Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker: A Novel

Chapter One

NOVEMBER 1860–JANUARY 1861

On Election Day, Elizabeth Keckley hurried home from a midafternoon dress fitting to the redbrick boardinghouse on Twelfth Street where she rented two small rooms in the back. Although she never failed to carry her license attesting to her status as a freedwoman whenever she ventured out, on that day of the presidential election of 1860 she was eager to be safely indoors well before curfew. The city hummed with breathless excitement even though the white citizens of Washington City, District of Columbia, were not enfranchised to vote. In this, the capital’s colored residents, both slave and free, were their equals, although Elizabeth prudently refrained from remarking upon this similarity to the wives of the city’s social and political elite for whom she sewed the beautiful gowns they wore to balls and levees and receptions. Her patrons were united in their suspicion of and disdain for the Republican candidate, a lawyer from Illinois they disparaged as an unpolished rube from the West and a radical abolitionist. They disagreed, however, on which of his three rivals ought to succeed President Buchanan, who, if ineffectual, had at least done their home states and the South’s peculiar institution no enduring harm.

If a spontaneous parade sprang up and turned into a riot, as happened far too often those days, Elizabeth wanted to be well away from the furor. Already the streets were filling with men hurrying from tavern to hotel for news of the election, gathering on corners with like-minded fellows and glaring across the way at their rivals, crowding anxiously around the doors of the telegraph office on Fourteenth Street although the returns wouldn’t be in for hours yet. Many folks had obviously been enjoying the free whiskey dispensed by the various political clubs that dotted the blocks near the White House, and from time to time their bursts of raucous laughter drowned out even the unceasing clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the more distant whistles of passing trains. As she made her way home, Elizabeth tightened her grip on her sewing basket and kept her bearing serene and composed, flinching only once, when a young man wearing a campaign button boasting a tintype of Mr. Breckinridge jostled her in his haste to reach the bulletin board outside the National Hotel.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she reached her own quiet neighborhood, a haven in what had been an unfamiliar city only months before. She had come to Washington City that spring after a few failed weeks in Baltimore, where her struggle to find work convinced her to seek her fortune elsewhere. Not long before that, she had lived in St. Louis, where, after years of toiling and saving, she had purchased her freedom and her son’s. Now George was a student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, and she was a successful mantua maker, a businesswoman with an admirable reputation, independent and free. She could more easily bear the miles separating her from her only child knowing that he was acquiring the education she herself had always longed for and had been denied, and that no man could claim him as property ever again.

Virginia Lewis, her landlady and dear friend, must have seen her approach through the front window, for she met her at the door. What’s the news? she asked, breathless, studying her expression as if to read the answer there. I know how your ladies talk. If anyone knows what’s happening, they would.

I’m afraid they don’t know any more than we do. Elizabeth set down her sewing basket and unwrapped herself from her shawl. Nothing’s changed from what we heard this morning. Mr. Lincoln’s favored to win, but we won’t know for a fact until they count the ballots.

I suppose your ladies wouldn’t care much for a President Lincoln.

Not one bit. Most of their husbands like Mr. Breckinridge, and so they do likewise. A few of them like Mr. Bell too. Elizabeth lowered her voice conspiratorially. As for Mr. Lincoln, they fear he wants to free all the slaves.

They shared a laugh. Well, then, God bless him, declared Virginia. If that’s true, I pray he wins.

Elizabeth nodded, but private doubts troubled her. No matter what the Southern partisans inhabiting the city said about Abraham Lincoln, as far as she knew, he had never promised to end slavery, only to keep it from spreading. But even if he had placed his hand on a Bible and declared himself a staunch abolitionist, her few months in Washington had taught her that candidates often made promises that they found impossible to keep after taking office. Whatever Mr. Lincoln’s intentions, and whether they boded ill or good for Elizabeth and the Lewises and other colored folk, when Mr. Lincoln’s people swept into the city to take over, most of Mr. Buchanan’s would be swept out, among them the husbands of several of her best patrons. She could only hope that enough of them would remain behind to keep her business thriving.

