Julia Boggs Dent Grant: The General's Wife

 

I hold similar frustrations with Ishbel Ross's The General's Wife: The Life of Ulysses S. Grant as I have with previous biographies chronicled in this blog - most notably, that while purporting to be about Julia Grant, it is written as the story of a woman told through the life of her husband, and I learned much more about General, then President, Grant than I did about Mrs. Grant.  

I don't want to dwell on that criticism too long, however, in an effort to accept the book within its larger context. First published in 1959, The General's Wife is written as a traditional biography, chronologically telling the story of its subject with little concern for the more rigorous analytical demands that social movements of the following decades would thrust upon future historians. The author also makes her source base clear in her acknowledgments at the front of the manuscript and points out that Mrs. Grant was "not as zealous a letter writer as General Grant" and that while the Grants' descendants allowed the author access to Mrs. Grant's then-unpublished memoirs, she was "not to draw from it in any way" other than to offer her a "fuller understanding of her character and personality." 

All that being said, the book is full of an astounding amount of detail. What follows are some thoughts, in no particular order, on just a handful that I remember finding interesting while reading: 

• The book spends more time on the Civil War than on any other period in the Grants' lives, including the presidency, so it didn't do much to alter my understanding of Grant as simply the General who led the Union Army to victory and then became President off that popularity. I did, however, find it interesting to learn that Grant never had any real affinity for life in the Army and was not one to seek attention. According to this account, his mother and his wife were the only people who saw his true potential to do great things. 
• The tensions and complications of a marriage between the Union-backing Grants and the Southern-sympathizing and slave-owning Dents were more dramatic than any previous presidential pairing. We don't get a lot on Julia's thoughts or feelings on the subject, and the book is far from a fully fleshed-out analysis of the situation, but the Grant family made its animosity toward the Dents' lifestyle very clear--they did not even attend the wedding because they "abhorred the thought that Ulysses was marrying into a slave-owning family" (pp. 45-46). Julia's father highly disapproved of his son-in-law's Union allegiance, though Julia, apparently, handled it gracefully (p. 117). 
• Yet I was also shocked to learn that General Grant had owned an enslaved person, whom he freed in March 1859, and had "up to that time ... not taken an emphatic stand" on the subject of slavery (p. 96). The General who was essentially leading the Union Amry in its fight to end slavery in the United States even lived with enslaved persons in his camp household during the Civil War when Julia and their children would travel to join him at the front, which they did regularly: 

When Julia joined him briefly in Jackson ... Black Julia, the tiny ginger-colored maid Julia had had from birth, ran away. Grant was relieved. He forbade any attempt to bring her back, and expressed the wish that he could get rid of Julia's two other slaves in the same way. He had often told Auntie Robinson that he 'wanted to give his wife's slaves their freedom as soon as he was able.' (134)

• Julia Grant may not have been as well-read as her husband, but she was more sophisticated than he and was generally well-liked. As First Lady, she handled her social responsibilities with aplomb and came to relish the power and glamour that came with the presidential position - so much so that she tried to convince her husband to seek a third term. 
• I enjoyed reading about the two years the Grants spent traveling the world after the presidency. It was a trip few people will ever experience, even today. Considering they spent much of their early marriage often struggling to find financial success, it must have been an affirming experience to experience so much in such lavish fashion. 
• Part of the reason Julia was not as prolific a correspondent was that she suffered from "a mild case of strabismus" (p. 37), crossed eyes, that caused her some difficulty. It even led her to self-consciously pose in profile in portraits, as seen on the cover of the book (above). I found it sweet, though, that when she contemplated having it surgically corrected, General Grant asked her not to. He wrote:

I don't want to have your eyes fooled with. They are right as they are. They look just as they did the very first time I ever saw them--the same eyes I looked into when I fell in love with you--the same eyes that looked up into mine and told me that my love was returned. I have felt and seen that expression in them through all the years since then, and I don't want it changed now. This operation might make you look better to other people; but to me you are prettier as you are--as you were when I first saw you. (p. 221)

