Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (21 page)

“Thank you, sir,” she replied. “I think very highly of her as well.” She ignored Mrs. Lincoln’s raised eyebrows, which, fortunately, Mr. Chase did not observe.

Mrs. Lincoln got right to the point, and when she finished explaining the purpose of the meeting, Mr. Chase gave Elizabeth an appraising look and said, “So, Mrs. Keckley, you’d like to give up sewing for a job in the cutting room? From what I’ve heard, that would distress a great many ladies throughout Washington.”

“I would not give up my sewing, sir,” she said. “I simply wish to supplement the income from my business.”

“There is no one in the district more qualified to wield a pair of shears than Elizabeth,” Mrs. Lincoln broke in. “The Treasury Department can certainly entrust the task of cutting paper in straight lines to her. She does far more complicated work than that every day.”

“I have no doubt she does.” Mr. Chase studied Elizabeth for a moment. “Very well, Mrs. Keckley. If this is what you desire, you should apply to the Treasury Department. I shall tell the assistant secretary that we spoke, and after that, I’m sure your qualifications will speak for themselves.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary,” Elizabeth said. He gave her a nod and strode from the room, with Mrs. Lincoln hurrying after as if to thank him with the courtesy of an escort. When Mrs. Lincoln returned,
she told Elizabeth that she would write to Mr. George Harrington too, to add her own recommendation to Mr. Chase’s.

Mrs. Lincoln immediately sat down with pen and paper, and before long she was blotting the ink on her composition. “I’ve assured him that you are industrious and will perform your duties faithfully,” she said, well satisfied with her work. “I also informed him that you will not be able to begin working for him until the middle of April, after the busy social season, when I will need you less frequently. I hope that suits you.”

“The timing would be perfect,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Lincoln.”

Beaming, Mrs. Lincoln summoned a servant to take the letter. “Now we await their reply.”

It would only be a matter of time, Mrs. Lincoln assured her the next day, and again the day after that. Perhaps Mr. Chase had not yet found a moment to broach the subject with Mr. Harrington. Every department was managing the best it could with the war on, but sometimes even important matters were delayed.

A week went by, and another. Elizabeth’s hopes diminished, but she did not complain. Mrs. Lincoln had shown her a great kindness in recommending her to Mr. Chase and Mr. Harrington, and Elizabeth did not wish to appear ungrateful. Mrs. Lincoln, however, had no reservations about complaining when she thought complaints were warranted. Indignant that the department had shown neither Elizabeth nor herself the courtesy of a reply, she declared that she would discover the reason why even if she had to go to the Treasury Department herself.

Elizabeth knew she had found her answer when she arrived at the White House one morning to find Mrs. Lincoln waiting pensively by the window, her expression vexed and faintly embarrassed.

“You’ve heard from the Treasury Department,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I didn’t get the job.”

“I’m very sorry, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Lincoln. “All agreed that your qualifications are exemplary, but I’m told the cutting-room supervisor had some…reservations. He had his current employees’ feelings to consider.”

Immediately Elizabeth understood, and she felt humiliated for ever entertaining the slightest expectation of being offered the position. “His other employees don’t wish to work side-by-side with a woman of color.”

Mrs. Lincoln crossed the room and placed her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “It’s wrong, I know it, and I’m so very sorry. If it were up to me, you should have the post and anyone who does not care for your company would be free to resign.”

“Regrettably, it is not up to you.”

“No.” Mrs. Lincoln frowned. “It is not—although I believe it
should
be up to me, as I am the First Lady.”

Nodding, Elizabeth turned away and sank wearily into a chair. She had not felt so hurt and discouraged and outraged all at once since her slavery days.

“We’ll think of something else,” Mrs. Lincoln said, offering her an encouraging smile. “Don’t give up, Elizabeth.”

“I am not in the habit of giving up,” she replied, but she had no idea what to do next.

To celebrate Tad’s tenth birthday, Mrs. Lincoln proposed a family outing to visit the Army of the Potomac encampment near Falmouth, Virginia, on the north bank of the Rappahannock. At sunset on Saturday, April 4, in the midst of an unexpected spring snowstorm, the president, Mrs. Lincoln, Tad, and a small entourage of friends, administration officials, and trusted members of the press boarded the steamer
Carrie Martin
. They set off south down the river, passing Alexandria and Mount Vernon, where the ship’s bells tolled a salute to George Washington in keeping with the time-honored custom of the river. Blinding, swirling snow forced the captain to put in to a sheltered cove for the night, and although the storm worsened overnight, the next morning they continued on to the crowded supply port of Aquia Creek, arriving on Easter Sunday. The party transferred to a flag-adorned train and chugged through fierce winds past huge snowdrifts to Falmouth Station, where General Hooker welcomed them.

The weather delayed their official plans for a day, but in the week that followed, the president and First Lady reviewed the troops, enjoyed a grand parade of cavalry, visited patients and staff in field hospitals, and ventured down to the shore of the Rappahannock, close enough to see Confederate troops waving to them from the other side. The family returned to Washington on April 11, their spirits much improved by the time away from the city. When Elizabeth came to the White House the next day, she observed that Mr. Lincoln seemed heartened by the readiness, strength, and spirit of the troops he had met, while Mrs. Lincoln appeared much more relaxed and contented—despite one irritating incident in a receiving line in which a vivacious, flame-haired equestrienne who had married a Prussian prince and acquired the title Princess Salm-Salm had ardently kissed the president rather than shaking his hand. Delighted, several other ladies had been emboldened to kiss him too, until he had been all but undone by an assault of kisses. Princess Salm-Salm had laughingly explained that General Sickles had put the ladies up to it, in hopes that their kisses would cheer the gloomy president. Mrs. Lincoln had been greatly affronted, but she refused to let those silly women ruin the excursion for her. What she always wanted above all else was time in the company of her husband and children, and the brief trip with Mr. Lincoln and Tad had clearly done her a world of good.

