First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  I noticed that dictionaries gradually began to include “First Lady” but only after the country’s attention had been drawn to Washington.7 Before the 1930s, city and county legislators voted on matters of immediate concern, and their names, rather than those of national leaders, appeared during debates over government services. Then the New Deal drew power to Washington, World War II added a large dose of unifying patriotism, and the media cemented the shift to Washington. Thanks to photograph-filled magazines, by the 1950s Americans knew more about Mamie Eisenhower’s bangs, her recipe for fudge, and her preference for pastels than they did about their mayors or state representatives.

  George E. Reedy, Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary in the 1960s, underlined the changed focus when he recalled a trip to Washington D.C. he had taken in his youth. Although Calvin Coolidge was president, Reedy admitted he had not yet heard of him, and the only lasting memory young Reedy took away from that visit to the White House was of having viewed Grace Coolidge’s portrait.8 Reedy could not have ignored the fact that schoolchildren in the 1960s—even those who had never gone near the capital—recognized not only President Johnson but also his wife and daughters and perhaps even his dog, Little Beagle Johnson, all of whom had appeared on national television.

  The use of “First Lady” seemed to flourish in spite of deeply felt, very logical objections to it. Women who held the title detested it, and Jackie Kennedy initially forebade her staff to use it.9 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., judged the term “deplorable” and began a search for a substitute.10 As more women sought elective office for themselves, the question arose about what to call their husbands, and jests were made about “First Mate,” “First Gentleman,” or “First Spouse.” None of these objections had any effect, however, and popular magazines continued to publish prominent articles about the current “First Lady,” while television correspondents superimposed their own stamp of approval on the phrase.

  The title seemed, in part, to reflect a continuing infatuation in the United States with royalty. Even after insisting they had rejected all the trappings of a monarchy, Americans continued to adopt royal terms, referring in the early decades of the republic to the president as “His Majesty,” his residence as “the Palace,” and his parties as “holding court.” When such references disappeared from coverage of the president, they continued to be used for the women at the White House. In the 1850s, James Buchanan’s young niece, who served as his official hostess, was praised as “our Democratic queen,” and in the Republican administration that followed, Mary Lincoln became the “Republican queen.” A century later, Abigail McCarthy, the writer and ex-wife of a presidential candidate, likened Jackie Kennedy’s job to that of Princess Grace of Monaco,11 and Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, was quoted as saying: “Kings and queens have always focused people’s feelings and since we’re not very far from a monarchy, the President’s wife, whoever she is, has little choice but to serve as our queen.”12

  Aside from being there as a symbol, what is the role of a First Lady? The Constitution mentions no assignments for the chief executive’s spouse, and yet she has become a prominent part of the presidency. Most Americans presumably know better than the 1920s immigrant who, when queried about who stood to succeed the president, responded “the president’s wife.” But anyone who watched television coverage of the 1985 Geneva Summit Conference might wonder why Nancy Reagan received so much attention or why President Reagan appeared in front of the United States Congress at the summit’s end and thanked his wife for being “an outstanding ambassador of good will for us all.”13

  As though to lend importance to all the questions about White House wives, they have expanded their roles while the office of vice president continues to have a rather ill-defined and somewhat obscure profile, the subject of many jokes. For example, the nineteenth-century journalist Emily Briggs suggested in ironic jest that American women remained unenthusiastic about acquiring the vote because they feared they might be called on to act as vice president.14

  Men who held the job have remarked on the uselessness of their assignment. John Adams, vice president under George Washington, declared his job “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”15 Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, jokingly compared the role of second-in-command to “a man in a cataleptic state; he cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; and yet he is perfectly conscious of everything going on about him.”16

  Thomas Marshall did well to note the limitations of his job. Few people remember his name, while Edith Wilson acquired a reputation as one of the most powerful of all First Ladies. After Woodrow’s stroke in 1919, she controlled the flow of communications between him and everyone else, thus prompting Massachusetts Senator Lodge to complain, “A regency was not contemplated in the Constitution.”17

  Regardless of such objections, the First Lady, with little public debate and no constitutional amendments, evolved a role of considerable power. Both outspoken Eleanor Roosevelt and reticent Bess Truman were named during their husbands’ administrations as among the “most powerful people in Washington,” while the vice presidents were conspicuously absent from such lists. President Ford, whose wife, Betty, explained that she resorted to “pillow talk” to convince her husband of her point of view, admitted that she was frequently successful. Her opinion had carried weight, he said, on some very controversial issues, including the pardon of Richard Nixon. Rosalynn Carter admitted that the enlistment of a president’s wife in almost any project is of inestimable value. By 1986, Nancy Reagan was credited with elevating the job of First Lady to a kind of “Associate Presidency.”18 With the powerful Clinton duo in the White House, reporters routinely relayed the views of both the president and First Lady on important issues and appointments.

