Reviews
Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley
moberle's review against another edition
3.75
A very compelling narrative of Mrs. Keckley's life, most notably the time she spent working for the Lincoln family during and after the Civil War.
tamaralgage1's review against another edition
5.0
For anyone that knows me, I love history and read a great deal of Historical Fiction. In these stories, I have my favorite authors that research events to present a story which is representative of the times. But, they were not there ... This book is well written and is a first hand account of what Elizabeth Keckley saw and heard. It is her perception of what she experienced. Like any story, there will be more than one view of events. But, having this one account is priceless and well worth the read. Highly recommend ....
real_life_reading's review against another edition
3.0
I imagine this was a pretty controversial book when it came out. Only three years after President Lincoln's assassination, and many of what might be considered "secrets" of the white house being presented by Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker. An interesting read.
readingthethings's review against another edition
3.0
“An act may be wrong, but unless the ruling power recognizes the wrong, it is useless to hope for a correction of it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
࿐ྂ ˳✧༚˚ If this was 1868, I’d be appalled by this book. It shares all kinds of Mary Todd Lincoln’s private conversations and correspondence. It’s been 148 years since this was published. Mary Todd no longer cares, I assume, and still I felt highly uncomfortable reading this. I mean, her husband was assassinated three years before this was published, and Keckley is telling the whole world how she mourned. She shares the way Mary Todd spoke with Lincoln: her remarks on Steward and other Cabinet members. This is private information and should never have been published in Mary Todd’s lifetime, particularly just three years after her personal tragedy.
But? It was America’s tragedy too. And 148 years HAVE passed. And I’m grateful for this look “behind the scenes” of the woman’s parlor. What women thought is too often lost to history. Maybe Keckley knew that. She claims to be wanting to help Mary Todd Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln was destitute before the nation in 1868: she was trying to sell her clothes for food money, and being hoodwinked by men who claimed to be helping her. Her letters to Keckley depict a woman grappling for stability, pleading help in her letters, confiding.
Keckley was a business woman in Washington D.C. Formerly enslaved, she bought her freedom and relocated to the North, where she began a business as a modiste that made her well-known in the upper-crust political circles before and during the American Civil War. Her narrative contains brief references to her time in enslavement, the birth of her son, who was killed in the war as a soldier, her marriage to a man who couldn’t keep up with her, and her own recognition of the value of self-reliance. She worked hard to free herself, and then worked to help those freed people in Washington who needed her help. She speaks calmly, proudly, evenly when referencing Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Mary Todd Lincoln, and others in government.
Reading this book 148 years after the fact, it’s difficult to reconcile how casually Keckley shares Mary Todd Lincoln’s confidences, but perhaps, in her mind, to share Mrs. Lincoln’s struggle openly — and deal with it — was the only way. Get it out in the open, look it in the eye, be proud and get back up. I can’t say whether or not that was her aim in revealing Mary Todd’s private correspondence, but I can see how she may have wanted America to see how the widow of Abraham Lincoln was living, only three years after his death.
And I can see that she spoke boldly, as a woman in the nineteenth century, without apology.
My favorite passages were, frankly, the letters from Frederick Douglass to Mary Todd Lincoln. His aim was to rally the African-American community throughout America to help her survive. This didn’t end up working, but I think it’s lovely that he, and so many of the people affected by Lincoln’s efforts as president, wanted to help. Perhaps this was Keckley’s effort as well, for she seemed very much to revere Lincoln.
I’m wondering if her sketches of the private moments in the Lincoln family are the only window we really have on it? If so, I value this document very much, despite my discomfort. ࿐ྂ ˳✧༚˚
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
࿐ྂ ˳✧༚˚ If this was 1868, I’d be appalled by this book. It shares all kinds of Mary Todd Lincoln’s private conversations and correspondence. It’s been 148 years since this was published. Mary Todd no longer cares, I assume, and still I felt highly uncomfortable reading this. I mean, her husband was assassinated three years before this was published, and Keckley is telling the whole world how she mourned. She shares the way Mary Todd spoke with Lincoln: her remarks on Steward and other Cabinet members. This is private information and should never have been published in Mary Todd’s lifetime, particularly just three years after her personal tragedy.
