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A Diary From Dixie
A Diary from Dixie is the Civil War diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, society matron and wife of United States senator and Confederate general, James Chesnut, Jr. As an active participant in her husband’s career, accompanying him to postings in Montgomery, Richmond, Charleston, and Columbia, Chesnut became an eyewitness to many important events of the war, and, despite being a member of the privileged class, managed to convey the Confederacy’s struggle from different points of view.
A Diary from Dixie is considered by many to be the most important work produced by a Confederate author. Filmmaker Ken Burns made extensive use of Chesnut’s diary in his documentary series The Civil War, and an annotated version of it, published by the historian C. Vann Woodward as Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982.
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111 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1905
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September 14, 2021
Mary Chesnut was a woman of her times and behaved as such but in her diary she confides how she really felt about being a southern belle during the civil war.
She constantly frets that all she wants to do is retire and read a good book but being the mistress of the plantation as well as good manners require her to spend the evening in conversation with her husband's elderly parents although they bore her to death.
Since Mary's husband is involved in politics she is present at many of the major events that occur during the war which she faithfully relates in her fascinating diary.
Mary is a kind soul and a friend to all she meets during good times and bad.
Her first person account of life during the civil war is a classic.
She constantly frets that all she wants to do is retire and read a good book but being the mistress of the plantation as well as good manners require her to spend the evening in conversation with her husband's elderly parents although they bore her to death.
Since Mary's husband is involved in politics she is present at many of the major events that occur during the war which she faithfully relates in her fascinating diary.
Mary is a kind soul and a friend to all she meets during good times and bad.
Her first person account of life during the civil war is a classic.
July 2, 2014
If the Confederacy had survived Lincoln's invasion, Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut might be a household name in the literary world.
And that's pretty good when one considers that her oeuvre was written without the slightest whiff of literary pretension or ambition.
highwayscribery is not sure if a deep interest in the Civil War, from the southern side of things, is necessary for her scribbling prowess to impress. But if it's there, "A Diary from Dixie" is for you.
Chesnut was well-positioned to chronicle Dixie's misery both as a South Carolina lady intimate with Jefferson Davis and his wife, and spouse to a Confederate officer whose competence is apparent in his upward trajectory throughout the book's (and war's) course.
The authoress succeeds in engaging the reader without any real structure other than the natural chronology of events as she lives them. The gentle lady moseys from one happening to another, recounting those things she witnesses, and those others have told her about, with nary a transition.
But the recounting is so casual, the prose so clean, the reader is never tried, taxed or bored. Chesnut was a feeling, seeing person with the literary chops to put what she felt and saw into words, as in this passage describing the family plantation, Mulberry, in Camden, South Carolina:
"It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest -- the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here -- with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter."
There are fascinating, first-hand insights in "Diary" as to the way slaves and masters interacted, and the ambiguous attitude of negroes in the south when freedom beckoned, but their familiar world crumbled.
Chesnut's tones are not the stark blacks and whites of Harriet Beecher Stowe's south, rather a wide array of grays.
The relations between the furiously independent member states are also depicted, with Virginians, and Kentuckians, and Carolinians both north and south, remarked upon for their peculiar, geographically bound traits.
In these times, as a single electronic culture inexorably engulfs humanity, it is interesting to read about the differences between neighboring communities and see how they celebrated those differences.
The book's tone morphs from light to dark as the northern noose tightens around the Confederacy's neck. Noteworthy is the early opinion, expressed by rebels in high places, that the South had no chance of winning the war.
"Diary" tells us that had clearer heads prevailed, the cataclysm might have been averted.
The dominant portrait is that of a small, agrarian society confronting a behemoth that will leave no stone unturned, no home unburned, and kill-off a generation of fine young men -- not all of them enamored with slavery -- so much as loyal to their homeland.
"Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs; von Boreke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat. Isabella said, 'We have all kinds now, but a blind one.' Poor fellows, they laugh at wounds. 'And they yet can show many a scar.'"
Chesnut is in the rearguard, her lofty status slowly reduced to a state of hunger bourn with ladylike dignity. Hers is the Confederate women's story, a dreadful enumeration of lost sons, sundered families, and mothers literally dying from grief.
"Isabella says that war leads to love-making. She says these soldiers do more courting here in a day than they would do at home, without a war, in ten years."
Perhaps most valuable are those anecdotes Chesnut recorded which give the war between the states, and the Confederacy in particular, a greater depth and richer texture.
Without her we might not have known that President Davis' little boy died at home, nor of the suspicions that a turncoat on staff, or a spy snuck into the house, actually killed him in a cruel effort to demoralize Dixie.
The tragic deaths of innocents stepping out from a cave for some air in Vicksburg during the Union siege might have gone unrecorded. We could not be aware that France's last Count de Choiseul had thrown his lot in with the south and died for it, too.
Without her desperate scribblings, we would have known only the winner's account, and been denied the terrible beauties associated with losing, which is so much a part of life.
And that's pretty good when one considers that her oeuvre was written without the slightest whiff of literary pretension or ambition.
highwayscribery is not sure if a deep interest in the Civil War, from the southern side of things, is necessary for her scribbling prowess to impress. But if it's there, "A Diary from Dixie" is for you.
Chesnut was well-positioned to chronicle Dixie's misery both as a South Carolina lady intimate with Jefferson Davis and his wife, and spouse to a Confederate officer whose competence is apparent in his upward trajectory throughout the book's (and war's) course.
The authoress succeeds in engaging the reader without any real structure other than the natural chronology of events as she lives them. The gentle lady moseys from one happening to another, recounting those things she witnesses, and those others have told her about, with nary a transition.
But the recounting is so casual, the prose so clean, the reader is never tried, taxed or bored. Chesnut was a feeling, seeing person with the literary chops to put what she felt and saw into words, as in this passage describing the family plantation, Mulberry, in Camden, South Carolina:
"It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest -- the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here -- with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter."
There are fascinating, first-hand insights in "Diary" as to the way slaves and masters interacted, and the ambiguous attitude of negroes in the south when freedom beckoned, but their familiar world crumbled.
Chesnut's tones are not the stark blacks and whites of Harriet Beecher Stowe's south, rather a wide array of grays.
The relations between the furiously independent member states are also depicted, with Virginians, and Kentuckians, and Carolinians both north and south, remarked upon for their peculiar, geographically bound traits.
In these times, as a single electronic culture inexorably engulfs humanity, it is interesting to read about the differences between neighboring communities and see how they celebrated those differences.
The book's tone morphs from light to dark as the northern noose tightens around the Confederacy's neck. Noteworthy is the early opinion, expressed by rebels in high places, that the South had no chance of winning the war.
"Diary" tells us that had clearer heads prevailed, the cataclysm might have been averted.
The dominant portrait is that of a small, agrarian society confronting a behemoth that will leave no stone unturned, no home unburned, and kill-off a generation of fine young men -- not all of them enamored with slavery -- so much as loyal to their homeland.
"Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs; von Boreke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat. Isabella said, 'We have all kinds now, but a blind one.' Poor fellows, they laugh at wounds. 'And they yet can show many a scar.'"
Chesnut is in the rearguard, her lofty status slowly reduced to a state of hunger bourn with ladylike dignity. Hers is the Confederate women's story, a dreadful enumeration of lost sons, sundered families, and mothers literally dying from grief.
"Isabella says that war leads to love-making. She says these soldiers do more courting here in a day than they would do at home, without a war, in ten years."
Perhaps most valuable are those anecdotes Chesnut recorded which give the war between the states, and the Confederacy in particular, a greater depth and richer texture.
