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What did mary chesnut do in the civil war

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Mary Boykin Chesnut

American Confederacy Civil War diarist (1823–1886)

Mary Boykin Chesnut (née Miller; March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886) was an American writer 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."[1] 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 James Chesnut Jr., a lawyer who served as a United States senator and officer in the Confederate States Army.

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, 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 in 1982. Literary critics have praised Chesnut's diary—the influential writer Edmund Wilson t

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Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller1823-1886, Diarist and Author 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

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Mary Boykin Chesnut
by
Youli Theodosiadou
  • LAST MODIFIED: 21 June 2024
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0247

  • Andrews, William L., Minrose C. Gwin, Trudier Harris, and Fred Hobson, eds. “Mary Boykin Chesnut.” In The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. Edited by William L. Andrews, et al., 220–234. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

    Includes a biographical note on Chesnut and excerpts from the 1981 edition of her journal.

  • DeCredico, Mary A. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. American Profiles Series. Madison: Madison House, 1998.

    Focuses on Chesnut as a member of the privileged class of plantation mistresses who was at the forefront of political and military action due to her family’s background and her husband’s political career. Apart from Chesnut’s life, DeCredico discusses national events. She devotes a considerable part of the book to comment on Chesnut’s view of slavery. Provides an overall view of Chesnut for scholars who wish to gain a better understanding of the Confederacy and Mary Chesnut.

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