Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin coined the term “Team of Rivals” to describe President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, but that was not the only team that Lincoln employed during the Civil War—virtually unknown was his “Team of Mediums.” While it is well known that Mary Lincoln frequently attended Spiritualist séances while living in the White House, historians have insisted that President Lincoln only attended a few séances in an attempt to humor and protect his mentally unstable wife. This narrative is incorrect. Following the death of their beloved son Willie President Abraham Lincoln and his wife became actively involved in the Spiritualist movement and formed friendships with the trance medium Nettie Colburn. Born in upstate New York in 1841 Nettie Colburn first discovered that she was a Spiritualist medium following a childhood illness. Having developed her talent as trance medium, Nettie left home and traveled the country as a successful Spiritualist lecturer, one of the fe...

"I was born a slave - - was a child of slave parents - - therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action." Elizabeth Keckly While looking through my huge pile of research books while preparing this month's series on Presidential scandals, I discovered that I had an advance reader's coppy of Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly that had been given to me by an old friend who has since passed away. Curiously I picked it up and began reading. While Lincoln has long been one of my favorite presidents, I didn't know a great deal about Mary Lincoln apart from the fact that like Lincoln, she was born in Kentucky, and her son had her committed to an asylum several years after Lincoln's death (dramatized in the play, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln). What intrigued me about the book was that it was a dual biography of Mary Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckly, the freed slave who became Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker and her closest friend. I had never heard of...