  Since the institution of First Lady is an American one, it seems reasonable to ask what in the United States provided for such growth. Did a quirk in the presidential system nurture it? Or did it develop out of peculiarly American attitudes about leaders? The answer probably lies in both areas.

  The United States’ presidency, that unique assignment hammered out in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, includes two jobs that are performed by separate individuals in other types of representative governments: a head of state who presides over ceremonial functions, and a head of government who makes major appointments and takes a decisive role in legislation. The American president, charged with both tasks, frequently resorted to sending substitutes on ceremonial and other occasions when a mere physical presence was required. Members of the president’s household made excellent surrogates—they signaled the president’s approval and also his continued control of government. Martha Washington began what became a tradition when she attended a New York church service while George was ill,19 and her example inspired her successors. Nearly two hundred years later, Nancy Reagan left her husband’s hospital room to return to the White House and announce to guests assembled for a large reception that she was “the president’s stand-in.”20 Political wives substituted in other ways for their spouses, sometimes maintaining a facade of civility while their husbands feuded. John Quincy Adams observed in 1824 that Andrew Jackson and William Crawford, contenders for the presidency, were avoiding each other socially but “the ladies have exchanged visits.”21

  The president’s living arrangements also increased his wife’s role. Once the decision had been made to combine the president’s official residence with his private quarters, his spouse dealt with more than just guest lists at official dinners. With a husband who “worked at home,” she could not, as John Quincy Adams’s wife, Louisa, liked to point out, escape knowing something about his job—who supported him and who opposed.

  The election process provided another push into prominence for candidates’ wives. Although it was considered inappropriate for women to campaign openly until well into the twentieth century, the groundwork was laid much earlier. Since presidents
must seek a popular mandate rather than the approval of their party caucus as a prime minister does, they cannot rely on the contacts and trust accrued from years of working with colleagues but must go to the population at large. A stand-in campaigner is always useful and enjoys some advantages over the candidate. Rosalynn Carter went off on her own in quest of votes for Jimmy fourteen months in advance of the 1976 nomination because she recognized the need to reach many voters. Lady Bird Johnson, confident that southern chivalry would accord her courtesies not granted her husband, campaigned on her own through several states in 1964. She called campaigning “one of the bills you have to pay for the job your husband has.”22

  The enlistment of presidents’ spouses in prominent roles required the concurrence of the women, several of whom compiled remarkable records. Eleanor Roosevelt’s unprecedented energy over twelve years raised the possibility of just what a president’s wife could accomplish; Lady Bird Johnson moved the distaff side of the White House off the family pages of the country’s newspapers and into the mainstream of her husband’s “Great Society”; Betty Ford took public stands at odds with those of her husband; Rosalynn Carter attended cabinet meetings, defended her approach to mental health care in front of a Senate committee, and conducted talks of a “substantive” nature on a Latin American trip. During Ronald Reagan’s convalescence in the summer of 1985, Washington watchers pointed to three people in control at the White House: the president, his chief of staff, and the First Lady. Hillary Rodham Clinton headed her husband’s drive to reform health care, a reform he had set as central to his goals as president.

  A few First Ladies marked watersheds in the history of the job. Dolley Madison’s popularity does not stem solely, as many believe, from her having introduced ice cream to Americans. (That distinction belongs more likely to Thomas Jefferson who recorded in his own hand the preferred recipe for the cold dessert that he had liked so much in France.) But Dolley Madison did exert unusual influence. For almost half a century, she remained a central figure in the capital, showing an uncanny ability to use social occasions to her husband’s political advantage. She had laid the foundation for her prominence in the Jefferson administration (1801–1809) when the widowed president turned to her to help him entertain. Later, when James Madison succeeded Thomas Jefferson, Dolley had two terms of her own (1809–1817) to solidify an important role for the president’s consort. After her husband retired from office, she continued to act as unofficial tutor to young White House hostesses, making her last, very celebrated appearance at President Polk’s party in 1849.

  The two decades embracing the Lincoln (1861–1865) and Grant (1869–1877) administrations offered a similar turning point. For two generations preceding them, presidents’ wives had made themselves nearly invisible in Washington. Some pled poor health or grief over family tragedies, but most felt justified in sending in substitutes to preside over social gatherings. Neither Mary Lincoln nor Julia Grant showed a similar reticence when confronted with the spotlight; both obliged photographers and reporters who requested pictures and information. The public appetite was whetted for trivia about important persons, and Jenkinsism (the nineteenth-century equivalent of what later came to be called paparazzi) had its day.

  No member of a successful politician’s family pushes too far beyond the accepted limits of the day. Lucy Hayes (1877–1881) was touted as the “New Woman” because of her college education and concern with issues outside her own family, but she and other presidents’ wives in the last quarter of the nineteenth century stayed well within what had been defined as the “woman’s sphere.” Domesticity retained its high value and even the artistically inclined Caroline Harrison (1889–1892) was praised as the “best housekeeper” of them all. The intellectual Rose Cleveland, who assisted her bachelor brother Grover during his first year in office (1885), received less praise for the books she wrote than for her silk and lace dresses. What had been introduced as the “New Woman” offered little that was new.