• Overall, Julia and Ulysses had a marriage of true love built on mutual respect and support. I think the last few paragraphs of Ross's book provide a good summation of what a more interpretive manuscript could have been developed around, had it been intended to be such: 

    None could question the fact that Julia had lived a rich and purposeful life. In her own quiet way she had made herself one of the more portent women in American history. She was not conspicuous in her generation, since she was neither a beauty nor scholar, a siren nor a politician. Her prosaic exterior gave no clue to the bright flame that Julia harbored, to the humor and warmth that infused her generous nature. She was always content to take a back seat and let Ulysses hold the reins, but behind her impulsive manner, her contradictions and her lenient ways, was the optimistic spirit that served him best in moments of crisis and discouragement. 

     Much wisdom underlay her air of simplicity in the closing years of her life. No American woman of her generation had traveled farther or met more famous people than Julia Grant. She had seen much of war, the world and the ways of government. At the end she had countless friends and few enemies. Above all, she had shared with unerring instinct the mixed fortunes of General Grant. Her faith in him was like a charm throughout his life. His love for her was a shield against destruction. (pp. 334-335)

Finally, the Grants moved around a lot, and I was surprised to learn that they spent some time living in Detroit. I might have to spend some time looking into whether any Grant-related buildings or markers still exist in the area. 

My Absence Explained

As I log back into my Blogger account for the first time in a long while, I see that I only managed a single post last year. The publication date for the entry, February 19, 2023, explains everything about the lack of further blog productivity to me, though perhaps not to my readers. 

You see, while life was calm enough in the weeks leading up to that blog post, the weeks after were some of the roughest of my life to this point. Without getting into details, several days after publishing my last blog post, I temporarily relocated to my home state to be with family as my younger brother was admitted to hospice care. He was gone in a couple of weeks, and I stuck around a little longer to help with everything that comes along with the death of a family member. 

The year and months since then have, for sure, included many moments from mundane to momentous. In addition to work and everyday living, traditional family gatherings and yearly celebrations, and keeping up with the shitshow of current world events, my husband and I celebrated 5 years of marriage with a trip to Jamaica, traveled through Spain, and experienced the total solar eclipse in Texas (and enjoyed the blue bonnets that Lady Bird Johnson played such a part in preserving and popularizing). We lost my mother-in-law to ALS and a sister-in-law to divorce, welcomed three new cats into our home (technically adopted two in January 2023 and cat-sat another for a few months later in the year), got to meet a celebrity (for whom one of those cats is named), dealt with water in our basement on more than one occasion, and are still dealing with the aftermath of putting in a (hopefully) permanent water abatement system. Amidst all that grief, mourning, celebrating, travel planning, cat caring, and crisis response, let's just say there was little desire to spend my time reading and writing about First Ladies. 

I finally decided last month that it was time to get back into the project, and I finished a biography of First Lady Grant last week. I hope to complete a blog post about it in the next few days. I knew absolutely nothing about Mrs. Grant going in, and while I don't know if I learned all that much about her 300+ pages later, I gathered (and remember) enough to write up some thoughts. 

Until then happy Father's Day, and (at the risk of sounding overly sappy) if you have a brother, tell him you love him. 

Eliza McCardle Johnson: A First Lady Still Unknown

Image from thriftbooks.com

Eliza Johnson: Unknown First Lady by Jean Choate is so poorly written I almost regret reading it. But it is the only full-length biography about the wife of Andrew Johnson not written for children that I could find. I learned almost nothing about Eliza Johnson, and what I read was so poorly punctuated, grammatically incorrect, and inconsistently cited that I did not know what to believe as fact versus historical conjecture. There is at least one grammar or punctuation error on every single page; most pages have multiple. I do not know how the book ever got published, as it clearly did not have a proper editor. There is also no way this book could have been peer-reviewed, as the footnoting situation is egregiously sub-par and confusing. In most of the instances when I was expecting to find a primary citation, it was secondary (and often incomplete or poorly punctuated), and on nearly all the occasions that some action, thought, or feeling was attributed directly to Eliza Johnson, there is no citation at all. On page 70, the author literally makes up an entire conversation between Andrew and Eliza, no citation whatsoever. Choate frequently writes that Eliza “knew” this or “thought” that or felt a particular way while providing no evidence to support those claims other than, seemingly, the general knowledge (dare I say stereotype) of how a typical woman in the nineteenth century might have lived and reacted. (Indeed, in this book, what is described is almost always a reaction on Eliza’s part rather than an action.) 

