Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 2, 1865

Dr. Boykin and John Witherspoon were talking of a nation in mourning, of blood poured out like rain on the battle-fields—for what? “Never let me hear that the blood of the brave has been shed in vain! No; it sends a cry down through all time.”

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 404

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 10, 1865

A letter from a Pharisee who thanks the Lord she is not as other women are; she need not pray, as the Scotch parson did, for a good conceit of herself. She writes, “I feel that I will not be ruined. Come what may, God will provide for me.” But her husband had strengthened the Lord's hands, and for the glory of God, doubtless, invested some thousands of dollars in New York, where Confederate moth did not corrupt nor Yankee bummers break through and steal. She went on to tell us: “I have had the good things of this world, and I have enjoyed them in their season. But I only held them as steward for God. My bread has been cast upon the waters and will return to me.”

E. M. Boykin said to-day: “We had a right to strike for our independence, and we did strike a bitter blow. They must be proud to have overcome such a foe. I dare look any man in the face. There is no humiliation in our position after such a struggle as we made for freedom from the Yankees.” He is sanguine. His main idea is joy that he has no negroes to support, and need hire only those he really wants.

Stephen Elliott told us that Sherman said to Joe Johnston, “Look out for yourself. This agreement only binds the military, not the civil, authorities.” Is our destruction to begin anew? For a few weeks we have had peace.

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.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 389-90

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 6, 1862

Mine is a painful, self-imposed task: but why write when I have nothing to chronicle but disaster?¹ So I read instead: First, Consuelo, then Columba, two ends of the pole certainly, and then a translated edition of Elective Affinities. Food enough for thought in every one of this odd assortment of books.

At the Prestons', where I am staying (because Mr. Chesnut has gone to see his crabbed old father, whom he loves, and who is reported ill), I met Christopher Hampton. He tells us Wigfall is out on a warpath; wants them to strike for Maryland. The President's, opinion of the move is not given. Also Mr. Hampton met the first lieutenant of the Kirkwoods, E. M. Boykin. Says he is just the same man he was in the South Carolina College. In whatever company you may meet him, he is the pleasantest man there.

A telegram reads: “We have repulsed the enemy at Williamsburg.”² Oh, if we could drive them back “to their ain countree!” Richmond was hard pressed this day. The Mercury of to-day says, “Jeff Davis now treats all men as if they were idiotic insects.”

Mary Preston said all sisters quarreled. No, we never quarrel, I and mine. We keep all our bitter words for our enemies. We are frank heathens; we hate our enemies and love our friends. Some people (our kind) can never make up after a quarrel; hard words once only and all is over. To us forgiveness is impossible. Forgiveness means calm indifference; philosophy, while love lasts. Forgiveness of love's wrongs is impossible. Those dutiful wives who piously overlook — well, everything — do not care one fig for their husbands. I settled that in my own mind years ago. Some people think it magnanimous to praise their enemies and to show their impartiality and justice by acknowledging the faults of their friends. I am for the simple rule, the good old plan. I praise whom I love and abuse whom I hate.

Mary Preston has been translating Schiller aloud. We are provided with Bulwer's translation, Mrs. Austin's, Coleridge's, and Carlyle's, and we show how each renders the passage Mary is to convert into English. In Wallenstein at one point of the Max and Thekla scene, I like Carlyle better than Coleridge, though they say Coleridge's Wallenstein is the only translation in the world half so good as the original. Mrs. Barstow repeated some beautiful scraps by Uhland, which I had never heard before. She is to write them for us. Peace, and a literary leisure for my old age, unbroken by care and anxiety!

General Preston accused me of degenerating into a boarding-house gossip, and is answered triumphantly by his daughters: “But, papa, one you love to gossip with full well.”

Hampton estate has fifteen hundred negroes on Lake Washington, Mississippi. Hampton girls talking in the language of James's novels: “Neither Wade nor Preston — that splendid boy! — would lay a lance in rest — or couch it, which is the right phrase for fighting, to preserve slavery. They hate it as we do.” “What are they fighting for?” “Southern rights — whatever that is. And they do not want to be understrappers forever to the Yankees. They talk well enough about it, but I forget what they say.” Johnny Chesnut says: “No use to give a reason — a fellow could not stay away from the fight — not well.” It takes four negroes to wait on Johnny satisfactorily.

