In May 1861, Mary Lincoln posed for what was likely her first official portrait as first lady with the highly respected Washington, D.C., photographer Mathew Brady. He would become renowned for stark Civil War battlefield photos. Before that he was known for photographing America’s leaders and well-known figures.
Mary chose a black silk dress embroidered withpurple berries, a white lace collar, and green and purple silk ruffles on the sleeves. Crowning her head, as was the style, was a matching headpiece. The photo and so-called “strawberry dress,” which is rarely displayed due to its fragility, are currently on exhibition at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Was Mary sending a message with her dress, or two or three?
Critics derided the Lincolns, especially Abraham, as country bumpkins from the wild and uncivilized west. Detractors included the press, “many of Lincoln’s political opponents, and southerners,” says Ian Hunt, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum’s chief of acquisitions and special projects. Abe’s habit of telling off-color jokes and his often-unkempt appearance only fueled their prejudice.
While dining at a Manhattan hotel in January 1861 (two months before Lincoln was inaugurated), Mary overheard easterners bashing him, according to Catherine Clinton’s book Mary Lincoln: A Life. They questioned if he could “with any honor, fill the presidential chair? Would his western gaucherie disgrace the nation?” Washington society proved equally judgmental, with women snubbing Mary at her first state dinner.
“Mary was determined to set a high standard and prove her refinement,” wrote Clinton.
One way was to equal or best them in fashion, a key metric of fine society. Mary went on shopping trips to New York and Philadelphia. She interviewed D.C. seamstresses the day after the inauguration. In late 1861, Mary penned two letters to a New York hatmaker to make a headpiece – possibly to match her strawberry dress, according to Hunt. She wrote: “I want it the exact shade of this purple…a little green and gilt would not hurt it…I want a lovely affair…the velvet gracefully twisted…to be made in your handsomest style…without they are of the best and most stylish, I do not want them.”
Fashion wasn’t Mary’s only challenge in the nation’s capital. Because she had married a northerner who frowned on slavery, southern women there considered her a traitor to her native South, where she was born and raised on a slave-owning estate in Lexington, Kentucky. On the other hand, “northern women thought Mary was clearly a spy who had been sent on behalf of the Confederacy to report back,” Hunt says. “She couldn’t win.”
Add to this Mary’s alleged longtime desire to be a president’s wife and her astute political interest and acumen. She advised her husband on politics and policy and wrote letters to peers on his behalf. This was heretical for a good 19th century woman.
Given her circumstances, was the (probably) carefully selected strawberry dress and matching headband Mary’s “up yours” to haters?
“I think it represents her efforts to demonstrate to Washington that she and Mr. Lincoln had ‘arrived,’” says Hunt. “I would hate to simply attribute her intentions solely to overcoming the country bumpkin stigma. She was the first lady, and everyone was to know about that.”
While Hunt thinks Abe wasn’t bothered by the criticism and won over his critics within a couple years, he says Mary never overcame the harsh judgements.
In the end, who knows what Mary was trying to say with her strawberry dress? What we do know is life goes downhill for the Lincolns after May 1861, especially for Mary. The war, first predicted to be short, drags on for four years and splits America in two. When it finally ends, Mary witnesses her husband’s assassination, then loses one of her two remaining sons. Later, she is institutionalized and has a strained relationship with her only surviving son, Robert. She even flees to Europe for a while to escape. She’s never the same.
Maybe the strawberry dress originally represented spite or success, or both, to Mary. Later, it surely represented a happier time.
It is one of a few Mary Lincoln dresses still in existence. She gave it to her family, who passed it down. Wear and tear on the much-repaired dress suggests they “nearly wore it out,” according to a recent ALPLM video about it on YouTube. In 1963, Alvin S. Keys, grandson of Levi O. Todd, the youngest of Mary’s four brothers, presented it to the Illinois State Historical Library.
A Feb. 24, 1963, State Journal-Register article quotes him: “Mrs. Lincoln was very reluctant to have her picture taken. She posed once with her sons, Willie and Tad, and several times in dresses that she particularly liked and that was all.”
You can see the strawberry dress at the ALPLM through April 26 in an exhibit called “Lincoln: A Life and Legacy that Defined a Nation.”
This article appears in April 9-15, 2026.
As usual, the author has written a well researched and informative article citing not only printed contemporary resources but also well respected current printed resources. Quotes from authoritative staff at the ALPLM further enhance and add additional substance to the column. Readers should take time to see the dress as it is quite fragile and it not often on display; it will be well worth it….The cited exhibit is excellent as well.