 Show Unlike the President, the role of the First Lady is not addressed in the Constitution. Both the role of the Presidential spouse and the title have shifted and formalized over the history of the United States. The spouse of the President is not elected to serve and yet, because the White House is both the residence and the office of the President, public service is inherent to the role. Traditionally, the spouse of the President served as the hostess and was in charge of all things domestic; but that role has evolved. Beyond defining the role of First Lady, even counting them is difficult as others besides the spouses of the Presidents filled the role of White House hostess, particularly in the 19th century. Widowers, bachelors, and others would call upon surrogates to fill the role when a spouse was unavailable -- a role that itself is a social surrogate for many of the ceremonial functions of the Presidency. When President George Washington was elected, the public, still steeped in the British culture surrounding royalty and aristocracy, referred to his wife Martha as "Lady Washington" as a sign of respect. This tradition stuck and both Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison were referred to as "Lady Adams" and "Lady Madison" respectively. Since Thomas Jefferson was a widower by the time he was elected, and James Madison was his Secretary of State, Dolley Madison took on the role of White House Hostess when Jefferson’s daughter was not available. When her husband became President, Dolley was able to seamlessly transition into the role of First Lady, as she had already been performing the duties. She was renowned for her excellent dinners and the ability to bring opposing political players together. Because of this, Mrs. Madison is often pointed to as a model spouse, capable of handling the domestic and ceremonial roles of the Presidency while also influencing policy and politics -- all while not overstepping the social and political boundaries of the time. At her funeral in 1848, President Zachary Taylor eulogized her as the "first lady of our land," bringing us a step closer to the current term for the Presidential spouse. Even at this time, the term “lady” was problematic as it connoted the royal stratification of England that this fledgling democracy had rebelled against. The First Ladies themselves often did not like being called “lady,” even into the 20th and 21st centuries. Jackie Kennedy famously quipped that it sounded like the name of a prized race horse. Other terms, such as “Presidentress” and “Mrs. President” were used early on. Both terms worked when the woman filling the role of White House Hostess was the spouse of the President, but came up short in describing bachelor James Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane. To remedy the problem, Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper used the term “First Lady of the White House” to describe her. This was the first time that the term First Lady was seen in print. The term has stuck ever since. Her Role
Mrs. Laura Bush and Mrs. Nancy Reagan appeared at The Heart Truth's First Ladies Red Dress Collection exhibit opening at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. on May 12, 2005. (P44867-138) First Ladies were often the most famous women in America, and were able to influence, or at least were perceived to be able to influence, the President. Due to their position and proximity, proponents of causes would implore First Ladies for their aid and assistance, sometimes successful in finding a champion. Harriet Lane took an interest in the needs of Native Americans. Mary Todd Lincoln advocated education, employment, and housing opportunities for freed slaves. Helen Taft inspected unsafe working conditions and used her influence to get health and safety laws passed. As the role of the First Lady as both an advocate and a ceremonial replacement for the President continued to grow, Edith Roosevelt became the first to have a federally-hired social secretary. Lou Hoover then hired additional secretaries with her own funds, growing the staff of the First Lady. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first to have a personal secretary, in addition to social and administrative secretaries. Jackie Kennedy hired the first press secretary. Soon appointments secretaries, speech writers, and with Rosalyn Carter, a Chief of Staff came on board, filling out a full staff to support the First Ladies’ projects and initiatives, as well as duties she performed on behalf of the President. Like their 19th century counterparts, 20th century First Ladies sponsored national and international causes such as environmentalism, volunteerism, women’s rights, literacy, and treatment for drug dependency. Laura Bush worked to further libraries, education, and the National Parks, while Michelle Obama worked to counter childhood obesity through healthy eating and exercise. Often these causes are interwoven into the ceremonial functions of the White House, such as themed Christmas decorations under Mrs. Bush, or a ‘Let’s Go, Let’s Play, Let’s Move’ Easter Egg Roll under Mrs. Obama.