It is this giving up that kills me. Norfolk they talk of now; why not Charleston next? I read in a Western letter, “Not Beauregard, but the soldiers who stopped to drink the whisky they had captured from the enemy, lost us Shiloh.” Cock Robin is as dead as he ever will be now; what matters it who killed him?

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¹ The Siege of Yorktown was begun on April 5, 1862, the place being evacuated by the Confederates on May 4th.

² The battle of Williamsburg was fought on May 5, 1862, by a part of McClellan's army, under General Hooker and others, the Confederates being commanded by General Johnston.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 161-3

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 7, 1862

Mrs. Middleton was dolorous indeed. General Lee had warned the planters about Combahee, etc., that they must take care of themselves now; he could not do it. Confederate soldiers had committed some outrages on the plantations and officers had punished them promptly. She poured contempt upon Yancey's letter to Lord Russell.¹ It was the letter of a shopkeeper, not in the style of a statesman at all.

We called to see Mary McDuffie.² She asked Mary Preston what Doctor Boykin had said of her husband as we came along in the train. She heard it was something very complimentary. Mary P. tried to remember, and to repeat it all, to the joy of the other Mary, who liked to hear nice things about her husband.

Mary was amazed to hear of the list of applicants for promotion. One delicate-minded person accompanied his demand for advancement by a request for a written description of the Manassas battle; he had heard Colonel Chesnut give such a brilliant account of it in Governor Cobb's room.

The Merrimac³ business has come like a gleam of lightning illumining a dark scene. Our sky is black and lowering.

The Judge saw his little daughter at my window and he came up. He was very smooth and kind. It was really a delightful visit; not a disagreeable word was spoken. He abused no one whatever, for he never once spoke of any one but himself, and himself he praised without stint. He did not look at me once, though he spoke very kindly to me.

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¹ Lord Russell was Foreign Secretary under the Palmerston administration of 1859 to 1865.

² Mary McDuffie was the second wife of Wade Hampton.

³ The Merrimac was formerly a 40-gun screw frigate of the United States Navy. In April, 1861, when the Norfolk Navy-yard was abandoned by the United States she was sunk. Her hull was afterward raised by the Confederates and she was reconstructed on new plans, and renamed the Virginia. On March 2, 1862, she destroyed the Congress, a sailing-ship of 50 guns, and the Cumberland, a sailing-ship of 30 guns, at Newport News. On March 7th she attacked the Minnesota, but was met by the Monitor and defeated in a memorable engagement. Many features of modern battle-ships have been derived from the Merrimac and Monitor.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 136-7

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 5, 1862

Mary Preston went back to Mulberry with me from Columbia. She found a man there tall enough to take her in to dinner —Tom Boykin, who is six feet four, the same height as her father. Tom was very handsome in his uniform, and Mary prepared for a nice time, but he looked as if he would so much rather she did not talk to him, and he set her such a good example, saying never a word.

Old Colonel Chesnut came for us. When the train stopped, Quashie, shiny black, was seen on his box, as glossy and perfect in his way as his blooded bays, but the old Colonel would stop and pick up the dirtiest little negro I ever saw who was crying by the roadside. This ragged little black urchin was made to climb up and sit beside Quash. It spoilt the symmetry of the turn-out, but it was a character touch, and the old gentleman knows no law but his own will. He had a biscuit in his pocket which he gave this sniffling little negro, who proved to be his man Scip's son.

I was ill at Mulberry and never left my room. Doctor Boykin came, more military than medical. Colonel Chesnut brought him up, also Teams, who said he was down in the mouth. Our men were not fighting as they should. We had only pluck and luck, and a dogged spirit of fighting, to offset their weight in men and munitions of war. I wish I could remember Teams's words; this is only his idea. His language was quaint and striking — no grammar, but no end of sense and good feeling. Old Colonel Chesnut, catching a word, began his litany, saying, “Numbers will tell,” “Napoleon, you know,” etc., etc.

At Mulberry the war has been ever afar off, but threats to take the silver came very near indeed — silver that we had before the Revolution, silver that Mrs. Chesnut brought from Philadelphia. Jack Cantey and Doctor Boykin came back on the train with us. Wade Hampton is the hero.

