Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley's book, Behind the Scenes (1868), is a post-Civil War memoir of her enslavement and subsequent service to the Lincoln family. She published her book not only to raise money for herself but also to help her friend and former employer Mary Todd Lincoln, who had incurred a $70,000 debt while her husband's estate was being probated. Exposing white women's cruelty and complicity in slavery, Keckley described her rape, lack of freedom, loss of family during servitude, her eventual emancipation, and her rise to public acclaim as the dressmaker, or modiste, to Mary Lincoln. In Keckley's memoir the events of her life are contrasted to Mrs. Lincoln's highs and lows, including Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency and Union victory in the Civil War, as well as the deaths of son William and the president and Mary Lincoln's impulsive overspending, disreputable confidantes, scandalous business transactions, and descent into...