It was perhaps too much to hope that the new First Lady would have a taste for finery, and that Elizabeth might somehow attract her notice.

It was well after midnight when she was startled awake by the sounds of shouting on the streets outside, of jubilant songs and speeches, and soon thereafter, of the firing of pistols and shattering of windows. She sat up in bed and strained her ears in the darkness, sifting sense from the jumble of noise and fury until she understood that the votes had been counted, the result announced.

Abraham Lincoln would become the sixteenth president of the United States.

When Elizabeth had first arrived in Washington, she had no money, no friends, no place to call home, but she had soon found work as an assistant seamstress for two and a half dollars a day and took a room in a boardinghouse. Before long she decided to strike out on her own, and she had a sign and business cards made. She advertised herself as a skilled mantua maker, capable of sewing the complicated, snug-fitting bodice of the style that well-dressed ladies most desired. Slowly but surely, she acquired a few patrons, who recommended her to their friends and acquaintances. One generous lady, a friend of the mayor, persuaded him to waive the fee for the license that, like all free Negro females over the age of fourteen, Elizabeth was required to obtain within thirty days of her arrival if she wished to remain in the city. And she had already decided that she did wish to stay, even though the daily sight of slaves in chains being led through the muddy streets from shipyard to auction house and the restrictions upon freedmen like the license and curfews sometimes made her feel as if she were not truly free.

In October, a few weeks before the election that threw Washington City into uproar, Elizabeth sewed a gown for the wife of the cavalry officer Colonel Robert E. Lee. Spare no expense, the colonel had urged Elizabeth as he entrusted her with a hundred dollars to purchase lace and buttons and ribbons for his wife’s attire. Elizabeth gladly did as he bade her, and when Mrs. Lee wore the gown to a private dinner party at the White House in honor of the Prince of Wales, the other ladies in attendance were so impressed by the gown’s beauty and elegance and excellent fit that they sought out Elizabeth’s services. Her reputation grew as one delighted patron after another recommended her to their friends, and soon she had almost more work than she could handle.

Not long after the election, one of Elizabeth’s patrons recommended her to a neighbor, Varina Davis, the wife of Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Informed that the Davises were late risers, Elizabeth offered to come to their I Street residence in the afternoons rather than first thing in the morning. That way she would have steady work sewing for the senator’s family in the afternoons, and her mornings would be free to devote to other patrons. Mrs. Davis agreed to the arrangement, and so the autumn days passed pleasantly and productively, despite the growing tension in the city that the election seemed to have augmented rather than diffused. The Davis residence was a hub of Southern activity, with politicians and statesmen from the South racing in at all hours and disappearing into Senator Davis’s study for clandestine meetings in hushed voices that occasionally broke out into angry shouts. Mrs. Davis’s mouth would tighten a trifle at each outburst, but usually she would barely glance at the door and carry on as if nothing had happened. If she were in a particularly cheerful mood, she might make a small joke about men and their tempers, but Elizabeth suspected that she was as concerned as they were about the widening divide between North and South, if not quite so loud about it.

Elizabeth liked the Davises. The senator struck her as a considerate, dignified gentleman, and Mrs. Davis—dark-haired, with large dark eyes and a complexion less fair than was fashionable—was well educated and witty, and she seemed to have friends in every corner, Republicans and Democrats alike. Mrs. Davis looked to be in her early thirties, perhaps a decade younger than Elizabeth, perhaps a little less. She loved to read and to quote poetry, and whenever Elizabeth called, she usually found her in the midst of writing a letter, reading a book, or enjoying a visit from a friend.

One gray December afternoon, Elizabeth arrived at the Davis residence just in time to see one of Mrs. Davis’s friends, the pretty and vivacious Mrs. Samuel Phillips Lee, leaving in a huff. She doesn’t look well pleased, Elizabeth murmured to Jim, the colored doorman, a slave who had come north from Mississippi with the Davises. I’m almost afraid to come inside and find out why. Did she and Mrs. Davis argue?

