Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley led a remarkable life from slavery to the White House. She worked for Mrs. Jefferson Davis and then became an employee and confidant to Mary Todd Lincoln. There is probably no one else in U.S. history who observed the Civil War as a slave and free person, as a Southerner and Northerner, and at the side of the President of the Confederate States and the President of the United States. Keckley’s autobiography, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House was first published in 1868 and is a fascinating read on a historical and human level.
Keckley was born enslaved to an enslaved woman named Agnes (Aggy) Hobbs and was fathered by her plantation owner, Colonel Burwell, in February 1818 in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Although Burwell was Elizabeth’s genetic father, Agnes was married to George Pleasant Hobbs who was enslaved and working on a neighboring plantation. George accepted Elizabeth as his child and she recognized him as her father, not knowing the truth until years later after becoming aware of the notation of her birth listed in a plantation book maintained by Burwell’s mother.
Agnes Hobbs was well-liked by the Burwells and took care of their children while working as a seamstress for the family. The Burwells allowed Agnes to learn reading and writing while she groomed Elizabeth in her skills of nannying and sewing. Elizabeth was the tender age of five years when she became a nanny to the Burwell’s baby, also named Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth loved her charge, she was only a young child herself and did not have the skills or experience for the job. One day, while she was rocking the baby and shooing away flies, the baby fell on the floor. Not knowing any better, Keckley tried to lift the baby off the floor with a fire shovel which resulted in her receiving several severe lashings for the incident, the first of many she would receive over her enslaved lifetime.
One of Elizabeth’s enslaved uncles committed suicide for fear of the abuse from Burwell after his tools was stolen. The Burwells were not atypical of slaveowners and their cruelty left its mark on Elizabeth. The mistress, Mary Burwell was recognized as being a “hard task master.” George Burwell arranged to have Agnes’s husband, George Hobbs, transferred to his plantation when Elizabeth was seven years old which was a wonderful relief for her mother. However, this was only a transitional period, as George was shortly sent to an enslaver in the West.
I can remember the scene as if it were but yesterday;--how my father cried out against the cruel separation; his last kiss; his wild straining of my mother to his bosom; the solemn prayer to Heaven; the tears and sobs--the fearful anguish of broken hearts. The last kiss, the last good-by; and he, my father, was gone, gone forever (Keckly, 9)
Separation of families was common for the enslaved. Physically separated for life, George and Agnes were both literate and carried on an unusual correspondence of letters. Elizabeth herself, was sent to North Carolina when she was fourteen years old to serve as the only slave to Burwell’s son (and her half-brother) and his new wife. A poor, Presbyterian minister, Burwell was particularly cruel to Keckley with whippings for no apparent reason. She was also routinely raped over four years by Alexander McKenzie Kirkland, a white local store owner who they would send her to work for and to stay with, resulting in her pregnancy. Elizabeth named her only son after her father, George, and prayed the boy would not blame is life on her as she had hoped not to have a child.
In 1842, at the age of 24, Colonel Burwell had Elizabeth and her new son return to Virginia where they were gifted, with her mother, to Ann Garland (her half-sister) as a wedding gift. Ann’s household was never prosperous. A poor businessman, Garland’s husband was facing bankruptcy in 1845 and used his assets as collateral, including his enslaved people. In 1846, he brought his family and his enslaved to St. Louis, Missouri but his prospects had not improved. Garland had decided to “rent” out Agnes but, relented under the objections of Elizabeth. Instead, he negotiated with Elizabeth to use her as a seamstress to society women to earn money for his family. As an enslaved woman, Keckley was not allowed to keep her earnings. but she supported her enslaver’s 18-person household. Most importantly for Elizabeth, she kept her elderly mother from being sent to work at a stranger’s home. She successfully developed a seamstress reputation among high society in St. Louis over the next twelve year which led to her meeting Mary Lincoln.
