Review - Capital Dames by Cokie Roberts

Series: N/A
Genre: Non-Fiction
Age Group: Adult
Audiobook - 14 hrs
Source: Overdrive 
Published: April 2015
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Rating: 3/5

In this engrossing and informative companion to her New York Times bestsellers Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty, Cokie Roberts marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War by offering a riveting look at Washington, D.C. and the experiences, influence, and contributions of its women during this momentous period of American history.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, the small, social Southern town of Washington, D.C. found itself caught between warring sides in a four-year battle that would determine the future of the United States.

After the declaration of secession, many fascinating Southern women left the city, leaving their friends—such as Adele Cutts Douglas and Elizabeth Blair Lee—to grapple with questions of safety and sanitation as the capital was transformed into an immense Union army camp and later a hospital. With their husbands, brothers, and fathers marching off to war, either on the battlefield or in the halls of Congress, the women of Washington joined the cause as well. And more women went to the Capital City to enlist as nurses, supply organizers, relief workers, and journalists. Many risked their lives making munitions in a highly flammable arsenal, toiled at the Treasury Department printing greenbacks to finance the war, and plied their needlework skills at The Navy Yard—once the sole province of men—to sew canvas gunpowder bags for the troops.


Cokie Roberts chronicles these women's increasing independence, their political empowerment, their indispensable role in keeping the Union unified through the war, and in helping heal it once the fighting was done. She concludes that the war not only changed Washington, it also forever changed the place of women.

While I’ve been interested in several of Cokie Robert’s books in the past, this is the first one I picked up. The Civil War has always been an area of interest for me and I was interested to see what the different perspectives and contributions women had during the war.

Throughout the book Roberts focused on the women who lived and worked in Washington D.C. The stories of these women are told through a chronological look at the war. Though this does put the events in context, it was difficult for me to keep track of all the women as we revisited their stories throughout the book. Since I listened to the audiobook this was especially difficult without a glossary to reference. There were quite a few women who were easy to recognize like Clara Barton, Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Dent Grant, but others that were important in their time were difficult to keep track of as we jumped between them.

While I enjoyed the look at high society life in Washington during the mid 19^th century, it was disappointing to have so few women from other backgrounds included. Almost every woman profiled is either in the Washington political sphere or in the city itself. Very few women of color, poor women or working women are mentioned. While I’m sure it was more difficult to find individual women to profile from these backgrounds, I felt their voices were missing in this book about a war that killed substantially more working-class husbands and liberated African-American women from slavery.

Overall, this was interesting and I enjoyed learning about the lives of the women Roberts chose to profile, but I would have enjoyed it more with more voices included. All of the information was fascinating and I am glad to see a book covering many of the women who changed society and the political spheres during the Civil War.

My Last Review--> Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs