Mary Boykin Chesnut (née Miller) (March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886) was an American author noted for a book published as her Civil War diary, a "vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle."
[Woodward, C. Vann. "Introduction", Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War'', 1981.] She described the war from within her upper-class circles of Southern
slaveowner society, but encompassed all classes in her book. She was married to a lawyer who served as a
United States senator
The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...
and
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
officer.
Chesnut worked toward a final form of her book in 1881–1884, based on her extensive diary written during the war years. It was published in 1905, 19 years after her death. New versions were published after her papers were discovered, in 1949 by the novelist
Ben Ames Williams
Ben Ames Williams (March 7, 1889 – February 4, 1953) was an American novelist and writer of short stories; he wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. Among his novels are ''Come Spring'' (1940), ''Leave Her to Heaven'' (1944) ...
, and in 1981 by the historian
C. Vann Woodward, whose annotated edition of the diary, ''
Mary Chesnut's Civil War'' (1981), won the
Pulitzer Prize for History
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history ...
in 1982. Literary critics have praised Chesnut's diary—the influential writer
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
termed it "a work of art" and a "masterpiece" of the genre
[Wilson, Edmund. ''Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962, pp. 279-80.]—as the most important work by a
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
author.
Life
Mary Chesnut was born on March 31, 1823, on her maternal grandparents'
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
, called Mount Pleasant, near
Stateburg, South Carolina
Stateburg is a census-designated place (CDP) in the High Hills of Santee in Sumter County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 1,380 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Sumter, South Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. St ...
, in the
High Hills of Santee
The High Hills of Santee, sometimes known as the High Hills of the Santee, is a long, narrow hilly region in the western part of Sumter County, South Carolina. It has been called "one of the state's most famous areas".[Stephen Decatur Miller
Stephen Decatur Miller (May 8, 1787March 8, 1838) was an American politician, who served as the 52nd Governor of South Carolina from 1828 to 1830. He represented South Carolina as a U.S. Representative from 1817 to 1819, and as a U.S. Senator fro ...]
(1788–1838), who had served as a
U.S. Representative
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...
, and Mary Boykin (1804–85). In 1829 her father was elected governor of South Carolina and in 1831 as a
U.S. senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
. The family then lived in Charleston. Mary was the oldest of four children; she had a younger brother Stephen and two sisters: Catherine and Sarah Amelia.
At age 13, Miller began her formal education in Charleston, South Carolina, where she boarded at Madame Talvande's French School for Young Ladies, which attracted daughters from the élite of the slaveowner class. Talvande was among the many French colonial refugees who had settled in Charleston from
Saint-Domingue
Saint-Domingue () was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city in the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer ...
(Haiti) after its revolution.
Miller became fluent in French and German, and received a strong education.
[Nomination for Mulberry Plantation](_blank)
National Park Service, accessed May 29, 2008
Leaving politics, her father took his family to Mississippi where he bought extensive acreage. It was a crude, rough frontier compared to Charleston. He owned three cotton plantations and hundreds of slaves. Mary lived in Mississippi for short periods between school terms but was much more fond of the city.
Marriage
In 1836, while in Charleston, 13-year-old Mary Boykin Miller met her future husband,
James Chesnut, Jr.
James Chesnut Jr. (January 18, 1815 – February 1, 1885) was an American lawyer and politician, and a Confederate functionary.
Chesnut, a lawyer prominent in South Carolina state politics, served as a Democratic senator in 1858–60, wher ...
(1815–85), who was eight years her senior. At age 17, Miller married Chesnut on April 23, 1840. They first lived with his parents and sisters at
Mulberry
''Morus'', a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of diverse species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions. Generally, the genus has 64 identif ...
, their plantation near
Camden, South Carolina
Camden is the largest city and county seat of Kershaw County, South Carolina. The population was 7,764 in the 2020 census. It is part of the Columbia, South Carolina, Metropolitan Statistical Area. Camden is the oldest inland city in South Caro ...
. His father, James Chesnut, Sr. (whom Mary referred to throughout her diaries as the “Old Colonel”), had gradually purchased and reunited the land holdings of his father John. He was said to own about five square miles at the maximum and to hold about 500 slaves by 1849.
