The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1897-03-03
LINCOLN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
His Wife n Worthy HeIpmeet in Spite
of Partisan ISLANDERS.

| of Partisan ISLANDERS.
Washington in 1861 was essentially
southern in all it's qualifications. In
politics and social life the capital wa,
decidedly, even aggressively, pro
slavery. Under these conditions the oc,
cupancy of the white house by "black
| republican" president and his wife was
Il peculiarly hateful event to large
| proportion of its society. Society was
in fact, torn up root and branch by the
| impending civil war; every thing was
chaos and had to be reorganized from
| the foundation.
1t was under these adverse circumi
] stances that Mrs. Lincoln became mis-,
| tress of the white house. Every inge
| nuity of malice was resorted to to dig
| credit the new regime. Both the pres
dent and his wife were mercilessly lam
pooned, and yet Mrs. Lincoln was the
peer of any woman in Washington in
education and character, as well as the
| barren ideality' of birth. w. o. Stod-
| dard, one of the private secretaries, and
| keen observer, in his little book, I'm
side the White House in War Times"
says that Mrs. Lincoln was prepared t.
assume leading part. AS her lieutenr
| ant in the official household, he noted
| that she was an authoritative mistress,
| but listened patiently to sensible repre-
sensations, and oftentimes yielded her
| judgment; that her instructions were
given in kindly and vivacious manner;
that she was a pleasant-looking woman
bright, cheerful and almost merry"
sometimes. The servants always spoke
Of her as 1.-The madam" Says Stoddard:
"As you look at her and talk with her
The fact that she has so many enemies
strikes you as one of the moral curl,
osities of this venomous time"
She dressed well, even extravaganza
ly. In her little book, Behind the
Scenes" Mrs. Keckley, who was Mrs,
Lincoln's dressmaker, speaks of having
made Is dresses for her in three or four
months. This authority says no queen
could have comported herself with
more dignity than Mrs. Lincoln at all
public functions.
Yet this woman was stigmatized by a
certain class of Washington society as
low, vulgar and even ignora without
any qualifications for the high station
to which she had been called.
The calumny which wounded her
most deeply was her alleged sympathy
with the rebellion, which had it's sole
foundation in the fact that her Ken
lucky half brothers were confederates,
although she had held no intercourse
with them since her childhood. 1t was
said and believed that she hampered her
husband in every possible way in the
prosecution of the war. In self-protec,
ton she wished Mr.. Stoddard to exam
inc all her correspondence. 1t is certain
that she Loyalty desired the success of
her husband and the great cause he so
ably directed. In a printed letter to
Mrs. Keckley Mrs. Lincoln asserts posi-,
lively that her sympathies were
strongly with the north during tho
war and always. II have never failed to
urge my husband to be an extreme re,
publican" AS Lincoln always con-
suited and relied upon her Judgment, ii
is hardly probable he would have taken
the advanced republican ground against
slavery in his Observation-Disclosures
self speech in 1883 without her approval
which strongly corroborates her claim
-Harper's Magazine.