Mary Boykin Chestnut
...s a state legislator and then a United States Senator. James’s position in the senate met the couple’s move to Washington and that he was serving with Jefferson Davis. Living in a Washington city, being a part of a political scene, heightened Mary’s observations. Although a firm believer in state’s rights, her paternal grandfather had been a confidant of John C. Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis, Mary had deep reservations about slavery.-1. Mary was also ahead of her time because she was a feminist. Yes, she stood by her husband and his beliefs, however Mary had a mind of her own and she was not afraid to hide her ideals. Her curiosity made her investigate the matter of male planters amongst the Southern plantations and how the men used their female slaves for sexual purposes. One observation she pointed out was how all the mulatto children represented the white children of the male planters. In 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, James Chesnut resigned from the Senate because he did not hold the same views as Lincoln. This resignation resulted in a move back down the Deep South for Mary and James. The couple returned to Mulberry where James’s became a supporter of Jefferson Davis and the new confederacy. Mary however, had a mixed political view on the idea of secession, but fully supported her husband and the confederacy. She sewed shirts for soldiers and provided provisions to local hospitals. Later on, James became a delegate to the Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Alabama which a move for the couple once again. In Montgomery Mary was reunited with Varina Jefferson, and the two rekindled their friendship. When Virginia seceded and Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy, the Chesnuts moved again to Richmond. They couple lived in a hotel. During their time in Virginia, James became a brigadier general to P.G.T. Beauregard and the President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis.-3. James also served as an emissary to Colonel Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison on beleaguered Fort Sumter.-1. Once the war ended in 1865, the Chesnuts returned to Mulberry where the couple had to gather their lives back together and try to rid themselves of their great debt. During the time of the Civil War, Mary recorded her recollection of the time in many diaries. To try and help out with family’s debt, Mary decided she would try and publish her diaries. However, this did not work so Mary tried her hand at fiction writing three novels that were never published. In 1880, Mary decided to revise her dairies once again, but never quite finished. Before Mary died, she gave her diaries to Isabella Martin, a single school teacher.-2. Martin did not realize the significance of Mary’s diaries and stored the diaries underneath her bed for many years. Martin was afraid the work might offend many Southern families and this is why she held the diaries under wraps for so long. Mary Boykin Chesnut died on November 22, 1886. She was a woman of great wit and intelligence. Her diaries were later published into the book Diary from Dixie that was also known as Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. “Spiced by the author’s sharp intelligence, irreverent wit, and keen sense of irony and metaphorical vision, it uses a diary format to evoke a full, accurate picture of the South in civil war. Chesnut’s book, valued as a rich historical source, owes much of its fascination to is juxtaposition of the loves and grieves of individuals against vast social upheaval and much of its power to the contrasts and continuities drawn between the antebellum world and a war-torn country.”-3. 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. Mary was close to years old when the war began, and lived through the most stirring scenes in the controversies that led to it. In her diary will be found the Southern spirit of that time expressed in words which are not alone charming as literature, but genuinely human in their frankness. Her words are the farthest possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely intellectual. The most uncompromising Northern heart can scarcely fail to be moved by their abounding sincerity, surcharged though it is with that old Southern fire which overwhelmed the army of McDowell at Bull Run. In making clearer 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. 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 ba...