Elizabeth received a marriage proposal from an alleged free Black man, James Keckley, that she met in Virginia in 1850. Not wanting to be married as an enslaved woman because her future children would then be enslaved, she asked Garland if she could buy her freedom. Garland offered her a silver dollar to take her son and leave for a free state. However, under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, this would not guarantee their freedom because they could be recaptured and sent back. Garland then offered to sell her freedom for an almost impossible amount of money, $1,200 (the equivalent of about $40,000 today). Elizabeth married Keckley with the opportunity for freedom and then later suspected he was not a free man but, an escaped slave.
Raising $1,200 for her freedom was a challenge as she still had to maintain her master’s household and found it difficult to accumulate any savings. Master Garland died and his brother took over the estate but promised to keep the commitment to Keckley if, she could come up with the funds. Elizabeth solicited support from her seamstress patrons who provided the funds to emancipate her and George on November 13th, 1855. Elizabeth had stayed with her husband for eight years but left him after her emancipation with little commentary in her book. Meanwhile, her mother had moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi with Burwell’s relatives and passed while there. Keckley continued to work as a seamstress in St. Louis to raise the money needed to pay off her freedom debts.
After a successful seamstress run in St. Louis as a free woman, Keckley was able to repay her debts. She then moved to Washington D.C. in 1860 but D.C. rules were difficult for her to maneuver. She needed a white person to vouch for her freedom and to get a work permit. Keckley asked her prominent clientele in St. Louis to help her get established. One of her clientele convinced the D.C. mayor to waive a large fee that was imposed on her as a free Black woman. Another customer started the process of establishing a Southern clientele for her. She enrolled her son, George, at Wilberforce University in Ohio and began her new life in the nation’s capital. Her business was so successful, she employed 20 assistants. One of her new clients included Varina Davis, wife of then Mississippi Senator, Jefferson Davis.
Varina Davis hired Keckley to be her personal stylist and dressmaker and gave her permission to take on other clients for half days. This gave Elizabeth the opportunity to meet the wives of the hegemony and gave her access to some of the most confidential conversations about the state of the union, including slavery and the potential for war. Mrs. Davis was so enamored with Keckley, she warned her of the impending war and offered her the opportunity to join them in the South. Keckley took this offer under advisement and decided if there was war, the North was more likely to be the victor, so she stayed in place.
Davis’s departure coincided with the arrival of President-elect Abraham Lincoln. One of Keckley’s patrons approached her about making an inauguration dress for the following Sunday. Keckley turned down the opportunity due to the short notice. The patron, Margaret McClean, sweetened the offer by informing Elizabeth that she would introduce her to Mary Lincoln as she had heard that Elizabeth dreamed of working in the White House. Keckley accepted the agreement and worked diligently to complete the dress in time and McClean kept her word. She was introduced to Mary Lincoln at the Willard Hotel before the inauguration. With her reputation having already reaching Lincoln through her St. Louis friends, she was instructed to come to the White House at 8:00 in the next morning. There were three other dressmakers also meeting with Mrs. Lincoln, but they were dismissed, and Keckley began her employment immediately.
Keckley made a dress for Mary Lincoln that received praise from the President which assured her employment. She produced at least fifteen dresses for Mrs. Lincoln in that first spring. As their relationship developed, Keckley found herself as a confidante for Mary Lincoln. She gained an insider view of history in the White House including the passing of the Lincoln’s son, Willie, in February of 1862. She is present when President Lincoln says goodbye to his son and writes:
I never saw a man so bowed down with grief. He came to the bed, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly, murmuring, "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die (43)!
With the loss of Keckley’s own son in the Union army six months earlier, the two mothers bonded in their grief of losing a child. Mary Lincoln suffered from terrible depression upon the loss of her child and asked Keckley to join her on a respite trip to New York and Boston. She writes the President and informs him of the strong support she gets from Keckley. Lincoln’s grief became debilitating to the point where the President suggests she may need inpatient mental health care if not controlled.
While in D.C., Keckley noted how hard it was for enslaved refugees from the war to acclimate with their legal freedom status unclear as “contrabands of war.” In addition to running her seamstress business, Elizabeth established the Contraband Relief Association to provide aid to these refugees. She approached Mrs. Lincoln about donating to the cause and then Mary asked and received $200 from the President to provide bed coverings.
