♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.
I'm here at the Tisch WNET studios at Lincoln Center and we're very fortunate today to have Cokie Roberts with us.
ROBERTS: So good to be with you, David.
RUBENSTEIN: Thank you for coming here.
RUBENSTEIN: Now you're from a very prominent family in New Orleans and your father was the House Majority Leader.
ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: Uh, Hale Boggs.
And your mother subsequently became a Congresswoman from Louisiana as well.
Lindy Boggs.
And later became our, in fact, our Ambassador to the Vatican, right?
So your father was the majority leader in the House of Representatives for a number of years and then tragically he had a plane crash in Alaska.
your mother subsequently was asked to run for his seat and she held that seat for how many years?
ROBERTS: Nine terms.
So 18 years.
RUBENSTEIN: And when she retired, she became the Ambassador to the Vatican?
ROBERTS: After a couple years, she discovered retirement was very hard work.
You know, everybody asks you to do everything.
And then, um, President Clinton asked her to become Ambassador to the Vatican when she was 81 years old and so she took a new job in a new country at age 81.
It's a great example for all of us.
RUBENSTEIN: And, it's a very political family in some other respects.
Your brother was the best-known lobbyist, I would say, in Washington, Tommy Boggs, for many years, and you had a sister who was the mayor of Princeton, right?
ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: Did you ever think of running for office yourself?
ROBERTS: Sure I did.
I actually, you know, I think I've told you this before, I feel guilty that I never did, because I am an, an admirer of public servants and people who are willing to go into the arena and put themselves on the line to serve the public.
Uh, and I am the only member of my original nuclear family not to run for Congress.
RUBENSTEIN: Did you intend to be a journalist?
ROBERTS: No.
I was, you know, a lady of a certain age and, uh, I didn't really intend to be much of anything except a mother and wife and do good things in the community, which is a wonderful life, by the way, but, um, the world turned topsy-turvy and, um, and I found myself as a journalist.
RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about three books that you've written.
Uh, and these books are written about women who were very important historical figures, but why do we need to have books about women?
Men did everything?
Why did, what did women do?
ROBERTS: Yeah right.
There you go.
But the, the fact is, of course, these women were incredibly influential and powerful and, uh, and had a lot to say about the foundation of the country and, and also made it possible for the men to do what they did.
RUBENSTEIN: So, the three books are: Ladies of Liberty, Founding Mothers, and Capital Dames, which is largely about the Civil War era.
So, let's talk about, um, a couple things that are more generic.
Uh, when you were doing the research, where did you get the information?
Was it letters or where were things that you wrote about?
ROBERTS: So, with Founding Mothers, which was the first one, which, uh, came out in 2004, it was really detective work, David.
There's not a lot of, attention paid to these women's letters and, uh, so often they're buried with the men's letters or, or they're, they're really some place you have to just go searching for them.
And some of the best places for that are the historic homes, because places like Mt.
Vernon, where you've been so involved, because they, they pay attention to the whole family and so, um, uh, Mt.
Vernon has done wonderful work on trying to piece together Martha Washington's life, even though she, I could kill her for this, burned all of her correspondence with George Washington.
But, um, the letters, uh, are really quite remarkable once you do get them, they're really so much better than the men's letters because they are much more frank and funny and free because the men knew that they were doing something extraordinary and they knew that, um, their letters, if they succeeded in, in this experiment of America, that their letters would be preserved and published, so they wrote with that in mind.
The women just wrote letters.
They didn't expect me to be reading them 200 years later.
RUBENSTEIN: Right.
So from reading your books and reading about the letters, the things that come through that are quite interesting, uh, are one, that women married very, very young... ROBERTS: Mm-hmm.
RUBENSTEIN: The age of consent, actually, in Virginia in those days I think was 12 and, you know, people got married very early.
ROBERTS: In, in, in most states, it was 10.
RUBENSTEIN: 10.
ROBERTS: And in New Jersey and Delaware I think it was like five.
I mean, it's just awful.
RUBENSTEIN: So they also had many, many children.
Why did they have so many children?
ROBERTS: Because there was no way not to have children.
Uh, and the men would, you know, the men would go off to Congress or to war and come home just often enough so that they would have another baby.
RUBENSTEIN: And one of the generally held notions that women really were not involved in the Revolutionary War, that the men were, the famous men, they're fighting the Revolutionary War, the women are home, but that's not actually true, right?
ROBERTS: No, um, some women were home, like Abigail Adams, and what they were doing at home was quite remarkable.
