Behind the Scenes: Formerly a slave, but more recently modiste, and friend to Mrs. Lincoln; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House - Softcover

"Keckley provides a contrast between her life as a slave and her life as freed dressmaker. From her early years to her later friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln, Keckley's life is the pattern of a self-made woman as she buys her own freedom and becomes a friend to one of the most influential couples in history." -- Civil War "[Keckley's] unusual memoir offers a rare view of the formal and informal networks that African Americans established among themselves, as well as an intimate perspective of the Lincoln family... Heavily illustrated with eighty-six photographs." -- Documentary Editing "Lizzie Keckley in those Civil War years was privy to the most intimate conversations of the White House living quarters. You will never find a life of Abraham Lincoln in which her remembrances are not extensively quoted." -- Gene Smith, American Legacy

Written in a conversational, first-person narrative, it is the personal testimony of a woman who went from being a slave, to being the friend and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln during the Civil War, to finally become a proprietor with more than twenty employees of her own, only to spend her last days in a home for the destitute. Possible Sleeper!