Jim nodded. Not long, and not too loud, but enough. I heard Mrs. Davis say she’s not gonna associate with Republicans anymore.

Why, that’s just silly. Elizabeth shifted her satchel to her other hand and gestured to Mrs. Davis’s departing guest, who was picking her way carefully down the street. The winter chill had frozen the mud into hard, deep ruts, which made walking treacherous. It was difficult to say which was worse, the thick, sodden mud that soiled skirts and stole shoes from one’s feet or the frozen variety that tripped one up and turned one’s ankles. Mrs. Davis has lots of Republican friends.

Not many of them show up around here anymore. Jim glanced over his shoulder and leaned toward her confidentially. Guess how many angry Democrats can squeeze inside Mr. Davis’s study.

Ten? Elizabeth replied, curious. A dozen?

Twice that, I saw it for myself. They came in yesterday at dusk, senators and secretaries and the like, one by one, all quiet, and they stayed till near three o’clock this morning, talking secession.

Elizabeth’s heart thumped. The first time she had heard the word secession, she had been obliged to ask her landlord Walker Lewis what it meant, and the sound of it still had the power to unnerve her. Talking war too?

Talk of one usually leads to talk of the other, don’t it?

Elizabeth nodded. It did, and ever more so. Maybe it won’t come to that. Maybe it’s all just a lot of political bluster. She knew that Senator Davis was working day and night to come up with a compromise to keep the slave states in the Union. She wanted to believe that something might yet come of his efforts, but the two sides’ differences were so sharp and strongly felt that an agreement seemed impossible.

Maybe so, Jim said as he showed her in, but she knew he was merely being polite. Perhaps he wanted war, if the war would bring him his freedom. She could not fault him for that.

She found Mrs. Davis in the parlor, a book on her lap, her gaze faraway. Good morning, ma’am, she greeted her. I’ve finished basting the lining for the day dress if you’d care to try it on.

Mrs. Davis looked up with a start. Certainly, Elizabeth. She rose and beckoned Elizabeth to follow her upstairs to her boudoir.

The senator’s wife said little as Elizabeth helped her into the muslin bodice and skirt. Elizabeth firmly believed that investing the time and effort into the cut and fit of the lining was the secret to a well-fashioned dress, and she could only shake her head at seamstresses who hastened through that most essential part of the process. First Elizabeth would make a pattern for the lining by pinning inexpensive muslin or paper upon her patron’s figure. Next, she would remove the pieces and baste them together. Her patron would try on this rough garment, which Elizabeth would fit and adjust and offer to her patron to try on again, over and over, for more fittings and adjustments until Elizabeth was satisfied. Only then would she risk putting shears to the more expensive satins and silks and moirés that would comprise the outer garment. After that, the carefully constructed pattern was the only model Elizabeth needed to sew the gown, a step she would complete in the privacy of her own rooms. The process was laborious and time-consuming, but Elizabeth insisted that it was the only way to ensure a perfect fit. She wondered what her patrons would think if she told them she had learned the technique of cutting on the figure by sewing clothing for her fellow slaves back in Virginia—not for the sake of fashion, of course, but so as not to waste any of the rough osnaburg cloth the mistress provided.

As Elizabeth took in the vertical pleats in the back of the bodice and pinned them carefully, Mrs. Davis sighed and said, I wonder…I wonder if I should have chosen a fabric more suitable for a Southern summer.

The sateen complements your complexion, and it won’t be too warm except on the very hottest days. Studying the bodice, Elizabeth plucked two more pins from her pincushion and slipped them in place. Why should you wonder? Are you going home to Mississippi for the summer?

Home, indeed. Mrs. Davis laughed shortly. Mississippi is the state of my birth, but Washington is the home of my heart. I should hate to leave it, even if the place is overrun by Republicans.

I should hate to see you go. Elizabeth thought of Mrs. Samuel Phillips Lee, her pretty features drawn with irritation as she stormed away from the Davis residence. As I’m sure your friends would too.

