St. Louis, Missouri, in the early 1850s.

A dressmaker stood before her master and asked, once again, the question she had asked many times: would he let her buy herself and her son? And at what price?

He had lost patience. He thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a bright silver quarter of a dollar, and held it out to her.

"Lizzie, I have told you often not to trouble me with such a question. If you really wish to leave me, take this. It will pay the passage of yourself and boy on the ferry-boat, and when you are on the other side of the river you will be free. It is the cheapest way that I know of."

The other side of the river was Illinois, a free state.

She looked at him in astonishment, and answered in earnest: "No, master, I do not wish to be free in such a manner. If such had been my wish, I should never have troubled you about obtaining your consent to my purchasing myself. I can cross the river any day, as you well know, and have frequently done so, but will never leave you in such a manner. By the laws of the land I am your slave, you are my master, and I will only be free by such means as the laws of the country provide."

Her name was Elizabeth Keckley. Within a dozen years she would be Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker and closest friend. A few years after that, a single book would cost her almost everything.

I. A Silver Quarter

She told this scene herself, in the third chapter of her memoir Behind the Scenes, published in 1868. She was nearly fifty by then, living in a small fourth-floor room in New York, sewing by day and writing by night.

She was born about February 1818 at Dinwiddie Court House, Virginia, the child of an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel Burwell. At four, her first duty was to mind her master's newborn daughter. She rocked the cradle too hard, the baby pitched out onto the floor, and in her panic she seized the fire-shovel to scoop the child up. Her mistress had her taken out and lashed. It was, she wrote, the first time she was punished that way, but not the last.

At eighteen she was in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the only servant of her master's eldest son, a Presbyterian minister, doing the work of three. The minister's wife disliked her, and the village schoolmaster, Mr. Bingham, called her into his study and told her to take down her dress for a flogging. She drew herself up: "Nobody has a right to whip me but my own master." He tied her and cut her back open with a rawhide. She did not make a sound. He tried twice more; the third time he burst into tears and said it would be a sin to beat her any more.

In Hillsborough, too, a white man pursued her for four years. She would not write his name. She wrote only that she became a mother. The boy, George, was her only child.

Later she went with her master's daughter, Anne Garland, and her family to St. Louis. Mr. Garland's affairs had failed so badly that he could not pay the postage due on a letter waiting for him. The family proposed to hire out her aged mother to strangers. She could not bear it, and told Mr. Garland to let her see what she could do.

She took in sewing and soon had a name in St. Louis; the best ladies of the city became her patrons. She later reckoned that with her needle she kept bread in the mouths of seventeen people for two years and five months.

II. "You Never Will"

Some time after the quarter, her master changed his mind. She had served his family faithfully, he said; she deserved her freedom; he would take twelve hundred dollars for her and her boy.

For a woman supporting another family, twelve hundred dollars was nearly beyond reach. She married James Keckley, whom she had known in Virginia, and only afterward learned that the man who called himself free was a slave, and a drinker; he became one more burden. Year after year she worked and could save nothing. Then Mr. Garland died.

She settled on a plan: go to New York, tell her story, and ask the public for the money. Mrs. Garland set one condition. She must bring the names of six gentlemen who would vouch for her return and stand responsible for her price.

She went from door to door. Five men signed. The sixth, Mr. Farrow, listened patiently and said: "Yes, yes, Lizzie; the scheme is a fair one, and you shall have my name. But I shall bid you good-by when you start."

"Good-by for a short time," she said.

"No, good-by for all time." He looked at her hard. "You mean to come back now, but you never will. When you reach New York the abolitionists will tell you what savages we are, and they will prevail on you to stay there; and we shall never see you again."

She told him she not only meant to come back but would, and would pay every cent. He only shook his head: "Time will show."

She would not take his signature. Slavery, she wrote, eternal slavery, rather than be distrusted by people whose respect she valued.

She went home and threw herself on the bed and wept. Her trunk was packed. Her mother had made up her lunch for the journey.

III. Twelve Hundred Dollars

Just then a carriage stopped at the door. Out stepped one of her patrons, Mrs. Le Bourgois.

"Lizzie, I hear that you are going to New York to beg for money to buy your freedom. I have been thinking over the matter, and told Ma it would be a shame to allow you to go North to beg for what we should give you. You have many friends in St. Louis, and I am going to raise the twelve hundred dollars among them."