Without her we might not have known that President Davis' little boy died at home, nor of the suspicions that a turncoat on staff, or a spy snuck into the house, actually killed him in a cruel effort to demoralize Dixie.
The tragic deaths of innocents stepping out from a cave for some air in Vicksburg during the Union siege might have gone unrecorded. We could not be aware that France's last Count de Choiseul had thrown his lot in with the south and died for it, too.
Without her desperate scribblings, we would have known only the winner's account, and been denied the terrible beauties associated with losing, which is so much a part of life.
July 16, 2018
There has always been a 1% who rule above the fray. As we are seeing today, the powerful are able to frame events and the time in a way that gains a following among the many who end up paying dearly for what those at the top decide to do. The wonder is that the many do not do this grudgingly but with enthusiasm, unaware of how they are being used. This is vividly shown during war.
The American Civil War pitted two ideas of freedom against each other. For the North it was the freedom of all men behind the idea of the preservation of the Union. For the South it was the idea of freedom of the states from any higher authority and the preservation of a way of life.
Behind both was the economic. For the North, the South was a large unexploited market kept out of action by slavery with which ordinary employment/business could not compete. For the South it was an economy protected by slavery from competition and utterly reliant upon it. The average Southerner was not a slave owner, had little or no property and could only be considered above poverty by comparison to the slaves.
Mary Chesnut's book relates, though I doubt she intended it, the ease with which wealthy Southerners, of which she was one, had no difficulty in finding thousands of volunteers to die for a system that was living on borrowed time. Cotton growing exhausted the soil forcing the South to look west for more territory. As with any monoculture the economy was fragile, subject to a single market. Putting passion aside, it was clear that things Southern would have to change in the face of a surging economy in the North that supported a far larger population that was growing all the time. To anyone of reason, going to war with the North would be suicidal. People in Mary's circle were aware of this, many dreaded war, but passion won the day.
As a personal friend of President Jefferson Davis, the members of his cabinet and his generals, Mary relates small talk, humorous stories and the march of events as she continues a life of luxury with constant service from her devoted slaves, daily meals complete with such things as oysters and a variety of desserts while ill clad common Southerners by the thousands go to their deaths in bloody battles that she hears of by way of a bulletin board of telegraph notices. She easily moves by train or carriage from the opening of the war at Charleston, to Columbia, Richmond, her plantations, her home in Camden and even a mountain retreat (all but Richmond in South Carolina).
Mary is revolted by the mutilation of bodies she sees when once she visits a hospital and doesn't return. She doesn't join in the constant knitting that many women do to keep clothing going to the troops. Though she lauds those who do make an effort to help in any way they can, she feels what she believes to be her fragile health prevents her from joining in.
Those around Davis bicker while new faces arrive appealing for appointments to office. Mary goes for carriage rides with this or that general while her husband works first as an adviser to the president and then as a general late in the war. Mary speaks highly of "Stonewall" Jackson. Only later in the war does Robert E. Lee become the hope of all. Though she sees him from time to time, blushing as he once recognizes her in church, she is not closely associated with his wife as she is with the wife of Jefferson Davis.
Though the reader is made aware that Confederate money is always losing value and outrageous prices are quoted, Mary is never at a loss for any amount of Confederate dollars to spend. She says nothing of the source of her funds. I assume being in the circle at the top she would have first access to regular distributions.
Lincoln is not condemned, his backwoods upbringing and sense of humor are known and appreciated. Once Grant establishes his ability to win in the West (Shiloh, Vicksburg), the superior manpower of the North combined with a general who doesn't hesitate to spend the lives of his men brings a sense of inevitable doom Mary's way. With the passage of time, spirits drop lower. Union forces continue to shrink the area of operations for the South. Once Sherman is moving through Alabama the thought that Lee's army will be trapped kills hope. Still the South fights on.
Mary writes of the inscrutability of the slaves. She continually looks at their faces to determine their attitude toward what is going on. Will they run to the Yankees? In the event, most of her slaves remain loyal even to the point of hiding valuables from the Yankees when it would be easy to flee. The slaves of other women she knows defend those women by verbally interceding for them when Sherman's forces finally appear, turning towns and plantations into ashes. Overall, the attitude is one of condescension. Who can tell about those Darkies and their ways!
True to form, Mary avoids capture or assault and ends up in a secure place as the war comes to an end, her husband alive and uninjured. One plantation of theirs, "Mulberry", still stands today and the book includes a photo of a new home that James Chesnut built for the two them to spend their retirement.
A Diary from Dixie was heavily edited before this edition of the book came out. That's good because it now contains just enough that is superficial to give the flavor of her life, a tale of a privileged person observing an epic disaster from which she was largely spared. She had to bear the sorrow of the deaths of friends and family, but her sense of the war can hardly be connected to the horror those who fought it knew.
The American Civil War pitted two ideas of freedom against each other. For the North it was the freedom of all men behind the idea of the preservation of the Union. For the South it was the idea of freedom of the states from any higher authority and the preservation of a way of life.
Behind both was the economic. For the North, the South was a large unexploited market kept out of action by slavery with which ordinary employment/business could not compete. For the South it was an economy protected by slavery from competition and utterly reliant upon it. The average Southerner was not a slave owner, had little or no property and could only be considered above poverty by comparison to the slaves.
Mary Chesnut's book relates, though I doubt she intended it, the ease with which wealthy Southerners, of which she was one, had no difficulty in finding thousands of volunteers to die for a system that was living on borrowed time. Cotton growing exhausted the soil forcing the South to look west for more territory. As with any monoculture the economy was fragile, subject to a single market. Putting passion aside, it was clear that things Southern would have to change in the face of a surging economy in the North that supported a far larger population that was growing all the time. To anyone of reason, going to war with the North would be suicidal. People in Mary's circle were aware of this, many dreaded war, but passion won the day.
As a personal friend of President Jefferson Davis, the members of his cabinet and his generals, Mary relates small talk, humorous stories and the march of events as she continues a life of luxury with constant service from her devoted slaves, daily meals complete with such things as oysters and a variety of desserts while ill clad common Southerners by the thousands go to their deaths in bloody battles that she hears of by way of a bulletin board of telegraph notices. She easily moves by train or carriage from the opening of the war at Charleston, to Columbia, Richmond, her plantations, her home in Camden and even a mountain retreat (all but Richmond in South Carolina).
Mary is revolted by the mutilation of bodies she sees when once she visits a hospital and doesn't return. She doesn't join in the constant knitting that many women do to keep clothing going to the troops. Though she lauds those who do make an effort to help in any way they can, she feels what she believes to be her fragile health prevents her from joining in.
Those around Davis bicker while new faces arrive appealing for appointments to office. Mary goes for carriage rides with this or that general while her husband works first as an adviser to the president and then as a general late in the war. Mary speaks highly of "Stonewall" Jackson. Only later in the war does Robert E. Lee become the hope of all. Though she sees him from time to time, blushing as he once recognizes her in church, she is not closely associated with his wife as she is with the wife of Jefferson Davis.
Though the reader is made aware that Confederate money is always losing value and outrageous prices are quoted, Mary is never at a loss for any amount of Confederate dollars to spend. She says nothing of the source of her funds. I assume being in the circle at the top she would have first access to regular distributions.
