"Submissiveness is not my role, but certain platitudes on certain occasions are among the innocent deceits of the sex." A strong character with a fervent belief in woman's changing place, Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) was not content to live the life of a typical nineteenth-century Southern belle. Feeling that "a woman with wealth or prestige garnered from her husband's position could attain great power," she married Francis Wilkinson Pickens, soon to be the secessionist governor of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War. Lucy urged Pickens to accept a diplomatic mission to the court...