Mary Chestnut

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May 22

Civil War

Southern congressman attacks Northern senator, 1856

Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of…

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Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut,  (born March 31, 1823, Pleasant Hill, S.C., U.S.—died Nov. 22, 1886, Camden, S.C.), author of A Diary from Dixie, an insightful view of Southern life and leadership during the American Civil War.

Mary Miller was the daughter of a prominent South Carolina politician and grew up in an atmosphere of public service. She attended private schools in Camden and Charleston. In 1840 she married James Chesnut, Jr., who later served as a U.S. senator from South Carolina until he resigned to take an important role in the secession movement and the Confederacy.

Her husband was a staff officer, an aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard, and commanding general of the South Carolina reserves. Chesnut accompanied him on his military missions during the Civil War and began recording her views and observations on February 15, 1861, and closed her diary on August 2, 1865. After the war she reworked her manuscript many times in anticipation of publication. But A Diary from Dixie was not published until 1905, long after her death. Although not a day-by-day account, A Diary is regarded highly by historians for its perceptive views of Confederate military and political leaders and for its insight into Southern society during the Civil War. An annotated edition with a biographical essay, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, ed. by C. Vann Woodward (1981), was awarded the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in U.S. history.

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