city. When Elizabeth came to the White House the next day, she observed that Mr. Lincoln seemed heartened by the readiness, strength, and spirit of the troops he had met, while Mrs. Lincoln appeared much more relaxed and contented—despite one irritating incident in a receiving line in which a vivacious, flame-haired equestrienne who had married a Prussian prince and acquired the title Princess Salm-Salm had ardently kissed the president rather than shaking his hand. Delighted, several other ladies had been emboldened to kiss him too, until he had been all but undone by an assault of kisses. Princess Salm-Salm had laughingly explained that General Sickles had put the ladies up to it, in hopes that their kisses would cheer the gloomy president. Mrs. Lincoln had been greatly affronted, but she refused to let those silly women ruin the excursion for her. What she always wanted above all else was time in the company of her husband and children, and the brief trip with Mr. Lincoln and Tad had clearly done her a world of good.

  Mrs. Lincoln had returned to Washington with a new plan to help Elizabeth out of her troubling circumstances. In conversation with the staff at a field hospital, she had been informed about a new law that entitled Elizabeth, as a widow whose only son had been killed in action, to a government pension. “All you need to do is apply at the United States Pension Office,” Mrs. Lincoln assured her. “In my opinion, it is the very least the nation can do to express our gratitude for your sacrifice.”

  Elizabeth thanked her, and as soon as she could, she went to the appropriate office and collected the necessary forms. The clerk looked askance at her as he explained the various signatures and affidavits she would need to collect, but she was used to such looks from white men who found her in places where they did
not expect to see a woman of color, and so she ignored him. It was not until later, when she spoke with several of the men whom she asked to testify on her behalf, that she realized she was again suspended in that strange middle ground between the white world and the black, and that circumstances not of her making would prevent her from obtaining the pension she so desperately needed.

  Even though a few scattered contraband regiments existed and it seemed likely that someday soon colored men would be welcomed into their own army regiments, George had enlisted nearly two years before by passing himself off as white. He had been able to do that, but one glance at Elizabeth would reveal that she was not a white woman. It would be difficult enough to explain how a black woman had given birth to a white man, but it was not even the most painful problem: Her son was, in the eyes of the law, illegitimate. George was the product of rape, the offspring of a liaison she had never desired, and yet, due to the curious morality surrounding race and marriage and the “peculiar institution” of slavery, Elizabeth would suffer for what would be perceived as her sexual indiscretion.

  Discouraged, Elizabeth feared that would be the end of it, but just when her prospects were at their bleakest, Miss Mary Welch, a longtime patron whom she had first met in St. Louis, drew the story out of her. “I believe I know someone who can help you,” the kind woman said, indignant that Elizabeth should be caught in such a tangle of bureaucratic unfairness. “Leave it to me.”

  A few days later, Miss Welch introduced Elizabeth to her friend Illinois congressman Owen Lovejoy, a staunch abolitionist with a great deal of experience unsnarling the knots of racially biased laws. He gladly agreed to help her prepare her application, and when he was obliged to return to Illinois before the task was done, his younger brother, Joseph, took over. A third brother, Elijah, the eldest, had been shot and killed about twenty-five years earlier while trying to defend the printing press of his abolitionist newspaper from an angry pro-slavery mob.