Harriet Lane

First Lady

• Born: May 9, 1830
• Birthplace: Mercerburg, Pennsylvania
• Died: July 3, 1903
• Place of death: Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island

President:James Buchanan 1857–1861

Overview

Harriet Lane assumed the role of White House hostess for the only bachelor president in American history, her uncle James Buchanan. She exerted a great influence on her female contemporaries and was one of the most popular First Ladies in the nineteenth century.

Early Life

Harriet Rebecca Lane was born on May 9, 1830, in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, the youngest of four children. After her mother’s death in 1839 and the death of her father a year later, she had no hesitation when it came to choosing her guardian: “Nunc,” alias James Buchanan, her favorite uncle.

Buchanan was flattered to be in charge of his niece’s education. He encouraged her to read a great deal, introduced her to the classics of British and American literature, and stimulated her interest in history and politics. She was allowed to attend his conferences and meet his friends, and she became familiar with political conversation.

Although Harriet was mature for her age in some ways, she was also boisterous, and Buchanan sent her to a boarding school, run by the Misses Crawford, two severe women who imposed strict discipline and tolerated no lapses in behavior. In her letters to her uncle, Harriet complained, according to Laura Carter Holloway Langford, of “early hours, brown sugar in tea, restrictions in dress, stiff necks and cold hearts.” After that period of chagrin, she attended other private boarding schools in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and in Charlestown, Virginia, from which she was graduated with honors.

Aware of her talents, Buchanan was concerned that his niece should also develop a sense of gentility suitable to a fine, respectable young lady. Therefore he chose the venerable Visitation Convent in Georgetown, Washington, DC, as her finishing school. With the nuns, Harriet blossomed into a bright and self-confident young woman.

When she was eighteen, she moved to Wheatland, a vast country home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, her uncle had recently acquired, where she became a gracious hostess as if it were second nature to her.

In April 1854, Harriet went to London, where Buchanan had been appointed minister to Britain’s Court of St. James by President Franklin Pierce. More lovely and charming than ever, she soon became a favorite of England’s Queen Victoria, who decreed that she be called Dear Miss Lane, a title that granted Harriet a status equivalent to that of an ambassador’s wife. In the brilliant circles in which she moved, she received much attention and many compliments as well as numerous offers of marriage. She even fell in love with a former lord chancellor, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, but she complied with her uncle’s advice not to marry a man forty years her senior. Harriet and James always acted as a team, and she made a point of respecting his opinion in all circumstances.

Conscious of her role in diplomacy, Harriet contributed to the promotion of the United States through her introduction of American Indian art at a time when English interest in Asian and African cultures was becoming fashionable. She wanted to reveal the Indians’ creative talent and spiritual life. With the Industrial Revolution at its height, Harriet also became active in social work. She emphasized the need to improve the living and working conditions of English laborers and vigorously supported the reform movement.

Presidency and First Ladyship

After the dismal years of the Millard Fillmore (1850–1853) and Franklin Pierce (1853–1857) administrations, Washington society was longing for a more lively and exciting White House. Their wishes came true with the election of James Buchanan in 1856. The new leader of the country, however, was not the cause of the joyful atmosphere that prevailed in the capital. It was his niece Harriet Lane who stole the show and was the center of attention. At the age of twenty-seven, she was installed in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as one of the youngest First Ladies in American history. Beautiful, gracious, and spirited, the new hostess of the White House became the talk of the town and soon won the hearts of many Americans across the country.

Her knowledge of politics and diplomacy, combined with her grace and dignity, helped her to perform her social duties with tact and style. According to one congressman’s wife, “White House functions rose to their highest degree of elegance.” Harriet brought gaiety back and the press dubbed her “Our Democratic Queen.” The song “Listen to the Mockingbird” was dedicated to her. A US steamboat was christened the Harriet Lane, and many baby girls were given her name. Harriet also became a trendsetter in youth-conscious American society, and her stiff, full skirts and “low-neck lace bertha” became all the rage in the capital.

