The Black History of the White House

by Clarence Lusane

  It was later discovered that President-elect Buchanan had illegally attempted to influence the Court to rule against Scott. He had furtively communicated with members of the Court to pressure them to use their decision to put a stop to the abolitionists, and he secretly worked with four of the Justices “to guarantee a favorable ruling.”70

  President-elect Buchanan’s violation of the “separation of powers” principle was unnecessary. The Supreme Court was dominated by pro-slavery Southerners and their edict not only denied Scott his freedom but issued a sweeping broadside against the abolitionist movement. Chief Justice Roger Taney, speaking for the majority, declared in one infamous passage that African Americans had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and that African Americans were not and could not become citizens of the United States. In the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution, neither the U.S. Congress nor the president could make or authorize any law that granted freedom to blacks. Thus, the decision vitiated the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, both of which had provisions excluding slavery in certain parts of the country and granting manumission and citizenship to some blacks. As “property” of white people, ruled the Court, enslaved blacks had no right to bring suit in federal courts.71

  While the South celebrated the racist ruling, the decision only intensified the racial crisis and drove a deeper wedge between Northern Democrats, who needed votes from the antislavery North, and Southern Democrats, who were unbending in their defense of enslavement. A party divided could not stand, and the jubilation over the Dred Scott case would soon fade in the face of two new challenges: the newly formed Republican Party and a more important victory for the abolitionist cause.

  In June 1860, with the war drums beating more loudly each day, Bethune brought the Blind Tom act to Washington, D.C. Thomas delivered two successful performances—one at a small concert hall and one in a private home for members of an elite wives’ club. One of the guests at that event was Harriet Lane, a niece and ward of President Buchanan, who lived at the White House, and as White House hostess she was central to putting together musical performances there for the president.72 Undoubtedly aware that she was making history, she extended an invitation to Bethune to have his blind eleven-year-old slave perform for her uncle, the fifteenth president of the United States.

  A black artist had never been asked to perform at the White House before, and thus the invitation was a historic milestone. Surprisingly, very little is known about the event, including Thomas’s own thoughts on the matter. Indeed, none of the published research even reveals an exact date of the event, although it is clear that it took place sometime between June 9 and June 18, 1860.

  To go by a few notes made by some at the performance, the concert was perceived as a strange but satisfying experience by most of those in attendance. According to Virginia Clay-Clopton, who was married to Alabama Senator Clement Claiborne and attended Thomas’s performance, Miss Philips and Miss Cohen played a duet together and then one of them volunteered to play with him. Apparently, the young woman attempted to test Thomas’s ability to remember the song that she and her partner had just played by skipping one page of the composition. He immediately recognized what she had done and shouted, “You cheat me! You cheat me.”73 Following that incident, Thomas sat down alone at the Chickering grand piano, the finest model of the time, and recited a thirteen-page score followed by a twenty-page score of classical music.74

  It is unknown what President Buchanan thought of the performance or of Thomas. It is notable that no controversy ensued as a result of having an enslaved black person placed essentially on the same musical level as the other artists who performed at the White House. It seems quite clear that the fact that Thomas was enslaved and considered an oddity served to obviate any problems that might have emerged from fearful whites who would normally strenuously object to any official signs of racial equality, such as having a black “guest” visit the White House.

  While there is no record of any political opinions he may have expressed, Thomas would soon be forced to perform at fundraisers for the Southern war effort. When war broke out, Thomas’s handlers made sure to keep him out of Northern states. He was also the star of a number of Confederacy fundraisers engineered by Perry Oliver, the manager hired by Bethune to handle the early years of Thomas’s career. Thomas, like other blacks, was forced by his white enslavers to sing Dixie and entertain the soldiers. O’Connell estimates that these affairs likely raised tens of thousands of dollars.75

  Far more disturbing was Thomas’s ode to the first major military victory of the South over the North, The Battle of Manassas, which reproduced the sounds of the battle as Thomas imagined it and became very popular as a cheerleader for the South’s pro-slavery cause. Self-servingly, Oliver spread the story that Thomas had independently created the song after listening to him describe the battle, and the composition became a albatross for Thomas for much of the rest of his life.

  In 1863, sensing that the South might lose the war, the Bethune family was able to trick Thomas into a long-term contract that would perpetuate their control over his career, and indeed his life, even if slavery were outlawed—a ploy that historian Geneva H. Southall accurately and poetically refers to as Thomas’s re-enslavement.76 The Bethunes’ power over Thomas would come to an end in 1887 when the embittered widow (John Bethune having been killed in a railroad accident in 1883) collaborated with Thomas’s mother Charity to win legal authority over Thomas. He continued to perform, but by the end of the century his best days were behind him. He died of a stroke on June 14, 1908.

  Inauguration of President Lincoln at U.S. Capitol, March 4, 1861.

