Mary Boykin Chesnut
A Diary From Dixie
(Civil War Memoir)
Published by
Books
- Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -
2019 OK Publishing
EAN 4057664559081
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: The Author and Her Book
I. CHARLESTON, S. C. November 8, 1860 - December 27, 1860
II. MONTGOMERY, ALA. February 19, 1861 - March 11, 1861
III. CHARLESTON, S. C. March 26, 1861 - April 15, 1861
IV. CAMDEN, S. C. April 20, 1861 - April 23, 1861
V. MONTGOMERY, ALA. April 27, 1861 - May 20, 1861
VI. CHARLESTON, S. C. May 25, 1861 - June 24, 1861
VII. RICHMOND, VA. June 27, 1861 - July 4, 1861
VIII. FAUQUIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, VA. July 6, 1861 - July 11, 1861
IX. RICHMOND, VA. July 13, 1861 - September 2, 1861
X. CAMDEN, S. C. September 9, 1861-September 19, 1861
XI. COLUMBIA, S. C. February 20, 1862 - July 21, 1862
XII. FLAT ROCK, N. C. August 1,1862 - August 8,1862
XIII. PORTLAND, ALA. July 8, 1863 - July 30, 1863
XIV. RICHMOND, VA. August 10, 1863 - September 7. 1863
XV. CAMDEN, S. C. September 10, 1863 - November 5, 1863
XVI. RICHMOND, VA. November 28,1863 - April 11,1864
XVII. CAMDEN, S. C. May 8,1864 - June 1,1864
XVIII. COLUMBIA, S. C. July 6,1864 - January 17,1865
XIX. LINCOLNTON, N. C. February 16,1865 - March 15,1865
XX. CHESTER, S. C. March 21, 1865 - May 1, 1865
XXI. CAMDEN, S. C. May 2,1865 - August 2, 1865
INTRODUCTION
The Author and Her Book
In Mrs. Chesnut's Diary are vivid pictures of the social life that went on uninterruptedly in the midst of war; of the economic conditions that resulted from blockaded ports; of the manner in which the spirits of the people rose and fell with each victory or defeat, and of the momentous events that took place in Charleston, Montgomery, and Richmond. But the Diary has an importance quite apart from the interest that lies in these pictures.
Mrs. Chesnut was close to forty years of age when the war began, and thus had lived through the most stirring scenes in the controversies that led to it. In this Diary, as perhaps nowhere else in the literature of the war, will be found the Southern spirit of that time expressed in words which are not alone charming as literature, but genuinely human in their spontaneousness, their delightfully unconscious frankness. Her words are the farthest possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely intellectual They ring so true that they start echoes. The most uncompromising Northern heart can scarcely fail to be moved by their abounding sincerity, surcharged though it be with that old Southern fire which overwhelmed the army of McDowell at Bull Run.
In making more clear the unyielding tenacity of the South and the stern conditions in which the war was prosecuted, the Diary has further importance. At the beginning there was no Southern leader, in so far as we can gather from Mrs. Chesnut's reports of her talks with them, who had any hope that the South would win in the end, provided the North should be able to enlist her full resources. The result, however, was that the South struck something like terror to many hearts, and raised serious expectations that two great European powers would recognize her independence. The South fought as long as she had any soldiers left who were capable of fighting, and at last "robbed the cradle and the grave." Nothing then remained except to "wait for another generation to grow up." The North, so far as her stock of men of fighting age was concerned, had done scarcely more than make a beginning, while the South was virtually exhausted when the war was half over.
Unlike the South, the North was never reduced to extremities which led the wives of Cabinet officers and commanding generals to gather in Washington hotels and private drawing-rooms, in order to knit heavy socks for soldiers whose feet otherwise would go bare: scenes like these were common in Richmond, and Mrs. Chesnut often made one of the company. Nor were gently nurtured women of the North forced to wear coarse and ill-fitting shoes, such as negro cobblers made, the alternative being to dispense with shoes altogether. Gold might rise in the North to 2.80, but there came a time in the South, when a thousand dollars in paper money were needed to buy a kitchen utensil, which before the war could have been bought for less than one dollar in gold. Long before the conflict ended it was a common remark in the South that, "in going to market, you take your money in your basket, and bring your purchases home in your pocket."
In the North the counterpart to these facts were such items as butter at 50 cents a pound and flour at 12 a barrel. People in the North actually thrived on high prices. Villages and small towns, as well as large cities, had their "bloated bondholders" in plenty, while farmers everywhere were able to clear their lands of mortgages and put money in the bank besides. Planters in the South, meanwhile, were borrowing money to support the negroes in idleness at home, while they themselves were fighting at the front. Old Colonel Chesnut, the author's father-in-law, in April, 1862, estimated that he had already lost half a million in bank stock and railroad bonds. When the war closed, he had borrowed such large sums himself and had such large sums due to him from others, that he saw no likelihood of the obligations on either side ever being discharged.