Sweet May Dacre. Lord Byron and Disraeli make their rosebuds Catholic; May Dacre is another Aurora Raby. I like Disraeli because I find so many clever things in him. I like the sparkle and the glitter. Carlyle does not hold up his hands in holy horror of us because of African slavery. Lord Lyons¹ has gone against us. Lord Derby and Louis Napoleon are silent in our hour of direst need. People call me Cassandra, for I cry that outside hope is quenched. From the outside no help indeed cometh to this beleaguered land.

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¹ Richard, Lord Lyons, British minister to the United States from 1858 to 1865.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 134-6

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 25, 1861

CHARLESTON, S. C. — We have come back to South Carolina from the Montgomery Congress, stopping over at Mulberry. We came with R. M. T. Hunter and Mr. Barnwell. Mr. Barnwell has excellent reasons for keeping cotton at home, but I forget what they are. Generally, people take what he says, also Mr. Hunter's wisdom, as unanswerable. Not so Mr. Chesnut, who growls at both, much as he likes them. We also had Tom Lang and his wife, and Doctor Boykin. Surely there never was a more congenial party. The younger men had been in the South Carolina College while Mr. Barnwell was President. Their love and respect for him were immeasurable and he benignly received it, smiling behind those spectacles. Met John Darby at Atlanta and told him he was Surgeon of the Hampton Legion, which delighted him. He had had adventures. With only a few moments on the platform to interchange confidences, he said he had remained a little too long in the Medical College in Philadelphia, where he was some kind of a professor, and they had been within an ace of hanging him as a Southern spy. “Rope was ready,” he sniggered. At Atlanta when he unguardedly said he was fresh from Philadelphia, he barely escaped lynching, being taken for a Northern spy. “Lively life I am having among you, on both sides,” he said, hurrying away. And I moaned, “Here was John Darby like to have been killed by both sides, and no time to tell me the curious coincidences.” What marvelous experiences a little war begins to produce.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 57-8

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 26, 1861

CHARLESTON, S. C. — I have just come from Mulberry, where the snow was a foot deep — winter at last after months of apparently May or June weather. Even the climate, like everything else, is upside down. But after that den of dirt and horror, Montgomery Hall, how white the sheets looked, luxurious bed linen once more, delicious fresh cream with my coffee! I breakfasted in bed. Dueling was rife in Camden. William M. Shannon challenged Leitner. Rochelle Blair was Shannon's second and Artemus Goodwyn was Leitner's. My husband was riding hard all day to stop the foolish people. Mr. Chesnut finally arranged the difficulty. There was a court of honor and no duel. Mr. Leitner had struck Mr. Shannon at a negro trial. That's the way the row began. Everybody knows of it. We suggested that Judge Withers should arrest the belligerents. Dr. Boykin and Joe Kershaw¹ aided Mr. Chesnut to put an end to the useless risk of life. John Chesnut is a pretty soft-hearted slave-owner. He had two negroes arrested for selling whisky to his people on his plantation, and buying stolen corn from them. The culprits in jail sent for him. He found them (this snowy weather) lying in the cold on a bare floor, and he thought that punishment enough; they having had weeks of it. But they were not satisfied to be allowed to evade justice and slip away. They begged of him (and got) five dollars to buy shoes to run away in. I said: “Why, this is flat compounding a felony.” And Johnny put his hands in the armholes of his waistcoat and stalked majestically before me, saying, “Woman, what do you know about law?”

Mrs. Reynolds stopped the carriage one day to tell me Kitty Boykin was to be married to Savage Heyward. He has only ten children already. These people take the old Hebrew pride in the number of children they have. This is the true colonizing spirit. There is no danger of crowding here and inhabitants are wanted. Old Colonel Chesnut² said one day: “Wife, you must feel that you have not been useless in your day and generation. You have now twenty-seven great-grandchildren.”

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¹ Joseph B. Kershaw, a native of Camden, S. C, who became famous in connection with "The Kershaw Brigade" and its brilliant record at Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, Spottsylvania, and elsewhere throughout the war.