Lincoln is not condemned, his backwoods upbringing and sense of humor are known and appreciated. Once Grant establishes his ability to win in the West (Shiloh, Vicksburg), the superior manpower of the North combined with a general who doesn't hesitate to spend the lives of his men brings a sense of inevitable doom Mary's way. With the passage of time, spirits drop lower. Union forces continue to shrink the area of operations for the South. Once Sherman is moving through Alabama the thought that Lee's army will be trapped kills hope. Still the South fights on.
Mary writes of the inscrutability of the slaves. She continually looks at their faces to determine their attitude toward what is going on. Will they run to the Yankees? In the event, most of her slaves remain loyal even to the point of hiding valuables from the Yankees when it would be easy to flee. The slaves of other women she knows defend those women by verbally interceding for them when Sherman's forces finally appear, turning towns and plantations into ashes. Overall, the attitude is one of condescension. Who can tell about those Darkies and their ways!
True to form, Mary avoids capture or assault and ends up in a secure place as the war comes to an end, her husband alive and uninjured. One plantation of theirs, "Mulberry", still stands today and the book includes a photo of a new home that James Chesnut built for the two them to spend their retirement.
A Diary from Dixie was heavily edited before this edition of the book came out. That's good because it now contains just enough that is superficial to give the flavor of her life, a tale of a privileged person observing an epic disaster from which she was largely spared. She had to bear the sorrow of the deaths of friends and family, but her sense of the war can hardly be connected to the horror those who fought it knew.
June 5, 2010
I cannot recommend this book. After watching the Ken Burns Civil War film, I began reading much of his more prominent sources. In particular, Grant's Autobiography, Company "Aytch" (Watkins), All for the Union (Rhodes) and this book. I did not know it at the time but this book is a poor compilation in several respects. One, it is comprised of much written well after the war. Two, it has been strongly bowdlerized for Southern tastes. Consequently I was unable to find the really pithy bits found in the Burns film such has her unflinching observation regarding the contradiction between the pious pretensions of aristocratic planters and the number of mulattoes on the grounds that clearly resemble the masters. There may not be one single quote here that Burns used. Favor is given to light and fluffy commentary of the social scene and famous people met etc. It does not do justice to Chesnut's stated (in some other edition) intention to be entirely objective, that her subjective days were over. There are two other volumes that I have not yet read but probably do provide the substantial content I was looking for: Mary Chesnut's Civil War and The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries edited by C Vann Woodward. I am sorry that when I ran out of interest in further researching Burns's sources I had wasted the Chesnut portion of it on this edition.
March 21, 2020
This is an interesting diary. Like many Civil War diaries, it was revised during the postwar period, and there is a moment towards the end of the diary when the author thinks about how her insights about famous men like Johnson and Davis and Lee are mocked at and accused of being foolish and that she had to be convinced not to burn it all in shame. That, to me, is the most notable aspect of this book and the most poignant moment in it. As a Civil War primary source, the diary is an immensely worthwhile one which has justly been celebrated for decades, and as the perspective of a relatively enlightened and elite Southerner, it provides the reader with a chance to feel sympathetic about someone one might not tend to be sympathetic towards. As a reader I found the author's elite status a bit irksome sometimes as she tended to be somewhat narrowly focused on the squabbles among the elites of the South, but that insight as to the petty hatred and arguments that divided Southern leaders helps explain why it is that the South did so poorly when compared with a great many other movements. The author herself wonders why the generation of 1860 could not achieve freedom for the South.
This book is about 400 pages long and it is divided into twenty-one chapters that extend from November 1860-August 1865. The book begins with a discussion of Charleston as it votes to secede from the Union (1), moves on to the debates over the leadership of the Confederacy in Montgomery (2), then back to Charleston in time for the struggle over Ft. Sumter (3). After that the author spends a bit of time in Camden (4) before returning to Montgomery on her husband's political business (5) and then waiting for battle news from back in Charleston (6). The author spends some time in Richmond (7) as well as Fauquier White Sulphur Springs (8) before returning to Richmond (9) and then Camden (10). There is a bit of a break in the diary before she writes from Columbia in early 1862 (11), Flat Rock from summer vacation (12), after which there is a long break for almost a year in the diary. When the diary picks up in mid-1863, the author is in Alabama (13), Richmond (14), and then Camden again (15). The author spends more time in Richmond at the beginning of 1864 (16), then back to Camden (17) after the death of Davis' son, and then faces the horrors of Sherman's invasion while in Columbia (18) and then in Lincolnton (19) before facing life without money in Chester (20) and back home after the defeat of the Confederacy (21).
One of the privileges of elite status in any age is the fact that unlike a great many people who write about their experiences, the author had some idea of what was going on and was able to get to know people and chat with them as they were chosen for various offices or promoted in rank or given thankless and impossible tasks. The author is obviously well-educated and it is only towards the end of the book when her family's wealth is decreasing and the Confederate dollar becomes worthless and she herself becomes old and somewhat threadbare that she becomes a subject of pity. In many ways the contemporary reader may find her to be a subject of sympathy but also a subject of contempt, seeing as for all of her claims that she and her husband were enlightened slaveowners, they were still part of a corrupt slaveowning class whose tyrannical rule over the United States and over their own human property ended up in a predictable if lamentable disaster. At no point in this book does one get the feeling that anyone in power in the South was willing to free their slaves and rejoin the Union voluntarily, which is what would have been required for peace apart from the disaster that ended up taking place.
This book is about 400 pages long and it is divided into twenty-one chapters that extend from November 1860-August 1865. The book begins with a discussion of Charleston as it votes to secede from the Union (1), moves on to the debates over the leadership of the Confederacy in Montgomery (2), then back to Charleston in time for the struggle over Ft. Sumter (3). After that the author spends a bit of time in Camden (4) before returning to Montgomery on her husband's political business (5) and then waiting for battle news from back in Charleston (6). The author spends some time in Richmond (7) as well as Fauquier White Sulphur Springs (8) before returning to Richmond (9) and then Camden (10). There is a bit of a break in the diary before she writes from Columbia in early 1862 (11), Flat Rock from summer vacation (12), after which there is a long break for almost a year in the diary. When the diary picks up in mid-1863, the author is in Alabama (13), Richmond (14), and then Camden again (15). The author spends more time in Richmond at the beginning of 1864 (16), then back to Camden (17) after the death of Davis' son, and then faces the horrors of Sherman's invasion while in Columbia (18) and then in Lincolnton (19) before facing life without money in Chester (20) and back home after the defeat of the Confederacy (21).
One of the privileges of elite status in any age is the fact that unlike a great many people who write about their experiences, the author had some idea of what was going on and was able to get to know people and chat with them as they were chosen for various offices or promoted in rank or given thankless and impossible tasks. The author is obviously well-educated and it is only towards the end of the book when her family's wealth is decreasing and the Confederate dollar becomes worthless and she herself becomes old and somewhat threadbare that she becomes a subject of pity. In many ways the contemporary reader may find her to be a subject of sympathy but also a subject of contempt, seeing as for all of her claims that she and her husband were enlightened slaveowners, they were still part of a corrupt slaveowning class whose tyrannical rule over the United States and over their own human property ended up in a predictable if lamentable disaster. At no point in this book does one get the feeling that anyone in power in the South was willing to free their slaves and rejoin the Union voluntarily, which is what would have been required for peace apart from the disaster that ended up taking place.
August 23, 2011
A real change of pace. this is a jaw-dropping diary of a Southern lady's life during the Civil War. She came from the highest of Southern society, was very perceptive, and highly educated--and did not bother to be so ladylike as to stint on her estimate of of Yankees and males. This is definitely a herstory, as the introduction to the Barnes & Noble eBook says.
