[inaudible conversations] booktv on instagram, follows for publishing news, and behindthescenes pictures and videos, instagram. Com booktv. Next on booktvs thanksgiving Holiday Weekend complete coverage of the fifteenth annual National Book festival held this past september. First Cokie Roberts talks about her book on women in washington d. C. During the civil war era called capital dames the civil war and the women of washington. [applause] thank you. Thank you all for being here this labor day weekend. This book festival is one of the greatest things that happens year in and year out. Hundreds of thousands of people showing up. To celebrate books and to buy them. What a concept, children and families, usually my grandchildren are with me but i am going to catch the plane and go see them in a minute. It is a wonderful event, i write the history books, often many of the characters in my history books are political wives and it was a political wife who started this book festival, laura bush went to fabulous library of congress and said i did at texas book festival, can we do one in washington, it shows you what a fabulous legacy but it lives throughout our history have left in washington. That makes it even more delightful to me to participate. And volunteers at this festival i the heroes. [applause] because there is no way this can go on with out hundreds of volunteers so thank you for what you do. And i was never going to write about the civil war. First of all, all my ancestors fought on the losing side. So i didnt really have any interest in it and secondly, it is a horrible, horrible time in our history, lasting 600,000 americans, it is a failure of the political system that we these politicians could not get to emancipation with our work and as someone who covers politics and cares about politics, that to me was so dispiriting, i did not want to write about it but my publisher had other ideas. It was pretty clear i was writing a book about the civil war. So i started to think about that but actually have absolutely no idea what that book was going to be. I knew it would be about women. People say to me, why do you write about women . Aside from the fact that i am in a skirt i think the other half of human kind should have books written about them. [applause] i would argue history is not accurate without knowing what the rest of the world was up to so i knew it was about women and that i would make great discoveries and i would find wonderful women who would delight me. Mens letters, throughout our history, so studied and edited and ready for publication, they read as though they were written by the bronx and marble statues, the womens letters are just letters, they are funny and frank, and they tell all whole story in the same letter, you will read about maybe we should go to war with france, i need 9 new half, and so and so having babies and all too often losing them and heres what the Economic Situation is but you get the full picture, throughout immense letters and you find them because most of them have never been published and you find these under the delightful things. My favorite remains one from my second history book, ladies of liberty about the early republic and was music by catherine adams, john quincy adamss wife and it was written when he was secretary of state ken she was running the campaign for president , called it her vocation to get him elected president and she wrote these wonderful gossipy letters from washington to john adams, abigail had died, here is abigail. She had died and john was lonely and she wrote these letters home and this particular letter was from the year 1820, the missouri compromise, because of hammering out a compromise the conversation took longer unusual. Finally they go home. In july louisa goes to a meeting of the trustees in the orphan asylum the Dolley Madison examined after the british invasion in 1814. And one of the trustees says who is going to need a new building. And the woman says that sessions had been very long. Fathers of the nation had left 40 cases to be provided for by the public and our institution was the most likely to be called upon to maintained those illnesses. Congress left 40 pregnant women behind and there were 187 members of congress. Some might have been recidivists, i dont know. Said she was up in arms and says i recommended a petition to Congress Next session for that great and moral a body to establish a founding institution, that the two additional dollars a day would have given themselves as an increase in pay, may be appropriate to the institution. It doesnt get any better than that. I found out later i was in ecstasy. Then it did turn out one of the great writers i found in this book, the civil war book was her daughterinlaw, abigail brooks adams, she came to washington when she was before he went off to be the Union Ambassador to the court of st. James during the war and wrote in these wonderful feisty letters home calling president buchanan a heavy gold toad, senate behave like children and silly ones at that. I could get behind that one. Any young woman who wishes to have an easy quiet life not to marry and adams. I knew that the letters whenever i found would be wonderful. I knew what the book was and i started thinking about my own growing up in washington after the war too, and at that point, it was covered with temporary buildings, i remember as a little girl, asking what temporary meant because building students seem to be going anywhere and they were basically sites that were very ugly, replaced by those ugly buildings on independence avenue. And a physical manifestation of how the war increase the role of government. How it made washingtons place in the country a very different place than it had been at the beginning of the century. I also of course knew the stories of rosie the river and the government girls coming to washington during the war. And i knew role of women during the war had promoted womens rights after the war, the