Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly - Jennifer Fleischner

A vibrant social history set against the backdrop of the Antebellum south and the
Civil War that recreates the lives and friendship of two exceptional women: First
Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her mulatto dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly.

"I consider
you my best living friend," Mary Lincoln wrote to Elizabeth Keckly in 1867, and indeed
theirs was a close, if tumultuous, relationship.
Born into slavery, mulatto Elizabeth
Keckly was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker, confidante, and mainstay during the difficult
years that the Lincolns occupied the White House and the early years of Mary's widowhood.
But she was a fascinating woman in her own right, Lizzy had bought her freedom in 1855 and come to Washington determined to make a life for herself. She wasindependent and already well-established
as the dressmaker to the Washington elite when she was first hired by Mary Lincoln
upon her arrival in the nation's capital. Mary Lincoln hired Lizzy in part because she was considered a
"high society" seamstress and Mary, as an outsider in Washington's social circles, was
desperate for social cachet. With her husband struggling to keep the nation together,
Mary turned increasingly to her seamstress for companionship, support, and advice-and
over the course of those trying years, Lizzy Keckly became her confidante and closest
friend.

Historian Jennifer Fleischner
allows us to glimpse the intimate dynamics of this unusual friendship for the first
time, and traces the pivotal events that enabled these two women to forge such an unlikely bond at a time when relations
between blacks and whites were tearing the nation apart.Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly is aremarkable work of
scholarship that explores the legacy of slavery and sheds new light on the Lincoln
White House.