The sheer amount of social engagements she attended and gave is numbing, but so out of my experience, I felt compelled to read on. She traveled constantly all during the war. Her husband was an aide to Jefferson Davis and she knew all the F.F. families in the South, it seems.
Most telling are the menus of the incredible banquets served up to the last months of the conflict. Truffles? Real ones, not chocolate.
Similarly, jewelry-encrusted gowns are worn by ladies.
The life of luxury and leisure slavery allowed these people is beyond imagination. Every wealthy First Family lived like Royalty.
But, her comments on slaves and Northern hypocrisy before and after Emancipation, these are well worth the read. Her own slaves continued to live with her for 20 years, when she died. They had nowhere else to go, these privileged house servants. She doesn't write much about the 1000 field hands her father-in-law owned.
The sheer amount of social engagements she attended and gave is numbing, but so out of my experience, I felt compelled to read on. She traveled constantly all during the war. Her husband was an aide to Jefferson Davis and she knew all the F.F. families in the South, it seems.
Most telling are the menus of the incredible banquets served up to the last months of the conflict. Truffles? Real ones, not chocolate.
Similarly, jewelry-encrusted gowns are worn by ladies.
The life of luxury and leisure slavery allowed these people is beyond imagination. Every wealthy First Family lived like Royalty.
But, her comments on slaves and Northern hypocrisy before and after Emancipation, these are well worth the read. Her own slaves continued to live with her for 20 years, when she died. They had nowhere else to go, these privileged house servants. She doesn't write much about the 1000 field hands her father-in-law owned.
August 19, 2023
The main image that came to mind as I read Mary Chesnut's diary was of a scene from the 2004 film Downfall, where Eva Braun is partying even as Allied bombs rain down on the Führerbunker. In Chesnut's case, it's more a matter of dinner parties, where catty gossip about Mrs Lincoln's stinginess will be exchanged over terrapin soup, snide remarks about Mr Lincoln's vulgarity will be made while consuming oyster and turkey before rumours as to which Confederate towns Sherman had burnt down that week will be whispered while sipping madeira. It's a little hard to be sympathetic when gossip reaches her that one of her friends has said "the reason I can not bear Mrs. Chesnut is that she laughs at everything and at everybody." It's not precisely the banality of evil that Arendt had in mind but it fits the bill well enough.
In fairness, the entire diary is not perhaps quite this frivolous (if nothing else, because the dinner parties cease after Confederate money ceases to be accepted and food becomes scarce). Chesnut does visit a military hospital and faints after seeing the injuries. She recounts seeing Confederate soldiers marching in rags and much of the book consists of a catalogue of the deaths of men she had known. The later chapters recount her living as a refugee after the United States army had retaken the area she lived in.
Nonetheless, the fact does remain that Chesnut is a remarkably unpleasant figure, who would probably have her own slot on Fox News if she were alive today, where she would doubtless opine about how it was a mark of tyranny to jail people for such harmless pastimes as sedition. There are quite a few ways this manifests itself. Firstly, much of her argument is that the South was seeking self determination but she frequently speculates whether the best way to achieve this was through military dictatorship: "The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us—anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees.... We want a Dictator... Jeff Davis will never consent to be a Dictator... And, pray, who asks him? Joe Johnston will be made Dictator by the Army of the West." In practice, Johnston had to settle for the hardship of being made Commissioner of Railroads after the fall of the South. Much of Chesnut's commentary is generally sceptical of the value of democracy, even beyond the military situation the South had placed itself in: "Mr. Barnwell says democracies lead to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false; so both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits.... People dare not tell the truth in a canvass; they must conciliate their constituents. Now everybody in a democracy always wants an office."
Then we can move onto her attitude towards slaves, of which the Chesnuts had a thousand prior to the civil war. The word she repeatedly uses is 'inscrutable' and describes their expressions as 'mask-like.' It doesn't occur to her that genuine expression of their sentiments would hardly have been a good idea and she accordingly oscillates between amazement that none of her slaves had defected to the Yankees and living in continual fear that they will do just that: "Yesterday some of the negro men on the plantation were found with pistols. I have never before seen aught about any negro to show that they knew we had a war on hand in which they have any interest... One servant whispered to his master, "Don't you mind 'em, don't trust 'em"—meaning the negroes." Open expressions of racism are not as common as one might expect, but are also not that hard to find: "It takes these half-Africans but a moment to go back to their naked savage animal nature."
Considering that Chesnut and her family were slaveowners, and part of an insurrection whose sole practical purpose was to defend slavery, there's a marked reluctance to defend slavery as an institution: "He is not for slavery, he says; he is for freedom, and the freedom to govern our own country as we see fit... you and General Chesnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery was a thing of the past, this many a year... one of the few men left in the world who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans, who are black, in bonds forever." Chesnut reads Uncle Tom's Cabin early on in the diary and her practice is generally to diminish the extent to which slavery was a crime rather than to actually defend it: equivocations and evasions such as freedom to self determination are resorted to. For example, she ludicrously asserts that slavery is hardly any worse than tolerance of Mormonism: it's very hard not to conclude that she was perfectly well aware of what an abomination slavery was and simply did not care very much. More reasonably, she does criticises Northern States that had massacred Indian populations for their hypocrisy over slavery and makes the same criticism of the British Empire: "Saintly folks those English when their blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not expect anything better from, but what an example of Christian patience and humanity the white "angels" from the West set them."
Given this, her reaction to Lincoln's assassination is hardly surprising: "The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last President put to death in the capital, though he is the first." Chesnut's habit, from start to finish, is always to regard herself as a victim. But in practice, although Chesnut's husband had been a senior figure in the Confederacy he was treated extremely leniently: rather than being made to stand trial he was able to return to practising law after the civil war before forming the Conservative Party.
In fairness, the entire diary is not perhaps quite this frivolous (if nothing else, because the dinner parties cease after Confederate money ceases to be accepted and food becomes scarce). Chesnut does visit a military hospital and faints after seeing the injuries. She recounts seeing Confederate soldiers marching in rags and much of the book consists of a catalogue of the deaths of men she had known. The later chapters recount her living as a refugee after the United States army had retaken the area she lived in.
Nonetheless, the fact does remain that Chesnut is a remarkably unpleasant figure, who would probably have her own slot on Fox News if she were alive today, where she would doubtless opine about how it was a mark of tyranny to jail people for such harmless pastimes as sedition. There are quite a few ways this manifests itself. Firstly, much of her argument is that the South was seeking self determination but she frequently speculates whether the best way to achieve this was through military dictatorship: "The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us—anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees.... We want a Dictator... Jeff Davis will never consent to be a Dictator... And, pray, who asks him? Joe Johnston will be made Dictator by the Army of the West." In practice, Johnston had to settle for the hardship of being made Commissioner of Railroads after the fall of the South. Much of Chesnut's commentary is generally sceptical of the value of democracy, even beyond the military situation the South had placed itself in: "Mr. Barnwell says democracies lead to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false; so both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits.... People dare not tell the truth in a canvass; they must conciliate their constituents. Now everybody in a democracy always wants an office."
Then we can move onto her attitude towards slaves, of which the Chesnuts had a thousand prior to the civil war. The word she repeatedly uses is 'inscrutable' and describes their expressions as 'mask-like.' It doesn't occur to her that genuine expression of their sentiments would hardly have been a good idea and she accordingly oscillates between amazement that none of her slaves had defected to the Yankees and living in continual fear that they will do just that: "Yesterday some of the negro men on the plantation were found with pistols. I have never before seen aught about any negro to show that they knew we had a war on hand in which they have any interest... One servant whispered to his master, "Don't you mind 'em, don't trust 'em"—meaning the negroes." Open expressions of racism are not as common as one might expect, but are also not that hard to find: "It takes these half-Africans but a moment to go back to their naked savage animal nature."
