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>> thank you very much. i feel a little bit like a rock star having one of these, but i'm not one. two years ago, as i was laboring over civil war wives, i found myself telling a class of freshmen about the newest book, on abraham lincoln, on slavery, when, from the back of the room, i heard a wispful student, unlikely to become a historian, raise the question, why do we need any more books on the civil

war? several war wives is in part, my own attempt to answer that student's question. the book tells the story of three women who lived through the mid 19th century cataclasmic changes, national disruptions, and the horrors of war to save or dissolve the union. none of these women, angelina i can't grimke weld, varina howell davis, or julia dent were not heroes on the battlefield, they did not giving stir orations in i don't think. their words and deeds are not commemorated on historic markers and to my knowledge, there are no statues to their memories. as the wise of famous men, that is, theodore weld, the great or tore of abolition, jefferson davis, the first and only president of the confederacy, and ulysses s. grant. as the wives of these famous

men, they were situated in that ill defined place between the powerful and the anonymous. they were brought close to the seats of power and prestige through their marriages, but they had no authority because of their gender. their intimate relationships, however, give them a unique perspective on the decisions and events that did change their world. and their marriages gave them intimate knowledge of the men who made the decisions that shaped those events. in their privileged yet restricted lives, they have much to tell us about the era, if we listen to their voices and we recover their stories. as individuals, these three women differed greatly in personality, character, temperment and intellect. the winds of change that were within their lifetimes, carried them down quite different paths, yet the paths they chose and the paths their husbands chose for them, illustrate both the

limitations and the possibilities for middle class married women in the 19t 19th century. more often than not, things did not turn out in their lives, as they might have hoped or as they planned. so today, let me introduce you briefly to these three southern women. almost by accident, the slave holder's daughter from south carolina, angelina that grimke, became one of the most controversial or ratorss of the 1850's. she left her home and all its luxuries, her father was one of the richest men in south carolina, because she could not condone the slave system on which her privileged life was based. as a teenager, she had come to believe that she had a grand destiny, but when she found it, it proved as bitter as it was sweet. it carried her to the most radical margins of her american

society and it made her a spokes women for two ideals that few of her contemporaries were willing or ready to embrace. gender equality and race equality. her remarkable journey began in 1836, when angelina wrote a private letter as a good, decent woman would do, wrote a private letter to the abolitionist newspaper editor, william lloyd garrison, urging him not to abandon the cause of the slave, despite the increasing violence against anti-slavery activists and the threats on his life in boston. garrison broke her confidence and published her letter in his newspaper "the liberator," how could he not. almost alone among the voices calling for the end of slavery, angelina grimke had seen the hated institution firsthand. she had lived in the very heart

of the slave's lives. most of the men and women who opposed slavery had never been south and here was a woman who the abolitionist movement could propel on to the stage. certainly of the impacts she would have, because she could declare, i have seen it, i have seen is it to her audiences. but grimke was not just a southerner or an abolitionist. she was a woman. as she gained her voice, she faced a growing criticism and she confronted it as angelina did everything, head on. she spoke out boldly on the right and obligation of women to participation as she was doing in public, moral campaigns. alas, the abolitionist leadership, who were socially conservative on matters of gender, shrank from the

controversy. yet, it was her radicalism that finally moved to silence her. equality of the races was a dream that very few were willing to share with her. even her future husband, theodore weld, criticized her for spooking and writing on -- speaking and writing on subjects best left alone. she once told theodore weld that she admired him because he prayed in black churches and he ate in black homes, to which he replied, yes, but i would never invite them to mine. angelina was not like that. the crit s. leveled at her not simply from those who opposed abolition and there were many, many in the north, congregationalist ministers condemned the document condemning her and closed their churches to her in new england, but from anti-slavery's only leading light, this offers us a new and i think very important perspective on the limits of the vision of a group of people in a