In 1858, by then an established lawyer and politician, James Chesnut, Jr. was elected a
U.S. senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
from South Carolina and served as such until South Carolina's
secession
Secession is the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity, but also from any organization, union or military alliance. Some of the most famous and significant secessions have been: the former Soviet republics le ...
from the
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
in December 1860, shortly following the election of
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
. Once the Civil War broke out, Chesnut became an aide to President
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a ...
and was commissioned a brigadier general in the
Confederate Army
The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...
. The couple resided at
Chesnut Cottage
Chesnut Cottage is a historic home located at Columbia, South Carolina. It was built between 1855 and 1860, and is a -story, Classical Revival style frame house, with a central dormer with an arched window. It features projecting front portico wi ...
in Columbia during the Civil War period.
Intelligent and witty, Mary Chesnut took part in her husband's career, as entertaining was an important part of building political networks. She had her best times when they were in the capitals of Washington, D.C. and Richmond. She suffered from
depression, in part because of her inability to have children, and she occasionally took
opium
Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...
.
[ The Chesnuts' marriage was at times stormy owing to their differences in temperament (she was more hot-tempered and sometimes considered her husband reserved), but their companionship was mostly warm and affectionate.]
As Mary Chesnut describes in her diary, the Chesnuts had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the upper society of the South and government of the Confederacy. Among them were, for example, Confederate general John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood (June 1 or June 29, 1831 – August 30, 1879) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Although brave, Hood's impetuosity led to high losses among his troops as he moved up in rank. Bruce Catton wrote that "the dec ...
, politician John L. Manning, general and politician John S. Preston
John Smith Preston (April 20, 1809 – May 1, 1881) was a wealthy planter, soldier, and attorney who became prominent in South Carolina politics in the 19th century. An ardent secessionist, he was the state's delegate dispatched to help con ...
and his wife Caroline, general and politician Wade Hampton III
Wade Hampton III (March 28, 1818April 11, 1902) was an American military officer who served the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War and later a politician from South Carolina. He came from a wealthy planter family, and ...
, politician Clement C. Clay and his wife Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
, and general and politician Louis T. Wigfall and his wife Charlotte (also known as Louise). The Chesnuts were also family friends of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina Howell
Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis (May 7, 1826 – October 16, 1906) was the only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, and the longtime second wife of President Jefferson Davis. She moved to a house in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-1 ...
.[
Also among these circles were ]Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
Sara Agnes Rice Pryor, born Sara Agnes Rice (February 19, 1830 – February 15, 1912), was an American writer and community activist in New York City. Born and reared in Virginia, she moved North after the American Civil War with her husband and ...
and her husband Roger, a Congressman. Sara Pryor, Virginia Clay-Clopton and Louise Wigfall Wright wrote memoirs of the war years which were published in the early 20th century; their three works were particularly recommended by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, ...
to their large membership.[Sarah E. Gardner, ''Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937''](_blank)
University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 128–130
Like many of the slaveowner elite, the Chesnuts fell on hard times after the war. They lost 1,000 slaves as property through emancipation.
New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1905, c1904, full online text available at ''Documenting the American South'', University of North Carolina James Chesnut, Sr. died in 1866; his will left his son the use of Mulberry Plantation and Sandy Hill, both of which were encumbered by debt, and 83 slaves by name, who were by then freedmen
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), abolitionism, emancipation (gra ...
. The younger Chesnut struggled to build the plantations and support his father's dependents.
By his father's will, James Chesnut, Jr. had the use of Mulberry and Sandy Hill plantations only during his lifetime. In February 1885, both he and Mary's mother died. The plantations passed on to a male Chesnut descendant, and Mary Boykin Chesnut received almost no income for her support. She also found her husband had many debts related to the estate which he had been unable to clear. She struggled in her last year, dying in 1886 at her home Sarsfield in Camden, South Carolina
Camden is the largest city and county seat of Kershaw County, South Carolina. The population was 7,764 in the 2020 census. It is part of the Columbia, South Carolina, Metropolitan Statistical Area. Camden is the oldest inland city in South Caro ...
