Raised in Alabama and married to a U.S. congressman, Virginia Tunstall Clay-Clopton always showed more interest in politics than in household duties. Her memoirs, covering the tumultuous period from 1853 to 1866, provide an insider's look at national and southern politics as she traveled with her husband, Clement Claiborne Clay, to Washington, D.C., and then on to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, where he served as a senator. The book relates it all--balls and state dinners, romantic entanglements and weddings, manners and fashion, secession and war.