On March 30, 2005, First Lady Laura Bush met a group of Afghan girls during a visit to Kabul (P44656-322). The American public has also been fascinated with the First Ladies as trendsetters in style, fashion, entertaining, and home design. After Frances Folsom Cleveland married President Cleveland in June 1886, women imitated her hairstyle and advertisers used her image to sell products. Mamie Eisenhower was named by the Dress Institute as one of the 12 Best Dressed Women in America in 1952. She was lauded for her use of color coordination and matching accessories, which then began to be imitated across the country. Jackie Kennedy worked to historically preserve the White House and her special tours of the House were televised. She was also considered extremely fashionable and her style is still imitated today. Nancy Reagan was known for her signature color red, which appeared in the White House China service and in her wardrobe. Inaugural gowns have been a popular fascination spanning the centuries and many are held preserved in the Smithsonian. What a First Lady wore to inauguration often set the tone for that social season in Washington even going back to the 19th century. Over time, the interest in First Ladies has gone beyond the traditionally feminine roles of fashion and home, to include their educational background and what they are reading. As the personification of American power, the President of the United States and his family face continual scrutiny and criticism. First Ladies have been criticized for doing too much and for not doing enough. Some have been praised for their looks or fashion, and others have been less kindly treated. Each woman has had to make her own rules and define her own role without the guidance or limitations of the Constitution. As it has in the past, this role will continue to change and adapt -- someday, there may even be a “First Gentleman.” BibliographyFIRST LADIES. The wife of the President of the United States is commonly called the First Lady. The term, like the position, is undefined, improvised, and extra-Constitutional. Nevertheless, the role of First Lady of the United States has evolved and developed certain boundaries over the years. Today, each First Lady is one of the most famous and most scrutinized women in America, for better and worse. The position offers the president's spouse a platform to address important issues. Yet, placing a modern woman in an anachronistic, derivative, and amorphous position, playing to a public with mixed emotions about the role of women, the nature of family, and the centrality of government, has made this unpaid task "the second toughest job in America." Origins of the TermThe first "First Lady," Martha Washington, was often known as "Lady Washington." Then, as now, Americans were ambivalent. Proximity to the Revolutionary experience, and pride in their frontier independence, made Americans wary of bestowing monarchical touches on the presidency, or creating a family-based court around the chief executive. Yet a weakness for pomp and a yearning for majesty persisted. Abigail Adams was sometimes called "Mrs. President" or even "Her Majesty." Other early first ladies were addressed as "Presidentress." The origins of the term "First Lady" are murky. In 1849, President Zachary Taylor eulogized Dolley Madison, saying, "She will never be forgotten, because she was truly our First Lady for a half-century." The British war correspondent William Howard Russell noted in his published Civil War diary in 1863 the gossip about "the first Lady in the Land." This is the first recorded reference to an incumbent First Lady, in this case Mary Todd Lincoln. A reporter and novelist, Mary Clemmer Ames, applied the same phrase to Lucy Webb Hayes in 1877, and the term was bandied about when the bachelor President Grover Cleveland married young Frances Folsom in the White House in 1886. The term became popular after Charles Nirdlinger's 1911 play about Dolley Madison, "The First Lady in the Land." Still, not all modern First Ladies have appreciated the title. Jackie Kennedy preferred the more democratic designation, "Mrs. Kennedy," grumbling that "First Lady" was more suited to "a saddle horse." A State Prisoner? The First "First Ladies"As all her successors would, Martha Washington balanced the informal and the formal, her private needs with public demands. George Washington decided that he and Martha would host a weekly drawing room on Friday evenings, and dinner parties on Thursday evenings. They would accept no private invitations. Mrs. Washington was miserable. "I am more like a state prisoner than anything else," she wrote, "there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from—and as I can not doe as I like I am obstinate and stay at home a great deal." Many of Martha Washington's successors would resent the "bounds set" for them—by their husbands or the public. Traditional proprieties circumscribed First Ladies' behavior, well into the modern era. The ideology of domesticity constrained all wives, especially the President's wife. The one consistent duty was that of the President's hostess. Not all White House hostesses, however, were First Ladies. The widowed Thomas Jefferson relied on Dolley Madison. James Buchanan, a bachelor, relied on his niece Harriet Lane, while the widowed Andrew Jackson relied on two nieces. During John Tyler's one term four women hosted: his ailing wife Letitia, his daughter-in-law Priscilla, his daughter Letitia Semple, and after Letitia Tyler's death, his second wife Julia Gardiner Tyler. First Ladies of the New Republic: Washington Society's Grand DamesStill, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, First Ladies had considerable latitude in defining their broader roles and most enjoyed a low public profile. With the president himself removed from most Americans' daily lives, the First Lady rarely made the newspapers. However, in presiding over the White House social life, all First Ladies were the titular heads of Washington society. Some, like Dolley Madison, relished the role. Others hated it. Some, like Julia Tyler, plunged into politics, lobbying at White House social events. Most did not. Some, like Sarah Polk, were effective behind-the-scenes advisers, true