. She was buried next to her husband in Knights Hill Cemetery in Camden, South Carolina.
Writing and the diary
Mary Boykin Chesnut began her diary on February 18, 1861, and ended it on June 26, 1865. She would write at the outset: “This journal is intended to be entirely objective. My subjective days are over.”[ Burns, Ken. '' The Civil War: “The Cause”'', minute mark 42:00 and after.] Chesnut was an eyewitness to many historic events as she accompanied her husband to significant sites of the Civil War. Among them were Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
, and Richmond, Virginia
(Thus do we reach the stars)
, image_map =
, mapsize = 250 px
, map_caption = Location within Virginia
, pushpin_map = Virginia#USA
, pushpin_label = Richmond
, pushpin_m ...
, where the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America convened; Charleston, where she was among witnesses of the first shots of the Civil War; Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia is the capital of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 census, it is the second-largest city in South Carolina. The city serves as the county seat of Richland County, and a portion of the city ...
, where her husband served as the Chief of the Department of the Military of South Carolina and brigadier general in command of South Carolina reserve forces; and again Richmond, where her husband served as an aide to the president. At times, they also lived with his parents at their house at Mulberry Plantation near Camden. While the property was relatively isolated in thousands of acres of plantation and woodland, they entertained many visitors.
Chesnut was aware of the historical importance of what she witnessed. The diary was filled with the cycle of changing fortunes of the South during the Civil War. Chesnut edited it and wrote new drafts in 1881–1884 for publication, and retained the sense of events unfolding without foreknowledge. She had the sense of the South's living through its time on a world stage, and she captured the growing difficulties of all classes of the Confederacy as they faced defeat at the end of the war. Politically aware, Chesnut analyzed and portrayed the various classes of the South throughout the war, providing a detailed view of Southern society and especially of the mixed roles of men and women. She was forthright about the complex and fraught situations related to slavery, particularly the abuses of women's sexuality and the power exercised by white men. For instance, Chesnut discussed the problem of white slaveowners' fathering mixed-race
Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...
children with enslaved women within their extended households.
Examination of Mary Chesnut's papers has revealed the history of her development as a writer and of her work on the diary as a book. Before working to revise her diary as a book in the 1880s, Chesnut wrote a translation of French poetry, essays, and a family history. She also wrote three full novels that she never published: ''The Captain and the Colonel'', completed about 1875; and ''Two Years of My Life'', finished about the same time. She finished most of a draft of a third long novel, called ''Manassas''. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, who edited the first two novels for publication by the University of Virginia Press
The University of Virginia Press (or UVaP) is a university press that is part of the University of Virginia. It was established in 1963 as the University Press of Virginia, under the initiative of the university's then President, Edgar F. Shannon ...
in 2002 and wrote a biography of Chesnut, described them as her writing "apprenticeship."[Chesnut, Mary Boykin, ''Two Novels'', Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, ed., University of Virginia Press, 2002.]
Chesnut used her diary and notes to work toward a final version in 1881–1884. Based on her drafts, historians do not believe she was finished with her work. Because Chesnut had no children, before her death she gave her diary to her closest friend, Isabella D. Martin, and urged her to have it published. The diary was first published in 1905 as a heavily edited and abridged edition. Williams' 1949 version was described as more readable, but sacrificing historical reliability and many of Chesnut's literary references. The 1981 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.
Publication history
1905: ''A Diary From Dixie. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, 1823-1886''
ed. by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary
Myrta Lockett Avary (December 7, 1857 – February 14, 1946) was an American white supremacist writer and journalist. Her books include ''Dixie After the War'' (1906), ''The Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens'' (1910) and ''Uncle Remus and ...
. New York: D. Appleton and Company 1905, available online as a part of the UNC-CH database "''Documenting the American South''."
* 1949: ''A Diary from Dixie'', an expanded version edited by the novelist Ben Ames Williams
Ben Ames Williams (March 7, 1889 – February 4, 1953) was an American novelist and writer of short stories; he wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. Among his novels are ''Come Spring'' (1940), ''Leave Her to Heaven'' (1944) ...
to enhance its readability and annotated. Reissued in 1980 by Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
Press, with a "Foreword" by Edmund Wilson, originally published in 1962 as an essay on Chesnut.