movement that we have often honored as heroic. angelina bowed to the pressures put upon her. she only spoke for two years publicly spoke for two years, and then she turned her energies and attention to a new, more intimate cause when she married theodore weld. she wanted to of prove that a woman that had once entered the public arena could satisfy the demands of the private steer as wife and mother. in this, she failed terribly. and she spent the rest of her long life depressed and struggling, as she watched history pass her buy. theodore weld's friends in the movement told her she shouldn't marry her pause she was ruined as a wife and mother, because she had led a public life. as it turns out, it was not that she was ruined because of her public life, but she was not happy simply raising children and cooking meals. but let me read to you my account of her last public

speech, given the day of a her wedding. at the meeting of the women's anti-slavery convention in philadelphia, for i believe this conveys the passion, and the conviction that defined angelina grimke weld until her death in 1879. the day after the wedding, sarah and angelina, sarah is her sister, say are and angelina made their way to the brand new pennsylvania hall to attend the third female anti-slavery convention. angelina was chosen to serve as the vice-president and she was invited to speak. under a banner that read, virtue, liberty, and independence, the delegates conducted a series of tee bates on science, temperance, slavery and the rights of working men, but the mood soon turned grim. trouble was brewing outside the hall, for the racially integrated meeting had hey tracked angry protesters.

the crowd's hostility was further fueled by rumors, they were untrue, that angelina and theodore's recent wedding had included african-americans in the wedding party itself. a sense of foreboding filled the hall on the evening of may 16th, as the public meeting began. both men and women, white and black, had gathered to hear angelina, mariah chapman and lucria matt to speak. angelina's speech of wove into one seamless cloth, a journey of the abolitionist movement itself. looking out at the nervous crowd, she razzed the question that she had often asked herself and her closest of confidantes. why did women and men, white and black, long to hear her speak. what came ye out to see, she asked? is it curiosity merely, or is it

deep sympathy with the perishing slave? tonight, the commitment would be tested, if not by her, then by the crowd gathering outside to do them all harm. as the noise increased, she urged, hear it, hear it, those voices without tell us that the spirit of slavery is here and has been roused to wrath by our abolition speeches and conventions. all over the roar outside, she reminded those who listened to her, once again, of her own intimate knowledge of slavery. i have seen it, i have seen it, she exclaimed and they knew that this was no empty claim. varina weld davis was born a

true southern beauty, in mississippi, a woman of impeccable pedigree, but alas, a southern woman. she observed the world astutely and voiced her opinions about it with wit, sarcasm, and too often, a shocking disregard for acceptable female reticence. she believed that the man she married, the widower, jefferson davis, loved her independent mind and spirit as much as he loved her beauty, for that's what he told her, as he was court willing her. -- courting her, but it proved tragically wrong. davis held a rigid and traditional view of gender roles if marriage and if their early years together, he laid down an endless barrage of criticism, because she would not cop form to his desires to present herself to the world as she

ought, an obedient wife. at one point he refuses to allow her to come to washington with him, because he will not let people see a wife who does not obey him. he's not one of my favorite people. he asserted his masculine authority and set about with steely determination to break varina's will. he was more than willing, however, to privately harness all her intellectual skills, for throughout his career, he sought her opinion and advice on political matters, relied on her astute reading of the character and motivations of the political leaders, friend and foe around him, and took full advantage of her sometimes sad efforts to please him. the cost to varina's sense of herself was great. a fact that jefferson davis probably never noticed and if he did, did not care. yet, varina's power of observation and her appreciation

of the absurd within her society could simply not be squelched. in her memoirs, she leaves us proof of her irrepressible character as she observes and die secretaries the foils of leading politicians, ridicules the conformity of women of her own social class and rudely assesses her husband's poor political instinct. her memoirs are filled with portraits of the great leaders of the era that revealed their flaws of steven a. douglas, she wrote, he would be more charming if he bathed more often. it's wonderful to see these men's character exposed outside of the marvelous debates that are going on in the congress. she recorded their surprising acts of kindness, that is enemies of jefferson davis', with she was delivering a baby and she couldn't get a nurse to her in washington.