political partners. Most were not. Some nineteenth-century First Ladies did attract public attention. Dolley Madison was the grande dame of Washington, dominating the social scene, and capturing the public's imagination, for almost half a century. The vivacious Lucy Webb Hayes and the young Frances Folsom Cleveland also charmed the public, foreshadowing the modern role of First Lady as celebrity. Mary Todd Lincoln, by contrast, was the black sheep of the Lincoln Administration, distrusted as a Southerner, despised for her extravagances, and demonized for her individuality. Just as Theodore Roosevelt helped usher the presidency into the twentieth century, his wife, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, helped institutionalize the First Ladyship. In 1902, Mrs. Roosevelt hired the first social secretary to a First Lady. A century later, the Office of the First Lady has a multimillion-dollar budget, and usually at least one dozen employees, including a social secretary, a press secretary, and a chief of staff. Americans' longstanding republican fears of schemers subverting the presidency made the First Lady's position even more delicate. When Ulysses S. Grant proved to be inscrutable as president in the 1870s, Washington wags decided that his wife, Julia, was manipulating him. In fact, Mrs. Grant had little interest in policy issues. Half a century later, when Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in late 1919, his second wife, Edith Wilson, did get involved. Mrs. Wilson functioned as a virtual chief of staff—some said as a virtual president—and suppressed information about the President's illness. Historians still debate how incapacitated Woodrow Wilson was, and how much input Mrs. Wilson had. Still, the charges that "Mrs. President" became "the first woman president," and instituted "petticoat government" offered a cautionary tale to activist First Ladies. Those who do seem too interested in power attract opprobrium. Edith Wilson's three Republican successors reverted to the more traditional role. Although none were as passive as the public believed, they attracted less flak. Florence Harding helped orchestrate her husband's career; Grace Coolidge brought a touch of glamour to her staid husband's administration; and Lou Henry Hoover became the first First Lady to address the nation on the radio. Modern Challenges: Eleanor Roosevelt and her SuccessorsThe great divide in the history of First Ladies comes with Eleanor Roosevelt's tenure. Eleanor Roosevelt was more political, more engaged, more public, and more influential than her predecessors. Her activism was systematic not sporadic. She wrote an ongoing newspaper column, held frequent press conferences, lobbied Congress directly, and regularly served as Franklin Roosevelt's emissary to liberals, laborers, blacks, Jews, and other oftforgotten men and women. In demonstrating the First Lady's great potential, Mrs. Roosevelt renegotiated the terms of the relationship between the First Lady and the public. All of Mrs. Roosevelt's successors, including the supposedly passive Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower, would be operating as modern First Ladies, on the political stage, and in the public eye. Since Eleanor Roosevelt, all First Ladies have felt compelled to project a public persona; all First Ladies have tended to advance at least one pet cause, from Jackie Kennedy's White House renovation to Lady Bird Johnson's beautification of the capital, from Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No to Drugs" campaign, to Hillary Rodham Clinton's say yes to national health care crusade. The Roosevelt revolution was furthered by the expansion of the presidency and the government, the emergence of a national media, and the feminist rebellion. All these forces combined have shifted the First Ladies' priorities, making her role more public and more political. Furthermore, in this celebrity age, First Ladies can generate excitement. Jackie Kennedy's charm and grace demonstrated First Ladies' political potential in the television age. Mrs. Kennedy became instrumental in setting the tone of her husband's "New Frontier," and perpetuating his legend. And yet, the transformation had its limits. While First Ladies have struggled with modern demands, Americans have looked to First Ladies to embody tradition in a changing republic. First Ladies who seem too aggressive, too modern, often generate controversy, as do First Ladies who seem too powerful and too political. When Lady Bird Johnson's beautification campaign shifted from fundraising and uplift to a Highway Beautification Act in 1965, her project no longer seemed so innocuous. Nancy Reagan effectively rehabilitated her own reputation by shifting from seeming too concerned with redecorating the White House, to emphasizing her longstanding commitment to encouraging foster grandparents and discouraging drug use. But, by 1986, during Reagan's second term, as she clashed with presidential advisers, she, too, was attacked for being power-hungry. And after Barbara Bush's smooth term, wherein she avoided most political issues, Hillary Rodham Clinton's more activist stance thrilled some, and infuriated others. Even today, in the twenty-first century, the First Lady struggles with gossamer shackles. First Ladies have a national podium, as Betty Ford discovered when she discussed her breast cancer in public in 1974. But it remains, as Nancy Reagan said, a "white-glove pulpit," a modern forum, suffused with the celebrity glow, still restrained by an American yearning for tradition, ambivalence about the role of modern women, and fear of someone, anyone, but especially his wife, getting too close to the President of the United States of America. BIBLIOGRAPHYBlack, Allida. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Helpful in seeing Eleanor Roosevelt in her broadest context. Caroli, Betty Boyd. First Ladies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Gould, Lewis L., ed. American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. Excellent and authoritative. Troy, Gil. Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. GilTroy |
When was the term First Lady first used
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