1981: ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War''
edited and Introduction by C. Vann Woodward. Reprinted in 1993 and available in preview online.
2002, Mary Chesnut, ''Two Novels''
includes ''The Colonel and the Captain''; and ''Two Years - or The Way We Lived Then'', edited and Introduction by Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, University of Virginia Press.
* 2011: ''Mary Chesnut's Diary'', with an introduction by Catherine Clinton, Penguin Classic edition.
Reception and legacy
Chesnut's reputation rests on the fact that she created literature while keeping the sense of events unfolding; she described people in penetrating and enlivening terms and conveyed a novelistic sense of events through a "mixture of reportage, memoir and social criticism".[Taylor, William R. "Mary Chesnut's Diary". '']New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', "Letters to the Editor" section, May 17, 1981. Critic and writer Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
summarized her achievement:
The very rhythm of her opening pages at once puts us under the spell of a writer who is not merely jotting down her days but establishing, as a novelist does, an atmosphere, an emotional tone...Starting out with situations or relationships of which she cannot know the outcome, she takes advantage of the actual turn of events to develop them and round them out as if she were molding a novel.
Chesnut has had some detractors, notably history professor Kenneth S. Lynn, of Johns Hopkins University. He described her work as a "hoax" and a "fabrication" in a 1981 ''New York Times'' review of Woodward's edition of the diaries. Lynn argues that the diary was "composed" (rather than simply rewritten) in the 1881-84 period, emphasizing that Chesnut both omitted a great deal from the original diaries and added much new material: "She dwelt upon the personalities of people to whom she had previously referred only briefly, plucked a host of bygone conversations from her memory and interjected numerous authorial reflections on historical and personal events."[Lynn, Kenneth S]
"The Masterpiece That Became a Hoax"
''New York Times'', April 26, 1981.
Because neither Chesnut nor her later editors conceded that she had heavily revised her work, Lynn's view that the whole project is a fraud is a minority one. In 1982, Woodward's edition of Chesnut's diary won a Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
. A few years later, Ken Burns
Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary film, documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle United States, American History of the United States, history and Culture of the ...
used extensive readings from Chesnut's diary in his documentary television series '' The Civil War''. Actress Julie Harris
Julia Ann Harris (December 2, 1925August 24, 2013) was an American actress. Renowned for her classical and contemporary stage work, she received five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play.
Harris debuted on Broadway in 1945, against the wish ...
read these sections.
In 2000, Mulberry Plantation, the house of James and Mary Boykin Chesnut in Camden, South Carolina
Camden is the largest city and county seat of Kershaw County, South Carolina. The population was 7,764 in the 2020 census. It is part of the Columbia, South Carolina, Metropolitan Statistical Area. Camden is the oldest inland city in South Caro ...
, was designated a National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...
, due to its importance to America's national heritage and literature. The plantation and its buildings are representative of James and Mary Chesnut's elite slaveowner class.
Notes
References
*Chesnut, Mary Boykin. ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War'' (New Haven: Yale University Press 1981), ed. C. Vann Woodward.
*Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth S.
''Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography''
Foreword by C. Vann Woodward, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1992
External links
Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War''
ed. C. Vann Woodward, reprint, Yale University Press, 1993
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1905, Digitized text on ''Documenting the South'', University of North Carolina website
Mulberry Plantation (James and Mary Boykin Chesnut House)
National Historic Landmarks Program, National Park Service
About Famous People website
*
"Writings of Mary Chesnut"
from C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
's '' American Writers: A Journey Through History''
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chesnut, Mary
1823 births
1886 deaths
American diarists
19th-century American memoirists
People from Stateburg, South Carolina
People of South Carolina in the American Civil War
Montgomery, Alabama in the American Civil War
Richmond, Virginia in the American Civil War
Women diarists
Women in the American Civil War
Writers from South Carolina
19th-century American Episcopalians
19th-century American women writers
American women memoirists
19th-century diarists