It is only on page 79 (of 154) that a footnote informs the reader that the letter cited, to Major General Kerby Smith from Eliza Johnson, refusing to comply with an 1862 order to leave her home in Confederate Tennessee, is “one of the few letters in existence which bears Eliza Johnson’s signature.” And a footnote on page 84 points out that the 1863 letter cited, from Andrew to Eliza, is “the only letter between the two that has been found thus far.” Had this been a proper historical biography, the author would have addressed that lack of source material about one’s subject in the introduction. Moreover, it takes a very talented, diligent, determined, and well-trained historian to overcome that limitation, critically analyzing all the source material surrounding your specific subject – searching for her and her circumstances in tangentially related primary collections and creatively utilizing secondary literature to provide “thick description” and fully place her within the historical context. Ms. Choate is not that historian. 

As such, the book is yet another purported biography of a woman that is actually just a shallow glimpse at her life as told through the story of her husband. With few exceptions, all the details and specifics as well as any substantial actions are attributed to Andrew Johnson, while Eliza Johnson is merely said to be making a home with him, worrying for him, or reading the news about him. To offer just one example of the many missed opportunities for true historical analysis of Eliza Johnson’s life and actions: The author tells me on page 109 that “Eliza also received letters from people asking that she pass on the message to the president” and that “Possibly they felt that she would influence the President to support their cause.” That’s it. End of paragraph, end of discussion. There is no citation offered and Choate goes into no further detail or exploration of that possible influence. The causes they were writing to her about, the messages she might have been passing on, and how she might have addressed them with her husband is exactly the type of stuff an interpretive historical biography would have expounded upon.

One of the only interesting things I learned about this First Lady is that she had more formal education than her husband. There is a brief mention very early on in the book about Eliza writing out old letters for Andrew to copy to improve his handwriting and reading aloud while Andrew, working as a tailor, sewed suits. The author writes, “Because she had so much more education than he, she could begin to open up new worlds for him” but quickly moves on from there to discuss Andew’s tailoring business and offers no further exploration of that dynamic within their marriage (p. 11). The rest of the book, while repeatedly pointing out that Eliza followed the national news and debates - indeed, read and clipped news articles related to her husband and his political pursuits - provides no critical or detailed analysis of how this president’s more formally educated wife would have most certainly had an influence on his politics and policies other than to say she would have been proud of or worried by his decisions and actions. An interpretive, overarching thesis about how Eliza lived her life would have improved this book dramatically, even if it was one to say that she chose to live a life grounded in frontier traditions and did not stray far from “traditional” female mores of the time. As written, the book does not strongly support or refute such a thesis but perhaps suggests it. 

There is so much more criticism that could be laid out against this book, not least of which would include its clumsy attempt at addressing the complications of the Johnsons’ politics as a southern, slave-owning family supporting the Union cause during the Civil War. I will not go into the details here. But if there are any talented historians of the Civil War era out there reading this, I would encourage you to see what you can do to make this “Unknown First Lady” better known. 

On a side note, I learned through reading this book that Eliza had tuberculosis (TB) and found it fascinating that she seemingly lived with it for an extended period of time, including during her husband’s presidency and after. I think it would be interesting to further explore Eliza’s TB and its effect on her role as a politician’s wife. It is made clear in the book that Eliza often stayed in Tennessee while Andrew was in Washington or cloistered in her room on the second floor of the White House and that she deferred to her daughter Martha when it came to the social responsibilities of the First Lady. Yet Choate also says that Eliza was often visited by family and others and was “the center of the household” (p. 102), so not completely devoid of energy. Furthermore, Eliza lived to be 65 years old, a relatively long life for the time, and she lived with tuberculosis for a good portion of her later life. Choate claims that Eliza “quite possibly” developed TB around 42 years of age (p. 36); that’s more than 20 years living with this chronic condition. I think it would be interesting to place her within a larger study of tuberculosis in the nineteenth century, how people lived with it and how it was perceived within larger society.   

