Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House: Memoirs of an African-American Seamstress
4/5
()
About this ebook
Keckley's behind-the-scenes view of wartime Washington not only provides fascinating glimpses of nineteenth-century America, but also offers candid observations on interracial relationships and the free black middle class. Here also are absorbing details of life in the Lincoln White House, as well as an insider's perspective on the men who made Civil War politics and the women who influenced them. A touching and revelatory work, filled with incisive social commentary, this inspiring narrative by an admirable woman will be an important addition to the libraries of anyone interested in African-American and Civil War history.
Elizabeth Keckley
Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907) was a formerly enslaved woman who used her skills as a seamstress to purchase her own freedom. Born in Virginia, she was owned by a local planter and later, his daughter. Despite her status, Elizabeth was recognized for her talent, which she used to support the family. She then raised enough money to buy her freedom and move to Washington D.C. It was there that she started a business, making connections with the political elite, including Mary Todd Lincoln. Later, Keckley would detail the events of her tumultuous life in the autobiography Behind the Scenes (1868).
Read more from Elizabeth Keckley
Slavery: Not Forgiven, Never Forgotten – The Most Powerful Slave Narratives, Historical Documents & Influential Novels: The Underground Railroad, Memoirs of Frederick Douglass, 12 Years a Slave, Uncle Tom's Cabin, History of Abolitionism, Lynch Law, Civil Rights Acts, New Amendments and much more Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Women and Freedom: Three Female Slave Narratives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiving to Tell the Horrid Tales: True Life Stories of Fomer Slaves, Historical Documents & Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Forgotten, Never Could be: Documented Testimonies of Former Slaves, Memoirs & History of Abolitionist Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the Lincoln White House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Life of a Slave Girl - Women's Slave Narratives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scenes or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House: Premium Ebook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Most Influential Memoirs Of Former Slaves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scenes: or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scenes: Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreaking the Chains: Collection of the Most Influential Narratives that Shook the Roots of Slavery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind the Scene Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn a Slave: Anthology: Collected Memoirs and Interviews Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House
Related ebooks
Diana of the Crossways Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Seed is Mine: The life of Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper 1894–1985 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gilded Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Risen Christ (Ebook Shorts) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Letters from the Closet: Ten Years of Correspondence That Changed My Life Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5An Unlikely Friendship: A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Pilgrimage of Hope: A Story of Faith and Medicine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemoir of an Independent Woman: An Unconventional Life Well Lived Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpellbound: Growing Up in God's Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Matter of Mercy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians: With a Brief Account of General Sully's Indian Expedition in 1864 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGulliver’s Travels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLet Us Now Praise Famous Women: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Linda Tressel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrontes: A Family History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I See Lincoln's Underpants: The Surprising Times Underwear (And the People Wearing Them) made History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnbridled Cowboy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAbigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Literary Connecticut: The Hartford Wits, Mark Twain and the New Millennium Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilliam John Wills: Pioneer of the Australian Outback Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Sexuality in Early America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsForbidden Wife: The Life and Trials of Lady Augusta Murray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Teaching in the Dark: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Social Science For You
My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Questions for Couples: 469 Thought-Provoking Conversation Starters for Connecting, Building Trust, and Rekindling Intimacy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House