  While Thomas was providing beautiful music inside the White House, a discordant political scenario was brewing outside it. Even as President Buchanan was enjoying the magic of Blind Tom’s musical prowess, his nation was coming apart beneath his feet. In October of the previous year, John Brown had raided the Harpers Ferry military arsenal as a bold first step toward liberating enslaved blacks by force. Brown’s plan failed, but his armed assault sent shock waves throughout the country, and his subsequent execution alongside his co-conspirators inflamed the passions of Americans on both sides, as had the Dred Scott decision. Buchanan’s Democratic Party split between Northern and Southern wings, and three Democrats ran for president under different party labels—Stephen Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party, and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party—created the electoral space for a victory by the relatively new antislavery Republican Party. Events would reach a crescendo on November 6, 1860, when a relatively unknown, lanky lawyer and former one-term congressman emerged victorious in the fall presidential election. Abraham Lincoln’s successful campaign earned 39 percent of the popular vote (virtually none of it from the South) and 180 votes in the Electoral College. The remaining 123 votes in the Electoral College were divided among Lincoln’s three opponents. Six weeks later, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first of eleven states to declare its secession from the United States.77 It was time for war.

  CHAPTER 5

  The White House Goes to War: Rebellion, Reconstruction and Retrenchment

  Prologue: Elizabeth Keckly’s White House Story

  On the night of April 14, 1865, as President Abraham Lincoln lay dying at Petersen’s Boarding House, across from the Ford Theater where he had been shot around 10:30 p.m., Mary Lincoln became increasingly distraught. Sitting next to her husband at the moment he was shot, she faced the terrible prospect of losing him to a brutal assassin’s bullet. As she sat with others who were providing security and medical treatment for the president, she desperately needed the personal comfort of a close friend. Three times she sent messengers from Petersen’s to retrieve Lizzy, but for some unknown reason the messengers could not find the correct address. Meanwhile, Lizzy had been awakened around 11:00 p.m. with the news of the shooting and immediately sought to
make her way to the White House to be with the First Lady. Unable to convince security at the White House to let her in, she returned home unsure if President Lincoln was dead or alive.1

  Elizabeth Keckly, 1861

  Elizabeth Keckly and Mary Lincoln, two powerfully determined and extraordinary women—one black, the other white—forged one of the most unique friendships in American political history. The former, born into slavery, not only had been able to eventually buy her freedom and start a successful business, but was also an activist who played an important role in aiding less fortunate blacks both during and after the Civil War. In addition, Lizzy, as she was known to the Lincolns, also published a book, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, about her experiences in Lincoln’s White House, an act that may have strained her relationship with Mary permanently.2

  Keckly felt heartbroken at being estranged from Mary, her friend of many years. Though their relationship had begun as one between businesswoman and client, it had evolved into a truly warm companionship of deep commitment, shared tragedies, personal sacrifices, and genuine love. In a period when smart, talented, and independent women were scorned, marginalized, and rebuked, Lizzy and Mary pushed back and often prevailed against tremendous odds. They fought fiercely for their rights and dignity against the relentless countervailing forces of their time. That their once close friendship had fallen apart was perhaps less remarkable than the fact that it had existed at all. Equally stunning was that an African American woman had risen to a position of such significance in the White House, and that when President Lincoln was shot, the first person Mary Lincoln sought was Lizzy.

  Throughout her life Elizabeth had an astonishing knack for connecting with some of the key historical figures of her time. These encounters were sometimes serendipitous but more often eventuated from her own tenacious engagement with the world and her willingness to challenge the racist and sexist stereotypes of the period.

  Elizabeth was born into slavery at Dinwiddie Court-House, Virginia, on January 15, 1818, the only child of two enslaved parents. One of her earliest memories was of being harshly beaten at approximately four years old for not properly taking care of an infant left in her charge. But as she remembers it, the beating seemed to strengthen her character rather than break it.3 Like countless other enslaved black women and girls, Elizabeth was raped, abused, and impregnated. She gave birth to a son, George, when she was still a teenager. But, as she tells it, she consistently and fiercely fought back in every way she could—though not always successfully—against men who attempted to take advantage of her.4

  When the white family that enslaved them moved to St. Louis, Elizabeth and her mother were forced to move with them. Indicative of her strong independent character, while enslaved in St. Louis, Elizabeth was able to build a successful dressmaking business by working on her free Sundays and some evenings. She started the enterprise out of an urgent need to raise the money needed to prevent her mother from being sold and sent away from her. The dress business turned out to be an enormous boon. In 1850, the year the Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened, Elizabeth sought to purchase freedom for herself and her son George rather than make a relatively easy escape across the river and be forever on the run and vulnerable to slave catchers. At the time, she was enslaved to Hugh Garland, a prominent St. Louis lawyer and pro-slavery advocate. In January that year, he and his law partner, Lyman D. Norris, had been hired to defend one Mrs. Eliza Irene Emerson against a lawsuit for freedom that had been filed by two blacks she enslaved, Dred and Harriet Scott.5 In a preview of momentous events to come in her life, Elizabeth was directly linked to the most famous Supreme Court case of the pre–Civil War era.6

  More out of need to alleviate his own family’s severe poverty than from any moral epiphany about her plight, Garland eventually agreed to let Elizabeth buy her freedom from him for $1,200.00, a kingly sum.7 Although he was ill and likely dying, Garland continued to fight against the Scotts in the Missouri circuit court system. Since Elizabeth had not been able to raise all the money she needed by the time he died in 1854, his brother Armistead and his widow Ann inherited Elizabeth as one of their legal possessions. She persevered, however, and eventually raised the funds with help from friends and clients in St. Louis. On November 13, 1855, she and her son George were emancipated.