Behind the young beauty there lay a strong personality and an astute politician who was well informed on the intricacies of the time. The president confided in her “in all matters political and personal,” according to Sarah A. Pryor. Like Buchanan, Harriet believed in the triumph of moderation over extremism. She kept supporting him when his political friends started to abandon him, and she defended him against accusations of inertia or treason. Leaving the White House was a relief for both of them.

Marriage and Family

Although men had admired her since her teens, it was not until October, 1864, that she announced her engagement to Henry Elliot Johnston, a handsome gentleman she had met in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, in 1849. She was almost thirty-six when, on the cold, snowy morning of January 11, 1866, her uncle the Reverend Edward Y. Buchanan of the Oxford, Pennsylvania, Episcopal Church, declared Henry and Harriet husband and wife. After a honeymoon in Cuba, they settled in Henry’s house in Baltimore. On November 21, 1866, a son was born, James Buchanan, named in honor of the former president. Harriet gave birth to a second son, Henry Elliot, Jr., two years later.

Her Uncle James’s death on June 1, 1868, caused Harriet inconsolable grief. She had lost her best friend, her moral guide, her second father. Fortunately, the next ten years of parenthood brought Harriet great satisfaction. Life was easy and comfortable, as Henry was a prosperous banker and the family traveled extensively in the United States and abroad. Summers were spent at Wheatland, the estate she had inherited from her uncle. In the 1880s, sadness and sorrow gained the upper hand as one tragedy followed another. On March 25, 1881, her fifteen-year-old son Buchanan died of rheumatic fever. On October 13, 1882, his brother, Henry, died of the same illness at the age of thirteen. Tragedy befell Harriet again on May 5, 1884, when her husband died suddenly of pneumonia.

Though grief-stricken, Harriet was by nature resilient, and instead of living in the past, she decided to work for the future. She sold both Wheatland and her Baltimore home and moved to Washington, DC, where she devoted herself to philanthropic causes. She died of cancer on July 3, 1903, at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island.

Legacy

Though not by definition, Harriet Lane was truly a First Lady in the eyes of Americans, and it was in her honor that the expression appeared for perhaps the first time in a magazine, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, on March 31, 1860.

Harriet left a valuable legacy of social and cultural service. Because of her interest in art, she instituted concert evenings at the White House and regularly invited artists to her receptions. She also supported the movement to create a national gallery. After her death in 1903, her own vast collection was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution and formed the basis of the National Gallery of Art, which prompted one official to call her the First Lady of the National Collection of Fine Arts.

Since her years at the convent, she had always pleaded the cause of the American Indians and celebrated their culture. She used her proximity to power to improve their living conditions, increasing educational and medical assistance available to them. In gratitude, the Chippewas called her Great Mother of the Indians, and Harriet became a popular name for their babies.

After the death of her two sons, she decided to create the United States’ first hospital for children, the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, in Baltimore. This pediatric institution is still in service today, as part of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and has acquired a worldwide reputation. As a devout Episcopalian, Harriet also began planning the Saint Albans choir school in Washington, DC, which was founded in 1909.

According to historian Lloyd C. Taylor, Harriet Lane “was the first of the modern First Ladies to capture the imagination of her contemporaries.” Her celebrity was not determined by the vagaries of public opinion; it was the result of her natural sense of communication and her political perspicacity as well as her influence in humanitarian reform and promotion of the arts.

Bibliography

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power. Vol. 1. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

Holloway, Laura Carter. The Ladies of the White House: Or, In the Home of the Presidents. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1976.

Peacock, Virginia Tatnall. Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970.

Shelley, Mary Virginia, and Sandra Harrison Munro. Harriet Lane, First Lady of the White House. Lititz, Pa.: Sutter House, 1980.

Swain, Susan, and C-SPAN. First Ladies: Presidential Historians on the Lives of 45 Iconic American Women. New York: PublicAffairs, 2015. Print.

Taylor, Lloyd C. “Harriet Lane: Mirror of an Age.” Pennsylvania History 30 (January-October, 1963): 213–225.