Mrs. Lincoln had returned to Washington with a new plan to help Elizabeth out of her troubling circumstances. In conversation with the staff at a field hospital, she had been informed about a new law that entitled Elizabeth, as a widow whose only son had been killed in action, to a government pension. “All you need to do is apply at the United States Pension Office,” Mrs. Lincoln assured her. “In my opinion, it is the very least the nation can do to express our gratitude for your sacrifice.”

Elizabeth thanked her, and as soon as she could, she went to the appropriate office and collected the necessary forms. The clerk looked askance at her as he explained the various signatures and affidavits she would need to collect, but she was used to such looks from white men who found her in places where they did not expect to see a woman of
color, and so she ignored him. It was not until later, when she spoke with several of the men whom she asked to testify on her behalf, that she realized she was again suspended in that strange middle ground between the white world and the black, and that circumstances not of her making would prevent her from obtaining the pension she so desperately needed.

Even though a few scattered contraband regiments existed and it seemed likely that someday soon colored men would be welcomed into their own army regiments, George had enlisted nearly two years before by passing himself off as white. He had been able to do that, but one glance at Elizabeth would reveal that she was not a white woman. It would be difficult enough to explain how a black woman had given birth to a white man, but it was not even the most painful problem: Her son was, in the eyes of the law, illegitimate. George was the product of rape, the offspring of a liaison she had never desired, and yet, due to the curious morality surrounding race and marriage and the “peculiar institution” of slavery, Elizabeth would suffer for what would be perceived as her sexual indiscretion.

Discouraged, Elizabeth feared that would be the end of it, but just when her prospects were at their bleakest, Miss Mary Welch, a longtime patron whom she had first met in St. Louis, drew the story out of her. “I believe I know someone who can help you,” the kind woman said, indignant that Elizabeth should be caught in such a tangle of bureaucratic unfairness. “Leave it to me.”

A few days later, Miss Welch introduced Elizabeth to her friend Illinois congressman Owen Lovejoy, a staunch abolitionist with a great deal of experience unsnarling the knots of racially biased laws. He gladly agreed to help her prepare her application, and when he was obliged to return to Illinois before the task was done, his younger brother, Joseph, took over. A third brother, Elijah, the eldest, had been shot and killed about twenty-five years earlier while trying to defend the printing press of his abolitionist newspaper from an angry pro-slavery mob.

Both surviving brothers were present when Owen Lovejoy
summoned her to his office to discuss his solution to her dilemma. “The crux of the matter is that the Union Army believes your son is a white man,” said Owen Lovejoy. He had strong, intelligent features, a keen gaze, and dark hair receding from a bold brow. “We need to show that George was, in fact, the legitimate mulatto son of you and Mr. Alexander Kirkland.”

Elizabeth felt a sudden stir of apprehension. “How will we do that?”

The brothers exchanged a look, and then Joseph Lovejoy spoke. “You will testify that you and Mr. Kirkland were married.”

“But…we never were,” she said faintly. The very thought of it made her sick to her stomach. “Even if the idea were not wholly, utterly repugnant to me, I could never place my hand on the Holy Bible and swear to something that was not true.”

The brothers exchanged another glance, and Elizabeth knew at once that they had anticipated her reaction. “Mrs. Keckley,” said Owen Lovejoy gently, “we have studied the matter backward and forward, and it is our professional opinion that this is the only way you will be able to obtain the pension.”

“You
are
the widowed mother of a soldier killed in the line of duty, are you not?” asked Joseph Lovejoy.

“Of course,” Elizabeth replied, taken aback.

“And does not the law declare that widowed mothers who have suffered this loss are entitled to the pension?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope you agree that it would be an injustice to deny you that pension simply because other, lesser laws weigh against you.”

“Your son did not claim to be a white man,” said Owen Lovejoy. “He stood in line to enlist, and when he put his signature to paper, the recruiters assumed he was a white man. They not only accepted him, they were glad and eager to have him.”

“Your son did not lie to enlist,” his brother added, as if to reassure her. Indeed, it did comfort her to have her son’s honesty confirmed.

“As for the other complication…” Owen Lovejoy hesitated. “Forgive me for addressing a subject that I can only assume must bring you great
pain. The circumstances of your son’s conception are not your fault. It was not your choice to bear Mr. Kirkland a child out of wedlock.”

It was not her choice to bear him a child at all, Elizabeth almost retorted, but she could not utter the words that would sound, to anyone who did not know her, like a rejection of her son, like an admission that she had not loved him. The greatest truth of her life was that she
had
loved George, fiercely and proudly, loved him as strongly and passionately as she had hated his father.

“It would be a grave injustice, therefore,” Owen Lovejoy continued, “to hold the letter of the law above that which is truly right—and it is most certainly right for you to receive the pension that your son’s patriotic sacrifice earned for you.”

“And if you
are
denied the pension,” his brother added, with a defiant edge to his voice, “it will only help our political cause.”

Elizabeth wasn’t quite sure what cause he meant—abolition? Equality? Republicanism?—but what she needed at the moment was something that would do her immediate, practical good, not intangible political victories that might benefit her in years to come. “You both speak like lawyers,” she said shakily. “You don’t need to coax me along with sweet words that poorly conceal what it is you want me to do. I know you want to help me, so please, let’s speak plainly with one another. Your recommendation is that I should lie in order to secure my pension, isn’t that right?”

“Well…” Joseph Lovejoy hesitated. “Yes. It is wrong to lie, but in this case, a small lie would serve the greater truth of justice.”