I doubt my dearest friends will linger. Some of them have already declared themselves eager to depart for friendlier states. None of us has much choice in the matter. Sighing, Mrs. Davis obligingly allowed Elizabeth to move her arms apart so she could better fit the sleeves. It’s our duty as wives to accompany our husbands. If they say we stay in the Union, and thus in Washington City, then we stay. If not— Mrs. Davis forgot herself and waved a hand in helpless dismissal, tugging the muslin sleeve from Elizabeth’s grasp. Well, we go where they go, willingly or not.

If you must go, and it seems to me there’s still a good chance you won’t, said Elizabeth, you’ll be the best-dressed woman in Mississippi—if you hold still and let me finish.

In spite of herself, Mrs. Davis laughed. She patted Elizabeth’s hand where it rested on her waist, but after that, she stood perfectly motionless as Elizabeth bade her until the task was done.

As December passed, the subject of war came up often in the Davis household—between the senator and his wife, Mrs. Davis and her friends, the senator and his numerous visitors. The senator worked increasingly long and erratic hours, and when Mrs. Davis wasn’t tending to her young children, she distracted herself with writing letters, reading books, and entertaining friends she probably thought she must soon part with and might never see again. A deep, hushed anxiety permeated the city, the sense that time was running out, and Elizabeth felt it most intensely within the Davis household.

As the holidays approached, Mrs. Davis kept Elizabeth busy sewing everyday clothes for her and the children, and one special garment for her husband—a fine silk dressing gown meant for his Christmas present. As Mrs. Davis wanted it to be a surprise, she asked Elizabeth to keep it out of sight whenever the senator was home. Once, Mrs. Davis dashed into the sitting room, where Elizabeth was busy sewing, and flung a quilt over her—the pieces of silk, her sewing basket, and Elizabeth herself from shoulders to shoe tops—only moments before Mr. Davis walked in, home earlier than expected from the Capitol. There was no time to adjust the quilt so that the draping was less ridiculous, so Elizabeth merely sat and nodded a greeting while Mrs. Davis whirled about to kiss her husband. The senator accepted the welcome with distracted affection, but then he looked past his wife to peer curiously at Elizabeth. Are you cold, Lizzie?

Not anymore, Mr. Davis, she replied. Mrs. Davis flashed her a quick, secret smile and led her husband from the room, asking about his day. Muffling laughter, Elizabeth threw off the quilt, folded up the silk, and hid the pieces in her sewing basket before the senator returned.

It was a rare lighthearted moment in a season of increasing worry and dread. A few days before Christmas, all of Washington was shaken by the news from the South—South Carolina had voted to secede from the Union. Within the Davis household, the debates Elizabeth overheard immediately shifted from whether it was legal and right to dissolve the Union to which states would follow South Carolina and how soon. As the calls for secession increased, Mrs. Davis’s ambivalence persisted. One day, she would champion the cause of states’ rights and praise the slave system, while on the next, she would confide to a friend that she could not bear the thought of leaving Washington City, where she had resided so long and forged such enduring ties. I would rather remain in Washington and be kicked about than go south and be Mrs. President, she said. And when her friend exclaimed in surprise, Mrs. Davis assured her that it was the true sentiment of her heart.

That more Southern states would follow South Carolina out of the Union seemed all but certain. In all the disquiet, Elizabeth had found very little time to work on Mr. Davis’s dressing gown. After weeks of swift, clandestine, off-and-on sewing, on Christmas Eve, the dressing gown remained unfinished.

Although Mrs. Davis did not rebuke her, Elizabeth knew she was anxious to have the dressing gown completed, lovingly wrapped and ready to give to her husband Christmas morning. I’ll stay and finish it, if you like, Elizabeth offered as the afternoon waned, though she was already weary after a long day of sewing, her fingers tired, her head and back aching.