Considering that Chesnut and her family were slaveowners, and part of an insurrection whose sole practical purpose was to defend slavery, there's a marked reluctance to defend slavery as an institution: "He is not for slavery, he says; he is for freedom, and the freedom to govern our own country as we see fit... you and General Chesnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery was a thing of the past, this many a year... one of the few men left in the world who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans, who are black, in bonds forever." Chesnut reads Uncle Tom's Cabin early on in the diary and her practice is generally to diminish the extent to which slavery was a crime rather than to actually defend it: equivocations and evasions such as freedom to self determination are resorted to. For example, she ludicrously asserts that slavery is hardly any worse than tolerance of Mormonism: it's very hard not to conclude that she was perfectly well aware of what an abomination slavery was and simply did not care very much. More reasonably, she does criticises Northern States that had massacred Indian populations for their hypocrisy over slavery and makes the same criticism of the British Empire: "Saintly folks those English when their blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not expect anything better from, but what an example of Christian patience and humanity the white "angels" from the West set them."
Given this, her reaction to Lincoln's assassination is hardly surprising: "The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last President put to death in the capital, though he is the first." Chesnut's habit, from start to finish, is always to regard herself as a victim. But in practice, although Chesnut's husband had been a senior figure in the Confederacy he was treated extremely leniently: rather than being made to stand trial he was able to return to practising law after the civil war before forming the Conservative Party.
March 24, 2020
I picked this book up because when I was younger, someone told me how interesting it was to read a firsthand account of what the Civil War was like. While I appreciated reading all the details and plans about the war and getting an insight into the opinions and thoughts of the Confederates, I wasn’t very impressed by this book. It’s rather boring, mostly because Chesnut is so disconnected from the true atrocities of the war and comes across as very superficial and arrogant without having any real substance about her.
The other problem is that this book is said to be heavily edited so as not to contain anything that would be unflattering to the Confederates, which is entirely ridiculous to me. It most likely would have been much more interesting if it contained everything, but it really just talks about inflation, traveling from one city to another, and the parties the higher up Confederates threw for each other.
Overall, I could see using snippets of this to supplement a civil war lesson in a class, but it’s not worth reading the diary in its entirety.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
The other problem is that this book is said to be heavily edited so as not to contain anything that would be unflattering to the Confederates, which is entirely ridiculous to me. It most likely would have been much more interesting if it contained everything, but it really just talks about inflation, traveling from one city to another, and the parties the higher up Confederates threw for each other.
Overall, I could see using snippets of this to supplement a civil war lesson in a class, but it’s not worth reading the diary in its entirety.
Also posted on Purple People Readers.
June 15, 2017
A profoundly honest personal view of the War Between the States. This is more than a personal closeup of the times. It gets the reader inside the head and heart of a woman born and living in those times. In spite of her determination to be absolutely "objective," her feelings still come through. Great book.
December 31, 2012
It seems like whenever you watch a documentary about the Civil War, they quote Mary Chestnut... so I got this book to see what all of the fuss was about. Mary Chestnut was the wife of an influential South Carolina politician and general. He served as an aide to Jefferson Davis, and Mary had access to a wealth of political and military information that your average Confederate citizen did not. She was friends with many of the generals and politicians, and you would think that there would be a ton of first hand information about the important events of the war in this book. What it ends up being, though, is a collection of her stories about dinner parties. I'd say 90% of this book is her talking about Mr. So and so getting married or what Ms. Whats her name said at some dinner party. To give you an idea of how lacking this book is on certain topics... it doesn't even mention the battle of Gettysburg. Only about 10% of the book relates to the actual war, and those parts are great. She talks about the personality of generals, the civilian's view point on some battle or the cost of products in the town. I wish some editor would cut out all of the gossip and skip to the important things... but then this book would only be like 40 pages long...
January 27, 2013
Interesting to go to the source of much content of the Ric Burns Civil War documentary series, and to see what they selected out of the overall diary content. The Chesnuts were very high up in the Confederate social and political circles, which was rather downplayed in the series. Outside of this, it is interesting how the author comments so candidly on how she (and others she meets) comments on the world. As a contemporary, it's remarkable how she speaks negatively of characters who remained relatively obscure to history, and so positively to some of the major characters of Confederacy whose name did persist forward so well. Was she really such a good assessor of people? There are many she praises who are unknown now, but it's still a remarkable element of her work. Wish she'd been even more descriptive of situations and conditions after 1864 than she was, but must have been too busy struggling through situations (especially due to what she was used to) to write in detail. Was interesting to read her perspective of General Hood and his courting of Buck Preston socialite immediately after reading the General Hood book by McMurry. This book makes me want a similar diary from a Southern women of lower income level and less influence from the times.
August 1, 2013
Absolutely fascinating narrative by the wife of a someone high ranking in the politics of the Confederacy. She shares her day to day, while interacting with other key players of the American Civil War, as she attended parties with their families and talked war politics over dinner. As a Northerner, I spent about the first half of the book completely confused why this woman, privy to so much of the reality of war and with her husband off fighting in it, spent her time throwing and attending parties. More importantly, she spent twice as much time describing them as she did notable moments in the war. But her evolution as a person and the transformational power of the Civil War is evident by the end. Fascinating. Slow in some parts, but as a complete product, these mundane parts are probably necessary to show the changes in the South and its people. Walked away with a better understanding of the Southern mindset during the war in many different ways. Fascinating.
May 12, 2012
It took me a little while to get into it, but once I became accustomed to Mrs. Chestnut's habit of dropping names like hot cakes I really got into the groove. Even though I felt like I had to plow my way thru the social agenda of the first two years, i found the insight and perspective derived from the latter half of the diary to be invaluable. This is a priceless perspective from the Southern gentry and a work I will recommend to any history-lover. Fascinating insights on slavery, confederate society, the major confederate generals and politicians, and the war itself.
August 20, 2010
This book seems to be a good look at this war through the eyes of a southern civilian, although her husband was military. It does express the feelings of the ladies who sent their sons and husbands off to battle, many to not return. This not a book about the war itself detailing battles, etc. I am glad I took the time to read it.
July 12, 2012
If you've watched the Ken Burns series on the Civil War as many times as I have, you can probably already quote Mary Chesnut. Or Shelby Foote. Or both. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, this diary is probably not for you.
February 5, 2020
Chesnut writes candidly about what elite Southerners were thinking but not saying, giving us considerable insight into their society, but at the same time she is blind to her privileged position. She famously writes of (although it appears to me she is actually quoting British reporter William Howard Russell's side of a conversation with her) the hypocrisy of plantation owners who are shocked to find their daughters reading Don Juan while they themselves enjoy access to young female slaves, a situation pithily summarized as: “Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) did not hit the sorest spot: she made Legree a bachelor.”
And yet even here, when Chesnut opens Southern society to view, she is still blind to the hapless position of the slaves, writing “There are no Negro sexual relations half so shocking as Mormonism”, ignoring the fact that Mormon women could and did refuse to enter into plural marriage, but female slaves could not turn away their masters.
