Mary Boykin Chesnut

Mary Boykin Chesnut, born Mary Boykin Miller (March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886), was a South Carolina 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." She described the war from within her upper-class circles of Southern planter society, but encompassed all classes in her book. She was married to a lawyer who served as a United States senator and Confederate officer.

Chesnut worked toward a final form of her book from 1881-1884, based on her extensive diary written during the war years. It was published after her death in 1905. New versions were published after her papers were discovered, in 1949 by the novelist Ben Ames Williams, and in 1981 by the historian C. Vann Woodward. His annotated edition of the diary, Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981), won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1982. Literary critics have called Chesnut's diary "a work of art" and the most important work by a Confederate author.

Source: Wikipedia

South Carolina Hall Of Fame Women Inductees

Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut was born 31 March 1823 in Stateboro, S.C., eldest child of Mary Boykin and Stephen Decatur Miller, who had served as U.S. congressman and senator and in 1826 was elected governor of South Carolina as a proponent of nullification. Educated first at home and in Camden schools, Mary Miller was sent at 13 to a French boarding school in Charleston, where she remained for two years broken by a six-month stay on her father's cotton plantation in frontier Mississippi. In 1838 Miller died and Mary returned to Camden. On 23 April 1840 she married James Chesnut, Jr. (1815-85), only surviving son of one of South Carolina's largest landowners.

Chesnut spent most of the next 20 years in Camden and at Mulberry, her husband's family plantation. When James was elected to the Senate in 1858, his wife accompanied him to Washington where friendships were begun with many politicians who would become the leading figures of the Confederacy, among them Varina and Jefferson Davis. Following Lincoln's election, James Chesnut returned to South Carolina to participate in the drafting of an ordinance of secession and subsequently served in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America. He served as aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis, and he achieved the rank of general. During the war, Mary accompanied her husband to Charleston, Montgomery, Columbia, and Richmond, her drawing room always serving as a salon for the Confederate elite. From February 1861 to July 1865 she recorded her experiences in a series of diaries, which became the principal source materials for her famous portrait of the Confederacy.

Following the war, the Chesnuts returned to Camden and worked unsuccessfully to extricate themselves from heavy debts. After a first abortive attempt in the 1870s to smooth the diaries into publishable form, Mary Chesnut tried her hand at fiction. She completed but never published three novels, then in the early 1880s expanded and extensively revised her diaries into the book now known as Mary Chesnut's Civil War (first published in truncated and poorly edited versions in 1905 and 1949 as A Diary From Dixie.

Although unfinished at the time of her death on 22 November 1886, Mary Chesnut's Civil War is generally acknowledged today as the finest literary work of the Confederacy. 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 its juxtaposition of the loves and griefs 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.

Article by Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography (1981); C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981), with Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, eds., The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (1985).

She wrote while she was on the sidelines of the battles, watching her husband and praying that he was not wounded or killed.

She would tend to the sick and wounded soldiers and help those around the battlefield with the mourning and the loss of their loved ones. She was a strong protestor against the Southern leaders for women suffrage rights. She was very outspoken on the things she observed from watching the war.

Civil War Academy

Diarist. Born Mary Boykin Miller at Pleasant Hill in Stateboro, South Carolina, the eldest child of Mary Boykin and Senator Stephen Decatur Miller. She was educated home before she was sent to Madame Talvande's French School for Young Ladies, a boarding school in Charleston, at the age of about 13. She met James Chestnut, Jr. for the first time shortly thereafter. Her father died in 1838, and she left school to return home. At the age of 17, she married Chestnut, and settled on his family's plantation, Mulberry. In 1858, Chestnut was elected to the U.S. Senate, and she accompanied him to Washington, DC. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, James Chestnut became the first southern senator to resign his office. Mary started the diary for which she became known in February 1861. It became an intimate window on the Confederacy, recording a personal view of the political atmosphere, the impact of the war, her experience as a nurse, her criticism of the leadership, and her lament at her own lack of influence as a woman. With the end of the war, the family fortunes were lost, their debt insurmountable. In an effort to make money, she wrote but never published three novels, then in the early 1880s expanded and revised her diaries. She published one story from her diary in the 'Charleston Weekly News and Courier,' it was the only piece published during her lifetime. Widowed in 1885 and broke, she became dependent on a butter and egg business for her survival. She died at home thee years later, at age 63. Her diaries were first published in a truncated form in 1905 as 'A Diary From Dixie' it was reissued in 1949. Finally, in 1982, 'Mary Chesnut's Civil War,' edited by historian C. Vann Woodward, saw the diaries published in their entirety. The volume won a Pulitzer Prize. It is today regarded as one of the finest primary sources for the Civil War era. Most of her original copybooks survive and are archived at the University of South Carolina. (bio by: [fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=46780914" target="_blank Iola)] Maintained by: Find A Grave Record added: Feb 28, 2000

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