one of his fiercest enemies, as soon as his own sled to bring a nurse to varina's side and she never forgot this cannedness. she also -- kindness. she also recorded their pettiness, all played ought far from the public stage of history and while soldiers, generals memoirs recount the horror horrf the battlefield, it is vereen that presents to us a struggle to survive in southern households and families. listen as she describes life during the siege of richmond. on her return to richmond that august, varina found the city air build with the odor of the battlefield. the women who remained behind, kept vinyl is i will on the roofs of their houses, she recalled, watching the smoke and gleam of battle and praying for victory. the city itself seemed diminished, war weary, no longer the elegant gem of the old

south. even before the campaign, rich pond citizens had begun to feel the pinch of scarcity and the painful presence of sick is and wounded young soldiers. the women of the city had done and would continue to do what they could, they visited the wounded in the makeshift hospitals, reading to the boys, and often singing to them as well. and they knitted, she wrote, socks and gloves and sewed shirts for the able boded men. our women, varina wrote, netted like penelope from day until dark. the well offered up their gold, silver, their jewels, anything for the cause. nothing was too sacred. i tried, one woman said guiltily and could not mask up my mind to part with my wedding ring, it was so thin from wear, else i would have given it up. varina never doubted that the confederacy's cause was just,

but also required the role that she was required to play in its brief history. she knew she was not suited to be first lady of the confederacy. most southern women of her class disliked her, for what they called her mannish intelligence. they were wary of her sharp tongue and all too often, they recognized that she was bored by the shallow focus of their lives. they have found her haughty. she found them foolish. the women of richmond called her queen victoria. an uncomplimentary illusion to the sense of superiority they thought she radiated. ironically, more than one man mistook the label, queen victoria, as a compliment to her regal bearing. indeed, many men of accomplishment took -- it is far more ironic that when jeff davis was imprisoned of a the war, did

not criticize, but encouraged varina's bold, relentless, and by his own standards, thoroughly unfeminine efforts to secure his release. then it was ok. and she was amazing. she hired the lawyers, she wrote letters and demanded interviews with andrew johnson, she had an interview with grant, she persuaded abolitionists to put up money for his bail. she was just -- and she wrote letters to these men who she had never met, and that was absolutely against all the rules of genteel feminine it's in the 19 50's. from prison, jefferson davis wrote to her, letters that many male historians have called some of the great love letters of the 19th century. but i believe these letters reflect a selfish, rather than a generous love. i have read them. they contain long catalogs of

things she did for him, but not a single word of appreciation for her as an individual. love letters indeed. after his release, jeff davis betrade his wife, if not physically, than emotionally, on several is occasions, finding pa doting woman, who adored him, when he needed one, if varina was not readily at hand. only after his death, did she come into her own. she abandoned the south, moved to new york city, got a job writing for the hearst newspapers, and created a salon in which playwrights and poets, artists and scholars, all people who jeff davis despised, came to revel in that wit and humor that the president of the confederacy always failed to appreciate. alone among the three women, the homely but always self-of can

dent julia dent grant led a completely unexamined live. julia accepted the world as she found it, she did question its arbitrary rules, did not challenge its norms and did not stop to inquire how or why any of these changed during her lifetime. she lived at the center of crisis and dramatic change, yet she filtered all these events of the world outside her home through the narrowest of domestic lenses. for julia, the civil war was a bless, not because it celebrated the slave, but it brought her husband the fame and glory she thought he deserved. the end of slavery was not a momentous reform but a mild inconvenience, for it meant preplacing the people she owned with the people she paid wages. julia dent grant brings her slave with her to visit ulysses

s. grant in vicksburg. had she been asked, she would surely have answered, but i needed her. the scandals and crises of her husband's presidential administration and there were many, were not challenges to national credibility, but for julia, atags on her beloved husband's personal honor. julia simply lacked curiosity about large and momentous events. she took them in only in their most reduced form, as positive or negative influences on her family's daily life. she did not resist change, so much as she moved at the slowest possible pace toward it, and only of a she had measured its impact on her husband and children. her memoir reflects her character and personality perfectly. it is filled with optimism and with of can dense in her

husband's desire to protect and care for her hand in this, she was correct. she was the only woman, ulysses s. grant ever spoke to, let alone loved and he was terribly shy, and he loved her till the day he died. when they went on a world tour, one of the reporters commented that they looked like young lovers, holding hands and whispering to each other and kissing when they thought no one was looking. we should all have marriages like that. he held close to her those who were in her family, and she would retain an abiding hostility to those who would ever do her husband harm. most amazingly, her memoir burst at the seem with strikingly uninformed opinions. i want to share three short ones with you.

