Monday, August 17, 2015

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 10, 1864

To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops are ordered to look after the mountain passes beyond Greenville on the North Carolina and Tennessee quarter.

Misery upon misery. Mobile1 is going as New Orleans went. Those Western men have not held, their towns as we held and hold Charleston, or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a “frill-shirt, silk-stocking chivalry,” or “a set of dandy Miss Nancy.” They fight desperately in their bloody street brawls, but we bear privation and discipline best.
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1 The battle of Mobile Bay, won under Farragut, was fought on August 5, 1864.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 319

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