Mrs. Davis gladly, gratefully accepted, so Elizabeth kept on, sewing with neat, quick, flawless stitches in the sitting room by gaslight while her patron decorated a Christmas tree in the parlor for the children. Her thoughts wandered to her son, who would be spending the holidays with a school friend in Cleveland. It would be their first Christmas apart. Elizabeth had sent George a gift—candies, a book, and two fine shirts—but she had not heard from him. Watching Mrs. Davis bustle about preparing for her family’s celebration made her miss George more acutely than ever. When she was still a young woman, her beauty and natural grace had drawn the attention of a powerful white man, Alexander Kirkland, who could not be fought off and would not be denied. Her master had done nothing to protect her, and so George had come to be—the child she had not wanted but had come to love with all her heart.

The closing of a door elsewhere in the house snatched her from her reverie, and when her gaze fell upon the clock on a nearby table, she saw that it was a quarter to midnight, well past the ten o’clock curfew for colored people. She could not walk home now, even if she dared brave the streets at so late an hour, what with crime on the upswing even in fine white neighborhoods like the Davises’ and respectable middle-class colored neighborhoods like her own. She decided that when she finished the dressing gown, she would present it to Mrs. Davis and request a bed for the night in the attic with the servants. With any luck she could snatch a few hours’ sleep and be well rested enough to enjoy the Christmas service at Union Bethel Church in the morning. Virginia and Walker Lewis had kindly invited her to join them and their young daughters for a Christmas feast later that day, and Elizabeth had gratefully accepted. She was accustomed to a good deal of time alone—after more than thirty-seven years as a slave denied all privacy, a bit of solitude still felt luxurious—but on the day of the Lord’s birth, she wanted to celebrate in the company of friends.

She was adjusting the tie cords when she heard Senator Davis in the hallway between the sitting room and the parlor. How festive you’ve made everything, my dear, she heard him praise his wife, though his voice was devoid of merriment. The children’s eyes will light up with joy when they behold that tree. He leaned against the doorway, and suddenly he glanced over his shoulder into the sitting room. That you, Lizzie? he exclaimed, turning her way. Why are you here so late? Still at work? I hope Mrs. Davis isn’t too exacting.

No, sir, she answered, startled by his gray and careworn look. Elizabeth knew he was ten years older than herself and that he often suffered from poor health, but clearly the events of the past few weeks had aged him drastically. Taken aback, she had missed her brief opportunity to hide the dressing gown. She had no choice but to explain herself, although she tried to conceal as much of the surprise as possible, without lying outright. Mrs. Davis was very anxious to have this gown finished tonight, she told him carefully, glancing toward the parlor to be sure Mrs. Davis would not overhear, and so I volunteered to remain and complete it.

Well, well, the case must be urgent. The senator crossed the room and took the hem of his Christmas surprise in his hand. What is the color of this silk? This gaslight is too deceptive to my aging eyes.

It’s a drab changeable silk, sir. She almost added that it was a rich, handsome color and would suit him well, but she decided to let him discover that for himself when he opened his gift the next morning and could admire it in daylight.

He nodded, smiled curiously, let go of the hem, and left the room without another word. Elizabeth knew then that he had easily guessed that the dressing gown was his wife’s Christmas gift to him, and he did not want her to know that the surprise had been spoiled. She found herself touched by his thoughtfulness. She would never concur with his views on slavery and secession, but she couldn’t help admiring him for the small kindness he showed his wife.

She finished the dressing gown just as the clock struck midnight. Her thoughts drifted unexpectedly to her own husband, how he had deceived and disappointed her, until she had been obliged to tell him that they must live forever apart. James Keckley, who had pretended to be a freedman among other things when she agreed to marry him, was likely still a runaway slave hiding out in St. Louis if his drinking had not killed him yet.

Carefully she folded the dressing gown and pushed thoughts of her estranged husband aside. It was Christmas, and she would not wish anyone ill on that sacred day, especially not the man she had once loved.