Uh, she had this little teeny house, not much bigger than this platform we're on, and four little kids and, um, the American soldiers sometimes stayed there and, um, and oh, by the way, the British were coming, you know, and John says to her, "If it gets really dangerous, take the children and go to the woods."
No, thank you.
But lots of women went to camp with these soldiers, and Martha Washington did it, we know about Valley Forge, but she did it every winter of the eight long winters... RUBENSTEIN: She would go there in a carriage... ROBERTS: She'd go in a carriage.
RUBENSTEIN: And what would she do when she got there?
ROBERTS: And she'd go in a carriage that was full of foodstuffs and cloth that had been produced at Mt.
Vernon over the summer, one of the many contributions of enslaved people to the Revolution, and, um, she would get there and she'd be cheered into camp, "Lady Washington!"
They loved her.
And, um, then she would cook for the soldiers and sew for the soldiers and pray with the soldiers and nurse the soldiers and put on entertainment to try to keep morale up.
Because there were periods, you know, when these soldiers were not being fed or paid, housed, and so they kept, uh, threatening desertion by regiment, and, uh, Martha Washington went a long way to keep that from happening.
RUBENSTEIN: Now she became our first First Lady.
Uh, was that the title that she was given then?
ROBERTS: No.
Uh, she was called "Lady Washington".
Uh, sometimes some people called her the "Presidentess".
Um, uh, she said, in one letter, she said, uh, "they said I am the first lady of the land.
I think I'm more like the chief state prisoner."
Uh, which is something I think a lot of first ladies have felt since then, living in the White House.
RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about the second first lady, in the history of American correspondence, nothing is as extraordinary as the 1,000 letters or so between John and Abigail.
ROBERTS: So wonderful.
It's, it's just such a treasure trove and, you know, it was, it was their separation from each other all those years that was so difficult for them, but wonderful for us because we do have, uh, these thousands of letters and the Massachusetts Historical Society has done a wonderful job of, of putting them all online so anybody can read them.
RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, one of the most famous letters is one that Abigail says to John Adams, uh, "Don't forget the ladies."
What is she referring to?
ROBERTS: So, she had been militating for a long time for independence.
She thought the men were just being lily-livered, that they would not, um, say to Great Britain, "for God sake, we're not gonna be part of you anymore."
And she kept saying to John, she kept writing him letters at the Continental Congress saying, "declare independency!"
Um, and then she thought, "well, now, if that does finally happen, you're gonna have to form a new government, and what kind of government should that be?"
And she had all kinds of ideas about taxes and tariffs and all of that, but she said, um, "but when you do form that new government, remember the ladies."
Because men would all by tyrants if they could.
And he laughed at her.
RUBENSTEIN: Now to put people in the perspective of those days, women had the right to vote?
ROBERTS: No, of course not.
RUBENSTEIN: Could they, could they serve in office?
ROBERTS: No.
ROBERTS: Women couldn't do anything, uh, it... RUBENSTEIN: They couldn't own property either.
ROBERTS: They couldn't, married women could not own property.
Their own prop, their property was the property of their husbands, including the clothes on their backs, the jewelry in their ears, um, they were the property, they were the property of their husbands.
RUBENSTEIN: Now there was another, uh, Founding Father who was married who didn't spend as much time with his wife as might be desired because he was in Europe, and that's Benjamin Franklin, but his wife ran his business and... ROBERTS: Totally.
RUBENSTEIN: How did he treat her?
ROBERTS: Not well.
Uh, I'm not fond of him, uh, because of the way he treated Deborah Franklin.
She, uh, she was not educated but she was a very savvy businesswoman.
And so we learn as children that Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General of the United States, but the truth is, he wasn't here.
He was in London.
So she ran the post office and she was very, uh, determined to run it her way and got into fights with the British overlord and all of that.
They also had printing businesses that were really essentially franchises that went out to what was then the frontier, which was Pittsburgh, and, uh, she ran all of that and meanwhile he's in London having a wonderful time representing the colony of Pennsylvania to the British Parliament.
He's a lobbyist.
And, uh, and his neighbors in, in Philadelphia felt that he was not sufficiently opposed to the Stamp Act and they came to burn down the house, ready to raze the house.
And everybody said, "Deborah, get out!
Get out!"
And she said, "I'm not getting out.
I haven't done anything to offend anybody."
And she got a gun and she, um, this Quaker lady, and she fended them all off, and Ben wrote her a note and said, "Well done, Deborah."
But he didn't come home.
RUBENSTEIN: The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, is, is a widower.
Uh, who does he had as a equivalent of First Lady?
ROBERTS: Well, he was a funny entertainer.
He often just would have the Federalists for dinner and the Republicans for dinner.