when ulysses s. grant gets out of the army for the first time, he tries a number of jobs, and he fails aft everything. everything. at one point, her father, who is quite wealthy and owns a lot of land outside of st. louis and owns slaves, gives them a farm to farm. ulysses runs it in to the ground. julia is in charge of the poultry in the barn yard. in julia's version of their years at wish upon wish, ulysses was a fine farmer and she was a fine farmer's wife. to her fell the task of raising the chicken, each of which she provided with absurdly fanciful names, together, fred and buck and julia, her oldest sons, passed handful of grains to seless and the great mogul and though many a farm wife, held that chickens were stupid creatures, julia insisted that

her hens and roosters were markedly intelligent, though their breeds came from distant lands, china and india, she felt they could understand the english language. she discerned this, she explained, because they responded to her call to come to heat, and even appeared to pass the word along to other members in the chicken coop. her fruits seemed to reveal an almost comic ignorance, but julia was, after all, a parochial young matron who had never left the country and had no reason to assume that poultry, any more than people were the same in shanghai as in missouri. she was surprised to observe the foreign birds, her roosters, had the same little tricks of gallantry towards the hence as roosters were known to employ.

throughout 1860, julia listened intently as her husband read aloud the speeches and debates that filled the newspapers, but clarity did not come to her. jewel leave i can't wrestled with these issues in her own way, absorbing the abstract and intellectual arguments by analogies to conflicts in her own life. she was of two minds on the great issue of secession. her dilemma was not based on the ambiguities of the constitution, on critical issues such as state sovereignty or indy visibility of the union. she confessed throughout her years of secession and the war, she did not know what the constitution was. she recorded a conversation during the war with confederate women who argued that the actions of lincoln's governments were unconstitutional. of after listening to them of offer their arguments, she explained, well, i did not know

a thing about this dreadful constitution and told them so. they seemed much astonished and asked, why, surely you have studied it. no, i have not, she replied. i would not know where to look for it, even if i wished to read it. and lastly. throughout the war, julia's initial responses to hospitality -- throughout the war, julia's initial responses to hospitality and war, as much as hostility and crit s., were rarely filtered through a consideration of the situation or context. the results were sometimes amusing, but often wholly inappropriate. when she visited her husband in 1862, in holly springs, mississippi, she found herself sharing a commandeered residence. julia responded with her natural

openness. she roller was a very nice person. in her member hoyer, she concedes that the women were so charming, that she did not real highs for a moment that i was actually in the enemy's exam. -- camp. the result was what many would consider a disconcerting tab low. there in the parlor, the wife of the union commander sat cheerly listening to the wives of confederate officers as she sang rebel war songs. it was not until the second evening when the women invited her once again to listen to their national song that julia at least realized her mistake. now, from julia, clearly, we can expect no deep insights into the politics of the era, or the impact of the war on americans of either race. yet, i think it would be a mistake to dismiss julia dent grant's importance to our understanding of the here ra. -- here ra, for we cannot know

how many 19th century americans, and i would add, americans today, faced with frightening and cataclasmic events that they could not hope to control, and could not fully understand, copes with them exactly as julia did, but domesticating them, by at the same timing them, and -- at the same timing them, and like her, reducing them to the empacket on those they loved and those they cherished. so my great surprise as i was writing this book, it was the story of the woman that my children rather ungenerously nicknamed, julia the ditz, that bam the heart of this book, for few historians have labored to reconstruct the lives of the many men and women who survived crisis and disaster, by turning inward to the safety and comfort of their private lives. angelina, varina and julia