Mary Todd Lincoln: A Complicated Life full of Grief

My knowledge of Mary Lincoln was limited to fictionalized accounts based on historical events: Lincoln, the Steven Spielberg film from 2012, and Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, the 2013 novel by Jennifer Chiaverini. Both of those focus on main characters close to Mary Lincoln, rather than on her specifically, so reading Catherine Clinton’s Mrs. Lincoln: A Life was my first exposure to a work distinctly about the former First Lady.

Amazon.com

It offered a well-rounded look at Mary Lincoln’s, and makes its own arguments around popular historical controversies such as Abraham Lincoln’s sexual orientation and Mary Lincoln’s mental health. Clinton comes down too strongly on the sides of definitely not homosexual and certainly of sound mind, respectively, for my liking, but I appreciate her attempts to address the historiographies.  

What I was struck by most in reading the manuscript was how difficult the Civil War must have been for Mary on a personal level. I never knew she grew up essentially as Kentucky gentry, meaning she had family members supporting, fighting, and dying for the Confederacy while she unfailingly supported her husband as President of the Union. Amidst horrible and often unfounded criticism in the press, Mary insisted on publicly supporting the Union cause, often traveling to the front lines and military hospitals to be with Union troops, all while personally mourning family losses to the Confederate cause, including half-brothers and a brother in-in-law, on top of mourning the tragic loss of her young son to illness early in the war years. It made me think about how someone’s personal experience with controversy can be much more complicated than anyone on the outside may truly understand.  

While death was much more a part of everyday life in the 19th Century than we of the 21st will ever truly understand, the compounding losses that Mary Lincoln experienced seem especially tragic – three sons dying before the age of twenty and a husband assassinated. Assuming she abided by strict Victorian mourning rituals, she would have spent a significant fraction of her life post-1850 in mourning garb, and the fact that she managed to rack up such high debts accumulating fabrics and other fashionable accoutrements is even more of an astonishing feat. Was it a symptom of undiagnosed bipolar disorder? Who am I to speculate? But I agree with recent arguments for a more complex understanding of how her prolonged grief may have affected her mental state or the public’s perception of it: Why Historians Should Reevaluate Mary Todd Lincoln's Oft-Misunderstood Grief | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine. 

On a side note, I never before stopped to consider Mary Todd Lincoln’s maiden name, which she shared with another prominent former First Lady, Dolley Madison, making them distant kin by marriage. I was reminded of the name during a trip to Philadelphia back in April, when we were able to view the Dolley Todd House. Unfortunately, the home has been closed since COVID, and we were unable to go on a tour, but here are a few photographs:

  

A Return: Harriet Lane Johnston

Image taken from Amazon.com

Just as Harriet Lane brought enthusiasm back to White House entertaining after its hiatus under Jane Pierce, her story also brings me back to blogging after the pandemic temporarily stalled interlibrary loan operations. Unfortunately, Milton Stern did not teach me all that much about the niece of President James Buchanan. 

I learned pretty much everything there was to know about "America's First Lady" from reading the preface and first chapter of Stern's book: Harriet Lane was the first woman to be referred to as First Lady, supposedly the "most admired woman of her time," a fashion trend-setter, a constant presence at events of the Washington social seasons even after her time in the White House, and generous to the city of Washington in her final bequests. 