But when he had a bigger crowd, he would often ask Dolly Madison, his Secretary of State's wife, to come in and hostess it.
And if women of Washington showed up, which they did from time to time, he would ask her to come over.
RUBENSTEIN: So, the fourth president was James Madison, his wife was Dolly Madison.
And why was she so famous as a, a First Lady and as an entertainer?
What was her personality that... ROBERTS: She was an incredible charmer.
Um, at one point Henry Clay said to her, "Everybody loves Mrs.
Madison."
And she said, "Well, that's because Mrs. Madison loves everybody."
Now I've read her mail.
RUBENSTEIN: Right.
ROBERTS: That's not true.
But, um, but she made everybody feel that way and she, um, starting when, in 1801 when, uh, Madison was Secretary of State, she started having these big parties in Washington and, uh, everybody had to come because that's where all the deals got made, that's where all the intelligence was exchanged, and at one point after she became First Lady, um, the Federalists, the opposition party, thought they would boycott her "Squeezes", they would call them, because, you know, they were mad at Madison, and, uh, they couldn't.
They discovered they couldn't because they wouldn't learn anything if they weren't there.
RUBENSTEIN: Now when the British are invading the United States in the War of 1812, it's in 1814, the British are coming towards Washington.
James Madison manages not to be at the White House.
He's out... ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: Looking at the troops.
Uh, Dolly Madison is still in the White House.
What does she do?
ROBERTS: So she, she keeps waiting for him and hoping, she goes to the roof and looks with a spy glass trying to see him.
She prepared a meal for him and, she had the enslaved people prepare a meal for him and the Cabinet.
Uh, and, uh, he's not coming, he's not coming, and she finally gets word the British are coming, so she packs up all of the papers she can find and some sterling and, uh, then makes sure that the portrait of George Washington is safely removed from the White House and taken away.
And the importance of that, David, you know, we always talk about it, but people don't realize why that was so meaningful, but if you think about modern times and think about the statue of Saddam Hussein coming down in Baghdad or before that the statue of Lenin coming down in, in the Soviet Union.
Um, it's, it's meaningful to a population to have their leader, uh...
Disappear, and if that portrait of Washington had gone away and been desecrated, that could have been incredibly demoralizing for the American people.
RUBENSTEIN: Let's go forward to the Civil War era.
Uh, James Buchanan is our only President who was never married.
ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: So, for a First Lady he has Harriet Lane, who is his niece.
Uh, how did she do as First Lady?
ROBERTS: She actually did a pretty good job given the, given the situation, which is of course immediately before the Civil War and the country's falling apart.
He did a terrible job.
Harriet Lane had come, has, was an orphan.
And he was her uncle and had helped raise her.
She had come to Washington, gone to Visitation school, he was Secretary of State, she would come to his soirees and see him and then he became the Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
So she went to London and was very well respected there.
Queen Victoria loved her.
And, um, so by the time she came to Washington, to the White House, she was a very sophisticated young woman.
And, uh, her endeavor was to try to bring people together and keep, keep things calm and people didn't like her that much, but they did feel she did a pretty good job.
RUBENSTEIN: And she was the first person, who was called First Lady?
ROBERTS: Because nobody knew quite what to call her.
You know, she wasn't, she wasn't Mrs. Buchanan.
She wasn't Lady Buchanan.
So they called her "First Lady".
RUBENSTEIN: Now after Buchanan left office, Harriet Lane became very involved in healthcare and in fact today there's a Harriet Lane Clinic at Johns Hopkins because of all the things that she did, uh, to help people who were, uh, unhealthy.
ROBERTS: And, people don't realize, she also really was the founder of the National Gallery of Art.
Um, there had been, when the Smithsonian Institution was created, there had been a proposal that there be a Gallery of Art, and, um, she gave her collection, but she had been lobbying for, uh, artists and for a National Gallery the whole time that she was in Washington.
RUBENSTEIN: So, Buchanan is succeeded by, let's see, a very unknown man... Abraham Lincoln.
ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: And, um, his wife is not somebody that the Washington, uh ladies... ROBERTS: Crowd.
RUBENSTEIN: Are very interested in.
Why were they so, uh, upset that she was gonna be First Lady?
ROBERTS: Well first of all they didn't like him.
Uh... RUBENSTEIN: Right.
ROBERTS: You know, he, I mean, he, he was a Republican.
Washington was really a southern city.
He had gotten I think 2% of the vote in Virginia... RUBENSTEIN: Right, right.
ROBERTS: And 3% in Maryland.
Um, so he, he was not popular.
But she, they thought she was, uh, um, a, a coarse, western woman, which was not true.