responded differently to their historical moments and the norms and values of their race, class and glander. each offers us a perspective on the narrative that has been told to us in hamas cue lynn voice and from a masculine point of view. no matter how internately their lives were intertwined with those of their husbands, these women narrate the events in a different tempo and in a different cadence from those men. and their stories, taken together, i believe, and i hope you will agree, help us reconstruct their era with greater depth and greater complexity. thank you. [applause] >> carol has graciously said if you have any comments or

questions, she will take them. >> i always tell my students, don't ask me anything i don't know the answer to. yes. >> i think you know the answer to this one. i'm on special assignment for mary chestnut, and i'm us impressed by the sense that she gave, that she and greta davis were good buddies. >> oh, yes. she and mary chestnut. mary chestnut was as smart as varina was and sarcastic about the other women and other things and mary chestnut and varina would sit together in richmond, where the ladies of richmond -- first of all, to the ladies of richmond, varina was from mississippi, that was a hit, that was being a hick, and some people might say the same thing today, i hope not, because i'm from alabama. they would get together of after one of these open reef exceptions, and they would just

make fun of all these women's. and then they would say, and they are making fun of us, even as we speak. i mean, they were well aware of that. and varina would often say to mary, don't tell people anything about what i -- what i do, because it will get reinterpreted in some dreadful way, people will make up stories about it, and they were very close and when varina was running away, when richmond fell, varina went in one direction and jeff davis went in another. and as she was running away, her goal was to reach mary chestnut's home to deposit her children with mary for safekeeping. instead, she was captured and she was put under house arrest for a long time by the union military, but they were very close friends. and remained so until mary chestnut died. >> i have one other question. what is it about south carolina

that -- >> what in particular do you mean? >> what, every once in a while -- when i've studied aspects of the civil war, i do present myself as an authority on the civil war, i'm more interested in the women of that period, but i often find out that there's -- even today, there is that something in south carolina that's different. >> well, if you remember, john c. calhoun, who is really the great articulator of state's rights theory, the nullification controversy, and he sets the scene for south carolina being first in state's rights, it also remained among the original colonies that became state, it remained the one in which slavery was critically important. if i start sounding like a professor, i apologize. but virginia and maryland had moved to some -- maryland to a

great extent, away from producing tobacco and were producing wheat. well, tobacco requires a lot of labor, but wheat, and i hope i'm not offending anyone from a wheat state, kansas, but wheat, you plant it, you stand there and you watch it while it grows and so a lot of the slaves that had been owned in these two states had been sold down further south and south carolina, of the original states, remains a slavery society, in a way that the maryland and virginia do not, and so it's the leader in a sense, because it's the oldest of the southern slaveocracy, and it has in it, government, some of the great fire eaters -- yeah, fire eaters, who are calling for secession, you know, from birth, and so it does seem

to have that leadership role. jefferson davis, who i don't like as a husband, but who is an interesting man, fought secession. he was opposed to it. he was a great lover of the union. he did not want to se see seed d he's stunned when he arrives at briar field and is told he is nominated the head of the of confederacy. part of the confederacy, they all believed in state rights, so if jefferson davis would say something, they would say no, we don't want to do that, and so i think that they -- that to some extent, though they said it was because he was their most prestigious intellectual figure, i think to some extent, it was because they thought they could say, we're not going to do what you say.

which they did all the time. why south carolina remains with names that shall remain nameless in the forefront, i can't -- i can't explain to you. i only write about very dead people. i find it much safer to write about dead people. >> but some people might say that stanford is pretty dead right now. >> she said it. i didn't, right? >> especially living in south carolina, how it is angelina grimke and her sisters come to view slavery so differently. >> you know, i just did an interview for npr and i think that is one of the most fascinating, unanswerable questions if a way. i like to write biography, because i like to try to figure people out. and i'm willing to concede that people are contradictory, that is, they're not consistent, but how do people like angelina, who

