Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly by Jennifer Fleischner

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly by 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 was independent 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 a remarkable work of scholarship that explores the legacy of slavery and sheds new light on the Lincoln White House.

JENNIFER FLEISCHNER was awarded a one-year Mellon Faculty Fellowship in Afro-American Studies at Harvard, where she researched and taught alongside such colleagues as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Also the author of Mastering Slavery and Nobody's Boy, she is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Adelphi University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780767902595
ISBN 10	0767902599
Title	Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly
Author	Jennifer Fleischner
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Crown Publishing Group
Year published	2004-02-10
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.