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Introduction
In Mrs. Chesnut's Diary
are vivid pictures of the social life that went on uninterruptedly in
the midst of war; of the economic conditions that resulted from
blockaded ports; of the manner in which the spirits of the people rose
and fell with each victory or defeat, and of the momentous events that
took place in Charleston, Montgomery, and Richmond. But the Diary has an
importance quite apart from the interest that lies in these pictures.
Mrs. Chesnut was close to
forty years of age when the war began, and thus had lived through the
most stirring scenes in the controversies that led to it. In this Diary,
as perhaps nowhere else in the literature of the war, will be found the
Southern spirit of that time expressed in words which are not alone
charming as literature, but genuinely human in their spontaneousness,
their delightfully unconscious frankness. Her words are the farthest
possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely
intellectual. They ring so true that they start echoes. The most
uncompromising Northern heart can scarcely fail to be moved by their
abounding sincerity, surcharged though it be with that old Southern fire
which overwhelmed the army of McDowell at Bull Run.
In making more clear the
unyielding tenacity of the South and the stern conditions in which the
war was prosecuted, the Diary has further importance. At the beginning
there was no Southern leader, in so far as we can gather from Mrs.
Chesnut's reports of her talks with them, who had any hope that the
South would win in the end, provided the North should be able to enlist
her full resources. The result, however, was that the South struck
something like terror to many hearts, and raised serious expectations
that two great European powers would recognize her independence. The
South fought as long as she had any soldiers left who were capable of
fighting, and at last "robbed the cradle and the grave." Nothing then
remained except to "wait for another generation to grow up." The North,
so far as her stock of men of fighting age was concerned, had done
scarcely more than make a beginning, while the South was virtually
exhausted when the war was half over.
Unlike the South, the
North was never reduced to extremities which led the wives of Cabinet
officers and commanding generals to gather in Washington hotels and
private drawing-rooms, in order to knit heavy socks for soldiers whose
feet otherwise would go bare: scenes like these were common in Richmond,
and Mrs. Chesnut often made one of the company. Nor were gently nurtured
women of the North forced to wear coarse and ill-fitting shoes, such as
negro cobblers made, the alternative being to dispense with shoes
altogether. Gold might rise in the North to 2.80, but there came a time
in the South when a thousand dollars in paper money were needed to buy a
kitchen utensil, which before the war could have been bought for less
than one dollar in gold. Long before the conflict ended it was a common
remark in the South that, "in going to market, you take your money in
your basket, and bring your purchases home in your pocket."
In the North the
counterpart to these facts were such items as butter at 50 cents a pound
and flour at $12 a barrel. People in the North actually thrived on high
prices. Villages and small towns, as well as large cities, had their
"bloated bondholders" in plenty, while farmers everywhere were able to
clear their lands of mortgages and put money in the bank besides.
Planters in the South, meanwhile, were borrowing money to support the
negroes in idleness at home, while . they themselves were fighting at
the front. Old Colonel Chesnut, the author's father-in-law, in April,
1862, estimated that he had already lost half a million in bank stock
and railroad bonds. When the war closed, he had borrowed such large sums
himself and had such large sums due to him from others, that he saw no
likelihood of the obligations on either side ever being discharged.
Mrs. Chesnut wrote her
Diary from day to day, as the mood or an occasion prompted her to do so.
The fortunes of war changed the place of her abode almost as frequently
as the seasons changed, but wherever she might be the Diary was
continued. She began to write in Charleston when the Convention was
passing the Ordinance of Secession. Thence she went to Montgomery, Ala.,
where the Confederacy was organized and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated
as its President. She went to receptions where, sitting aside on sofas
with Davis, Stephens, Toombs, Cobb, or Hunter, she talked of the
probable outcome of the war, should war come, setting down in her Diary
what she heard from others and all that she thought herself. Returning
to Charleston, where her husband, in a small boat, conveyed to Major
Anderson the ultimatum of the Governor of South Carolina, she saw from a
housetop the first act of war committed in the bombardment of Fort
Sumter. During the ensuing four years, Mrs. Chesnut 's time was mainly
passed between Columbia and Richmond. For shorter periods she was at the
Fauquier White Sulphur Springs in Virginia, Flat Rock in North Carolina,
Portland in Alabama (the home of her mother) , Camden and Chester in
South Carolina, and Lincolnton in North Carolina.
In all these places Mrs.
Chesnut was in close touch with men and women who were in the forefront
of the social, military, and political life of the South. Those who live
in her pages make up indeed a catalogue of the heroes of the Confederacy
President Jefferson Davis, Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, General
Robert E. Lee, General "Stonewall" Jackson, General Joseph E. Johnston,
General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, General Wade Hampton, General Joseph B.
Kershaw, General John B. Hood, General John S. Preston, General Robert
Toombs, R. M. T. Hunter, Judge Louis T. Wigfall, and so many others that
one almost hears the roll-call. That this statement is not exaggerated
may be judged from a glance at the index, which has been prepared with a
view to the inclusion of all important names mentioned in the text.