  While still enslaved to Garland, Elizabeth received a marriage proposal from James Keckly, a man she had met in Petersburg, Virginia, who had moved to St. Louis. When Garland agreed to her terms, she then accepted Keckly’s proposal, and the wedding was held at the Garland home. It was later discovered that James Keckly had misrepresented himself as free, and due to this deception, coupled with his drinking problems, the marriage ended quickly. He disappeared from Elizabeth’s life, leaving only his surname behind.8

  After taking a few years to pay back those who had lent money for her freedom, Elizabeth Keckly decided to move to Washington, D.C., to seek her fortune. Although ambitious and determined to build a better future for her son, she had no way of knowing that she would be engaging some of America’s most important historical figures, including abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, and, her most pivotal association, Abraham and Mary Lincoln. In Washington, D.C., Keckly also worked at one point for Colonel Robert Lee, one of the two military officers sent to capture John Brown at Harpers Ferry. It was her dressmaking work for his wife that led her to become a dressmaker for Varina Davis, the wife of Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, who would within months resign from the U.S. Senate and become the president of the Confederacy. In January 1861, as Southern congressmembers were leaving town in droves, Varina begged Lizzy to leave Washington, D.C. and come with the family to Mississippi. Varina teased her with the possibility that if the South won the war, she and Jefferson would be coming back to Washington, D.C. to live in the White House as president and first lady. In that scenario, Keckly would come back with them and have a guaranteed job at the White House. This was an enticing opportunity for Keckly.

  It was one thing to work for pro-slavery congressmen in the confines of Washington, D.C., but it was quite another to relocate to the deep South and essentially contribute to the war effort on behalf of white enslavers. Alongside her resistance to slavery and her belief that the North would win if war broke out, Lizzy was also shrewd enough to recognize that accepting the offer would likely gain her more clients and possibly even lead to working in the White House, her dream job.9 Nevertheless, she turned the offer down. As things turned out, though, providence was on her side once again.

  In exchange for some emergency work for another client, Margaret McClean, Elizabeth was promised an introduction to Mary Lincoln for the express purpose of securing dressmaking work with the new first lady.10 McClean kept her word and set up the interview. To Elizabeth’s surprise, some of the other prominent socialites in the city had recommended other dressmakers to Mrs. Lincoln. When she went to meet with Mary at the Willard Hotel the day after the inauguration, she found herself waiting in line with several rivals. Even though she was last to meet with the new first lady, Keckly won the job, ironically, because she mentioned that she had worked for Varina Davis, the wife of Lincoln’s—and the Union’s—greatest enemy.11

  In the nineteenth century, the relationship between dressmakers and their clients seems to have been akin to the intimacy that sometimes develops between modern hairdressers and their clients. Relations often became so familiar that private information, secrets, and plain old gossip were regularly shared. Whether the women were enslaved or free, the closeness that nevertheless developed between them in these circumstances, generally framed by gaping differences in power and status, provided a safe context where sharing and bonding could and did occur.

  And this contact allowed black women like Elizabeth Keckly access to the private spaces where the elite exercise of authority was manifest, discussed, and debated. As her relationship with Mary g
rew, so did her relationship with President Lincoln. While she never rose to the level of counselor, as Frederick Douglass did—no woman achieved that status, except perhaps Mary—her influence was real, and she played the role of confidante and sounding board on many occasions. Because, as a couple, the Lincolns were very intimate and committed to each other, proximity to the first lady also meant proximity to the president. Mary was his strongest defender in the nation, and he was equally protective of her. Often when Mary and Lizzy were working on an outfit, which was quite frequent, the president would join them or could be found nearby. Over time, he and Mary increasingly felt that they could be candid and unguarded in their conversations around Keckly. As she noted, “Often Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln discussed the relations of Cabinet officers, and gentlemen prominent in politics, in my presence.”12

  Perhaps her most crucial role in the White House was as a stabilizing force for Mrs. Lincoln during several traumatic incidents and throughout the turmoil of the Civil War. The death of the Lincolns’ eleven-year-old son, Willie, on February 20, 1862, devastated the Lincolns and left Mary distraught. It took her a year to recover a semblance of her old self. Keckly had been there for her the entire time, from the moment he fell ill with what turned out to be typhoid fever to the end of his life. After his death, Elizabeth was there to help wash and dress his body, and consoled Mary when no one else, including Abraham, could. Keckly could empathize with Mary’s profound loss, because her own son, George, had died in the war. Passing for white—blacks were outlawed from signing up at that time—he had enlisted in the military and become one of the war’s early casualties. He was killed in the infamous August 10, 1861, Battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, where more than 2,500 men died. At the time, Mary had sent Elizabeth a very sympathetic message.13