Mary Boykin Chestnut Journal Entries for the years 1860 thru 1864

Charleston, SC - 8 November 1860

From to-day forward I will tell the story in my own way. I now wish I had a chronicle of the two delightful and eventful years that have just passed. Those delights have fled

Charleston, SC - 10 December 1860

We have been up to the Mulberry Plantation with Colonel Colcock and Judge Magrath, who were sent to Columbia by their fellow-citizens in the low country

Charleston, SC - 21 December 1860

Mrs. Charles Lowndes was sitting with us to-day, when Mrs. Kirkland brought in a copy of the Secession Ordinance. I wonder if my face grew as white as hers.

Charleston, SC - 27 December 1860

The row is fast and furious now. State after State is taking its forts and fortresses.

Montgomery, AL - 19 February 1861

The brand- new Confederacy is making or remodeling its Constitution. Everybody wants Mr. Davis to be General-in-Chief or President.

Montgomery, AL - 19 February 1861

Brewster says Lincoln passed through Baltimore disguised, and at night, and that he did well, for just now Baltimore is dangerous ground.

Montgomery, AL - 25 February 1861

After church to-day, Captain Ingraham called. He left me so uncomfortable. He dared to express regrets that he had to leave the United States Navy.

Montgomery, AL - 28 February 1861

In the drawing-room a literary lady began a violent attack upon this mischief-making South Carolina.

Montgomery, AL - 1 March 1861

Dined to-day with Mr. Hill from Georgia, and his wife.

Montgomery, AL - 3 March 1861

Everybody in fine spirits in my world. They have one and all spoken in the Congress to their own perfect satisfaction.

Montgomery, AL - 4 March 1861

I have seen a negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd.

Montgomery, AL - 5 March 1861

The people, the natives, I mean, are astounded that I calmly affirm, in all truth and candor, that if there were awful things in society in Washington, I did not see or hear of them.

Montgomery, AL - 8 March 1861

Judge Campbell, of the United States Supreme Court, has resigned. Lord! how he must have hated to do it. How other men who are resigning high positions must hate to do it.

Montgomery, AL - 10 March 1861

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.

Montgomery, AL - 11 March 1861

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.

Charleston, SC - 26 March 1861

Dueling was rife in Camden. William M. Shannon challenged Leitner.

Charleston, SC - 2 April 1861

Doctor Gibbes says the Convention is in a snarl. It was called as a Secession Convention.

Charleston, SC - 3 April 1861

Met the lovely Lucy Holcombe, now Mrs. Governor Pickens, last night at Isaac Hayne's.

Charleston, SC - 6 April 1861

Beauregard is a demigod here to most of the natives, but there are always seers who see and say. They give you to understand that Whiting has all the brains now in use for our defense.

Charleston, SC - 8 April 1861

Went to see Miss Pinckney, one of the last of the old-world Pinckneys. She inquired particularly about a portrait of her father, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Charleston, SC - 12 April 1861

Anderson will not capitulate. Yesterday's was the merriest, maddest dinner we have had yet. Men were audaciously wise and witty.

Charleston, SC - 13 April 1861

Nobody has been hurt after all. How gay we were last night. Reaction after the dread of all the slaughter we thought those dreadful cannon were making.

Charleston, SC - 15 April 1861

I did not know that one could live such days of excitement. Some one called : "Come out ! There is a crowd coming."

Camden, SC - 20 April 1861

And so we took Fort Sumter

Camden, SC - 22 April 1861

Years afterward the house in which he had taken that disastrous sleep was pulled down. In the wall, behind the wainscot, was found his pile of money.

Camden, SC - 23 April 1861

There are certain subjects pure-minded ladies never touch upon, even in their thoughts. It does not do to be so hard and cruel.

Montgomery, AL - 27 April 1861

General Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, has been made General-in-Chief of Virginia. With such men to the fore, we have hope.

Montgomery, AL - 9 May 1861

Sumter ,Anderson has been offered a Kentucky regiment. Can they raise a regiment in Kentucky against us ? In Kentucky, our sister State?

Montgomery, AL - 13 May 1861

Saw for the first time the demoralization produced by hopes of freedom. My mother's butler (whom I taught to read, sitting on his knife-board) contrived to keep from speaking to us.