Just before midnight on December 31, the bells at Trinity Church at Third and C streets rang out Hail, Columbia and Yankee Doodle to welcome the New Year, but any lingering chance for reconciliation between North and South had been left behind in the old. New Year’s Day was usually a festive, merry holiday in the city, or so its longtime residents told Elizabeth, but on the first day of 1861, no crowds celebrated in the inns and taverns, and few neighbors ventured out to pay calls. Those who did bore anxious and troubled expressions, as if urgent business rather than a wish to spread New Year’s greetings had compelled them from the comfort of their homes on that bright, frigid morning. A neighbor, a former slave employed as a butler at the White House, later told the Lewises that only a small fraction of the usual number of guests had attended the traditional New Year’s Day reception. The guests were as courteous to one another as gentility required, but some boldly wore Union or secession cockades in their hats so that no one would mistake their loyalties. Not even President Buchanan was immune from barbs and bitter words as he shook hands in the receiving line, but as the host as well as the leader of the land, if only for a few more weeks, he bore it with diplomacy and tact.

On January 9, Mississippi voted to secede, and Jefferson Davis told his wife that he was resolved to follow his beloved state out of the Union. Within days, the senator fell ill and took to his bed, which was where the unceasing stream of friends and politicians and statesmen conferred with him. Elizabeth did not doubt that the strain upon him as the leader of the Democrats’ Southern faction contributed in no small part to his poor health. Mrs. Davis nursed him tenderly, and when Elizabeth remarked upon her sure hand in the sickroom, Mrs. Davis replied matter-of-factly, I’ve had a great deal of practice.

One evening, as Elizabeth was dressing Mrs. Davis for one of the few social gatherings the couple attended that bleak winter, Mrs. Davis suddenly said, Elizabeth, you are so very handy that I should like to take you with me.

Something in her voice told Elizabeth that this was no idle compliment. When do you go South, Mrs. Davis? she asked.

Oh, I cannot tell just now, but it will be soon. You know there is going to be war, Elizabeth?

She had long suspected, but Mrs. Davis spoke as if she had certain knowledge of it—which, as Senator Davis’s wife, she very well could have. War? You cannot mean it.

I tell you, yes. The Southern people will not submit to the humiliating demands of the abolition party. They will fight first.

Elizabeth fought to keep her voice even as she fastened the last of Mrs. Davis’s buttons. And who do you think will win?

The South, of course, replied Mrs. Davis. The South is impulsive, and the Southern soldiers will fight to conquer. The North will yield when it sees the South is in earnest, rather than engage in a long and bloody war.

Impulsive and earnest, perhaps, but Elizabeth didn’t think that was enough to win a war. She also thought, although she would not be impudent enough to say so aloud, that Mrs. Davis underestimated the determination of Northerners. Those of Elizabeth’s acquaintance did not seem particularly yielding, or any more afraid of a fight than Southern folks. Mrs. Davis, she said instead, in her most reasonable tone, are you certain that there will be war?

I know it. Suddenly she turned in her chair and clasped Elizabeth’s hand. You had better go South with me. I will take good care of you.

Elizabeth was so startled that without thinking she snatched her hand away.

Mrs. Davis seemed not to notice her rudeness. When the war breaks out, the colored people will suffer in the North. The Northern people will look upon them as the cause of the war, and I fear, in their exasperation, will be inclined to treat you harshly.

Reluctantly, Elizabeth acknowledged the truth of her patron’s words with a nod. Secession would cause the war, and the state delegates who had voted to leave the Union would have to bear the responsibility. Still, Elizabeth had no reason to doubt that somehow the blame would shift to the people of her race, as it so often, so unfairly, did in other matters.

I may come back to Washington in a few months, and live in the White House, Mrs. Davis mused, turning around to examine the drape of her dress in the mirror. "The Southern people talk of choosing Mr. Davis for their president. In fact, it may be considered settled that he will be their president. As soon as we go South and secede from the other states, we will raise an army and march on Washington, and then I shall live in the White House."

Mrs. Davis, Elizabeth managed to say, I’m very pleased that you’ve placed so much confidence in me. However, I— She had to stop, to take a breath, to find a moment to think. I have my business to consider. I have my church and my friends.