But she had a bad temper and she could be quite crazy and, uh, and they, you know, she, she made her views known and they weren't terribly popular.
RUBENSTEIN: Interestingly, many people may not remember this, but, uh, Abraham Lincoln had been engaged to her and then he broke off the engagement, she was also wooed by Lincoln's opponent... ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: Stephen Douglas.
ROBERTS: Stephen Douglas.
Right.
Stephen Douglas, um, eventually he, he married and had children and then he, his wife died and then he married Adele Cutts, and she was Dolly Madison's great niece, and all the women loved her.
They couldn't stand Mary, but they loved Adele.
And one of them, Varina Davis, the wife of Jefferson Davis, who of course ended up leading the Confederacy, wrote wonderful letters and she wrote home to her mother that she was furious that Adele was marrying this drunkard, Stephen Douglas, and she said, "it's a good thing there's a new water system coming to Washington so he may wash a little oftener, otherwise, uh, his acquaintances will have to build bigger rooms with more ventilation."
See, you don't learn from the men's letters that Stephen Douglas stinks.
RUBENSTEIN: Don't get that.
So Mary Todd Lincoln, uh, and Abraham Lincoln had, uh, several children die, one in the White House died, and so it is said that Mary Todd Lincoln had seances to communicate with their deceased son... ROBERTS: Oh she did.
RUBENSTEIN: And Abraham Lincoln participated in them?
ROBERTS: That's true.
Um, the, seances were very common.
Uh, but, uh, yes, they did have people both come to the White House and then they went, and Lincoln accompanied her, to her home in Georgetown where the mediums were.
RUBENSTEIN: Now after Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865, um, no one had any experience about what to do in terms of getting the First Lady to move out.
What did people say, uh, "Mrs. Lincoln, could you leave, uh, soon?"
Or... ROBERTS: Actually, Andrew Johnson was very kind about it, her, uh, Lincoln's successor.
And she was full on crazy at that point and she sort of took to her bed for six weeks and was cared for by... RUBENSTEIN: At the White House?
ROBERTS: At the White house.
Uh, cared for by the, uh, she's called her dressmaker but she was really a fashion designer and former slave, Elizabeth Keckley, but not only did they not know what to do about her, they, they had never, they didn't know what to do about a presidential funeral and, what happened was that first day, he was in the East Room of the White House and 30,000 people came through the East Room of the White House in 1865 and, uh, they had, then they had the services and then they realized people had to see him, so they brought him to the Capital.
And, um, hundreds of thousands of people.
RUBENSTEIN: It is said by some people that she, when she finally left, she took everything that wasn't nailed down in the White House and took it back with her.
Is that unfair?
ROBERTS: Yeah, it is unfair.
Uh, she, I mean, I'm not a fan of Mary Lincoln, but she didn't steal everything from the White House.
A lot had been stolen before she ever left.
Um, she was a shopaholic, I mean, really to the point where it was, it was a mental illness.
I mean she had 300 pairs of gloves she bought one day.
And the press followed her everywhere and wrote down everything she was buying.
Um, and then she got back to Illinois and was essentially impoverished and, um, kept begging the Congress for a pension, and then she enlisted Mrs. Keckley to help her go to New York and sell her clothes, and that became a big scandal.
RUBENSTEIN: There was no pension then for First Ladies and as I recall, not until, um, Harry Truman died... ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: Did his, uh, widow get a pension, which was $5,000 a year.
ROBERTS: There, there were no pensions, period.
People would stay in Congress forever because they, they wouldn't have no pension.
They finally got pensions and people would, you know, not die in their chairs.
RUBENSTEIN: Now one of the things you point out about Mary Todd Lincoln as a First Lady is that she spent a lot of time entertaining, because it was very common in those days to have, uh, parties, and when you went to a party you had to reciprocate and so forth.
Could you explain this reciprocating style they had?
ROBERTS: So she had great big parties... RUBENSTEIN: Right.
ROBERTS: And the White House was open to the public.
Uh, particularly on New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, things like that.
But, um, there was this system of calling, calling on each other, and this went on, uh, until World War II.
RUBENSTEIN: You go to somebody's house?
ROBERTS: You go to somebody's house and either they received you or you left your calling card and said you would come.
And there was a whole, uh, protocol at various times in these early days, there was a lot of upset about who called on whom first and all of that.
RUBENSTEIN: So you're now, uh, working on a book on suffragettes.
And that was in... ROBERTS: Well it started... RUBENSTEIN: Well there was the Seneca Falls... ROBERTS: Of course with Seneca Falls in 1848, and, and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who are the two suffragists we know the best, were really the 19th century, but, and the movement kind of went into the doldrums, um, and then reemerged in the early 20th century, uh, and, uh, and those are the women who really suffered.
