Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House

Glossary

B

Brady and Keyes: William H. Brady and S. C. Keyes, the New York commission brokers Mrs. Lincoln engaged, under the alias "Mrs. Clarke," to sell her wardrobe and publicize her letters in hopes of pressuring politicians into a relief subscription. Their scheme — including a failed exhibition tour to Providence and a public sale at 609 Broadway — produced ridicule rather than money and was, by Keckley's account, badly mismanaged.; Related: The Old Clothes Scandal, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln's Secret Debts

C

Colonel Armistead Burwell: Keckley's first enslaver, who owned her from her birth at Dinwiddie Court-House, Virginia. Keckley recounts his household's cruelties factually: her first whipping at age four for an accident with an infant in her care, the sale of a boy "like the hogs, at so much per pound," and her uncle's suicide rather than face punishment for a lost pair of plow-lines.; Related: George Pleasant, Mr. Bingham, Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom
Contraband Relief Association: A mutual-aid society Keckley founded in the summer of 1862 after seeing formerly enslaved "contrabands" pour into wartime Washington with high hopes and nothing else. Organized with forty working members after she raised the idea at her church, it drew contributions from Mary Todd Lincoln ($200), Frederick Douglass ($200 plus lecturing), Washington's Black hotel workers, and British antislavery societies; Keckley served as its president.; Related: Frederick Douglass, Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln

F

Frederick Douglass: The orator and abolitionist who contributed $200 and lectured on behalf of Keckley's Contraband Relief Association, was warmly received by Lincoln at the second inaugural reception after initially being barred at the door for his race, and later corresponded with Keckley urging that any relief campaign for the widowed Mrs. Lincoln be run as a national duty rather than, in his words, a "negro testimonial."; Related: Contraband Relief Association, The Old Clothes Scandal, Robert Todd Lincoln

G

George Pleasant: Keckley's father, enslaved by a different owner than her mother Agnes and permanently separated from the family when Keckley was a small child, taken west to Tennessee. Their only later contact was through letters — quoted in the text — in which he asked after "my darling little Lizzie" until his death, having never again seen his wife or daughter.; Related: Colonel Armistead Burwell, Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom

J

James Keckley: The man Elizabeth married in St. Louis, in part hoping marriage would hasten her path to freedom. He had misrepresented himself as a free man when he was in fact enslaved, and Keckley found him "dissipated, and a burden instead of a help-mate" over the eight years they lived together; she took his surname and kept it for the rest of her life.; Related: Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom, Keckley's Patron Network

K

Keckley's Patron Network: The web of well-off women, first in St. Louis and later in Washington, whose dressmaking commissions and personal generosity sustained Keckley's independence. Mrs. Le Bourgeois organized the $1,200 loan that purchased Keckley's and George's freedom in a single visit; later, Washington patrons like Mrs. Ringold and Mrs. McClean opened the door first to Varina Davis and then to Mary Todd Lincoln.; Related: Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom, Modiste, The Jefferson Davis Household
Keckley's Preface Defense: The book's opening argument, dated March 14, 1868, in which Keckley anticipates being condemned for publishing Mary Todd Lincoln's private letters and the "secret history" of their friendship. She insists nothing in the book is exaggerated, that revealing Mrs. Lincoln's motives will vindicate rather than harm her, and that her own reputation is bound to her former employer's — a defense written in expectation of exactly the criticism the book's publication provoked.; Related: Mrs. Lincoln's Letters to Mrs. Keckley, The Old Clothes Scandal, Mary Todd Lincoln

M

Mary Todd Lincoln: Wife of Abraham Lincoln and Keckley's principal patron and confidante from Inauguration Day 1861 through the wardrobe scandal of 1867–68. Keckley portrays her as intelligent, impulsive, fiercely protective of her husband, and devastated in turn by Willie's death, the assassination, and eventual poverty — the central subject this entire book was written, per its preface, to vindicate.; Related: Modiste, Willie Lincoln's Death, The Old Clothes Scandal
Modiste: Keckley's own word for her profession — an elite dressmaker and designer, not a common seamstress, who cut, fitted, and often chose the trimmings for a fashionable clientele. She built her reputation among Washington's political wives before Mary Todd Lincoln hired her, on Inauguration Day 1861, as the "regular modiste of Mrs. Lincoln," ultimately running her own workroom and employing other seamstresses.; Related: Mary Todd Lincoln, Keckley's Patron Network, The Jefferson Davis Household
Mr. Bingham: A Hillsboro, North Carolina schoolmaster who, at the urging of Keckley's mistress, repeatedly and savagely beat the eighteen-year-old Keckley in an attempt to break what he called her "stubborn pride." She physically resisted each time; after weeks of failed attempts he broke down in tears, asked her forgiveness, and never struck a servant again. The same chapter records, without further elaboration, the four years of coercion by another man that resulted in the birth of her son, George.; Related: Colonel Armistead Burwell, Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom
Mrs. Lincoln's Letters to Mrs. Keckley: The appendix of Mary Todd Lincoln's own letters, written between October 1867 and February 1868, that Keckley published as documentary proof of her friend's genuine distress and honest motives during the wardrobe sale. Ranging from despairing to imperious to affectionate, the letters are the evidentiary backbone of the book's stated purpose: to vindicate Mrs. Lincoln by laying bare her "secret history."; Related: The Old Clothes Scandal, Keckley's Preface Defense, Mary Todd Lincoln
Mrs. Lincoln's Secret Debts: The roughly $27,000 in store bills — chiefly at Stewart's in New York — that Mary Todd Lincoln concealed from her husband in 1864, fearing his defeat in the election would force their disclosure. Keckley was her sole confidante in this; by Keckley's account the debts had grown to some $70,000 by the time of the assassination, and became the underlying cause of the 1867 wardrobe sale.; Related: The Old Clothes Scandal, Mary Todd Lincoln, Modiste

