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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.