We do have churches in the South, you may recall, as well as many colored women who would surely like to count you among their friends. A faint, amused smile turned up the corners of Mrs. Davis’s mouth. As for your business, it will surely thrive. I’ll have plenty of work for you within my own household, but if that doesn’t suffice, with my recommendation you’ll have no trouble finding many eager new customers in Montgomery.

So the Davises were planning to remove to Alabama, not Mississippi. Elizabeth wondered why her patron had not mentioned this before. I—I don’t know what to say. Forgive me my uncertainty. I’m very grateful you think so highly of my work.

Not only of your work, but also of you. Mrs. Davis caught her gaze in the mirror and held it. Promise me you’ll consider my proposal—although time is of the essence. I’ll need your answer soon.

That much Elizabeth could do. I promise.

Elizabeth kept her word, pondering Mrs. Davis’s proposal, praying over it. She was tempted to accept. She liked the Davis family, and Mrs. Davis’s reasoning seemed plausible. But to go so far south, so deep into the land of slavery—even as a freedwoman, life there would be difficult for her, far more difficult than in the slaveholding District of Columbia. But as much as she liked Mrs. Davis, she liked the Lewises more, and she would miss her friends in the congregation of Union Bethel Church. And though the Northerners might, as Mrs. Davis predicted, blame the colored race for the inevitable war and turn upon them in anger, weren’t Southerners as likely to do the same?

After pondering the question alone, and with the deadline for her decision approaching, Elizabeth turned to her friends for guidance. One and all, freeborn and former slave, urged her to remain in Washington. They were astonished that Mrs. Davis would even presume to ask such a thing upon such a short acquaintance. Elizabeth had been in the family’s employ less than three months, and Mrs. Davis expected her to leave her home and place herself in unimaginable risk in a land she herself expected soon to be torn by war? They did not believe, as Elizabeth did, that Mrs. Davis’s offer was generous, that it was a sign of respect. Don’t go, Virginia implored after one late-night talk in her parlor. If you change your mind, you may not be able to come home.

Elizabeth knew her friends were right. She also knew that the North was far stronger than Mrs. Davis seemed to believe—in spirit as well as might. Mr. Lincoln’s people were powerful and eager for victory, and Elizabeth could not believe that they would let the Southern states go without a fight or that they would give up as soon as the Southerners resisted. In the end, after all her questioning and pondering and prayer, her decision came down to one irrefutable fact: She was a colored woman, and she would be far wiser to cast her lot with the people of the North, many of whom supported abolition, than those of the South, most of whom believed she belonged in chains.

Elizabeth had not yet told Mrs. Davis of her decision when she arrived at the Davis residence a few days later to find that her patron had gone out earlier that morning to purchase several yards of floral chintzes, pretty but less fine than the fabrics she usually favored. I’d like you to make me two wrappers, Mrs. Davis said, draping the fabrics upon the sofa.

From chintz?

Yes, Elizabeth, from chintz. Mrs. Davis’s smile twisted as if she were fighting back tears. I must give up expensive dressing for a while. Now that war is imminent, I—and I daresay all Southern people—must learn to practice lessons of economy.

Of course. Elizabeth gathered up the fabrics. I’ll get started right away.

Thank you. After a moment, she added, Elizabeth?

Yes, Mrs. Davis?

I think… Her voice trailed off, and she inhaled deeply. To be prudent, it would be best to finish the wrappers sooner rather than later.

Elizabeth understood.

The Davises’ course was fixed, irrevocable. It was only a matter of time.

Elizabeth finished the wrappers a few days before the Davis family left Washington. When she presented the finished garments to Mrs. Davis, she admired them, set them aside, and handed Elizabeth a bundle of fine needlework, a difficult work-in-progress of her own that she wanted Elizabeth to finish. You can send it to me by post when it is done, she instructed, and then she paused to offer Elizabeth a hopeful smile. Or perhaps you can call on me in the parlor of my new home and hand it to me yourself. Perhaps you won’t have to walk very far. I’m sure that wherever we settle, we can arrange a room in our residence for you.