R

Robert Todd Lincoln: The Lincolns' eldest surviving son, who enters the war as a captain over his mother's initial objections, comforts her after the assassination, and repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — urges her to burn rather than hoard the boxes of "old plunder" she packed when leaving the White House. Keckley portrays him as manly and tender toward his mother, though often exasperated by her financial habits.; Related: Mary Todd Lincoln, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Willie Lincoln's Death

S

Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom: The price Keckley's enslaver, Anne Garland, set for manumitting Keckley and her son George. Keckley refused her master's offhand offer to simply cross the ferry to freedom, insisting she be freed "by such means as the laws of the country provide." She raised the $1,200 as a loan from her St. Louis dressmaking patrons — organized on a single afternoon by Mrs. Le Bourgeois — and later repaid every cent from her needle's earnings.; Related: Keckley's Patron Network, George Pleasant, James Keckley

T

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: The shooting of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865. Mrs. Lincoln sent for Keckley by name that night; after being turned away at a guarded White House, Keckley was finally brought to her the next morning and stayed at her side through the viewing of the body and the weeks that followed.; Related: Willie Lincoln's Death, Robert Todd Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln
The Jefferson Davis Household: Keckley's position as modiste to Varina Davis, wife of Senator (and future Confederate President) Jefferson Davis, during the secession winter of 1860–61. Keckley sewed in the house through late-night political discussions, finished the dressing-gown Davis reportedly wore during the war, and declined the family's invitation to follow them South when they left Washington.; Related: Modiste, Keckley's Patron Network, Mary Todd Lincoln
The Lincoln-Douglas Rivalry: Keckley's account, told to her by Mrs. Lincoln herself, that the rivalry between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas began as young suitors competing for Mary Todd's hand in Springfield. Douglas proposed first and was refused; Mary Todd then tested Lincoln by refusing him too, before relenting after Dr. Henry warned her that Lincoln had fallen dangerously ill with grief.; Related: Mary Todd Lincoln, Modiste
The Old Clothes Scandal: The controversy that erupted after Mary Todd Lincoln, financially desperate and traveling incognito as "Mrs. Clarke," tried to sell her wardrobe through New York brokers Brady and Keyes in September 1867. When the goods went on public exhibition and her private letters leaked to the World, the press mocked both women; the affair — which this book's publication was meant to answer — is documented in Keckley's Chapter 17 appendix of Mrs. Lincoln's own letters.; Related: Brady and Keyes, Mrs. Lincoln's Secret Debts, Mrs. Lincoln's Letters to Mrs. Keckley
The President's Glove: The soiled glove Lincoln wore while shaking thousands of hands at his second inaugural reception in March 1865, which Keckley had specifically requested from Mrs. Lincoln in advance as "a precious memento" of the man who had "done so much for my race." It became, in Keckley's words, "a prouder, sadder memento than I ever dreamed" once Lincoln was assassinated weeks later.; Related: Wilberforce University Relics, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln
The Rude's Hill Reunion: Keckley's 1866 visit to the Garland family — the household in which she had once been enslaved — at Nannie Garland Meem's Shenandoah Valley estate. The five-week stay, full of embraces and old affection from women who had once owned her, illustrates the entangled, contradictory bond Keckley describes between formerly enslaved and enslaving families after the war.; Related: Colonel Armistead Burwell, Self-Purchase and the $1,200 Freedom

W

Wilberforce University Relics: The Lincoln mementos Mrs. Lincoln gave Keckley after the assassination — the blood-stained cloak and bonnet worn the night of the shooting, Lincoln's comb and brush, his overshoes, and the glove from the second-inaugural reception — which Keckley later donated to Wilberforce University, a Black college near Xenia, Ohio, destroyed by fire the same night Lincoln was murdered.; Related: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The President's Glove, Mary Todd Lincoln
Willie Lincoln's Death: The death of eleven-year-old William "Willie" Lincoln from fever in February 1862, during a White House reception that went forward on the family physician's assurance he was in no immediate danger. Keckley helped wash and dress his body and witnessed Abraham Lincoln's uncontrolled grief; Mary Todd Lincoln's mourning was so consuming that for two years she could not enter the room where he died and never fully regained her earlier gaiety.; Related: Mary Todd Lincoln, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln