Portrait of Mary Clemmer Ames. United States Senate

After separating from her husband, Mary Clemmer Ames began “A Woman's Letter from Washington ” in 1866. Within a few years, she was the highest-paid newspaperwoman of her day: the Brooklyn Daily Union paid her a $5,000 annual salary, a huge sum in 1872. She enjoyed a two-decade career as a political reporter.

Mary Abigail Dodge, writing under the pen name “Gail Hamilton,” served as a political columnist for the New York Herald, openly opposing the suffrage movement. While ostensibly rejecting the idea of women in politics, Dodge nonetheless served as a longtime ghostwriter for the 1884 Republican presidential nominee, James G. Blaine.

Perhaps the most famous of female journalists in the nation's capital during this era, however, was Kate Field. She began her career in 1870 as the London correspondent for the New York Tribune , and her syndicated columns on politics were popular for the next three decades. She also published news and opinion in her own paper, Kate Field's Washington , from 1890 to 1895. She finally endorsed suffrage just three years prior to her 1898 death.

Gail Hamilton’s article, “Courage,” published by Charles B. Richardson in 1862. Hamilton calls upon women to contribute to the Civil War effort instead of feeling disheartened. “Let us tear up our carpets to make blankets for the soldiers, as rebels have done; let us turn our houses and churches into hospitals; let us confine ourselves to two meals a day, and one course at a meal, and no butter to our bread...” Library of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection; Portfolio 124, Folder 3.