Mary sought to dispel her husband's backwoods reputation by wearing sumptuous gowns in the very latest fashion, made by her dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly . Although a few journalists gushed approvingly over the decolleté dress of "our fair 'Republican Queen,'" Mary Lincoln was more often criticized for her extravagant or inappropriate dress during the lean war years. (TURNER 113-4) Frances Owens, a Chicago schoolteacher, recorded a Springfield visitor's gossip in her diary:

[She] knows Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln perfectly well and has for years. When they held their first levee at Springfield, after his election, she appeared at 10 am in a white moire antique dress, low necked, with flowers in her hair. Her conduct deserves censure. (OWENS)

Mary Todd Lincoln in 1861 (ICHi-11228).

Keckly established her own business in Washington and soon powerful politicians' wives clamored for her gowns. She employed as many as twenty apprentices in her shop. Keckly was intimately involved with the Lincolns. She attended the sick bed of the Lincoln's dying son Willie, and became Mary's closest confidante. Elizabeth used her influence with the president's wife to solicit relief for contrabands, slaves who had freed themselves by fleeing behind Union military lines; many lacked shelter, jobs, and provisions. Keckly founded a Contraband Relief Association, with support from noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Elizabeth helped Mary dress for special occasions, and groomed the President's hair:

When almost ready to go down to a reception, [Lincoln] would turn to me with a quizzical look: "Well, Madam Elizabeth, will you brush my bristles down tonight?" (KECKLEY 184)

Clara Harris, a senator's daughter, was engaged to marry her stepbrother, Major Henry Rathbone, who had just returned from the war. Clara wrote to a friend:

I have been very intimate with Mrs. Lincoln and the family ever since our mutual residence in Washington, which began at the same time, and we have been constantly in the habit of driving and going to the opera and theater together. It was the only amusement, with the exception of receiving at their own house, in which the President and Mrs. Lincoln were permitted, according to custom, to indulge, and to escape from the crowds who constantly thronged to see them... (GOOD 69)

The Lincolns invited a young couple to join them at the theatre after General Grant and his wife, as well as several other couples, declined their invitation.