As her Diary constantly
shows, Mrs. Chesnut was a woman of society in the best sense. She had
love of companionship, native wit, an acute mind, knowledge of books,
and a searching insight into the motives of men and women. She was also
a notable housewife, much given to hospitality; and her heart was of the
warmest and tenderest, as those who knew her well bore witness.
Mary Boykin Miller, born
March 31, 1823, was the daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller, a man of
distinction in the public affairs of South Carolina. Mr. Miller was
elected to Congress in 1817, became Governor in 1828, and was chosen
United States Senator in 1830. He was a strong supporter of the
Nullification movement. In 1833, owing to ill-health, he resigned his
seat in the Senate and not long afterward removed to Mississippi, where
he engaged in cotton planting until his death, in March, 1838.
His daughter, Mary, was
married to James Chesnut, Jr.,April 23, 1840, when seventeen years of
age. Thenceforth her home was mainly at Mulberry, near Camden, one of
several plantations owned by her father-in-law. Of the domestic life at
Mulberry a pleasing picture has come down to us, as preserved in a
time-worn scrap-book and written some years before the war :
"In our drive of
about three miles to Mulberry, we were struck with the wealth of
forest trees along our way for which the environs of Camden are
noted. Here is a bridge completely canopied with overarching
branches; and, for the remainder of our journey, we pass through an
aromatic avenue of crab-trees with the Yellow Jessamine and the
Cherokee rose, entwining every shrub, post, and pillar within reach
and lending an almost tropical luxuriance and sweetness to the way.
"But here is the
house a brick building, capacious and massive, a house that is a
home for a large family, one of the homesteads of the olden times,
where home comforts and blessings cluster, sacred alike for its joys
and its sorrows. Birthdays, wedding-days, 'Merry Christmases,'
departures for school and college, and home returnings have enriched
this abode with the treasures of life.
"A warm welcome
greets us as we enter. The furniture within is in keeping with
things without; nothing is tawdry; there is no gingerbread gilding;
all is handsome and substantial. In the 'old arm-chair' sits the
venerable mother. The father is on his usual ride about the
plantation; but will be back presently. A lovely old age is this
mother's, calm and serene, as the soft mellow days of our own gentle
autumn. She came from the North to the South many years ago, a fair
young bride.
"The Old Colonel
enters. He bears himself erect, walks at a brisk gait, and needs no
spectacles, yet he is over eighty. He is a typical Southern planter.
From the beginning he has been one of the most intelligent patrons
of the Wateree Mission to the Negroes, taking a personal interest in
them, attending the mission church and worshiping with his own
people. May his children see to it that this holy charity is
continued to their servants forever!"
James Chesnut, 'Jr., was
the son and heir of Colonel James Chesnut, whose wife was Mary Coxe, of
Philadelphia. Mary Coxe's sister married Horace Binney, the eminent
Philadelphia lawyer. James Chesnut, Jr., was born in 1815 and graduated
from Princeton. For fourteen years he served in the legislature of South
Carolina, and in January, 1859, was appointed to fill a vacancy in the
United States Senate. In November, 1860, when South Carolina was about
to secede, he resigned from the Senate and thenceforth was active in the
Southern cause, first as an aide to General Beauregard, then as an aide
to President Davis, and finally as a brigadier-general of reserves in
command of the coast of South Carolina.
General Chesnut was
active in public life in South Carolina after the war, in so far as the
circumstances of Reconstruction permitted, and in 1868 was a delegate
from that State to the National convention which nominated Horatio
Seymour for President. His death occurred at Sarsfield, February 1,
1885. One who knew him well wrote:
"While papers were
teeming with tribute to this knightly gentleman, whose services to
his State were part of her history in her prime tribute that did him
no more than justice, in recounting his public virtues I thought
there was another phase of his character which the world did not
know and the press did not chronicle that which showed his beautiful
kindness and his courtesy to his own household, and especially to
his dependents.
"Among all the preachers of the South Carolina
Conference, a few remained of those who ever counted it as one of
the highest honors conferred upon them by their Lord that it was
permitted to them to preach the gospel to the slaves of the Southern
plantations. Some of these retained kind recollections of the
cordial hospitality shown the plantation missionary at Mulberry and
Sandy Hill, and of the care taken at these places that the
plantation chapel should be neat and comfortable, and that the
slaves should have their spiritual as well as their bodily needs
supplied.
"To these it was no matter of surprise to learn
that at his death General Chesnut, statesman and soldier, was
surrounded by faithful friends, born in slavery on his own
plantation, and that the last prayer he ever heard came from the
lips of a negro man, old Scipio, his father's body-servant; and that
he was borne to his grave amid the tears and lamentations of those
whom no Emancipation Proclamation could sever from him, and who
cried aloud: 'O my master! my master! he was so good to me! He was
all to us! We have lost our best friend! '"
Mrs. Chesnut 's anguish when her husband died, is
not to be forgotten ; the 'bitter cry' never quite spent itself,
though she was brave and bright to the end. Her friends were near in
that supreme moment at Sarsfield, when, on November 22, 1886, her
own heart ceased to beat. Her servants had been true to her; no
blandishments of freedom had drawn Ellen or Molly away from 'Miss
Mary.' Mrs. Chesnut lies buried in the family cemetery at Knight 's
Hill, where also sleep her husband and many other members of the
Chesnut family."
