Founding Mothers - The Women Who Raised Our Nation

After reading the late Cokie Roberts' 2004 book Founding Mothers - The Women Who Raised Our Nation (#891) I realized how much I miss her commentary on TV and NPR on our current political state.

Here she recounts the stories of the influential women of the period leading up to and just following the American Revolution, as they encouraged their husbands, brothers, sons and friends to undertake the cause of liberty and helped shape it even through their writings.  Most of the women presented here are familiar to most of us - Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, to name a few - but many are not: Mercy Otis Warren who used her pen to great advantage, Eliza Pinckney, who at 16 managed her father's three plantations and brought prosperity to South Carolina by introducing indigo as a cash crop, or Deborah Read Franklin who ran husband Benjamin Franklin's businesses at home while he spent years abroad impressing the French court.

Most of the women's stories are told through their surviving correspondence, but presented in such a way that the writing is anecdotal, not professorial.  You do want to find out what made these ladies tick, and in many cases, what ticked them off!  Since the material is organized by time frames, we do meet many of the same women several times on the country's journey to a new governmental style.  It makes for fascinating reading.

My biggest surprise about this book?  I recognized three of the four women whose portraits grace the cover, but I had to look up the identity of a somber matron dressed all in black.  It turned out to be Catherine Littlefield Green Miller, widow of Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Green.  Kitty, as she was known, was quite the belle of the ball and a great favorite amongst both men and women in the winter encampments during the long years of the war, where she kept up everyone's spirits.  It's hard to imagine looking at this rather dour portrait that she and George Washington caused a sensation by dancing for three solid hours without a pause one night.  It was the talk of the camp and the colonies!