Mary Boykin Chesnut

This journal is intended to be entirely objective. My subjective days are over. No more silent eating into my own heart, making my own misery

Mary Boykin Chesnut (née Miller; March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886) was an American woman noted for the diary she kept during the Civil War and revised shortly before her death. She was married to James Chesnut Jr., a lawyer who served as a United States senator and an officer in the Confederate States Army.

Quotes

Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary (eds.), A Diary from Dixie (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1905)
Ben Ames Williams (ed.), A Diary from Dixie (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949)
C. Vann Woodward (ed.), Mary Chesnut's Civil War (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1981)

• My father was a South Carolina nullifier, governor of the state at the time of the nullification row, and then U.S. senator. So I was of necessity a rebel born.
  • February 18, 1861

• I was a seceder, but I dreaded the future. I bore in mind Pugh's letter, his description of what he saw in Mexico when he accompanied an invading army. My companions had their own thoughts and misgivings, doubtless, but they breathed fire and defiance.
  • February 18, 1861, emphasis original

• I have seen a negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd. I was walking and felt faint, seasick. The creature looked so like my good little Nancy, a bright mulatto with a pleasant face. She was magnificently gotten up in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all, sometimes ogling the bidders, sometimes looking quiet, coy, and modest, but her mouth never relaxed from its expanded grin of excitement. I dare say the poor thing knew who would buy her. I sat down on a stool in a shop and disciplined my wild thoughts. I tried it Sterne fashion. You know how women sell themselves and are sold in marriage from queens downward, eh? You know what the Bible says about slavery and marriage; poor women! poor slaves! Sterne, with his starling—what did he know? He only thought, he did not feel.
  • March 4, 1861
  • Cf. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), "The Passport. The Hotel at Paris"

• What nonsense I write here. However, this journal is intended to be entirely objective. My subjective days are over. No more silent eating into my own heart, making my own misery, when without these morbid fantasies I could be so happy.
  • March 11, 1861

• God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an iniquity! Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.
  • March 14, 1861
  • Williams (1949) gives "partly"; Woodward (1981) "exactly"

• And all the time they seem to think themselves patterns — models of husbands and fathers.
  • March 18, 1861

• I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms—at four—the orders are—he shall be fired upon.
  I count four—St. Michael chimes. I begin to hope. At half-past four, the heavy booming of a cannon.
  I sprang out of bed. And on my knees—prostrate—I prayed as I never prayed before.
  • April 12, 1861

• Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Laurence sits at our door, as sleepy and as respectful and as profoundly indifferent. So are they all. They carry it too far. You could not tell that they hear even the awful row that is going on in the bay, though it is dinning in their ears night and day. And people talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. And they make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?
  • April 13, 1861

• Our battle [summer]]. May it be our first and our last. So-called. After all, we have not had any of the horrors of war.
  • July 9, 1861

• Every day regiments pass by. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new ones are running in, fairly. They fear the war will be over before they get a sight of the fun.
  • August 4, 1861

• Woe to those who began this war, if they were not in bitter earnest.
  • October 15, 1861

• Sally Reynolds told a short story of a negro pet of Mrs. Kershaw's. The little negro clung to Mrs. Kershaw and begged her to save him. The negro mother, stronger than Mrs. Kershaw, tore him away from her. Mrs. Kershaw wept bitterly. Sally said she saw the mother chasing the child before her as she ran after the Yankees, whipping him at every step. The child yelled like mad, a small rebel blackamoor.
  • May 10, 1865

See also

• The Civil War (documentary)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Mary Boykin Chesnut on Wikipedia