Mary Lincoln's Fashions

[Eva Elisabeth]

Could you easily imagine Mary voluntarily signing a pledge in 1864 to avoid buying European "web-velvets and plushes, satins, white and black thread laces, foreign embroideries, foreign artificial flowers and feather, ermine, camel's hair shawls, French hats, bonnets, caps, and head-dresses"?

Alledgedly she "impulsively" agreed to do sign when she was approached from a group of activists, calling themselves "Ladies's National Covenant", who wanted to boycott these goods mainly due to the ongoing French invasion in Mexico. Abraham Lincoln, as Kevin Peraino writes in "Lincoln in the World", was "outraged at the First Lady's freelancing on critical trade issues", and told her: "You have no idea what a hornets' nest you are stirring up", and that, considering the delicate "state of our foreign relations", signing the boycott "will never do".

The source is given as follows: Jane G. Swisshelm letter, n.d., Chicago Journal, copied in "Mrs. Lincoln and Foreign Goods," NY World, May 3, 1865.

Unfortunatelly I couldn't find this source/letter online. Does anyone know more about all this? If not, would you consider the story possible or rather apocryphal?

Thanks for any comment!