But? It was America’s tragedy too. And 148 years HAVE passed. And I’m grateful for this look “behind the scenes” of the woman’s parlor. What women thought is too often lost to history. Maybe Keckley knew that. She claims to be wanting to help Mary Todd Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln was destitute before the nation in 1868: she was trying to sell her clothes for food money, and being hoodwinked by men who claimed to be helping her. Her letters to Keckley depict a woman grappling for stability, pleading help in her letters, confiding.
Keckley was a business woman in Washington D.C. Formerly enslaved, she bought her freedom and relocated to the North, where she began a business as a modiste that made her well-known in the upper-crust political circles before and during the American Civil War. Her narrative contains brief references to her time in enslavement, the birth of her son, who was killed in the war as a soldier, her marriage to a man who couldn’t keep up with her, and her own recognition of the value of self-reliance. She worked hard to free herself, and then worked to help those freed people in Washington who needed her help. She speaks calmly, proudly, evenly when referencing Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Mary Todd Lincoln, and others in government.
Reading this book 148 years after the fact, it’s difficult to reconcile how casually Keckley shares Mary Todd Lincoln’s confidences, but perhaps, in her mind, to share Mrs. Lincoln’s struggle openly — and deal with it — was the only way. Get it out in the open, look it in the eye, be proud and get back up. I can’t say whether or not that was her aim in revealing Mary Todd’s private correspondence, but I can see how she may have wanted America to see how the widow of Abraham Lincoln was living, only three years after his death.
And I can see that she spoke boldly, as a woman in the nineteenth century, without apology.
My favorite passages were, frankly, the letters from Frederick Douglass to Mary Todd Lincoln. His aim was to rally the African-American community throughout America to help her survive. This didn’t end up working, but I think it’s lovely that he, and so many of the people affected by Lincoln’s efforts as president, wanted to help. Perhaps this was Keckley’s effort as well, for she seemed very much to revere Lincoln.
I’m wondering if her sketches of the private moments in the Lincoln family are the only window we really have on it? If so, I value this document very much, despite my discomfort. ࿐ྂ ˳✧༚˚
jocelynw's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating memoir from an African-American seamstress who was a good friend of Mary Todd Lincoln.
halberdbooks's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
A great deal of the most important mementos of the Lincoln family were preserved by Elizabeth Keckley herself, and her book -- by far the most contemporary of the histories I have read -- is a deeply intriguing document. History is, in many ways, the intersection of stories. In telling a story from life, one must select what to include and what to exclude. Multiple histories told of the same time period will touch each other, intersect, weave in and out, and fly from each other. I am deeply struck at Keckley's choices of what she felt were necessary for her book. Her thirty years as a slave are, in opposition to the title, hardly touched upon. The first couple chapters do detail her first thirty years of life, but they include only a few deeply traumatic incidents before breezing past into her freedom. Later in the book, she speaks quite fondly of the people who owned her, which stands firmly in contrast to the actual stories she chose to tell. People and their responses to trauma defy easy answers. This warmness is less felt when discussing Mary Todd Lincoln, who -- despite the book's own protestations to the contrary -- is only ever shown as jealous, critical, imposing, near-insane, and provocatively dressed. The way the book ends, however, does make quite clear why little warmth for the widow remained. I imagine if I had to give up my own business to unsuccessfully execute the business of a friend, I might also feel my affection for them dwindle. Abraham Lincoln, however, is spoken of more highly than any human being I have ever read. I have spoken before about the importance of not mythologizing a person, but here Keckley calls him saintly, a demigod, both Moses and Jehovah. I cannot help but wonder how much of any of these points were affected by the political and literary climate she was in. A book less worshipful of Lincoln, less critical of Mary, less judgemental of uneducated black people and less forgiving of slaveholders might never have gotten published. But I cannot comment on what the book would have or should have been -- I will never know. What I can say is that it is beautifully written, and when taken with a grain of salt, it is of clear importance in this chapter of history.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery and Racism
zena_ryder's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating book written by an exceptional person, Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and friend, Elizabeth Keckley. Keckley describes many domestic scenes (including the heartbreaking incidents of Willie's death and Lincoln's assassination) and I feel that I have a greater understanding of both Mary's character, and the relationship between Abraham and Mary Lincoln. Keckley does not doubt that Abraham loved Mary (as some have done), even though the latter was often a "difficult" person to be around. To my modern eyes, Mary was a bit stroppy and emotional, clearly opinionated and independent-minded — but she doesn't sound at all like the harpy that she has sometimes been portrayed as being.
