Keckley, Elizabeth

Sex: Female

Born: Dinwiddie, Virginia, United States, Dinwiddie Court House
26 February 1818

Died: Washington, District of Columbia, United States, Home for Destitute Women
26 May 1907

Activity/Profession: Seamstress, Slave, Autobiographer / Memoirist, White House Staff Member, Confidante

(b. 26 May 1818 ; d. 1907 ),
seamstress, memoirist.

Elizabeth Keckley used her needlework skills to purchase her freedom and went on to have such a flourishing business that she became dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln . Fortunately for posterity, she also wrote a book about her life, her sewing work, and her experience as someone closely connected to the Lincoln White House. Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years as a Slave, and Four Years in the White House ( 1868 ) has been a source of historically significant information ever since.

Elizabeth was born Elizabeth Hobbs , the only child of a slave couple, Agnes and George Pleasant Hobbs , in Dinwiddie, Virginia. Her mother was a housemaid and excellent seamstress owned by the Burwells, a prominent family of central Virginia. Her father lived on a neighboring farm and was allowed to visit his family twice a year until he was sold away from them. As a teenager, Elizabeth was repeatedly sexually molested by a white man and, as she wrote in her book, her owners were not helpful in protecting her. Eventually, she gave birth to a son, whom she named after her father and loved dearly, despite the circumstances of his conception. Elizabeth was given to one of the Burwell daughters and her minister husband, Hugh Garland . Garland was not paid well as a minister; he later tried to improve his financial position by moving to St. Louis, and Elizabeth went with them.

During the period of slavery in America, black women were responsible for taking care of the sewing needs of the plantation and, in the city, the general household. They mended and fashioned clothing for the mistress of the house, the family, and household servants. They also used their ingenuity and skills to make and repair clothing for other slaves. A special talent for needlework in a black woman added to her value as a slave. Once the woman became especially competent, her time was spent producing delicate piecework for her owners. Her beautiful quilts and bedspreads were proudly displayed throughout the mansion, and her gowns were the subject of much admiration. The talented seamstress was sometimes hired out to make stylish dresses for the mistresses of other households. In some cases, the slave was able to keep a percentage of the money for her own use.

Elizabeth became just such a seamstress and thus a very valuable asset to her owners. Though the family was socially in the “upper class” in St. Louis, Hugh Garland, now a lawyer, could not bring in the income needed to live as his wife was accustomed, and so they hired out Elizabeth to sew for wealthy women in the area. Elizabeth sewed mostly evening dresses, at a “market rate.” The average price of her dresses was from one to two hundred dollars. Those years were hard on Elizabeth, who wrote that she was bringing in enough money from her dressmaking earnings to support seventeen people in the Garland household. While in St. Louis, Elizabeth married James Keckley , who presented himself as a free man. She wrote that she later found out not only that he was a slave but also that he was “dissipated.” After eight years, the marriage failed and they separated.

When Keckley was thirty years old, she tried to buy her freedom, but Garland did not want to sell her. Instead, her owner jokingly gave Keckley the choice of staying a slave or taking twenty-five cents from him for the ferry to the free territory of Missouri, telling her that it would be easier for him, and for her, if she joined other fleeing blacks rather going through a purchase process. Keckley refused his offer of ferry fare (although she might have accepted it, since most people in the 1840s felt that slavery would be ending soon), because she did not want to have her life and her business interrupted by bounty hunters.

Nonetheless, Keckley, wanting a legal basis for her freedom, persisted and badgered Garland. Her price, however, had risen because the Garlands had trained and fed Elizabeth for years and because she had taught herself to read and to write. The family thus set the price of Keckley and her son at twelve hundred dollars. Keckley did not have the full amount. She wrote that one of her customers said, “Why don't you visit a friend in New York? No one ever comes back,” but she refused. Fortunately, some of her wealthy customers heard of her plight, formed a “syndicate,” and lent Keckley the twelve hundred dollars. In 1855 she purchased her freedom and that of her son. Within a year, she had paid off her loan. She kept the purchase paper, which looked much like a mortgage contract, and later published it in her book.

Elizabeth Keckley was Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and friend during Abraham Lincoln's presidency; the friendship ended when Keckley's frank memoir, which revealed some confidential details about the Lincolns, was published in 1868.

By permission of University of North Carolina

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After Keckley gained her freedom, she moved with her son to Baltimore. Although she had letters of recommendation, she was not able to grow her business to the level she expected, so she moved on to Washington, DC, in early 1860 . Soon her business was thriving. She employed twenty young women to sew her designs and attracted a large clientele of wealthy women, including Varina Davis , the wife of Jefferson Davis , who was to become president of the Confederacy. Knowing that secession was imminent, Davis asked Elizabeth Keckley to join her in New Orleans, the city which would be the capital of the newly formed Confederacy. Keckley was tempted with the offer of guaranteed business. She also knew that there were many free blacks in New Orleans, but she had just purchased her freedom and was not sure how other Southerners would treat her. In her book she said that she bade Mrs. Davis a pleasant goodbye, stating she would think over the offer.

