LIFE First Ladies: Portraits of Grace and Leadership

By The Editors of LIFE

Americans have always been fascinated with the women who have held the title First Lady. But just who were these people, behind their official portraits? Did you know that one won an Emmy and another held regular radio addresses? LIFE takes a close look at all of these women and their legacy in a volume that's guaranteed to delight and surprise. Highlights include

• Firsts, such as the first First Lady to wear pants publicly and the first to drive a car
• How Dolley Madison set the stage
• Unanswered questions: Did one First Lady poison her husband? Did another serve as unofficial commander in chief?
• Presidential spouses around the world and how their roles differ from the U.S. First Lady
• Eleanor Roosevelt's achievements are well-known, but others quietly accomplished great things in politics

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life
• Release date: Jan 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683307457

Book preview

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

The Ladies through the Ages

From Martha to Michelle, these are the women who made the White House their home

DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY

ARRAYED IN reverse chronological order from left to right, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Pat Nixon and Lady Bird Johnson gathered in California for the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 1991.

First things first. While we’ve grown accustomed to referring to the president’s wife as the First Lady, the widespread use of that term is a relatively recent phenomenon. The earliest First Lady mention may have been in a Washington Chronicle column from 1870, in which Emily Briggs referred to Julia Grant as First Lady, though some historians argue that the term entered common parlance after a play about Dolley Madison titled First Lady of the Land was produced in 1911. Webster’s New International Dictionary did not even include the term until 1934.

Martha Washington, the first First Lady of all, was sometimes referred to as Lady Washington, but that struck many as too reminiscent of English nobility and the stratified society the emerging nation was leaving behind. Other terms bandied about in the early decades of the presidency included the tongue-twisting Presidentress or Mrs. President. Dolley Madison was once referred to as Lady Presidentress.

Just as uncertain as the term for the role was the nature of the role itself. Many historians have speculated that had Martha Washington not involved herself in her husband’s public life and taken on the task of hosting a variety of political events, the president’s wife might have remained in the shadows for many years to come—at least until the glare of mass media made that impossible in the modern era. But Martha was a strong woman, well aware that her family fortune had been critical to George’s rise to prominence, and she was ever intent on assisting him with his duties, whether that meant spending cold winters with him and his beleaguered troops at Valley Forge or hosting foreign dignitaries in her role as First Lady in New York and Philadelphia. In so doing, she set the template for the women who followed, making it all but impossible for her successors to avoid at least minimal participation in the life of the nation.

Most Americans are familiar with at least a few of the women who filled this unique and prominent role. Eleanor Roosevelt remains a genuine American icon, admired for the force of her intellect and for her tenacious personality. The incomparably stylish Jackie Kennedy, though she served as First Lady for less than three years, captured the public imagination so powerfully that she remained a fixture in the celebrity spotlight until her death some 30 years later. Several First Ladies of more recent vintage have left indelible impressions too: the elegant and imperious Nancy Reagan in the 1980s, the capable and ambitious Hillary Clinton in the 1990s and the charismatic and forceful Michelle Obama.

All of these seem destined to remain in the nation’s consciousness for many years to come. But what of all those forgotten names from the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of them married to less than distinguished presidents? One might wrongly assume that these women, raised in a prefeminist era and confronted with the decidedly male-dominated world of politics, had retreated to the background, quietly accepting subservient roles behind their powerful husbands. Even a cursory examination of the roster of First Ladies yields a very different picture. Many presidents married into families of higher social standing and greater financial resources than their own, among them George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Only the powerful personalities of Martha Dandridge and Mary Todd made those marital matches possible. Many other First Ladies came from families steeped in national politics, providing the future presidents with valuable connections as they moved up the political ladder, and also suggesting a wife with decided opinions of her own. Many First Ladies were older and perhaps wiser than their spouses. Others were much, much younger. (Frances Folsom was just 21 when she wed 49-year-old Grover Cleveland in the Blue Room of the White House in 1886.) In several instances, the First Ladies’ parents objected to their daughters’ choice of husband. Julia Dent’s father never quite accepted her marriage to the itinerant soldier Ulysses S. Grant.

The tales of talent and courage exhibited by the First Ladies debunk any conception of the group as shrinking violets. Dolley Madison famously oversaw the rescue of numerous items from the fires that consumed the White House in 1814 after the British invasion of Washington. Louisa Adams withstood a perilous 40-day journey alone from St. Petersburg to Paris during Napoleon’s ignominious retreat from Russia in 1815. Lou Hoover survived the violence of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 before becoming the first First Lady to deliver a radio address during her husband’s presidency. Florence Harding was a hardheaded businesswoman who successfully ran her hometown newspaper before taking on the campaign of her hapless husband, Warren. (She even managed the strategy of getting her husband’s pregnant lover out of town, way out of town, during her husband’s winning campaign.) Abigail Adams, Julia Grant, Lucy Hayes, Sarah Polk—all were women of extremely strong and openly expressed opinions. Almost without exception, the First Ladies were women of serious substance.

Certainly the women we profile in the pages that follow were limited by the sexism that pervaded the culture in which they lived. In spite of the privilege many of them possessed from birth, their education was often limited, as were the roles they could play in society and the independence they were allowed. Given how thoughtful and capable these women were, imagine the sort of leadership they might have offered the nation in a more enlightened time. Though former First Lady Hillary Clinton did not