Wife of Senator Clement C. Clay of Alabama, Virginia Clay was among the brightest hostesses of Washington under Pierce and Buchanan. Her memoirs describe congressional messes, cabinet circles and the fashions of the fifties, the exodus of Southern society in 1861, life in the Confederacy, and her fight to free her husband from prison after the war, all from a Confederate standpoint.
A lively social history of antebellum Washington, valuable for its detail and as a document of Southern elite memory. Download the free EPUB.