republicans put the e r a and their platform in 1940, took the war to get the democrats to do it in 1944 and the Movement Towards equal rights again coming out of the experiences of the war. And a similar impact on womens lives and the role of washington in society. And turned out that in fact that was exactly the case. So that is the book. It was just fascinating to learn about it because it is as much a history of washington in the period as it is a history of the women and as someone who lived here all her life it was of great interest to me. Some of these women are women you know of like clara barton and dorothea dix but you probably dont know all about them and some of the things they did were absolutely remarkable. Clara barton had come here to work in the government, she worked in the Patent Office and she made as much as men for period of time but then during the war government barrels did show up in the same way they did in world war ii, mainly with someone coming to make a living with their husbands or the men in their lives gone but then it coincided with Congress Passing the bill to allow the printing of greenbacks to finance the war. Then as now the money comes off the Printing Presses in huge sheets of bills. But now of course it is cut in individual bills by machines but then it took women sitting there with scissors cutting out bill by bill by bill, and the treasurer of the united states, general skinner, said women are just better with scissors than men are. He also allowed the deegan pay them less which was something many of us experienced in our own lives but then rose the the river, the equivalent in my view is women who worked in the arsenals which they did around the country but in washington it was mainly the very young and for women who were in the arsenal and this horrendous arsenal explosion that killed a couple dozen of these girls and the day after the newspaper story was just awful to reach of them pulling tarp off of the charred bodies and they were unrecognizable and the reporter said they were trapped in there who skirts and you could seek the Nineteenth Century midcentury women working in very dangerous job in this broiling hot arsenal and being proper in their hoopskirt, thousands of people showed up for the funeral led by the president and the secretary of war and for the procession going to the Congressional Cemetery where there was a monument to them recognizing their tremendous contribution to the war effort. As i say, there were women you do know about like clara barton and dorothea dix. Also women journalists who came to town. Some of them came before the war, one of them was grace greenwood, somewhat fierce, she was an abolitionist and suffragist and the first woman allowed to write from the senate press gallery, but she was soon picked out of the senate first gallery for writing vicious truths. She wrote the Daniel Webster was a drunk and the men didnt like that and it reminded me a lot of my own experiences. There were activists, or raiders, all of these fascinating women who thrived during the war in washington and the reporters came in large numbers. Dorothy dix was here before the war lobbying in congress and was so influential, has given a lot out of in the Senate Library by the senate with which to do lobbying. And managed the st. Elizabeth and when talk to other places when she failed in the bill she was trying to get through congress. She then came back for the war and brought herself into the Surgeon General and said she would be superintendent of female nurses. There were no female nurses. Recreated that and opened the profession to women. It had not been womens work with the exception of catholic nuns. She was a formidable figure, the whole medical profession was closed to women, there were just a couple of female doctors in the country at the time, one of them was the surgeon who came to washington and presented herself to work for the union army. She was not hired, she worked as a volunteer and involved course of her work during the war she was eventually hired, she was captured, she had such horrific experiences that she is still, still the only woman to have won the medal of honor. With mary walker during the civil war. By the time dorothea dix died she had created 100 mental hospitals around the world including in japan meaning she had traveled by herself there. Clara barton, what you probably know about clara barton, this drives me nuts about history books particularly text books, clara barton founded the american red cross. Really . Was it hard . Did anything go before that . Came as a government worker and did heroic work during the war as a nurse and supplier and went to europe after the war, discovered the red cross and lobbied for two decades to get the Geneva Convention ratified by the senate and when they finally did ratify them it was with the american amendment which she wrote which the red cross could go to natural disasters as well as war zones so anytime you see the red cross after a hurricane or earthquake anywhere in the world is because clara barton win she went back to geneva as the american representative got the american amendment adopted by the International Red cross. There was a lot involved in founding the american red cross. I of course was interested because i am me, in the political women. I got to know a lot of them very well and i enjoyed getting to know more arena davis. Him not so much. But she was here as the wife of him as senator and public officer and all the women of washington after Dolly Madison thought which was not until 1849 really relying to be the chief bill and describe themselves as bills. One of from why write about wrote a book about herself called belle of the 50s so they all knew each other, they basically liked each other and one of the women they all liked enormously was the dell cuts, which Dolley Madison quilt think is a great peace and she married Stephen Douglas, the senator who defeated Abraham Lincoln at the famous Lincoln Douglas debate and she was furious this was happening and she wrote to her mother and said this was so wonderful. The dirty speculator and party trickster broken and helped by drinks with his first wifes money buys an elegant well bred woman because she is poor and her father is proud. It is a good thing theres a water system coming to washington. If he doesnt, his acquaintance will build larger rooms with perfect ventilation. You dont learn from the men Stephen Douglas thinks. When she did go off to richmond, first lady of the confederacy, stayed in close touch with friends here, blair house, montgomery blair, in the congress, her father, but phillips lee, was in the union navy, she wrote to him almost as a day. And the rest at princeton. They stayed in touch through the war. Was one of the few people, who befriended mary lincoln, not easy to do. Mary lincoln came to town and a tough time, they didnt like Abraham Lincoln. A rough westerner which is not fair which was the assessment. It made life harder for herself by being a difficult person, accused of leaking the president s state of the Union Address but there was a congressional investigation of the first ladys private communications. She had personal service too. Servants she was accused of leaking gets, the exchange for money or an unfair depending on the rumor of the moment. She was not a wellliked person but after the president was shocked, has become friendly with, her dressmaker was much more addressmaker, it is a great personage. Mary lincoln in the white house just a couple months, crazy, out of her mind after the president shot and she takes her back to chicago and elizabeth wrote a tell all book. Nothing changes. In their relationship with ms. Lincoln, it ended her business because others worried she might write similar books. She was then able, she is very interested, basically in social work, when enslaved people started showing up in washington trying to free themselves before emancipation and after emancipation, she was a former slave herself and she saw the terrible circumstances and started the Contraband Relief Association which became the friedman relief association. And she was involved in getting people to help these desperately poor people because she had contacts and was able to raise money and that is what you started to seek, people behindthescenes and doing other things now coming forward as the war ended. So virginia clay, who had been the wife of an alabama senator and the delightful flowers in the prewar period wrote a book about herself became a great suffragist and was suddenly on platforms after the war, mrs. William lloyd garrison, people who had fought her husband bitterly leading up to the war and during the war, but she had because of her experience during the war, felt she could come forward and be someone herself a use her own voice to promote a cause that had not occurred to her before the war. After Jefferson Davis diet, long, drawn out, difficult situation, it accused of being one of the lincoln conspirators, these women showed up in the white house all the time, they would go marching into the white house and tell off the president , whoever he was. I am so jealous. Andrew johnson led virginia classs has been down jail just to make her go away. It is remarkable. At any rate davis got Jefferson Davis out of jail too, didnt work so well for her but finally died and she decided to move to new york to the reporter but mainly wanted the money she had to make a living but also wanted freedom and there was a big problem with the first lady of the confederacy moving to new york, had always been a little too conflicted for a perfect southern belle, so she wrote to her daughter and said i am free, brown and 62 and i will move wherever i want to. While she was in new york she befriended julia grant and it was page 1 in every newspaper in the country which is another great thing, you can get newspapers online, the library of congress has one, and there they were and what they knew they were doing was bringing about reconciliation. That is what a lot of these women were involved in, in their own voices after the war was over and use see the tremendous impact that it had on their lives and on the role of women in america Going Forward and in fact clara barton said at a memorial day again established by women to talk about reconciliation at memorial Day Celebration, it she said at one of her addresses at a memorial Day Celebration in the 1880s, because of the war, woman was at least 50 years in advance of the normal position which continued peace would have assured her. So that is these women, capital gains, they were remarkable people, i loved i know you will too. Thank you for being here. [applause] there are microphones at the front of each thailand folks would appreciate it if you would come to the microphone and they are taking this or whatever one does these days, digitizing or whatever. Thank you for these remarks. Dorothea dixs lobbying career, scholarship at that point in time, a very public nontraditional role for women and a lot of times articles from 1875, and can you share more with us about dorothea dix . She was already showing up in washington. The bill she was trying to get through was to put aside millions of acres of federal land for the impoverished and mentally ill. One hours in congress one year and another house did get it through both houses of congress and president pierce said it was up to the states to support the impoverished and he vetoed it. But she was immune to normal things but what you are talking about was definitely there, women lobbyists were considered maybe exchanging some favors for the votes. With women government workers too, to get the job this is one of the reasons Civil Service was created, because to get the job of congressman, had to recommend them and sometimes would demand something in return. Always had a little with about it. But they still did those jobs and there were lots o