Chesnut freely quotes numerous men highly placed in the Confederate hierarchy, and even letters to Union soldiers taken from the battlefield, giving us not just her own view of the Civil War but the views of many others as well. In one of these conversations, with a Mississippi colonel, we learn that the war was somehow Senator Sumner’s fault. Evidently he should have “stood on his manhood” when attacked by Representative Preston Brooks and returned blow for blow, like a schoolyard fight. This revealing tidbit tallies with Mark Twain’s observations on the backwardness of Southern “honor”. The colonel concludes by criticizing Northerners for not wanting to fight if there is nothing to be gained from it -- really?
It’s surprising how much things cost late in the war. We expect prices from 150 years ago to be much less than today, but rampant inflation of Confederate currency rendered e.g. the cost of a turkey $23 or a dental exam $350.
And yet even here, when Chesnut opens Southern society to view, she is still blind to the hapless position of the slaves, writing “There are no Negro sexual relations half so shocking as Mormonism”, ignoring the fact that Mormon women could and did refuse to enter into plural marriage, but female slaves could not turn away their masters.
Chesnut freely quotes numerous men highly placed in the Confederate hierarchy, and even letters to Union soldiers taken from the battlefield, giving us not just her own view of the Civil War but the views of many others as well. In one of these conversations, with a Mississippi colonel, we learn that the war was somehow Senator Sumner’s fault. Evidently he should have “stood on his manhood” when attacked by Representative Preston Brooks and returned blow for blow, like a schoolyard fight. This revealing tidbit tallies with Mark Twain’s observations on the backwardness of Southern “honor”. The colonel concludes by criticizing Northerners for not wanting to fight if there is nothing to be gained from it -- really?
It’s surprising how much things cost late in the war. We expect prices from 150 years ago to be much less than today, but rampant inflation of Confederate currency rendered e.g. the cost of a turkey $23 or a dental exam $350.
May 25, 2016
Mary Chestnut’s diary is a look into the life of a southern lady prominent in social circles, who was married to a US Senator then Confederate officer and advisor to Jeff Davis, during the years of the War Between the States. She writes events she lived during the time from the start of the secession to the end of the inevitable war. She was close with Jefferson Davis and his wife as well as other prominent Confederate government officials and generals. She was privy to some behind the scene things due to her connections…social issues, some battles, and politics. She also had no problem sharing her opinion on things or people for that matter. I would love to have known this wonderful woman. There were some lighthearted moments but soon enough they were few and far between when the loss of young life and tragedy took away the jovial nature of Mary at times. She managed to keep her spirits and the spirits of those around her up at times but the sad times of hopelessness and loss were inevitable.
She also painted the picture of the differing views of the many politics going on in this time, even inside the Confederacy, one thing they all had in common during this time was their love and loyalty for their southern homes. There were many that did not agree with the secession preferring to continue with talks and avoid the inevitable fight when the north attacked, because they knew it would come once they claimed their independence.
Mary, her husband, as well as many others in her circle, and family did not agree with slavery and had no issue with it ending. Most stated the obvious that it was more expensive to pay for them in taxes, food, housing, etc. than it would be simply pay a wage to the ones they wanted to hire as hands. Mary’s in-laws had a plantation with slaves and Mary herself had servants, most of which stayed loyal to them and stayed with them through it all. I am sure this was due to her, as well her families, care for them. Especially after the few that left to go to the Yankees were robbed of their valuables that their masters had given them such as watches etc., just like they did the whites when they raided their homes or robbed them on the streets. The servants staying loyal to their families wasn’t uncommon in some cases when they were with families that were decent and treated them well, they did form bonds contrary to popular belief. You simply can’t look at it with the bias of this time period, the Yankees sorely mistreated them as well in many cases much worse than they could have imagined.
This quote said much: ““this was a rich man’s war”, and the rich men would be the officers and have an easy time and the poor ones would be privates.”
Most seem to forget this, but those of us with numerous Confederate ancestors (all non-slave owners in my case) have always known this fact. The destruction of memorials to and graves of the men that fought for their homes and freedom is deplorable. There was suffering for Mary’s family and many in her circle and they were considered well off, imagine how the soldiers who lived by small means and their families fared in the face of starvation and desolation after their food and homes were destroyed, if they survived at all.
There was one thing that resonated while reading this and that is how so little has truly changed in many social issues today, even stereotyping the south and southerners. It seems history truly does repeat itself, in some form or fashion. The division in this country today, along with the disdain for anything southern, as well as the people assuming too much about others due to their own personal opinions and views while trying to force others to bend to their will was very similar to happenings in this period of history. There are so many similarities in things happening today, the media has certainly reverted back to the tactics of this day and age. It is truly sad to see people still haven’t managed the art of live and let live, as long as no physical harm of person or property is involved it seems it could have been accomplished by now but sadly it has not.
She also painted the picture of the differing views of the many politics going on in this time, even inside the Confederacy, one thing they all had in common during this time was their love and loyalty for their southern homes. There were many that did not agree with the secession preferring to continue with talks and avoid the inevitable fight when the north attacked, because they knew it would come once they claimed their independence.
Mary, her husband, as well as many others in her circle, and family did not agree with slavery and had no issue with it ending. Most stated the obvious that it was more expensive to pay for them in taxes, food, housing, etc. than it would be simply pay a wage to the ones they wanted to hire as hands. Mary’s in-laws had a plantation with slaves and Mary herself had servants, most of which stayed loyal to them and stayed with them through it all. I am sure this was due to her, as well her families, care for them. Especially after the few that left to go to the Yankees were robbed of their valuables that their masters had given them such as watches etc., just like they did the whites when they raided their homes or robbed them on the streets. The servants staying loyal to their families wasn’t uncommon in some cases when they were with families that were decent and treated them well, they did form bonds contrary to popular belief. You simply can’t look at it with the bias of this time period, the Yankees sorely mistreated them as well in many cases much worse than they could have imagined.
This quote said much: ““this was a rich man’s war”, and the rich men would be the officers and have an easy time and the poor ones would be privates.”
Most seem to forget this, but those of us with numerous Confederate ancestors (all non-slave owners in my case) have always known this fact. The destruction of memorials to and graves of the men that fought for their homes and freedom is deplorable. There was suffering for Mary’s family and many in her circle and they were considered well off, imagine how the soldiers who lived by small means and their families fared in the face of starvation and desolation after their food and homes were destroyed, if they survived at all.
There was one thing that resonated while reading this and that is how so little has truly changed in many social issues today, even stereotyping the south and southerners. It seems history truly does repeat itself, in some form or fashion. The division in this country today, along with the disdain for anything southern, as well as the people assuming too much about others due to their own personal opinions and views while trying to force others to bend to their will was very similar to happenings in this period of history. There are so many similarities in things happening today, the media has certainly reverted back to the tactics of this day and age. It is truly sad to see people still haven’t managed the art of live and let live, as long as no physical harm of person or property is involved it seems it could have been accomplished by now but sadly it has not.
May 16, 2019
I finally finished!
I started my review when I was in the middle of the book:
So far, I enjoy her writing style; she writes clearly and intelligently. She is also very open with her opinions on almost everything she writes about. As you might expect with a journal, a lot of the events don't have bearing on the rest of the occurrences, except in a vague way to provide more context for the time period.
Her views on slavery, politics, and the war are very interesting and conflicted. She doesn't like that there is a war or slavery, but she stands behind her country. Her views are definitely not modern, but it IS interesting to view the Antebellum South through the eyes of a woman (instead of a man) that actually lived through that period.
A lot of the journal is full of gossip, though she usually protects the identity of people of whom she tells unflattering stories.