Elizabeth could delay no longer. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Davis. I’m happy to finish your sewing, but I’ll have to send it to you. I’ve decided to stay in Washington.

Mrs. Davis pressed her lips together and nodded as if she had expected Elizabeth to refuse, and yet she could not quite give up her cause for lost. Aren’t you tempted, even a little, by the prospect of being a First Lady’s personal modiste?

Elizabeth laughed shakily. I am indeed, but not enough to leave my home. I promise, ma’am, if you return to Washington, I’d be pleased to sew for you again. More than pleased—I would be delighted.

Oh, Elizabeth. Mrs. Davis regarded her with sad affection. "You betray yourself. You said if I return, not when."

On the twenty-first of January, Jefferson Davis and several other Southern senators resigned their seats and left Washington, casting their lots with their home states. Later Elizabeth would read in the papers that Mr. Davis had expressed love for the Union and a desire for peace, but he had also asserted his right to own slaves and the right of states to secede. I am sure I feel no hostility to you, senators from the North, he had told the assembly. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well.

Soon thereafter, Mrs. Davis left Washington with her husband and children and slaves. The Southern states elected Jefferson Davis as their president, and Varina Davis became First Lady of the Confederacy.

Chapter Two

FEBRUARY–MARCH 1861

All of Washington City was abuzz with anticipation—and in certain quarters, apprehension—for the arrival of President-Elect Lincoln. He and his family were approaching the capital by a circuitous train route, both to greet as many supporters along the way as he could and to thwart anyone who might attempt to do him harm. He hasn’t even taken office yet and those secessionists are already threatening his life, said Walker Lewis one morning, offering Elizabeth his newspaper, which disgusted him too much for him to continue reading. They won’t bother to wait and see what he might do in office. They hate him on principle.

The ongoing, escalating conflict over Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor also dominated conversation. Ever since December 26, when United States major Robert Anderson had moved his command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to the stronger, more defensible fortifications controlling the harbor, the handful of federal troops there had been essentially under siege. In early January, on the same day Mississippi seceded from the Union, South Carolinian forces had fired upon the Star of the West, an unarmed merchant ship President Buchanan had sent to resupply and reinforce Major Anderson and his men. The ship had been forced to turn back, and reports from Fort Sumter had become increasingly dire as the men ran low on food, arms, and supplies. Although many Republicans called for an immediate military response, President Buchanan seemed inclined to wait out the last few remaining weeks of his presidency and let Abraham Lincoln worry about it when he took over.

A few officers’ wives had been living on Sullivan’s Island with their husbands, but when Major Anderson moved his troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, the ladies had been sent over to Charleston for their safety. There they found every door closed to them. Not a single boardinghouse would offer them lodgings, and one landlady bluntly declared that if she offered the officers’ wives a safe haven, she would lose all her other boarders. Discouraged and angry, the women had been obliged to leave their husbands to their defense of Fort Sumter and seek refuge in the North. When they arrived in Washington, bitter and defiant, they found themselves warmly welcomed by the Republicans and celebrated as the first martyrs of the war.

I cannot imagine such a state of feeling, one of Elizabeth’s patrons declared as Elizabeth dressed her for a levee at the White House one evening. Margaret Sumner McLean was the daughter of the Massachusetts-born Major General Edwin Vose Sumner and the wife of Captain Eugene McLean, a Maryland native with unabashed Southern sympathies. Her father’s cousin was the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, who had been savagely caned and nearly murdered on the Senate floor almost five years earlier by a colleague from South Carolina who had taken great offense to one of his antislavery speeches, which was not surprising considering that it had been full of personal insults. To say that Mrs. McLean’s loyalties were probably divided in those troubled times was, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a grave understatement. To turn away helpless women, to leave them homeless and unprotected! I am quite indignant with so-called Southern chivalry.

I hear a few Southern gentlemen offered the ladies rooms in their own homes, said Elizabeth, adjusting the fall of lace around