61 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth Keckley was a slave for 30 years. Once she bought her freedom, she opened a dressmaking business, and eventually became Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker. This is her autobiography. We hear conversations between the President and his wife, conversations they both held with Elizabeth, the people she met, and what life was like in the White House during the Civil War. Just a different perspective, but a very interesting one. Keckley ends the book with copies of correspondence between her and Mrs. Lincoln after the President's death.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elizabeth Keckley wrote BEHIND THE SCENES OR, THIRTY YEARS A SLAVE, AND FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE in 1868. While the book received a great deal of attention when it was published, both she and the book were largely forgotten until the recent publication of MRS. LINCOLN’S DRESSMAKER by Jennifer Chiaverini in which she both bases and quotes much of her book.In short, this book is about Mrs. Keckley’s life from her birth as a slave through her years as a seamstress and entrepreneur to her relationship with Mrs. Lincoln following President Lincoln’s assassination. The second focus is on the character, relationships, and actions of Mrs. Lincoln from her time in the White House to a year after President Lincoln’s assassination. It is not at all what one would expect to read from a woman born into slavery.However, there is so much literary beauty in this book that I am including many examples of what I found that fueled my interest. In the preface, Mrs. Keckley explained that she wrote the book to “place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world.” She continues that both their characters are “at stake, since I have been intimately associated with that lady in the most eventful periods of her life. I have been her confidant...and have been party to all her movements.” The book includes several letters from Mrs. Lincoln to Mrs. Keckley verifying their close relationship. One, sent from Chicago after the assassination reads, “My Dear Lizzie,...I consider you my best living friend....Always truly yours, M. L.”She began by telling the story of her childhood as a slave, born in Virginia. Her father lived on another plantation and was cruelly moved further away. She never saw him again but hoped to see him in heaven. She wrote, “We who are crushed to earth with heavy chains, who travel a weary, rugged, thorny road, groping through midnight darkness on earth, earn our right to enjoy the sunshine in the great hereafter.”Speaking of life as a slave, she observed having what could be interpreted as a negative attitude could result in punishment. “The sunny face of the slave is not always an indication of sunshine in the heart.” She did not want to marry and have children because she did not think want to bring a child into slavery. Her son was the result of rape. “The Anglo-Saxon blood as well as the African flowed in his veins; the two commingled–one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of despair....By the laws of God and nature, as interpreted by man, one-half of my boy was free, and why should not this fair birthright of freedom remove the curse from the other half...?” But she did marry into a troubling relationship.Mrs. Keckley writes about a visit she made to the plantation where she had been a slave following her White House years. She was greeted warmly, as she expected to be because of the “warm attachment between master and slave.”She was an accomplished seamstress and was able to use her skills to help support her family and to buy freedom for herself and her son for $1200. She borrowed the money from her patrons in St. Louis, and was able to repay it. She then moved to Baltimore, then to Washington City, now known as Washington, D.C. There she found a different life, being treated with respect by merchants and establishing a dressmaking shop serving women such as the wives of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. When Abraham Lincoln became President, her skills brought her to the attention of Mrs. Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln relied on her not only for her needle skills but also as a confident and friend. (Many in the capital avoided Mrs. Lincoln for many reasons: She was from the West; she was opinionated ;she was jealous; she was suspicious; she was moody.) Following the death of Willie Lincoln, the second of her sons to die, Mrs. Lincoln entered into a deep depression, she was adamant against allowing her older son Robert enlist in the Army. She thought she had sacrificed enough and that his services were not needed. Eventually he did enlist but was assigned to a less dangerous position.Mrs. Keckley observed that freedmen came North “looking for liberty, and many of them not knowing it when they found it.” People weren’t as friendly as they were in the South and many former slaves had difficulty coping with independence. Their helplessness was branded idleness. “Charity is never kind,” she wrote. .Freedom brought poverty. She wrote that “Colored people are wedded to associations and when you destroy these you destroy half the happiness in their lives.” They would rather live in poor, familiar surroundings with those they knew than travel and find what, to others, would be a better life. Many slaves believed they had “earned our right to enjoy the sunshine in the great hereafter.” Education was very important to her. She learned to read and write, against the wishes of her masters, and her son attended college. She began an association to help poor colored people, especially soldiers. In the process, she became acquainted with people such as Frederick Douglass. When Richmond fell, she and the girls who worked for her were “elated” because “the rebel capital had surrendered to colored troops.” When President Lincoln and his party went there by boat, he asked the band to play one of his favorite tunes, “Dixie.”After Willie’s death Mary Lincoln went into a deep depression. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated it got worse; Mrs. Keckley and the Lincoln children were her only companions.She refused to see any other callers.Even though she had a seamstress business to run in Washington, Mrs. Lincoln insisted that Mrs. Keckley accompany her to Chicago where Mrs. Lincoln continued her isolation. While there, Tad’s lack of education becomes very apparent when he refuses to admit that A-p-e doesn’t spell monkey. Mrs. Keckley observed, “Had Tad been a negro boy, not the son of a President, and so difficult to instruct, he would have been called thick-skulled, and would have been held up as an example of the inferiority of race....If a colored boy appears dull, so does a white boy sometimes; and if a whole race is judged by a single example of apparent dullness, another race should be judged by a similar example.”At the time of President Lincoln’s death, Mrs. Lincoln owed $70,000 for her extravagant personal purchases. She tried several methods to raise money