Elizabeth Keckley worked at the White House for Mary Lincoln through Lincoln’s assassination on April 15th, 1865 – a week prior to the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House. The morning following Lincoln being shot at the theater, Mary Lincoln sent a carriage to bring Elizabeth to the White House for comfort as her closest friend. When Mrs. Lincoln left the White House for the last time, she asked Keckley to join her for a short time in Chicago.
Upon Keckley’s return to D.C. from Chicago, Mary Lincoln, deeply in dept, continued to depend on Keckley for assistance. In 1867, she solicited Elizabeth’s help in selling off some of her dresses and jewelry to raise much needed funds. News leaked of her financial situation and the media tore into Mary Lincoln for selling off items of historical significance. The attempt to sell the items were disastrous and only made Mary Lincoln’s position and mental state worse. She hired William Brady of New York to be her agent in the liquidation. It did not improve her situation. She implored Keckley to do more to help her as their relationship became strained and distant. Elizabeth reached out to the Black community for support through church collections and asked Frederick Douglass to give a lecture to raise funds, but Mary Lincoln originally rejected this offer and had burned her bridges, when she had a change of heart.
At this point, their relationship was wearing thin with the pressure on Keckley who was not receiving any payment for her services nor attending to her own business. Keckley had some of Lincoln’s relics donated to Wilberforce College for sale in a rebuilding fundraising after a fire in 1865, without Mary Lincoln’s permission, which created more friction. In addition, Mary Lincoln’s clothes were put on a traveling show increasing her humiliation.
In 1868, Elizabeth Keckley published her memoir with four chapters about her enslaved life and the rest about her relationship with the Davis family and the Lincolns. Mary Lincoln’s reputation as a flirt and spendthrift were established while serving in the White House and only worsened after Lincoln’s assassination. Keckley thought her book would humanize Mary Lincoln, but it only made matters worse in its intimate detail. It also destroyed Keckley’s reputation as Victorian period social norms around privacy, did not approve of a public display of gossip. Not only does the book include intimate moments from the time of Willy’s death, the Lincoln marriage, and Lincoln’s assassination, it also includes the publication of personal letters between Mary Lincoln and Keckley about her mental and financial desperation. Elizabeth’s socialite clientele abandoned her because of the publication. Keckley seemed to anticipate this negative response and attempted to head it off in her book’s preface:
If I have betrayed confidence in anything I have published, it has been to place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world. A breach of trust--if breach it can be called--of this kind is always excusable. My own character, as well as the character of Mrs. Lincoln, is at stake since I have been intimately associated with that lady in the most eventful periods of her life. I have been her confidante, and if evil charges are laid at her door, they also must be laid at mine, since I have been a party to all her movements. To defend myself I must defend the lady that I have served. The world have judged Mrs. Lincoln by the facts which float upon the surface, and through her have partially judged me, and the only way to convince them that wrong was not meditated is to explain the motives that actuated us (4).
The media now turned on Keckley and some used the story to say this was an example as to why Black women should not be educated. They claimed she violated her rights as a free woman by gossiping about the President and his family. The book went from being the talk of the town to suddenly fading in the background. Keckley believes this was due to the influence of Mary’s son, Robert Lincoln. It is alleged that after reading the memoir, Mary Lincoln never spoke of Keckley again. With Keckley’s clients dropping off, she mentored Black seamstresses. She took a position as the head of Ohio’s Wilberforce University’s Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts in 1892 at the age of seventy-four. Keckley returned to Washington D.C. after possibly suffering from a stroke. She financed her retirement with the pension from her son’s Civil War service and died in 1907 while living at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, D.C. at the age of eighty-nine. A purple velvet gown designed and made by Keckley and worn by Mary Lincoln at her husband’s second inauguration can be viewed at the Smithsonian’s American History Museum.
Cited references:
· https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/keckley-elizabeth-hobbs-1818-1907/
· https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/reconstruction/elizabeth-keckley/
· Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. Hillsborough, NC: Eno Publishers, 2016. (Originally published New York: G.W. Carlton & Co., Publishers, 1868).