The Chesnuts settled in
South Carolina at the close of the war with France, but lived originally
on the frontier of Virginia. Their Virginia home had been invaded by
French and Indians, and in an expedition to Fort Duquesne the father was
killed. John Chesnut removed from Virginia to South Carolina soon
afterward and served in the Revolution as a captain. His son James, the
"Old Colonel," was educated at Princeton, took an active part in public
affairs in South Carolina, and prospered greatly as a planter. He
survived until after the War, being a nonogenarian when the conflict
closed. In a charming sketch of him in one of the closing pages of this
Diary, occurs the following passage: "Colonel Chesnut, now ninety-three,
blind and deaf, is apparently as strong as ever, and certainly as
resolute of will. Partly patriarch, partly grand seigneur, this old man
is of a species that we shall see no more; the last of a race of lordly
planters who ruled this Southern world, but now a splendid wreck."
Three miles from Camden
still stands Mulberry. During one of the raids committed in the
neighborhood by Sherman's men early in 1865, the house escaped
destruction almost as if by accident. The picture of it in this book is
from a recent photograph. A change has indeed come over it, since the
days when the household servants and dependents numbered between sixty
and seventy, and its owner was lord of a thousand slaves. After the war,
Mulberry ceased to be the author's home, she and General Chesnut
building for themselves another to which they gave the name of Sarsfield.
Sarsfield, of which an illustration is given, still stands in the pine
lands not far from Mulberry. Bloomsbury, another of old Colonel Chesnut
's plantation dwellings, survived the march of Sherman, and is now the
home of David R. Williams, Jr., and Ellen Manning, his wife, whose
children roam its halls, as grandchildren of the author's sister Kate.
Other Chesnut plantations were Cool Spring, Knight's Hill, The
Hermitage, and Sandy Hill. The Diary, as it now exists in forty-eight
thin volumes, of the small quarto size, is entirely in Mrs. Chesnut 's
handwriting. She originally wrote it on what was known as "Confederate
paper," but transcribed it afterward.
When Richmond was
threatened, or when Sherman was coming, she buried it or in some other
way secreted it from the enemy. On occasion it shared its hiding-place
with family silver, or with a drinking-cup which had been presented to
General Hood by the ladies of Richmond. Mrs. Chesnut was fond of
inserting on blank pages of the Diary current newspaper accounts of
campaigns and battles, or lists of killed and wounded. One item of this
kind, a newspaper "extra," issued in Chester, S. C., and announcing the
assassination of Lincoln, is reproduced in this volume. Mrs. Chesnut, by
oral and written bequest, gave the Diary to her friend whose name leads
the signatures to this Introduction. In the Diary, here and there, Mrs.
Chesnut 's expectation that the work would some day be printed is
disclosed, but at the time of her death it did not seem wise to
undertake publication for a considerable period. Yellow with age as the
pages now are, the only harm that has come to them in the passing of
many years, is that a few corners have been broken and frayed, as shown
in one of the pages here reproduced in facsimile.
In the summer of 1904,
the woman whose office it has been to assist in preparing the Diary for
the press, went South to collect material for another work to follow her
A Virginia Girl in the Civil War. Her investigations led her to
Columbia, where, while the guest of Miss Martin, she learned of the
Diary's existence. Soon afterward an arrangement was made with her
publishers under which the Diary's owner and herself agreed to condense
and revise the manuscript for publication. The Diary was found to be of
too great length for reproduction in full, parts of it being of personal
or local interest rather than general. The editing of the book called
also for the insertion of a considerable number of foot-notes, in order
that persons named, or events referred to, might be the better
understood by the present generation.
Mrs. Chesnut was a
conspicuous example of the wellborn and high-bred woman, who, with
active sympathy and unremitting courage, supported the Southern cause.
Born and reared when Nullification was in the ascendent, and acquiring
an education which developed and refined her natural literary gifts, she
found in the throes of a great conflict at arms the impulse which
wrought into vital expression in words her steadfast loyalty to the
waning fortunes of a political faith, which, in South Carolina, had
become a religion.
Many men have produced
narratives of the war between the States, and a few women have written
notable chronicles of it ; but none has given to the world a record more
radiant than hers, or one more passionately sincere. Every line in this
Diary throbs with the tumult of deep spiritual passion, and bespeaks the
luminous mind, the unconquered soul, of the woman who wrote it.
ISABELLA D. MARTIN,
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY.
You can read this diary here in
pdf format
Note: 1981: Mary
Chesnut's Civil War,
edited and Introduction by C. Vann Woodward. Reprinted in 1993.
This version by C. Vann Woodward retained more of her original work,
provides an overview of her life and society in the "Introduction", and
was annotated to identify fully the large cast of characters, places and
events. You can also order this book through our
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