Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly:
The Remarkable Story of the Friendship
between a First Lady and a Former Slave

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship between a First Lady and a Former Slave is a double-biography. The focus here is not on just one woman but on two, their lives so entwined for a number of years that it is not enough to consider the life of only one while relegating the life of the other to only a supporting part of the story. (Not even Abigail Adams, a woman of great influence on her husband, John Adams, shared double-billing in the title of the 2001 biography, John Adams, by David McCullough.)

Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln while he was still a relatively unknown midwestern lawyer but he was beginning to get involved in politics. Interested in politics from an early age herself, Mary saw his budding career as a possible route for her into the White House, a goal of hers from about the age of twelve. When Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860 and moved to Washington, D.C. to take up residence in the White House, Mary found herself an outsider in Washington's social circles. By hiring Lizzy Keckly, seamstress to the city's elite, Mary hoped to smooth her way into the nation's capital's inner circles. As their relationship progressed, Mary would increasingly turn to Lizzy for companionship, support, and advice.

Born into slavery, mulatto Elizabeth Keckly was the child of Aggy, a privileged black slave who knew how to read and write, and her owner, Armistead Burwell (pronounced Burl). Lizzy bought her freedom in 1855 and moved to Washington, D.C. determined to make her own way in life as a free black. She succeeded very well and was considered *the* high society seamstress by the ladies of Washington. While the Civil War tore the nation apart, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln devastated the country and his widow, and the early Reconstruction period showed little progress in giving African Americans in reality what they were due on paper, Lizzy Keckly became Mary Lincoln's confidante and closest friend. It was an unlikely bond at a time when relations between blacks and whites were extremely tense.

Using previously unknown original sources and building on the work of other historians, author Dr. Fleischner traces the lives of these two women from childhood through their deaths and shows us the intimate dynamics of their unusual friendship, and underscores the inseparability of black and white in our nation's heritage.