and eventually moved to Chicago. “The colored people...intend to take up collections in their churches for the benefit of Mrs. Lincoln.” When told about it, “Mrs. Lincoln...declined to receive aid from the colored people.” Mrs. Keckley also consulted with Frederick Douglass about ways to help Mrs. Lincoln.Mrs. Keckley was given several personal items from both President and Mrs. Lincoln. Many were donated to Wilberforce University, a colored college in Ohio, which had been destroyed by fire the night of the assassination. A quilt made from pieces of Mrs. Lincoln’s dresses was donated to Kent State University.BEHIND THE SCENES OR, THIRTY YEARS A SLAVE, AND FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE is a wonderful, very personal memoire of a remarkable woman living in and reporting on an important part of American history. I heartily recommend it. This book was an e-book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Having recently attended a performance of The Widow Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC, I wanted to learn more about the relationship between Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley. I opted for this memoir rather than a historical novel and am glad I did. The writing is wonderful and gives the reader a real sense of the bond between these two women. For those who have the opportunity, I strongly encourage you to see the play AND to read this book.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Yikes. Over 500 pages long and serious. Abandoned this pretty fast, I'm afraid. Not something I cared for enough to pressure myself into the long hard slog it would be. I'd like to point out original publishing date is 1888 not 1988.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of the most remarkable memoirs I have read. Keckley speaks frankly about having been beaten as a slave, being ofrced to take a white slave owner as a lover, baring his child, and then traveling to Washington to set up a dress shop. It was there she met the Lincolns. Her time spent with them was the most interesting part of this tale so I won’t spoiler the eye openers. The memoir was completely engrossing. A remarkable book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The book starts with a short life-story of the author, a former slave who bought her own freedom. She became well-known as a seamstress and went to work for Mary Lincoln. There are many recollections in this book that are well known in Lincoln-lore, but they originated in this book. Thus, as an original source, this is a must read. First editions are essentially non-existent, so be satisfied with any modern copy.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The lasts few years have held some horrible surprises for me. One of the worst was the day I discovered, to my terrible surprise, that, no matter how much I want to think of myself as an enlightened, educated human being with no preconceptions nor prejudices about others, I was horribly wrong as I discovered when George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Treyvon Martin. I am a racist. Rodgers' and Hammerstein's "You've Got to be Taught" sums it up --and I suggest that, if you have never heard it ,you dig out a copy of "South Pacific" and listen to it.In any case, I resolved after discovering this terrible thing that I had to understand how and why I became a racist and how to change these deeply embadded feelings.When I stumble on Elizabeth Keckley's book about the Lincoln White House, Keckley taught me much about what it meant to be an African American, and even in the enlightened White House of the Great Emancipator, it was not easy.I was right. Elizabeth Keckley was an incredibly talented woman who not only sewed all of Mary Lincoln's clothing (and Mrs. Lincoln was an even more demanding clotheshorse than Jacqueline Kennedy), but also became her best friend and confidant. She was so successful that she was able to buy her freedom (and her son's) prior to be the beginning of the Civil War. By the end of the War, designed clothing for all the great Washington ladies and commanded a large staff of seamstresses to keep up with the demand. If you have seen Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," you will see Mrs. Keckley portrayed by Gloria Reuben, the woman who accompanied Mrs. Lincoln to the final vote on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.If you do not know what it means to be Black in the United States --- and this is something that only our African American brothers and sisters can understand, I suggest that you pick read this book. It will give you a tiny glance into a different culture and time. And although there are now 150 years separating us from that time, I don't know that our better selves have been very successful at creating a new world.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth Keckley gives us an interesting look at life in US in the 1800's, the politics of the time and her relationship with the people of the era. There's a little snapshot of Fredrick Douglas and a larger analysis of Mary Todd Lincoln in which the reader is both annoyed with the frippery of the president's wife and dismayed at her treatment. Perhaps the most amazing aspect was Keckley's statement that there was both a bad and good aspect to the practice of slavery. Keckley details her beatings and the selling off of family from each other, also the fact that she was "interfered with" by a white man who fathered her only child. But she professed profound love for her former masters, the ones whom she supported with her sewing and who would not grant freedom to herself and her son until she managed to pay them $1200. She says people don't understand how a former slave can have fond memories of her days in servitude but that people always remember the days of childhood with fond nostalgia, even when those days involve slavery. This book left me wanting to know more and with the utmost respect for the ambition and accomplishments of its author.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Keckley worked for the Lincoln family in the White House. She was an expert seamstress. The novel adheres to some melodramatic conventions of the time but is nonetheless fascinating.