  Some presidents’ wives paralleled their husbands’ interpretations of the job of chief executive. While Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) took advantage of what he termed the “bully pulpit,” his wife, Edith, streamlined the executive mansion and hired a staff for herself. Theodore officially renamed the mansion the “White House” and Edith helped transform it into an important national monument. Together they drew the nation’s attention to the energetic young family residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and set the stage for the increased attention in the following decades.

  The question of what name to use for women who happen to have married famous men remains a difficult one. American writers commonly refer to men by their last name alone (as in “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address” or “Washington’s Farewell”) so that wives, when they are mentioned at all, are left with the cumbersome combination of first and last names (Mary Lincoln) or the comparatively demeaning first name alone (Jackie and Nancy). The tacit agreement that women, even powerful ones, cannot be satisfactorily identified by surname only extends beyond the country’s borders and into coverage of the highest ranks of government (as the records of “Indira” [Gandhi] and “Golda” [Meir] show), but that hardly justifies such usage.

  Since famous couples are my subject here, I decided to treat both partners equally and to use given names wherever the text permits. Readers who cringe at seeing the father of their country referred to as “George” might want to consider why they had never reacted so strongly to seeing “Martha Dandridge Custis Washington” abbreviated to “Martha.”

  The thirty-odd women who shaped First Ladyship (counting is complicated by the fact that daughters, daughters-in-law, and sisters of presidents used the title) ranged in age from early twenties to late sixties, from superbly educated for their time to poorly schooled. Some showed themselves immensely courageous and adventuresome; others were emotionally unstable, withdrawn, and beset by enough personal tragedies to defeat even gargantuan wills. Each woman worked within a set of expectations for her time and place, often within the confines imposed by the special needs of marriage to a politician. In one sense, this book has become an inquiry into attitudes toward marriage.

  No matter how they performed their jobs, First Ladies never lacked detractors. Critics pointed to their extravagance (Mary Lincoln), coarseness (Margaret Taylor), casual entertaining (Dolley Madison), elitism (Elizabeth Monroe), prudishness (Lucy Hayes), gaiety (Harriet Lane), excessive grief (Jane Pierce), advanced age (Martha Washington), and youth (Julia Tyler). When wives appeared to exert some influence on their husbands or on government, they were charged with exercising “petticoat government” (Edith Wilson), running their husbands’ careers (Florence Harding), putting words into the president’s mouth (Eleanor Roosevelt), “getting people fired” (Nancy Reagan), and making her husband look like a wimp (Hillary Rodham Clinton).

  The reader who expects to find here a tightly argued thesis will be disappointed. None has emerged, except the unsurprising conclusion that individual First Ladies have reflected the status of American women of their time while helping shape expectations of what women can properly do. They extend our understanding of how women participated in government in ways other than simply voting and holding office.23 Yet this book cannot substitute for a text on women’s history or for the multitude of specific studies that have appeared in that field in the last few decades or are scheduled for future publication.

  Partisans of individual First Ladies will be disappointed that material on their favorites has been abridged. Full biographies, when available, are indicated in the notes, but I have had to select and cut, as I sought to emphasize particular aspects of each woman’s tenure. My focus has been the women—how each saw her place in her time and how others saw her. As much as possible, I have tried to quote the participants directly—not because I expected to demonstrate what was “true” but to illustrate a public perception or to document an explanation. Again and again, I skipped over important national events and presidential a
ctions so that I could concentrate on fitting First Ladies into women’s history. In cases where a great deal had already been written (on Eleanor Roosevelt and Abigail Adams, for example), I have intentionally limited my coverage so as to give more attention to the lesser known (such as Sarah Polk and Lou Hoover). I sought to illuminate all their records—not just those of a few exceptional individuals.

  In the beginning, I considered writing a history of the institution of First Lady, a book that would have documented the decision-making process, the level of staff performance, and the rise in power on the distaff side of the White House. I abandoned that project when I realized that most readers would want more biographical information than that volume could have included. I was also persuaded by the need to wait for hundreds more boxes of White House materials to become available and then be carefully examined by several scholars.

  Taking stock of the record of First Ladies at this point does not imply that their job will remain static. It will surely continue to change. If a married woman achieves the presidency, her husband will have to consider how to fit his life to the role. A woman whose husband becomes chief executive while she remains dedicated to a career of her own will have to formulate her own answers. Powerful couples who work in tandem may motivate Americans to legislate limits or to require accountability on the part of the spouse who, though unelected, behaves as though she (or he) were.

  Whatever the future brings, it seems appropriate to look at presidents’ wives over more than two centuries and see how the role of First Lady was transformed from ceremonial backdrop to substantive world figure. Each was given “a magic wand,” it has been said,24 with no instructions on its use—each woman had to figure that out for herself.