Soon after Mary Todd Lincoln arrived in Washington, she asked friends to recommend a good seamstress and was given Keckley's name. Keckley was first to the White House after Lincoln spilled coffee on the dress his wife had chosen for the inauguration, and thereafter made and maintained virtually all Mrs. Lincoln's clothing during her years in the White House. In addition to being Lincoln's dress designer, she also became her “eyes and ears” in Washington and her traveling companion, journeying with Mrs. Lincoln to visit her son Robert at Harvard, to Richmond and St. Petersburg during the war, to New York City, and to Springfield, Illinois, after the assassination. Keckley's own son, George, was killed fighting in the Civil War. The loss seems to have drawn her closer to Mrs. Lincoln, who lost her own young son at about that time.

During the Civil War, Keckley helped out in hospitals and noted how difficult it was for the fleeing slaves to resettle in the nation's capital. She asked various abolitionists to take up collections in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, to help the former slaves, who were called “contrabands of war.” Mrs. Lincoln herself donated two hundred dollars to Keckley's Contraband Relief Association. Keckley's untiring work on behalf of African American soldiers and former slaves continued throughout the war.

The demanding friendship with Mrs. Lincoln was a mixed blessing—it took valuable time away from Elizabeth's business, but it gave her unique access to the private world of the Lincolns. Scholars today are indebted to Keckley's access. She wrote with compassion about Lincoln's troubles with various politicians and generals during the war, and about his love and understanding of his complex, high-strung wife. After the president's assassination, Mary turned to Keckley for comfort, and though she could no longer afford to keep the dressmaker with her, the two remained friends. When Mary Todd Lincoln, believing herself to be in serious financial trouble, decided to sell part of her White House wardrobe, Keckley met her in New York to help her organize the auction. Keckley turned to her own friends to find help for Lincoln, and, at her urging, Frederick Douglass agreed to lecture to raise money for the president's widow.

Scholars have wondered whether Keckley was the actual author of her 1868 book. Keckley explained that she wrote the book in New York City while attending to the selling of Mrs. Lincoln's clothes to various brokers. She worked on the book during the day, and gave the manuscripts to James Redpath , an antislavery newspaper man, each evening. He was, at the least, her editor, but may have done considerable rewriting and also helped to get the book published. However, the words and the observations of the White House, of Lincoln, and of national life during the Civil War in Washington were Keckley's.

Mrs. Lincoln's erratic behavior had created many political and social enemies. Mrs. Keckley tried to explain Mrs. Lincoln to the world in her book, which offers a candid insight into the White House and life in the 1860s. Although Keckley's intention was to show Mrs. Lincoln in a better light to the world, and to help her pay off her debts, both Mrs. Lincoln and her son Robert, who was a corporate executive at the Chicago Railroad, took offense. The publisher found it hard to distribute the book, and many black people felt that Elizabeth was a traitor to the beloved Lincoln and to the newly formed Republican Party, which had a strong antislavery position. Others felt that Elizabeth was wrong to tell family “secrets.” Someone produced a terrible racist parody pamphlet of her book, titled “Behind the Seams, by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis.” The sales of her book were almost nonexistent, and it was a terrible failure. Keckley did only one public reading of her book, in Boston, an event arranged by Redpath, and spent most of her time writing letters defending her position and that of Mrs. Lincoln.

Because of the public reaction to her book, Elizabeth lost her customer base. People who had come to her because they knew she designed for and had access to Mrs. Lincoln and the White House shunned her now that she was no longer in favor. She eventually had to close her business, and her income fell. Keckley taught domestic science for one year at Wilberforce University in Ohio, but she lived out her remaining forty years in obscurity. Jennifer Fleischner , in Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, states that “one newspaper writer in the late 1800's even wrote that there was no real ‘colored seamstress’ who did work for Mrs. Lincoln.” Various black people proudly wrote letters to the editor saying that Keckley was still alive and active in her church.

Elizabeth Keckley died in Washington, DC, at the Home for Destitute Women, which she had assisted in establishing years earlier with earnings from her business.

Bibliography

Fleischner, Jennifer . Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly. New York: Random House, 2003 .
Keckley, Elizabeth . Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years as a Slave, and Four Years in the White House ( 1868 ). New York: Oxford University Press with the Schaumburg Library, 1961 .
Quarles, Benjamin . Elizabeth Keckley. In Notable American Women, 1607–1950, edited by Edward T. James , Janet Wilson James , and Paul S. Boyer . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1971 .