Elizabeth Keckley - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

With regard to Mrs. Lincoln's reaction, Mrs. Lincoln felt betrayed and extremely disturbed by the work's public disclosure of private conversations and letters that were written to Keckley. Keckley explained that she too had been betrayed; that James Redpath violated her trust by printing the letters he asked her to 'lend' him, as he promised not to disclose them and had not gained her consent for publication. The now destitute former First Lady permanently severed contact with Keckley.

In July 1869, during a European trip, Mrs. Lincoln was pleased to come across Sally Orne, a good friend from her Washington days. The two women spent every moment together reminiscing about the past and lamenting the present. Not since she had last seen Keckley had Mrs. Lincoln had the pleasant company and undivided attention of an old friend.

Elizabeth Keckley continued to attempt to earn money by sewing and teaching young women her techniques, while much of her white clientele stopped calling. Eventually she was in great need of money. In 1890 at age seventy-two, she made a drastic decision: to sell the Lincoln articles which she kept for thirty-five years. She sold twenty-six articles for $250, but it remains to be known how much she received from the transactions.

In the years following, she moved frequently, but in 1892 she was offered a faculty position at Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts and moved to Ohio. Within a year, she organized a dress exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair. By the late 1890s, she returned to Washington, where she lived in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children (an institution established in part by funds contributed by the Contraband Association that she founded), presumably for health reasons.