was raised -- they were so rich. how rich were they, carol, that when they sat down to dinner, if the butter was in front of her brother sitting next to her, she did not ask him to pass the butter. she turned around to her personal slave, and the slave picked up the butter and moved it three inches. so in a family like this, in a society like this, and angelina was very pretty, sarah, you could understand, she did not have any suitors, so she was not going to become a southern matron, so she might have felt like an outsider, but angelina was pretty. she could have had married, she could have had an easy life, she could have been been the belle of the ball. what lead her to this? i've read her diary, i've read her letters, her writings. some introspection, some ability to step outside of the world she was born in, and view it with

different eyes, allowed her to do this. and i find people like this extraordinary. yes, ma'am? >> [inaudible] >> yes. yes, but i think the religious crisis she voices her -- she believes she had a grand destiny, and she voices that in her early diaries, as a young woman, in religious terms. but i think even if there hadn't been a religious crisis for her, that sense, that she was meant for something nobler, than what the society offered her, is what i think allowed her to step back and look at her world. i want to add, i don't know if any of you had daughters during the teenage years, she was absolutely unbearable. in the years when she was finding her destiny, she was just like, if you take away the

fact that she was morally right, she was just as obnoxious as my daughter was when she was a teenager. she's wonderful now, in case my daughter is listening. always correcting me, always telling me where i was wrong. angelina lectured her family night and day. they could not sit down to the dinner table without her telling her brother that was lazy and loved luxury, the bother and his wife -- brother and his wife finally run into their room and slam the door and angelina writes in her diary, i don't understand why they're angry with me. i mean, she's just an amazingly, in some strange way, typical teenager. she grows as she gets older. she ceases to lecture people in this holier than thou voice and becomes an extremely chrismatic

speaker, because there is empathy and sympathy and urgency in what she says, instead of i'm more moral than you, i know more than you know. and so she gets over that, but if you read that diary from when she's young are and that diary is about finding her version of god, finding what she wants to believe in, it's also just filled with certainty of teenagers. i remember very distinctly, my daughter once saying to me at the breakfast table, you breathe funny. i mean, should i stop breathing, dear? and angelina was just like that. i mean, her mother was a veritable saint. angelina went after her night and day. so one of the things that really is admirable about her is her

maturation. that is the way in which she moves from being that kind of i know everything to being someone who speaks with such conviction, and such sympathy for her audience and for the slaves. yeah? >> what about the education of these three women, do they have tutors? >> varina weld davis, very interestingly, the family had a friend, george winchester, who was a bachelor friend and he educated varina and i mean he educated her. she was required to read and read and read. she spoke french beautifully, she had a first class tutored education, which is how southern boys also got their education. she was briefly sent to a miss somebody's finishing school. so was julia dent grant. julia dent grant was sent to the mismore rows school in st. louis and julia didn't see any reason

to learn arithmetic or math. she thought it was too hard and it was boring, and so she liked to read history, and so, she records -- they tried to make me do it hand i said, i will not, and so i sat on the lawn and i read what i wanted to read. and so when she and her husband travel around the world, she's lecturing her husband all about the greek myths and the roman myths and he only wants to know about the battles. he's not interested at all in the ruins, but she knows all of this from her reading, but when she tries to keep her budget for her household supplies, she says, i bought a book, but some months i didn't have the money i thought i had and some months i had more than i was supposed to, so she role leadership has this sort of spotty education. angelina does not have, as far as i can recall, any tutors.

her brother -- sarah is enraged, because sarah wanted to study law and sarah's father said, but you're a girl. i don't know that angelina had any formal education at all. yeah? >> you talk about the relationship between julia dent -- >> she was loved by everybody. julia dent grant, i'm really was tempted as i was writing this, to say ignorance may be bliss after all. she had a husband who adored her, she had healthy children, four of varina's five children died,. angelina has three children and one of them becomes, i'm sure today, we could diagnose it, but at about 14, he just decides to sit down in a chair and never move again. his name was theodore, he was named after his father, they