The author is anti-slavery, and claims that most Southern women are. Her reasons for being anti-slavery are mostly selfish, however. She often talks negatively of the slaves around her, but shares interesting or flattering stories about their lives as well. She doesn't like that slave owners have all slaves at their mercy (especially the women), she doesn't like having them walking through her house at any time of the day, and she doesn't like that they don't work harder (even though she works even less!). She doesn't like having to pay for their upkeep. Whenever she talks about Northern women, she describes their "easy life." Despite all this, I find her easily likable.
Many parts of the journal were written in my hometown, and I recognize some of the surnames. My forebears were not in her social circle, so I haven't read anything about them unless they were included among the men ("Sandhill tackeys") who would not fight at the beginning of the war because it was a "rich man's war."
About halfway through the book, she starts mentioning how much money she pays for different items, showing the inflation and scarcity endemic to the late Confederacy.
This book really is an incredible chronicle of how the Southern plantation class went from immense wealth and comfort to being dependent on the loyalty of their former slaves. At the beginning, Mrs. Chesnut talked about luxuries such as ice in an off-hand way and lingered on her illnesses, which also seem more frequent. By the end of the war, she had milked cows and helped her lady's maid (slave) clean their rooms and cook. She still took to her bed, but only mentioned it in passing. She paid exorbitant prices for food, and was happy with "bread and molasses." She had seen or heard of the horrors of war--maimed soldiers, starvation, cruelty to women and children, death and destruction. She would lament, "And what was it all for? Nothing!"
Despite this and the difficulty in rebuilding, I could still see at the end of her diary that she and her circle of friends would be able to regain their old way of life.
True to a what you would expect of a journal, the book goes through stages of being more interesting and less interesting, depending on the society that Mrs. Chesnut associates with.
I started my review when I was in the middle of the book:
So far, I enjoy her writing style; she writes clearly and intelligently. She is also very open with her opinions on almost everything she writes about. As you might expect with a journal, a lot of the events don't have bearing on the rest of the occurrences, except in a vague way to provide more context for the time period.
Her views on slavery, politics, and the war are very interesting and conflicted. She doesn't like that there is a war or slavery, but she stands behind her country. Her views are definitely not modern, but it IS interesting to view the Antebellum South through the eyes of a woman (instead of a man) that actually lived through that period.
A lot of the journal is full of gossip, though she usually protects the identity of people of whom she tells unflattering stories.
The author is anti-slavery, and claims that most Southern women are. Her reasons for being anti-slavery are mostly selfish, however. She often talks negatively of the slaves around her, but shares interesting or flattering stories about their lives as well. She doesn't like that slave owners have all slaves at their mercy (especially the women), she doesn't like having them walking through her house at any time of the day, and she doesn't like that they don't work harder (even though she works even less!). She doesn't like having to pay for their upkeep. Whenever she talks about Northern women, she describes their "easy life." Despite all this, I find her easily likable.
Many parts of the journal were written in my hometown, and I recognize some of the surnames. My forebears were not in her social circle, so I haven't read anything about them unless they were included among the men ("Sandhill tackeys") who would not fight at the beginning of the war because it was a "rich man's war."
About halfway through the book, she starts mentioning how much money she pays for different items, showing the inflation and scarcity endemic to the late Confederacy.
This book really is an incredible chronicle of how the Southern plantation class went from immense wealth and comfort to being dependent on the loyalty of their former slaves. At the beginning, Mrs. Chesnut talked about luxuries such as ice in an off-hand way and lingered on her illnesses, which also seem more frequent. By the end of the war, she had milked cows and helped her lady's maid (slave) clean their rooms and cook. She still took to her bed, but only mentioned it in passing. She paid exorbitant prices for food, and was happy with "bread and molasses." She had seen or heard of the horrors of war--maimed soldiers, starvation, cruelty to women and children, death and destruction. She would lament, "And what was it all for? Nothing!"
Despite this and the difficulty in rebuilding, I could still see at the end of her diary that she and her circle of friends would be able to regain their old way of life.
True to a what you would expect of a journal, the book goes through stages of being more interesting and less interesting, depending on the society that Mrs. Chesnut associates with.
February 24, 2015
I used to think of elite Southern women as apathetic. I imagined Southern belles sitting in ornate parlors, enjoying their comfortable lifestyles, nearly oblivious of the Civil War raging in their backyards. I have come to learn that this is far from the truth. In her meticulously written account, A Diary From Dixie, Mary Chesnut is a prime example of a sophisticated woman working hard for the Confederacy, and her diary is a testimony to others like her. Every page of Mary Chesnut’s diary expresses a passion for her cause and her work. During one of her many fevers she still thought of the needy soldiers: “My small ailments in all this comfort set me mourning over the dead and dying soldier I saw in Virginia. How feeble my compassion proves after all.” There is no doubt that her tireless volunteerism was an example to Southern women and her diary has become a gem for scholars and students of the Civil War.
Although her diary is a scholarly treasure, it is not fit for armchair reading. From the beginning Mary Chesnut was clear about her purpose, “From today forward I will tell the story in my own way.” Accuracy was essential to the stated intention of her account: “These memoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am.” Thus she spends much time on politics, biography, and current events. She wanted to write an account of the Civil War, not a novel. What she set out to do, she accomplished. A Diary From Dixie is one of the most valuable and often quoted sources for studying the Civil War.
May 18, 2015
I started reading this famous diary in 2011 and have tracked along with Mary Chestnut her account of the Civil War from her viewpoint of a Southern woman and aristocrat. Now the sesquicentennial of the war is ended, and I have closed the last chapter of her story of the conflict. She gives us an unblinkered look at the course of the war. She is not an ideologue, and her mixture of humor, observations on daily life and famous personalities gives a realism to her story that is still captivating. Many historians even today prefer to characterize the Civil War as a struggle of near equals with sudden collapse in the last year of the conflict. Mary Chestnut entertains no such dreams - her pessimism and realism run throughout the narrative. She holds no brief for the institution of slavery, but like many white Southerners of the time, does not know what is to become of African Americans in freedom. She does not demean, however. Early on, in discussing a dinner in Charleston, she wonders what the African American servants are thinking as they hear the conversation and yet she trusts their presence in the room as part of the life she leads. Since the war is still with us in some real way, and confronting racism and reconciling the roles of state and federal power are still central challenges for Americans, her account still has the power to draw old memories and inspire new efforts to reconcile the past with a brighter future.
October 23, 2017
This book took me years to read. It is very long and rambling. I have an avid interest in the Civil War so picked it up off and on when I was between novels. Mary and her husband were close to Jeff Davis and the inner power circle of the South. She writes as things happen from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. She explains how life goes on in a country under siege. She also writes about daily life, parties, books, and especially visitors . Many of the important rebel generals were their friends. She talks about the feuding and competition among them. She tells about friends lost or disfigured by war. She discusses slavery in many aspects. She says she and many southerners were against slavery, though they doubt the slaves could live on their own. The book becomes more intense as. Mary and others are forced from their homes as Sherman advances toward The sea burning everything in his path. These once proud, educated people become starving and homeless. The book ends rather abruptly after General Lee's surrender.
It appears that Mary lives on as she continues to refine the diary with the idea of publishing it someday. I believe the first copy came out about 8 years after the War. She covers Lincoln's assassination and Jeff Davis imprisonment. The diary ends at probably her lowest point.
It appears that Mary lives on as she continues to refine the diary with the idea of publishing it someday. I believe the first copy came out about 8 years after the War. She covers Lincoln's assassination and Jeff Davis imprisonment. The diary ends at probably her lowest point.
