Angelina Grimké Weld. "We are a nation of changes": America at the crossroads in the 1830s
"I think much suffering awaits me": Angelina Grimké's journey to reform
"Make me instrumental in the great work of emancipation": Angelina Grimké's letter to The liberator
"This is all like a dream now; but I can't undream it": Angelina becomes an abolitionist
"I laid my difficulty at the feet of Jesus": The burden of being a woman
"You have had my whole heart": A season of surprises
"We abolition women are turning the world upside down": Triumphs and retirement
"I cannot tell thee how I love this private life": Angelina and domesticity
"Innumerable, horrible, unspeakable, earthy, sensual and devilish distortions of married life": The crisis years at home
This is not an in memoriam, it is a war-cry": The last years of Angelina Grimké.
Varina Howell Davis. "The happy fireside": The deep South before the Civil War
From the briars to the hurricane: Varina Banks Howell and Jefferson Davis
"The desire I have to be with you every day and all day": The courtship of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell
"Calmer, discreeter, happier & lovelier": The months at Brierfield
"How grand and blasé the people all looked": The first Washington experience
"The heart at last, if it is well governed, makes the heaven": War, injury, and domestic discord
"The Southern rights cause is the losing one now": The return to Washington, D.C.
"We felt blood in the air": Personal and public tragedies
"Everybody is scared": John Brown, the fire eaters, Lincoln, and secession
"Civil war has only horror for me": Varina becomes the first lady of the Confederacy
"The people of our country rose in their might": From first lady to refugee
"I never report unfit for duty": Varina begins her campaigns for freedom
"I saw Mr. Davis's shrunken form and glassy eyes": The reunion at Fortress Monroe
"The business is finished": Jefferson Davis goes free
"Our once happy homes": Varina's postwar odyssey
"In the course of human events I shall probably do down to Mr. Davis's earthly paradise": Separation and reconciliation
"Other refuge have we none": Life and death at Beauvoir
"Her conversation is superlatively interesting": Varina's years of independence.
Julia Dent Grant. The winds of change, the shelter of tradition - "One long summer of sunshine": Growing up in Missouri
"But one sweetheart in his life": The courtship of Julia Dent Grant
"His loving little wife": Creating a home and starting a family
"Cheer up, make the best of this": The return to civilian life
"As I was a Democrat at that time": The opportunities of war
"The horrid old Constitution": Julia's personal war
"If your mind is made up": Marital relations in wartime
"There will be an outbreak tonight": Victory and assassination
"What shouts went up!": A hero and his wife
"Ulys, do you wish to be President?": The early White House years
"Nice people, questionable people, and people who were not nice at all": Weddings and scandals in the White House
"A waif on the world's wide common": Julia becomes a world traveler
"Do you not desire success?": From politics to poverty
"Warmed in the sunlight of his loyal love and great fame": Julia becomes a widow
"Living again, with the aid of my fancy and my pen": Julia Dent Grant writes her memoirs.