called him sody, an they had hundreds of doctors look at him and nobody ever found out what was wrong with him. and here's julia, she has these wonderful, happy, healthy children and everybody really did like her. especially after mary todd lincoln. she was a really, a welcome change, and everybody just adored how happily married she and ulysses were, and she is was homely. she was really homely. she had a -- she was about my height and far rounder, and she had an eye problem, so she had a wandering eye and that's why, in all of her portraits, she's posed like this, so you won't see her eye. here's a wonderful story about her, if you'll indulge me. she goes to ulysses after he's become a hero of the civil war and she says to him, i hear that

there's an operation that i can have to have my eye fixed, so that i will be more presentable when you take me out in public. and he replies, i fell in love with you with just the eyes that you have. and i love them still, i don't want you to change a thing about you. i mean, you know, give that man a prize. right? but her homeliness and matronliness, no one was jealous of her. there was no cattiness about her, because vereen, who was in her younger years, really quite stunningly beautiful, women were a little annoyed, but no one was ever annoyed with julia. and julia never was too witty and she never was too -- she never learned how to cook, because she had slaves, and when they had a recipe exchange, in

washington, she wrote a letter of apology, and she said, i will ask my housekeeper what, you know, what recipe i can send you, so they liked her very much. the one criticism of her was that she and ulysses indulged their children too much, that their children were not disciplined, and people complained about that a lot. that they had spoiled children. you know, that they weren't told to behave all the time. but otherwise, she was very -- she really from birth to death, she was a woman who always assumed that her life was good. and it was pretty much. and when it wasn't, she thought it was anyway. so, you know. anybody else. have i talked you to death? yeah? wait. >> a short followup. i think that ulysses grant, had

a problem with alcohol and -- >> up know,. >> so forth. i mean, did that -- >> she always was offended by that. she halls said that these were madeup stories. historians of ulysses s. grant still disagree about this. it is true that when she was -- he was off in northern california, away from her, ulysses s. grant was the kind of person who really couldn't open up to anyone but her. he was very good at smoking cigars and playing cards and cursing and drinking with the guy friends. but he -- he didn't talk to anyone and he missed her unbelievably. his letters to her are just sad. and it's possible that when he was there, he drank too much. but she insisted that of after he came home, he never drank. but you have to take anything

julia says with a grain of salt, because she also said he was a wonderful farmer. she thought the world of him. there's just no question that she just thought the world of him, an he of her. i don't know if he drank. i was less interested in him, if you'll forgive me, than i was in her, so i didn't try to track that down. and his biographers disagree, so who am i to say whether he did or not? yeah? >> was there anything recorded about angelina grimke's reaction -- [inaudible] >> yes. thanks for asking me that. she's such an admirable person. was there anything about her reaction, angelina grimke weld's reaction to the end of slavery. when she was an older woman and

not in good health, she read in the newspaper that a young man had been the valedictorian at a black college in ohio called lincoln academy and his name was frederick grimke. this was not a common name. she traveled out there to meet him, and she discovered that he was the illegitimate child of her brother and a slave woman, and that there were three sons. and that her brother had put in his will that they'd be freed on his death and his white children ignored this and said no, we're not freeing anybody. and so frederick and his brother ran away to the north and the other brother stayed at home with his mother. angelina grimke weld publicly acknowledged them as her nephews, she told them how glad

they used the name grimke. she was by no means a wealthy woman at the end of her life and she paid for one son to go die vinity school and the other to go to law school. fast forward, frederick grimke's wife dies, and the second time he marries a white woman. not a single minister in washington, d.c. would marry them. the black community wrote them hostile letters for the rest of their life, how dare you marry a white woman and the white community wrote hostile letters, how dare you marry a black man. guess who agreed to officiate? frederick grimke agreed to officiate, and it was almost as if the circumstance is he will was complete for angelina grimke. she's really to the very end of her life, someone who lives her

principles, and suffers for that. i mean, paid for that dearly. yeah. somebody else had one more question. yeah? >> in the campaign for the presidency, did wives participate in those days? >> jefferson davis never campaigned. he was sifting, you know, she says, we were clipping our roses in the rose garden when someone rode up and said, guess what? you're the president of the confederacy. julia, it would be hard -- she did not campaign. she did not understand most of the issues involved in politics. but she recounts in her memoir that they're sitting at the table. he was veryters. he was not a loquacious guy, he's smoking the cigar that eventually gave him throat

cancer that he died from and she reads in the newspaper that ulysses s. grant is in hiding because he was found drunken, stumbling on the road, and she's furious and she says, but of course you're not in hiding, you're sitting right here with me. and he says -- you know, and he says, julia, you have got to get used to the fact that if you're running for public office, people are going to say things about you. so be calm, and don't worry about it, and that's as far as i know the only involvement she ever had in his campaign. >> well, i think cheryl would be happy to sign books for us, if people are interested in getting a hot more detail about this, but i also think that you will agree with me that this was wonderful. thank you. [applause]

>> carol berkin is an american history professor at barook college and the graduate center of the city university of new york. she's the author of "a brilliant solution, inventing the american constitution." the 2009 fall literary festival e information, visit fallersity for the book.org. [inaudible conversations] >> this man has a pen.

>> one of them is from a grandson that you delivered. >> i'll put his name. jeremy 67. >> mr. swkrao: and how would is >> and how old is jeremy? >> 23 or 24. >> he has a son now. >> oh, ok. >> do you have more time with the camera. >> if you get it fast. we have limited time. thank you, sir. >> ok. good. >> appreciate that. >> you have three? >> >> he keeps me straight. nice to meet you.

or she keeps the book straight. i don't know which. >> nice to see you. >> good to see you. >> you're going to get tired of that one day. >> oh, no. >> i'm glad you're here. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello. >> hi. >> nice to see you. >> nice to see you. >> well, so far, so good. no cramps yet. we'll see you. >> good to see you again. >> my favorite memory is being in an elevator with you and timothy leery in chicago, 1991. >> i can't believe that. >> i don't recall that, because it was at his home one time and he had like a little reception for me. that was pretty wild too. >> yeah. >> but i don't remember the one in chicago. >> it was just in an elevator. it was more memorable to me than to you. but i love your work. thank you. >> thank you. >> glad to see people

interested. : >> hello. good to see you. >> hello. nice to see you. i wouldn't say that. young in spirit, right?

>> hello, congressman. 22 years in the army, i have been to afghanistan. dad wouldn can't do it. thank you very much. en >> is this yours? this is yours. try to give your book away. >> go back to pittsburgh for the g 20 summit. >> when are we expecting that? >> not a lot of other than behind-the-scenes there'll be a lot of mischief planned but we won't hear about it but nothing good will come out of it. they will work hard to internationalize the reserve currency. it won't be very easy.

doing all right. >> going to be around. from some of the stuff you say is there anything special you want to say? >> do you going to be there tonight? i don't have anything special to say unless you want to ask me something. we are here to promote the campaign for liberty and liberty is the subject and part of that is dealing with the size and scope of the federal reserve because they intrude on our liberties through the financial system. >> is that the key issue you are going to speak about? >> there will be a lot of it. the concept of liberty, liberty is the opposite of government. the more government, the less liberty. an enhancer of the government is the federal reserve.

if you need to finance work you can do it without direct taxation through inflation. you can have a welfare state without paying for it until later on by just printing money. the system is intertwined and it is corrupt because it serves special interests and it is totally secret and congress doesn't assume responsibility. >> is there anyway to get corruption out of government? >> that is why you want very small government because the nature of government is to be corrupted. there will always be that temptation. the smaller the government the less harm they can do to us. >> that is great. thank you. >> thank you for stopping by. [talking over each other] >> i can't do it right now. >> we have customers who here.

>> okay. >> in fed we trust, from wall street economic senator david e wessel will discuss his book with the first director of the congressional budget office. afterwards, part of this weekend's booktv on c-span2. >> up next, mitv for an in dept our interview. >> on the back flap of the book's pretty will authors often have endorsements a the additio culture of corruption and here is the back flap endorsed