² Colonel Chesnut, the author's father-in-law, was born about 1760. He was a prominent South Carolina planter and a public-spirited man. The family had originally settled in Virginia, where the farm had been overrun by the French and Indians at the time of Braddock's campaign, the head of the family being killed at Fort Duquesne. Colonel Chesnut, of Mulberry, had been educated at Princeton, and his wife was a Philadelphia woman. In the final chapter of this Diary, the author gives a charming sketch of Colonel Chesnut.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 21-2

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 11, 1861

In full conclave to-night, the drawing-room crowded with Judges, Governors, Senators, Generals, Congressmen. They were exalting John C. Calhoun's hospitality. He allowed everybody to stay all night who chose to stop at his house. An ill-mannered person, on one occasion, refused to attend family prayers. Mr. Calhoun said to the servant, “Saddle that man's horse and let him go.” From the traveler Calhoun would take no excuse for the “Deity offended.” I believe in Mr. Calhoun's hospitality, but not in his family prayers. Mr. Calhoun's piety was of the most philosophical type, from all accounts.¹

The latest news is counted good news; that is, the last man who left Washington tells us that Seward is in the ascendency. He is thought to be the friend of peace.  The man did say, however, that “that serpent Seward is in the ascendency just now.”

Harriet Lane has eleven suitors. One is described as likely to win, or he would be likely to win, except that he is too heavily weighted. He has been married before and goes about with children and two mothers. There are limits beyond which! Two mothers-in-law! Mr. Ledyard spoke to Mrs. Lincoln in behalf of a doorkeeper who almost felt he had a vested right, having been there since Jackson's time; but met with the same answer; she had brought her own girl and must economize. Mr. Ledyard thought the twenty thousand (and little enough it is) was given to the President of these United States to enable him to live in proper style, and to maintain an establishment of such dignity as befits the head of a great nation. It is an infamy to economize with the public money and to put it into one's private purse. Mrs. Browne was walking with me when we were airing our indignation against Mrs. Lincoln and her shabby economy. The Herald says three only of the elite Washington families attended the Inauguration Ball.

The Judge has just come in and said: “Last night, after Dr. Boykin left on the cars, there came a telegram that his little daughter, Amanda, had died suddenly.” In some way he must have known it beforehand. He changed so suddenly yesterday, and seemed so careworn and unhappy. He believes in clairvoyance, magnetism, and all that. Certainly, there was some terrible foreboding of this kind on his part.

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¹ John C. Calhoun had died in March, 1850.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 17-8

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 10, 1861

Mrs. Childs was here to-night (Mary Anderson, from Statesburg), with several children. She is lovely. Her hair is piled up on the top of her head oddly. Fashions from France still creep into Texas across Mexican borders. Mrs. Childs is fresh from Texas. Her husband is an artillery officer, or was. They will be glad to promote him here. Mrs. Childs had the sweetest Southern voice, absolute music. But then, she has all of the high spirit of those sweet-voiced Carolina women, too. Then Mr. Browne came in with his fine English accent, so pleasant to the ear. He tells us that Washington society is not reconciled to the Yankee regime. Mrs. Lincoln means to economize. She at once informed the major-domo that they were poor and hoped to save twelve thousand dollars every year from their salary of twenty thousand. Mr. Browne said Mr. Buchanan's farewell was far more imposing than Lincoln's inauguration.

The people were so amusing, so full of Western stories. Dr. Boykin behaved strangely. All day he had been gaily driving about with us, and never was man in finer spirits. To-night, in this brilliant company, he sat dead still as if in a trance. Once, he waked somewhat — when a high public functionary came in with a present for me, a miniature gondola, “A perfect Venetian specimen,” he assured me again and again. In an undertone Dr. Boykin muttered: “That fellow has been drinking.” “Why do you think so?” “Because he has told you exactly the same thing four times.”  Wonderful! Some of these great statesmen always tell me the same thing — and have been telling me the same thing ever since we came here.

A man came in and some one said in an undertone, “The age of chivalry is not past, O ye Americans!” “What do you mean?” “That man was once nominated by President Buchanan for a foreign mission, but some Senator stood up and read a paper printed by this man abusive of a woman, and signed by his name in full. After that the Senate would have none of him; his chance was gone forever.”

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 16-7