Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley's behind the Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath

Abstract

When Elizabeth Keckley wrote her 1868 autobiography Behind Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years White House, one of her primary goals was to defend herself and Mary Todd Lincoln from public ridicule. Because Keckley most intimately associated that lady most eventful periods of her she tells readers that her character, as well as character of Mrs. Lincoln, is at stake (xiv). Keckley was particularly concerned about public reaction to old clothes scandal, a scandal that erupted when widowed Lincoln met Keckley New York City and arranged to sell pieces of her wardrobe what quickly degenerated into an event reminiscent of a circus sideshow. [1] Keckley thought that by providing more information she could demonstrate Mrs. Lincoln's positive characteristics and pure intentions, and, from what we know about Keckley, we little reason to doubt her affection for Lincoln or overt motivation for writing her book. [2] Despite Keckley's sincere intentions, Behind Scenes was met public ridicule and media's wrath. Putnam's Magazine. for example, called it latest, and decidedly weakest production of sensational press, which ought never to been written or and could not be read by any sensible person with pleasure or profit (119). The New York Times questioned Keckley's authorship and said she would been better off to have stuck to her needle as the disclosures made in her book were gross violations of confidence (10.) [3] Perhaps nowhere is wrath against Keckley more evident than vicious parody spawned by her text, Behind Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis. [4] This parody reveals author's anxiety over an African American woman's rising class and social status, and is intent on proving that, even if Keckley were no longer a slave, she would always be a nigger (a word that appears six times first paragra ph alone). In Keckley's personal and social circles, response to Behind Scenes was not much better. Mary Todd Lincoln read book early May and thereafter renounced 'colored historian' as friend and confident (Baker 280). Later her life, Keckley attempted to talk Robert Lincoln (who reportedly requested that book be removed from circulation), but he refused to see her because Behind Scenes reprinted his mother's private letters to Keckley, a decision that was made, apparently, without Keckley's consent (Washington 241). [5] Within African American community, according to Frances Smith Foster, some believed Keckley had been victimized but most were angered by their fear that backlash from her actions would jeopardize their own positions (129). For a combination of reasons, Foster notes that book was eventually withdrawn from stores, and Keckley was left to earn her living by sewing and from a small pension she received for her son's death Civil War. [6] As reviews, parody, and community's reaction reveal, attacks on Keckley were so severe that her life was never same after she published Behind Scenes. Why, we might ask, was public so outraged by Keckley's decision to write about Mrs. Lincoln? Certainly, censure was not result of public's excessive love for Abraham Lincoln's grieving widow. By time book was published, Mary Todd Lincoln was considered by many to be extravagant and improper her dress, manners, and actions. [7] Nor can we argue that Keckley's public discussion of Lincoln was unprecedented. As Keckley notes her Preface, Lincoln already forced herself into notoriety by stepping beyond formal lines which hedge about a private life, and invited public criticism (xiii). She comments: I do not forget, before public journals vilified Mrs. Lincoln, that ladies who moved Washington circle which she moved, freely canvassed her [Lincoln's] character among themselves. …