A Voice of Healing

A Voice of Healing

Picture the scene. It’s Civil War America. Women have no right to vote. Across the South, Blacks have no rights whatsoever. President Lincoln is assassinated. His widow, Mary Lincoln, is left devastated. To whom does she turn?

To a Black woman.

To Elizabeth Keckley.

In the story of her life Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, Keckley explains, “. . . I have been intimately associated with that lady (Mrs. Lincoln) in the most eventful periods of her life. I have been her confidante . . .”[1]

Given the inauspicious beginnings of Keckley’s life story, her spiritual friendship with Mary Lincoln is staggering. “My life has been an eventful one. I was born a slave—was the child of slave parents—therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action.”[2]

How in the world did a Black woman of that cultural era become confidante to the slain President’s wife? Keckley understood how. “God rules the universe.”[3]

All Silver in Heaven

Like her Savior, Keckley was a woman of sorrow acquainted with grief, and thus able to bring sustaining and healing spiritual care to Mrs. Lincoln. Though enslaved, her first few years were at least spent in the love of her intact family. However, soon her father was sold to another slaver. As Keckley picturesquely recalls it:

“But the golden dream faded all too soon. . . . The announcement fell upon the little circle in that rude log cabin like a thunderbolt. I can remember the scene as if it were but yesterday;—how my father cried out against the cruel separation; his last kiss; his wild straining of my mother to his bosom; the solemn prayer to Heaven; the tears and sobs—the fearful anguish of broken hearts. The last kiss, the last goodbye; and he, my father, was gone, gone forever. . . . The shadow eclipsed the sunshine, and love brought despair. The parting was eternal. The cloud had no silver lining, but I trust that it will be all silver in heaven.”[4]

Years later, through a series of sovereign appointments, Elizabeth Keckley finds herself in the role of dressmaker for the President’s wife. More than that, she finds herself in the role as the President’s wife sacred friend.

A Tornado of Sorrow

Upon the announcement of the President’s death, Mrs. Lincoln was inconsolable. Mrs. Secretary Wells asked Mrs. Lincoln who could comfort her. “Is there no one, Mrs. Lincoln, that you desire to have with you in this terrible affliction?”

Mrs. Lincoln responded, “Yes, send for Elizabeth Keckley. I want her just as soon as she can be brought here.”[5]

Bringing her in, Mrs. Wells excused herself and Keckley was left alone with Mrs. Lincoln. “She was nearly exhausted with grief, and when she became a little quiet, I asked and received permission to go into the Guests’ Room, where the body of the President lay in state.”[6]

Returning to Mrs. Lincoln’s room, Keckley reports:

“I found her in a paroxysm of grief. Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and little Tad was crouched at the foot of the bed with a world of agony in his young face. I shall never forget the scene—the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief over the soul.”[7]

How did Keckley respond? “I bathed Mrs. Lincoln’s head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could. Tad’s grief at his father’s death was as great as the grief of his mother, but her terrible outbursts awed the boy into silence.”[8]

Beyond the Dark, Mysterious Shadows of Death

In those days, of all people, a formerly enslaved Black woman was the one human being on the face of the earth who could comfort the President’s widow! And how? With her empathy. With her silence. With her physical presence. With her loving companionship.

“Every room in the White House was darkened, and every one spoke in subdued tones, and moved about with muffled tread. The very atmosphere breathed of the great sorrow which weighed heavily upon each heart. Mrs. Lincoln never left her room. She denied admittance to almost every one, and I was her only companion, except her children, in the days of her great sorrow.”[9]

Mrs. Lincoln’s testimony says it all. “Lizabeth, you are my best and kindest friend, and I love you as my best friend.”[10]

Elizabeth Keckley not only understood how to offer sustaining comfort. She also recognized how to impart healing hope. “At the grave, at least, we should be permitted to lay our burden down, that a new world, a world of brightness, may open to us. The light that is denied us here should grow into a flood of effulgence beyond the dark, mysterious shadows of death.”[11]

The Voice of the Voiceless

All of us, even the “best trained,” at times feel speechless when face-to-face with a grieving family member. But have we an excuse to remain voiceless?

If a Black woman in Civil War America—the epitome of voicelessness—can soothe the tumult of the President’s widow, can we not find our voice in the Wonderful Counselor? A voice that speaks out of our own melting grief, a voice that speaks with soothing kindness, a voice that speaks of heavenly hope. A courageous voice from a courageous soul set free by the One who calls Himself the Word.

[1]Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Reprinted by the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. xiv.
[2]Ibid., p. 17.
[3]Ibid., p. xii.
[4]Ibid., pp. 22-24.
[5]Ibid., p. 189.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Ibid., pp. 191-192.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid., pp. 192-193.
[10]Ibid., p. 210.
[11]Ibid., p. 24.