First Ladies (14 page)

Martha Johnson Patterson, who substituted for her mother at the president's table, could rely on the country's preference for youth to protect her from criticism. The Johnson daughter immediately disarmed potential detractors by announcing, “We are plain folks from Tennessee, called here by a national calamity. I hope not too much will be expected of us.”
¹⁰⁶
Then to lend credence to her claim, she covered the worn White House carpets with simple muslin and installed two Jersey cows on the lawn to provide fresh milk and butter. In an older woman, such decisions might have prompted ridicule or charges of bumpkin roughness, but in a younger woman, they apparently seemed refreshing. Margaret heard her sister and herself praised as assets to their father, “frank and unostentatious … [in a manner that has] gained for them the respect of all visitors.”
¹⁰⁷

In 1868, the Johnson family found themselves in the unwelcome glare of the first presidential impeachment trial in American history. The House of Representatives, in a show of their own strength and their disapproval of the president's handling of a defeated South, had charged him with “high crimes and misdemeanors.” For three months
while the Senate tried the case, people flocked to witness the proceedings as though it were a carnival show rather than a national trial. Kate Chase, whose father presided as chief justice, appeared each day to watch his performance, while others competed for tickets to see her, one of the city's most popular young belles.

The Johnson women remained in the White House—the president's daughters keeping up a regular social schedule and Eliza staying upstairs and out of sight.
¹⁰⁸
Each evening, a steward, delegated to attend the proceedings, reported on the day's events. Except for that contact, the Johnsons feigned disinterest in the trial. When acquittal came (by the margin of a single vote), Eliza insisted that she had correctly predicted her husband's vindication.

Several of the accounts of Eliza Johnson's life raise questions about whether or not she was physically able to assume a more active public role in the White House. Her grandchildren evidently enjoyed her company, and according to one witness they ran to her room as soon as they finished their lessons—hardly evidence that she was incapacitated. Often described as fragile or frail but never uncommunicative or disabled, she remained central to the family's life in the White House. After leaving Washington, she outlived her husband, and, when he died in 1875, she appeared healthy enough to have herself appointed his executrix under bond set at $200,000.
¹⁰⁹

Any conclusions about Eliza Johnson, however, are bound to be speculative because so little information remains. Her prospective biographer, Margaret Blanton, abandoned the project after years of work because she thought the subject impossible to know. Except for Eliza's loyalty to her husband, which was unquestioned, nothing was clear. “In the end I did not know,” Blanton wrote, “whether she loved Andrew or hated him.”
¹¹⁰

Blanton did not definitely conclude that Eliza Johnson withdrew behind explanations of illness to avoid unwanted social duties. But Blanton did judge the entire Johnson family “not very clever [and] put in a position to which they were unequal.”
¹¹¹
If that is true and Eliza remained a frontier woman, pushed by circumstances far beyond her accustomed setting, then it is not surprising that she looked for an escape. By making herself invisible for four years, she avoided criticism. The country's acceptance of youthful substitutes provided a way out.

Illness as a permanent condition of First Ladies disappears with Eliza Johnson's departure from Washington in 1869 (except for Ida McKinley, who came to the White House much later). Other presidents' wives suffered serious and debilitating sicknesses but
they remained inactive only temporarily. Helen Taft, after her stroke in 1909, delegated official responsibilities to her daughter and sister for much of the next year but then returned to resume a full and active role in Washington life. Florence Harding (1921–1923) and Lou Hoover (1929–1933) both suffered serious illnesses during their husbands' administrations but kept full schedules. Betty Ford (1974–1977) underwent surgery and chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer but continued to make public appearances.

Nineteenth-century America's tolerance—indeed, solicitous sympathy—for women's withdrawal into illness and grief gave presidents' wives a convenient exit from what had become onerous, often unpleasant responsibilities. No written rules dictated the activities of White House chatelaines, leaving them free to react to public attitudes as well as to express their own frustrations and needs. Women who were bored by the role of hostess that so many of their predecessors had taken had another choice. Rather than face judgment by the “cave dwellers,” they could take to their beds and install a young ingénue in their place, confident that any social lapses of the substitute would be tolerated and charged to inexperience.

Some exceptions (Sarah Polk and Mary Lincoln) broke the pattern, and they will be considered next. But for the most part, mid-nineteenth century America witnessed few mature or strong First Ladies. Youthful surrogates became a tradition because they evidently fit in with prevailing ideas about femininity—womanliness could be exemplified in obsequious, smiling mannequins who showed little evidence of thinking for themselves.

MOST HISTORICAL PATTERNS EXPOSE
an exception—a conspicuous deviation from an otherwise straight, clear line. Presidents' wives are no different; and if in the middle half of the nineteenth century most preferred anonymity to exploring new possibilities in the job, a minority achieved prominence. Sarah Childress Polk (1845–1849) eschewed domestic details so that she could maintain a close working relationship with her husband. Mary Todd Lincoln (1861–1865) left observers unsure about whether or not she had any influence on important decisions, so that merchants, intent on catering to her, permitted her to run up enormous bills. Julia Dent Grant's activities (1869–1877) and those of her children received enough attention to qualify the Grants as the first “star” family in the White House. The three women totaled only a bit more than sixteen years in the White House, but they stand out in sharp contrast to the faceless First Ladies who preceded them.

All three had especially good educations for women of their time and place. The schooling itself was not so important, but it may have encouraged the women and those whom they encountered to give special weight to their judgments. Sarah Polk and Mary Lincoln had a long time to prepare for the White House. Their husbands had spent their entire adult lives in politics, and Mary Lincoln had never concealed her lifelong ambition to reach the top. That infatuation with the limelight and an acceptance of the careers their husbands had chosen characterize all three women.