Stern claims that he spent one third of his previous book, America's Bachelor President and the First Lady, on Harriet Lane but that there was enough in the research to devote a second book to her. Having now read that second book, I'm not sure I agree and wonder whether I should have read the first book instead. Harriet Lane, America's First Lady is a slim volume at 207 total pages, and only 104 of those pages are devoted to the actual story he is trying to tell. (More than 4 of those 104 pages simply contain a bulleted list of "selections from the society pages," used to offer an idea of events Mrs. Lane Johnston attended from 1888-1902.) The remaining 103 pages of the book include photographs, endnotes, a timeline of significant historical events from 1786-1861, the full text of select correspondence of James Buchanan and Harriet Lane Johnston, and the full text of both their the wills. (Oh, had I been able to just type out the text of the primary sources I used in developing my dissertation and call it a "book.") 

Rather than taking the time to do thorough primary and secondary research that would place Harriet Lane Johnston fully in the social and cultural context of her time and interrogate her life as a woman of means in a highly public role as compared to the societal expectations of women at the time, Stern spends at least half of his short text talking about the life of James Buchanan and the historical events that influenced his time in public service and as president. He literally spends two entire pages explaining the Dred Scott decision, which he later easily summarizes in two sentences in Annex A, titled The Effects of United States History on Harriet Lane's Seating Arrangements. His book would have been much more interesting had he actually attempted to explain how U.S. history affected Harriet Lane as she was busy making seating arrangements for high-profile, powerful men.  

I suppose it was interesting to learn that Ms. Lane had become close with Queen Victoria while accompanying her uncle during his appointment as Minister to the Court of St. James in England during the 1850s and that she later, as First Lady, prepared the social program for the U.S. visit of the Prince of Wales and also organized a successful state dinner for Japanese royalty. But the 19 pages devoted to her time as First Lady were riddled with overly long block quotes from primary sources and spent more space describing the exploits of Prince Edward than they did talking about Ms. Lane. It also left me wondering if Prince Edward and the dignitaries from Japan were the only significant guests she organized entertainment for, foreign or otherwise (assumedly not). 

In fact, the most successful parts of this book are the few sections that fictionalize brief moments in the life of Harriet Lane Johnston. The prose reads more smoothly and we get more insight into the inner thoughts of Harriet on her prominent role in Washington society. Perhaps it just goes to show that Stern, a writer, editor, and novelist, should consider writing historical fiction, leaving the history writing to professional historians who are more versed in the art of research and interpretation. Stern points out that "Most of Buchanan's personal correspondence was destroyed in a New York warehouse fire in the early 1900s," but he does not fully address what source material exists to tell the story of Harriet Lane Johnston. Perhaps one day a historian will delve deep into the Harriet Lane Papers at the Library of Congress and other relevant collections, integrate them with a thorough historiographical understanding of American history, and take up the challenge of writing a true, interpretive biography of "America's First Lady," one that devotes more time to her than to her uncle and the men surrounding her. In the meantime, I may have to seek out Stern's first book on Buchanan and Lane to see if I can learn more. 

Jane Means Appleton Pierce: Introversion and Tragedy

image taken from goodreads.com

To learn about the wife of President Franklin Pierce, I read Ann Covell’s Jane Means Appleton Pierce: U.S. First Lady (1853-1857): Her Family, Life, and Times. More than half the book was devoted to telling the story of Jane’s immediate family and ancestors plus the story of Franklin Pierce. The set-up made the book a bit repetitious, but it also allowed the reader to glean an understanding of, as the title says, the life and time of this reluctant First Lady.  

Jane Appleton was a well-educated, shy young lady, who frequently suffered from physical illness. The author speculates that her shyness and introversion were related to her being a middle child and that her frequent illness might have been the result of anorexia, depression, or both. Despite these challenges and the disapproval of her family to their daughter marrying the son of a former tavern owner (before becoming Governor of New Hampshire), Jane Appleton and Franklin Pierce were married in 1834. Over the next 19 years, before the Presidency, their marriage was a series of ups and downs, filled with the stresses of Washington, the calm of Concord, and multiple tragic family deaths, including two young sons.  