She had two hundred dollars put away for a present, and would give that instead. She owed Keckley a hundred dollars; her mother owed fifty and would add fifty more. "Don't start for New York now until I see what I can do among your friends."

The money was raised. Keckley copied the papers into her book one by one: a note from a Mrs. Doan asking her to sign for seventy-five dollars, with twenty-five enclosed; a statement from a Mr. Williams that between July and August 1855 he had received nine hundred and fifty dollars for her in three sums, banked it, and guaranteed her one percent a month.

Two other documents, read side by side, are chilling.

On August 10, 1855, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, members of the Burwell family conveyed to Anne Garland, "for the love and affection we bear towards our sister" and five dollars, "a negro woman named Lizzie, and a negro boy, her son, named George," warranting them "to be slaves for life," with "no representations as to age or health."

Three months later, on November 13, 1855, in St. Louis, Anne Garland signed a deed of emancipation: for twelve hundred dollars in cash, she freed her "negro woman Lizzie, and her son George." Lizzie was "about 37 years of age, by trade a dress-maker"; George was "about 16 years of age, and is almost white." Two days later the St. Louis Circuit Court entered it on the record.

She would take the money only as a loan. She went back to work and, before long, repaid every cent.

IV. Ten Days in the Capital

In the spring of 1860 she left her husband and left St. Louis. George had been sent to the newly founded Wilberforce University in Ohio.

She stopped first in Baltimore, hoping to teach young Black women her system of cutting and fitting dresses. After six weeks she had barely enough for the fare to Washington.

In Washington she found work at two dollars and a half a day, and was promptly told that, by law, a Black person without a license could stay only ten days, and that someone had to vouch to the authorities that she was free. She could not afford a license. A patron, Miss Ringold, went with her to the mayor and arranged for her to stay without paying, and without being molested.

She rented rooms, and business picked up. The real turn came with a dress. Mrs. Captain Lee needed one for the dinner in honor of the Prince of Wales and was sent to Keckley. Captain Lee handed her a roll of bills, a hundred dollars, and told her to spare no expense on the trimmings. At Harper & Mitchell's, Mr. Harper waited on her himself. She asked to take the laces to Mrs. Lee for approval, and reminded him that she was a stranger and the goods were valuable. He said he was not afraid to trust her; her face was the index to an honest heart. She never forgot it. He also allowed her a commission of twenty-five dollars.

Mrs. Lee's dress was the talk of the dinner, and orders followed. That winter Mrs. Jefferson Davis, wife of the senator, became a patron. On Christmas Eve Keckley stayed late at the Davis house finishing a dressing-gown, the senator's present, and set the last stitch as the clock struck twelve. A few weeks later Mrs. Davis urged her to come South: there would be war, and Black people in the North would suffer for it. She thought it over for a long time and chose the North.

V. A Knock at Willard's

She had long wanted to work for the ladies of the White House.

The chance came through an impatient patron, Mrs. McClean, who was invited to dine at Willard's on Sunday and insisted on a new dress. Keckley said she had more work than she could do. Mrs. McClean answered: "I have often heard you say that you would like to work for the ladies of the White House. Well, I have it in my power to obtain you this privilege. I know Mrs. Lincoln well, and you shall make a dress for her provided you finish mine in time."

She hired help and finished it.

On Monday, March 4, 1861, Inauguration Day, the streets were jammed. She pushed through to Willard's Hotel and knocked at Mrs. Lincoln's door. A rather stout lady of about forty said: "You are Lizzie Keckley, I believe. I have not time to talk to you now, but would like to have you call at the White House, at eight o'clock to-morrow morning."

At eight the next morning she crossed the threshold of the White House for the first time. Three other dressmakers were already in the waiting room, each sent by one of Mrs. Lincoln's friends. Keckley was called last.

"Who have you worked for in the city?"

"Among others, Mrs. Senator Davis has been one of my best patrons."

"Mrs. Davis! So you have worked for her, have you? Of course you gave satisfaction. We are just from the West, and are poor. If you do not charge too much, I shall be able to give you all my work."