They were thrown into jail, they were force-fed, they were tortured, for picketing the White House.
And, um, and then they finally got it passed and ratified and it's quite a story.
RUBENSTEIN: One of the things I recall about reading of that period is that people like Eleanor Roosevelt were against the right to vote for women.
They argued it was gonna hurt women.
Is that true?
ROBERTS: Well there was a whole, uh, theory that, um, that women going into the voting booth was going to be something that diminished them because they were so pure and proper and all of that and, of course, the, the suffragists said, "well, if it's, if it's so terrible, men, good men shouldn't be doing it either."
Um, but, uh, what's so interesting is how of course they wanted to be recognized and to be considered full citizens.
But they mainly wanted the vote for the purpose of social justice and so they wanted to get child labor laws passed, for instance, and they couldn't do it without the vote.
And so they, they felt that that was the way that they would have the power to make the society a better society.
RUBENSTEIN: What is the message that you would like to convey to people that are watching about the way women were treated in our country early on and today, you could argue, and how they responded to that?
ROBERTS: Well I think the main message I want to convey is that this, this great country was not created by half of the population.
Uh, the other half of the population was very much part of the picture.
Uh, but also that given, uh, the circumstances that women did find themselves in with no, no political power, no legal power, uh, the possibility of being constantly pregnant, of losing children, all of that, the fact that they were still so engaged in the civic discourse and such patriots is really incredibly impressive and, um, and they did it, you know, just with tremendous perseverance.
RUBENSTEIN: So if you had the opportunity to talk to any of the people that you've written about, who would you like to talk to and what would you like to ask them?
ROBERTS: Well, you know, the different, different ones would be interesting on different ways.
I mean, Dolly Madison would be kind of, uh, I suspect would not really open up to you, you know, that she would be charming and, and, um, and funny, but not really let you see herself.
Um, Abigail Adams would probably talk to you quite frankly about her views and what she thought and, you know, if she didn't like you, she'd probably tell you that too.
Um, so, you know, different ones would be a different, um, conversation.
If Dolly Madison would really open up, I'd love to talk to her about how she saw that role of bringing people together.
And, you know, she was in Washington until 1849.
I mean, she, she reigned over the city for a very long time.
RUBENSTEIN: She was, um, then considered a very important person even though her husband had passed away a long time ago.
ROBERTS: Right, she had a seat in the House of Representatives.
She was on medallions.
She was considered a huge personage.
RUBENSTEIN: I think when the Washington Monument was being dedicated... ROBERTS: Right.
RUBENSTEIN: She came to it with, uh, Eliza... ROBERTS: Hamilton.
RUBENSTEIN: Hamilton.
We haven't mentioned her.
That was Hamilton's, uh, widow.
What was she like?
ROBERTS: Well she was very determined to burnish Alexander Hamilton's image.
Um, even though he had famously cheated on her, um, and she really saved his political career because she was a Schuyler.
She was of an old... RUBENSTEIN: Right.
ROBERTS: New York Dutch family and, um, and he was, as everybody who's seen the play now knows, you know, a, an immigrant, illegitimate child from the West Indies and, um, and marrying Eliza Schulyer really brought him into another level of society and when he then was found to have been having this affair, uh, she stood by him and, uh, saved his political career.
And then spent the rest of her life, uh, trying to defend him.
RUBENSTEIN: So from the time that you've been writing these books until today, how would you say Washington has treated women differently?
Today is Washington, uh, much more, uh, favorable to women?
ROBERTS: Well, women serve in office, which is an enormous difference.
Uh, we now have, uh, you know, upwards of more than 20% now of women in the House and Senate, which took a long time to get to that number.
It's not the 53% of the population, but it's a whole lot better than it was.
We've had three women Secretaries of State, um, so it is very different from what it used to be.
But I would argue that even in the days when women did not have any official power, they had a tremendous amount of influence.
RUBENSTEIN: And how long before we have a woman president, do you think?
ROBERTS: Well, it could be any time.
You know, it has to be the right woman in the right place at the right time.
But, um, I used to think that we wouldn't have a woman president unless you first elected a vice president and then something happened to the guy.
Um, but, um, uh, now I think we can elect a woman president.
RUBENSTEIN: Well, I've enjoyed reading all of your books and it's a very fascinating story and I hope more people will learn more about the women that helped to create this country and not just the men, so thank you very much for doing the research and writing those books.
ROBERTS: Thank you David, and thank you for bringing them to light.
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