In their forties when their husbands took on the presidency, the three exceptions may simply have had more energy than their older counterparts. At forty-one, Sarah was almost as young as Dolley Madison had been at her husband's inauguration. After James Polk had
delivered his speech to a “large assemblage of umbrellas,”
¹
Sarah had accepted the Bible used in the ceremony, tucked away a souvenir fan with its pictures of the first ten presidents, and ridden up Pennsylvania Avenue with her friends. The custom had not yet developed for the president's wife to accompany him to the White House, but in Sarah's case it would have been appropriate since she had played an important part in the career that took him there.

That Sarah Polk figured prominently in James's rise to power is less difficult to prove than the reasons, but from the beginning of their marriage she showed a mind of her own. On their wedding trip, following the nuptials on New Year's Day, 1824, Sarah impressed her husband's relatives as “display[ing] a great deal of spice and more independence of judgment than was fitting in one woman.”
²
She might have been expected to defer to James, who was eight years her senior and a graduate of the University of North Carolina, but she showed little evidence of doing so.

Partly pampered and partly pushed into self-confidence, Sarah Childress Polk had grown up in very comfortable circumstances. Her parents, prosperous Tennessee planters and tavern keepers, had provided particularly good schooling for their children. In Sarah's case that meant beginning with a tutor at home, then continuing at a Nashville girls' school before enrolling at thirteen in the best girls' school in the South. Salem Female Academy in North Carolina, founded by Moravians who put great importance on girls' education, eventually drew students from all over the Eastern Seaboard.
³
When its reputation reached Tennessee, Sarah and her younger sister rode 200 miles on horseback to enroll. In addition to the usual academic subjects, the girls had to improve their needlepoint, practice the piano, and assist in cleaning the dormitory—all part of preparing them for assuming wifely responsibilities in adulthood. Sarah's stay at this exceptional school ended after less than a year when her father died and she was called home, but it is clear from her later statements and decisions that the academic part of Salem's program interested her far more than the domestic part.

From the very beginning of her marriage, Sarah Polk considered household tasks a peripheral part of being a wife, and if forced to choose between domestic chores and spending time with her husband, she almost always chose the latter. During the first year of James's term in Congress she remained in Tennessee, but the next session she accompanied him to Washington. In the style of the time, the Polks boarded—so Sarah had few housekeeping duties. James reportedly supported his wife's view of her role, because she explained
that she had volunteered to stay in Tennessee and take care of the house but that he had chided her, “Why? If it burns down, we can live without it.”
⁴

With that kind of endorsement, Sarah evidently felt comfortable fitting herself into her husband's career. Whenever she could help him, she was there. Her skills as a hostess took on new importance as James became a more central figure in the capital. Under Andrew Jackson's protection, he was chosen Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations and then Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1835. Rather than objecting to the inconvenience of dividing her life between two places, Sarah concentrated on the advantages of seeing the world beyond Tennessee. A detour to New York City or a stop in Pennsylvania to make political calls interested her as much as it did James. Physical danger in the form of overturned carriages and swollen streams failed to deter her.

When her presence in Washington might have complicated matters for James, as during the Peggy Eaton episode, she remained in Tennessee, offering vague explanations about wanting to economize. Her real motive was no doubt more political. She had every reason to want to avoid taking a position in favor of Peggy or against her. Peggy's husband, John Eaton, was a favorite of President Jackson but her own reputation, clouded by rumors of an affair with John while she was still married to another man, upset many of his colleagues and prompted their wives to refuse to socialize with her. Not until John Eaton left the cabinet in 1831 did the matter resolve itself and even then, harsh words, exchanged in anger, continued to echo and affect political careers.

Sarah Polk is sometimes credited with participating in her husband's career almost by default “because she had no children.”
⁵
Congressmen's wives frequently complained about the difficulties of boarding a family in the capital; and if Sarah had been responsible for young children, she might have resisted moving them back and forth between Tennessee and Washington. But she remained childless throughout her twenty-five-year marriage. Unlike Rachel Jackson, who was evidently attracted to young people and surrounded herself with nieces and nephews to compensate for the children she never had, Sarah showed little feeling of loss in the letters she wrote.

They show, instead, overwhelming concern with her husband's health and his political career. Because the Polks were not often separated, their correspondence is not so voluminous as that of John and Abigail Adams. Many of the letters were written during campaigns, since the mores of her time did not permit a candidate's wife to
campaign openly, and while James was out electioneering, Sarah had to content herself with reporting to him on local political maneuverings. She frequently began her letters with “nothing to report,” but then always managed to find something. When the newspapers criticized James, with one editorial pouring out “a vial of wrath” against him, she passed the word along but predicted that the attack had “Too much of a flourish” to continue for long.
⁶
After the
Knoxville Argus
forecast an increased Democratic vote all over the state, “even in the strong Whig counties,”
⁷
Sarah wrote to James with a touch of glee, “The Whigs are dispirited. Good … Democrats are in extacies [
sic
].”
⁸

While her husband went out looking for votes, Sarah worked quietly at home to promote “union and harmony [to] get … our own sort of men [elected].”
⁹
She did not always achieve the results she wanted, and once, after summoning politicos for a conference, she complained to James that she had accomplished little because many of the important men were out of town and “I have not much to opperate [
sic
] on.”
¹⁰
She almost always included in her letters to James an admonition that he pay attention to his health. “It is only the hope that you can live through [the campaign] that gives me a prospect of enjoyment,” she wrote in 1843 when he was running again for governor. “Let me beg and pray that you will take care of yourself and do not become to [
sic
] much excited.”
¹¹