She took measurements and carried off a rose-colored moire-antique. On the evening of the levee, when she brought the dress, Mrs. Lincoln was declaring she would not go down at all. With the relatives pleading, Keckley dressed her hair and fitted the gown, which fit nicely. Mr. Lincoln came in, threw himself on the sofa, laughed with Willie and little Tad, and pulled on his gloves, quoting poetry. "I declare, you look charming in that dress. Mrs. Keckley has met with great success."

From then on she was Mrs. Lincoln's regular dressmaker, making fifteen or sixteen dresses for her that first spring and summer. Later research says her shop came to employ twenty seamstresses.

VI. The Son from Wilberforce

That August she lost George.

He had left school, gone to the field with the three-months troops, and been killed in Missouri, buried on the battlefield where General Lyon fell. That is nearly all she wrote, adding that Mrs. Lincoln, on hearing of it, sent her a kind and womanly letter of comfort.

Later research adds that George, very fair, had enlisted as white and was killed at the Battle of Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861. An old St. Louis patron urged her to apply for the pension due to a widow who had lost an only son. At first she refused; she did not want to make money out of his death. In the end she received eight dollars a month. In old age, when she could no longer work, the pension was her only income.

In the summer of 1862 she saw white Washington hold a festival for sick and wounded soldiers. Why, she thought, should the well-to-do Black people not do something for the destitute freedpeople pouring into the capital? The next Sunday she proposed it in her church. Within two weeks the Contraband Relief Association was organized with forty working members. "Contrabands" was the wartime word for enslaved people who had escaped to Union lines. Mrs. Lincoln headed the subscription list with two hundred dollars.

VII. "My Best and Kindest Friend"

On Saturday, April 15, 1865, at about eleven in the morning, a carriage stopped at her door, and a messenger asked for Elizabeth Keckley: "I come from Mrs. Lincoln. If you are Mrs. Keckley, come with me immediately to the White House."

The night before, the president had been shot at the theater; that morning he died. In her shock, Mrs. Lincoln had asked for one person: "Send for Elizabeth Keckley. I want her just as soon as she can be brought here." Three messengers had been sent in the night. All three mistook the house number.

Keckley entered the darkened room. Mrs. Lincoln, tossing on the bed, whispered: "Why did you not come to me last night, Elizabeth? I sent for you."

For five weeks Mrs. Lincoln did not leave her room. Keckley helped her pack, then rode with her to Chicago. The first night out, as Keckley bathed her aching temples, Mrs. Lincoln said: "Lizabeth, you are my best and kindest friend, and I love you as my best friend. I wish it were in my power to make you comfortable for the balance of your days. If Congress provides for me, depend upon it, I will provide for you."

VIII. 609 Broadway

Two years later Mrs. Lincoln's money ran short. In March 1867 she wrote from Chicago that she could not live on $1,700 a year, that she must sell part of her wardrobe, and asked Keckley to help her in New York.

In September Mrs. Lincoln checked into a second-rate New York hotel as "Mrs. Clarke." Two brokers at 609 Broadway, Brady and Keyes, took on the business and promised a fine price. But when the clothes were shown, no one would buy. In desperation Mrs. Lincoln agreed to put the wardrobe on public display for sale and allowed the brokers to publish her letters to them in the World.

On the morning the letters appeared, Keckley saw her off on the train to Chicago.

A storm followed. A president's widow selling her old clothes became a story in every paper. Hundreds of people a day crowded into Brady's rooms to handle the fabrics and judge the prices. From Chicago Mrs. Lincoln wrote: "My ink is like myself and my spirits failing, so I write you to-day with a pencil."

Keckley stayed in New York to clear up the affair. Not until March 4, 1868, did she settle the account with Mr. Keyes and ship the unsold things back to Chicago.

IX. The Price of a Book

That winter she sewed by day and wrote by night. On March 14, 1868, in the little room at 14 Carroll Place, she finished her preface.

She had put some of Mrs. Lincoln's private letters into the book, she said, so that the world would understand the real story behind the wardrobe affair and judge Mrs. Lincoln more kindly. "If I have betrayed confidence in anything I have published, it has been to place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world." She had, she said, cut everything personal from the letters.