The reader is also struck by how exceptional Keckley is, and how lucky. Not only was she clearly incredibly bright, as well as a highly talented and hardworking dressmaker, she also manages to carve an incredible "rags to riches" life for herself. Well, not quite. Although she did indeed spend the first 37 years of her life in slavery, and managed to buy herself and her son out of slavery, she was not rich when she was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker, but she was certainly comfortably middle class. (Sadly, she died impoverished in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, DC.)
Keckley was also the impetus behind, and one of the founders of, an organization that raised funds from well-to-do free blacks in order to help newly freed ex-slaves, who often arrived in the North with no money or possessions, no education or skills beyond those they had used on the plantations (and cutting cane or picking cotton is not a valuable skill in New York City or Boston).
After her book was published, Keckley was publicly criticised as a traitor for "exposing" Mary, and I expect that that is in large part because "ladies" of the time were not supposed to have strong, independent opinions. So to her contemporary audience, Keckley made Mary look bad. (Although that same contemporary audience also seemed to enjoy hating Mary anyway.) Keckley claims she was trying to vindicate some of Mary's decisions by explaining the motives behind them, but (whether or not this was Keckley's genuine motivation) it backfired. As mentioned in the Introduction to the book, "After the appearance of Behind the Scenes... Mrs Lincoln contemptuously severed all ties with her former friend." This is very sad, because Elizabeth Keckley and Mary were clearly close friends and Keckley was very supportive of Mary as she dealt with her intense grief and shock over the assassination, and her subsequent move from the White House and into relative penury. I would like to know more about this episode and because the Introduction does not provide any more background on this, I give this book 4 rather than 5 stars.
The reader is also struck by how exceptional Keckley is, and how lucky. Not only was she clearly incredibly bright, as well as a highly talented and hardworking dressmaker, she also manages to carve an incredible "rags to riches" life for herself. Well, not quite. Although she did indeed spend the first 37 years of her life in slavery, and managed to buy herself and her son out of slavery, she was not rich when she was Mary Lincoln's dressmaker, but she was certainly comfortably middle class. (Sadly, she died impoverished in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, DC.)
Keckley was also the impetus behind, and one of the founders of, an organization that raised funds from well-to-do free blacks in order to help newly freed ex-slaves, who often arrived in the North with no money or possessions, no education or skills beyond those they had used on the plantations (and cutting cane or picking cotton is not a valuable skill in New York City or Boston).
After her book was published, Keckley was publicly criticised as a traitor for "exposing" Mary, and I expect that that is in large part because "ladies" of the time were not supposed to have strong, independent opinions. So to her contemporary audience, Keckley made Mary look bad. (Although that same contemporary audience also seemed to enjoy hating Mary anyway.) Keckley claims she was trying to vindicate some of Mary's decisions by explaining the motives behind them, but (whether or not this was Keckley's genuine motivation) it backfired. As mentioned in the Introduction to the book, "After the appearance of Behind the Scenes... Mrs Lincoln contemptuously severed all ties with her former friend." This is very sad, because Elizabeth Keckley and Mary were clearly close friends and Keckley was very supportive of Mary as she dealt with her intense grief and shock over the assassination, and her subsequent move from the White House and into relative penury. I would like to know more about this episode and because the Introduction does not provide any more background on this, I give this book 4 rather than 5 stars.