When All Is Said and Done

Published in 1952, this memoir portrays life inside a politically prominent southern family from Reconstruction to the New Deal. Dolly Blount Lamar describes her father's struggle to earn respect and political clout during the Reconstruction era. She details her own social life in Washington, D.C., providing intimate portraits of the wives of Presidents and members of Congress, lobbyists, radical Reconstructionists, and leaders from the Civil War who came together to make the new Union work. Lamar describes her years as president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, her role in electing Sidney Lanier to the Hall of Fame at New York University, and the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial controversy of the 1920s. The memoir closes with her later years of life in her hometown of Macon, Georgia.