Readers saw something else: a woman once enslaved laying a First Lady's private letters, temper and debts before the public. The appendix carried more than a dozen letters from Mrs. Lincoln to her. Later research says the editor, James Redpath, chose to include them, and the publisher advertised the book as a "literary thunderbolt." Papers condemned her for a breach of trust. A Cleveland reviewer said he was glad the book had appeared, as a warning to future presidents' wives not to put on airs their education and station did not warrant.

Historians have taken the friendship to have ended there; Keckley maintained that the two women still corresponded. Many of her clients stopped coming. Robert Lincoln persuaded the publisher to halt the book. It did not sell well.

Years before, she had refused a silver coin and held out for freedom written down plainly in law. This time she tried again to set things down in black and white, for herself and for her friend, and it cost her her living.

X. Years Later

She kept a small business going until about 1890. In 1892 Wilberforce University, her son's old school, invited her to head its department of sewing and domestic science. The next year she mounted an exhibit for the university at the Chicago World's Fair, then resigned after a mild stroke.

In the late 1890s she returned to Washington and lived at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, which she had helped to found. She died there in May 1907 and was buried in Columbian Harmony Cemetery. When that cemetery closed in 1960, her unclaimed remains went into an unmarked grave. Not until May 26, 2010, a hundred and three years after her death, was a marker placed there.

At the end of her book she wrote: "The labor of a lifetime has brought me nothing in a pecuniary way." She also wrote that she was still stout of heart.

The silver quarter, she had never taken.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Main source: Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1868), read in the Project Gutenberg edition (eBook #24968, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24968): preface, chapters I–VII, XI–XV, and the appendix. Published in the United States in 1868; public domain in the US.

2. Scenes and dialogue: the quarter and the ferry, the twelve hundred dollars, seventeen people for two years and five months, the marriage, Mr. Farrow, Mrs. Le Bourgois, the Doan and Williams papers, the deed of August 10, 1855, the deed of emancipation of November 13, 1855, and the court record of November 15 are in chapter III. The cradle and the fire-shovel are in chapter I. Bingham, the minister, the white man and George's birth are in chapter II. Repaying the loan, leaving St. Louis in spring 1860, Baltimore, the wage and ten-day rule in Washington, Miss Ringold and the mayor, and the Davis household are in chapter IV. Mrs. Lee's dress, Mr. Harper, Mrs. McClean, Willard's, the White House interview, the levee and Lincoln's words are in chapter V. George's death and Mrs. Lincoln's letter are in chapter VI; the Contraband Relief Association in chapter VII; the eight-dollar pension in chapter XIII. April 15, 1865, and the three messengers are in chapter XI; the five weeks and the train to Chicago in chapter XII. The 1867 letters, Brady and Keyes, the World, the crowds and the settlement of March 4, 1868, and the room at 14 Carroll Place are in chapter XV.

3. Other sources: her birth date (February 1818); the account that Garland agreed to the price in 1852; twenty seamstresses; George's enlistment as white and death at Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861; the pension later raised to $12; the founding of the association in August 1862; Redpath's role, the advertising, the Cleveland review, Robert Lincoln's intervention and poor sales; Wilberforce in 1892, the 1893 fair and stroke; the National Home; her death in May 1907, reburial and the 2010 marker: all from the English Wikipedia article "Elizabeth Keckley" and the research it cites, chiefly Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly (2003). These are cited secondhand.

4. Where the memoir and the record differ: (a) Keckley dates her farewell to the Davises to "early in the year 1860" and the chintz wrappers to "January, 1860," yet says Mrs. Davis arrived in November 1860; by context this was early 1861. (b) She names the mayor "Burritt"; the mayor of Washington was James G. Berret; the story says only "the mayor." (c) Wikipedia identifies "Mrs. Captain Lee" with the wife of Robert E. Lee; the story keeps the book's wording without deciding. (d) The year of the quarter scene is not given; the story says "early 1850s." (e) Whether the friendship ended is disputed; both views are given. (f) A 1935 claim that Keckley did not write the book was widely rebutted and later modified by its author; how much the editor polished her prose cannot now be measured, so her words are treated as "her account in the book."

5. Narrative boundaries: every scene, line, number and feeling comes from the memoir or the sources above; nothing is invented. Her accounts of childhood and St. Louis rest on her word alone, written about thirty years after the events.