Jane Pierce with son Benny c. 1850
image from wikimedia commons

Jane was always happiest when Franklin was retired from the Congressional life, and when he won the Presidential nomination, after assuring his wife it was entirely unlikely, their marriage was seriously challenged. Even more so when he won the Presidency. Yet, the most tragic challenge to their domestic life was when their third young son died in a tragic train accident just weeks before President Pierce’s inauguration. Two years of self-imposed mourning put a major damper on the often lively social scene of the White House, as First Lady responsibilities were taken over by Abigail Kent Means (the wife of Jane’s uncle), whose main concern was caring for her niece and friend. Jane spent her personal time in the White House by herself or with family and largely secluded from the President. After those first two years, Jane dutifully attended the necessary social events, but the role of First Lady proved tiresome for introverted Jane.  

A three-year tour of Europe after President Pierce’s single term proved to be the happiest and most relaxed time for both Franklin and Jane. Upon return to Concord, Jane again became depressive and her health deteriorated. She died of tuberculosis in 1862.  

Abigail Powers Fillmore: A teacher and accidental First Lady

Image from: https://issuu.com/wintersking74/docs/080508715x-millard_fillmore_by_paul

Written by law professor Paul Finkelman, Millard Fillmore, in The American President series, focuses much less on the life of Fillmore himself and more on a political and legal analysis of what got him into the office of Vice President in the first place and his policy decisions once President that the author argues would pave the way for Civil War in the long-term and in the short-term prevent Fillmore’s outright election to a term as President. Finkelman spends a large chunk of the middle section of the book discussing the machinations of the Compromise of 1850 and how it was in no way a real compromise and then repetitiously reminding us of Fillmore’s aggressive implementation of the Fugitive Slave Act that was part of that “Compromise.”  

image from:
 http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=14

We are only offered a few small pieces of information about Fillmore’s wife and family. Fillmore came from a poor family in central New York. He was almost entirely self-taught, but met his future wife while briefly enrolled in a local academy. Abigail Powers was a teacher at the school. “She was two years his senior, the daughter of a deceased Baptist minister and the sister of a local judge. Abigail was well read and as sophisticated as one could become at the time in a tiny town in rural central New York” (4-5). Millard and Abigail married in February 1826. Abigail continued teaching for two years after their marriage, making her “the only first lady before the twentieth century to have worked outside the home after marriage” (10). As Finkelman points out, “Her employment after marriage also suggests that while Fillmore was rising in his profession [law], he was hardly economically secure at this time” (10). Abigail remained in Buffalo for much of her husband’s vice presidency. The book says that after Fillmore moved into the White House as President in July 1850, “in the fall Abigail, who had last visited her husband in March, returned to Washington” (72). We learn nothing else about Abigail during her time as First Lady except that either she or her husband started the White House library, and the Fillmore family was personally involved in ordering books (96). Abigail Fillmore died less than a month after President Fillmore left office and their daughter, Mary Abigail, died in July 1854. Finkelman tells us when mentioning her death that Mary Abigail “often served as the official hostess in the White House” (131-32), but we learn nothing else about life in the White House or any other details of the personal lives of the Millard family.  

While reading this book, I was most struck by how much Millard Fillmore seems to have had in common with our current president. While significant differences are that Fillmore did not come from a wealthy family and was a largely self-educated, voracious reader, both Fillmore and 45 had, respectively, little to no political experience and unexpectedly gained their nominations. Each fumbled his way through most of his time in high office – making costly mistakes and lacking any real backbone and leadership abilities in cases where it might have actually been beneficial to himself or the country. At the same time, each proved stubborn in obsessively enforcing unfair and potentially damaging policy and let his fear of outsiders and disregard for the most vulnerable populations dictate his policy and campaigns. And similar to what seems to be the trajectory of the current administration, Millard Fillmore’s “leadership, or lack thereof, did little to either solve the nation’s problems or reduce its tensions. Indeed, his presidency exacerbated both” (4). I’ll let the reader consult Finkelman's book or other research for details and to make their own determination in this regard, but consider this: When Fillmore ran for president again in 1856, he did so under the nomination of the American Party (also known as the Know-Nothing Party) whose slogan was “Americans Must Rule America.” Sound at all familiar?