Currently reading
August 6, 2012In keeping with my historical summer (it seems I've only been reading Civil War books until the JFK switch recently), I began searching for this book after seeing that it was used as a material reference for "The Rebel's Wife"...
I don't think I will make my goal of finishing this book before school starts (I go back tomorrow), but, I am not giving up.
There are lots of names of people, and descriptions of people and the comings and goings of other people.. Mary B. Chestnut, as was proper for her time period, refers to people by "Mr. so-and-so"... but, then later refers to them by their whole name, as in "James Chestnut", and that's fine, too, but -- sometimes it's hard to decipher if she is talking about her husband, her father-in-law, of a brother-in-law... maybe it's just me?!?!?
I am enjoying the historical references, but, at this point in my reading, she is still very un-affected by the war. It is going on around her, but she is still constantly travelling, having friendly get-togethers, even dining with her friends - Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis!
Will rate the book upon completion...
I don't think I will make my goal of finishing this book before school starts (I go back tomorrow), but, I am not giving up.
There are lots of names of people, and descriptions of people and the comings and goings of other people.. Mary B. Chestnut, as was proper for her time period, refers to people by "Mr. so-and-so"... but, then later refers to them by their whole name, as in "James Chestnut", and that's fine, too, but -- sometimes it's hard to decipher if she is talking about her husband, her father-in-law, of a brother-in-law... maybe it's just me?!?!?
I am enjoying the historical references, but, at this point in my reading, she is still very un-affected by the war. It is going on around her, but she is still constantly travelling, having friendly get-togethers, even dining with her friends - Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis!
Will rate the book upon completion...
April 30, 2019
It's always interesting to read about pivotal points in history through people who lived through it, let alone, a running commentary in real time without any idea or corruption of how the events will play out. That is what this diary is like, but it is possible that Mrs. Chestnut heavily revised the diary entries to be more appealing to the reader or flattering to herself and her contemporaries. What I took from the book is the sadness that the Civil War was inevitable given the South's inability and utter rejection of eliminating slavery from its states. What this resulted in was utter devastation and the loss of so much humanity on both sides. The horror and deprivation of war was brought to the front steps of these families and the aftershocks, while fading a little each generation, are still felt within the South. To read this made me feel saddened, I understand that each nation undergoes civil wars - but our nation is still so young and this war was so deeply divisive that I wonder when it will be finally put into the history books as a true cautionary tale and not a call to resurrect animosities and hatreds.
August 16, 2011
I enjoyed reading this because I wanted an account of what it was like to be a southerner during the Civil War. I enjoy her writing. However, this diary was subject to editing by the author retrospectively and, apparently, editing by editors in the early 1900s. So, I am wondering how much editing occurred? Plus, there are things that I would like a better understanding of which she didn't explain here...definitely appropriate to the nature of a journal. For instance, her views of slavery seems to be very complicated, and I would like further explanation. I plan to read a biography of her and maybe some further diary versions. I am interested in the Civil War since this is the 150-year anniversary of its beginning. I am not planning, however, to read some book involving movements of troops, battles, and strategy. So, I will look into other eyewitness accounts or other non-fiction on life during the Civil War.
January 4, 2015
Picked this up in Toppings, Ely - one of those 'small bookshop inspirations'.
Interesting, but less revealing than you might expect and - quite naturally - very confined in what it can show, given her status as a cloistered, upper class Confederate WAG. She's endearingly bolshie and sharp at times and there are plenty of instances of real insight (slave relations; attitudes to the various generals and a widespread disdain for 'Jeff' Davis, etc).
But it's often ponderous reading to the non-historian. Everyone is forever lunching or dining; powerful figures are forever passing through (Mr Chesnut included - and did the man ever do *any* work?) and, oh, the cast of passing characters, soldiers and social contacts is endless.
Still, occasionally entertaining and, for me, bringing some welcome colour to a chapter I don't know enough about (yet).
Interesting, but less revealing than you might expect and - quite naturally - very confined in what it can show, given her status as a cloistered, upper class Confederate WAG. She's endearingly bolshie and sharp at times and there are plenty of instances of real insight (slave relations; attitudes to the various generals and a widespread disdain for 'Jeff' Davis, etc).
But it's often ponderous reading to the non-historian. Everyone is forever lunching or dining; powerful figures are forever passing through (Mr Chesnut included - and did the man ever do *any* work?) and, oh, the cast of passing characters, soldiers and social contacts is endless.
Still, occasionally entertaining and, for me, bringing some welcome colour to a chapter I don't know enough about (yet).
October 20, 2015
Mary Chestnut came from a prominent Southern family. She was in a unique position to record events, as she saw and heard them, leading up to and during the American Civil War. Her husband was a Southern States senator and became an aide to Jefferson Davis. Mary had the keen sense to know that what was unfolding was going to be of lasting and immense magnitude and she recorded the details in her diary. Mary was part of a large circle of friends and was privy to high level discussions regarding the war. Her diary reveals the complex views at the times and is an invaluable source detailing the relentless losses on the battlefield and in the hospitals. Her account of the lives and careers of her many friends and the untimely loss of so many of them over the span of four years becomes a tragic but lasting record of a terrible period in history.
May 25, 2019
After reading about Varina Davis, I was very interested to read this book, which is an actual diary from Mary Chesnut, wife of James Chesnut, a Confederate general and aide to Jefferson Davis. Mary was an intimate friend of Varina Davis and mingled frequently with Jefferson Davis and all of the top political and military leaders of the Confederacy. She kept this diary throughout the war years, and it is amazingly revealing of the personalities, habits, attitudes, prejudices, and thoughts of this highly significant group of people. It is also a very human story of being in the middle of events that are spiraling out of control with the loss of so many lives and the destruction of an entire way of life. A great book for understanding more about the way people were thinking in what seems like a senseless time.
May 24, 2014
This book was very good. I am an avid reader and among my interest is first hand accounts of the civil war. Mary Chestnut does a good job through the words in her diary presenting an account of the war from inside the circles of the Confederate's presidency. She expresses how slavery was truly represented during the war for both sides showing that the north and south didn't differ much in their sentiments about slavery. She showed many cases of inhuman behavior and generosity from both sides. It supports a common analogy about the civil war being a war about state's rights. But after saying all of this, one has to realize that the book is bastardized from a southern prospective, regardless of how that is altered from modern day reality.
January 29, 2015
This is a memoir, written by the wife of a senior military officer fighting for the South in the American Civil War. As the South’s fortunes collapse, she retreats toward the centre of Confederate power, and sees the trappings of her affluent lifestyle stripped away. She is, to a modern reader, clearly on the wrong side of history, but her justifications for slavery and the attack on Fort Sumter are made all the more interesting by her alieness. The Librivox reader is tremendously successful, absolutely convincing as Chesnut’s voice. Again, the Librivox page contains links to ebook sources.
This review originally appeared on book coasters
This review originally appeared on book coasters
March 30, 2015
When I picked up ths diary of the Civil War, I was not expecting it to be so hilarious. I want Mary Chestnut to be my best friend, or at least my aunt. I love how she sets her skirts on fire, flirts with generals, meets her friends wherever she goes, relates the war from a uniquely southern perspective and offers a scintillating social commentary on those in the highest Southern circles during the war. Sometimes her enormous cast of characters is slightly confusing, and I am still puzzled as to why there's no mention of Gettysburg or much made of General Lee. All in all though, an excellent read for students or enthusiasts interested in the American Civil War.
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