Montgomery, AL - 19 May 1861

Mrs. Fitzpatrick says Mr. Davis is too gloomy for her. He says we must prepare for a long war and unmerciful reverses at first, because they are readier for war and so much stronger numerically.

Montgomery, AL - 20 May 1861

LunchecLajJ Mrs. Davis's; everything nice to eat, and I was ravenous.

Charleston, SC - 25 May 1861

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.

Charleston, SC - 6 June 1861

Charleston people are thin-skinned. They shrink from Russell's touches. I find his criticisms mild. He has a light touch.

Charleston, SC - 12 June 1861

The war is making us all tenderly sentimental. No casualties yet, no real mourning, nobody hurt. So it is all parade, fife, and fine feathers. Posing we are en grande tenue.

Charleston, SC - 19 June 1861

n England Mr. Gregory and Mr. Lyndsey rise to say a good word for us. Heaven reward them

Charleston, SC - 24 June 1861

Last night I was awakened by loud talking and candles flashing, tramping of feet, growls dying away in the distance, loud calls from point to point in the yard.

Richmond, VA - 27 June 1861

Two quiet, unobtrusive Yankee school-teachers were on the train. I had spoken to them, and they had told me all about themselves.

Richmond, VA - 29 June 1861

Poor Mr. Lamar has been brought from his camp paralysis or some sort of shock. Every woman in the house is ready to rush into the Florence Nightingale business.

Richmond, VA - 4 July 1861

Russell abuses us in his letters. People here care a great deal for what Russell says, because he represents the London Times, and the Times reflects the sentiment of the English people.

Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, VA - 6 July 1861

The cars were jammed with soldiers to the muzzle. They were very polite and considerate, and we had an agreeable journey, in spite of heat, dust, and crowd.

Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, VA - 7 July 1861

An antique female, with every hair curled and frizzed, said to be a Yankee spy, sits opposite us.

Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, VA - 9 July 1861

Our battle summer. May it be our first and our last, so called. After all we have not had any of the horrors of war. Could there have been a gayer, or pleasanter, life than we led in Charleston.

Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, VA - 11 July 1861

The one who is under a cloud,, shadowed as a Yankee spy, has confirmed our worst suspicions. She exhibited unholy joy, as she reported seven hundred sick soldiers in the hospital at Culpeper

Richmond, VA - 13 July 1861

Mr. Chesnut doubtless had too many spies to receive from Washington, galloping in with the exact numbers of the enemy done up in their back hair.

Richmond, VA - 14 July 1861

Mr. Chesnut remained closeted with the President and General Lee all the afternoon. The news does not seem pleasant.

Richmond, VA - 16 July 1861

As far as I can make out, Beauregard sent Mr. Chesnut to the President to gain permission for the forces of Joe Johnston and Beauregard to join, and, united, to push the enemy, if possible, over the Potomac.

Richmond, VA - 19 July 1861

Beauregard telegraphed yesterday (they say, to General Johnston), " Come down and help us, or we shall be crushed by numbers.

Richmond, VA - 23 July 1861

Mrs. Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said : A great battle has been fought. Joe Johnston led the right wing, and Beauregard the left wing

Richmond, VA - 24 July 1861

They brought me a Yankee soldier's portfolio from the battle-field. The letters had been franked by Senator Harlan. One might shed tears over some of the letters.

Richmond, VA - 27 July 1861

Mrs. Davis's drawing-room last night was brilliant, and she was in great force. Outside a mob called for the President.

Richmond, VA - 1 August 1861

The President, with his aides, dashed by. My husband was riding with him. The President presented the flag to the Texans.

Richmond, VA - 3 August 1861

Now the Yankees so far are as little trained as we are ; raw troops are they as yet. Suppose France takes the other side and we have to meet disciplined and armed men

Richmond, VA - 5 August 1861

They seem to feel that the war is over here, except the President and Mr. Barnwell ; above all that foreboding friend of mine, Captain Ingraham. He thinks it hardly begun.

Richmond, VA - 8 August 1861

To-day I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword, in the early part of the fray, was taken prisoner by the Yankees.

Richmond, VA - 13 August 1861

Jordan, Beauregard's aide, still writes to Mr. Chesnut that the mortality among the raw troops in that camp is fearful.

Richmond, VA - 14 August 1861

Last night there was a crowd of men to see us and they were so markedly critical. I made a futile effort to record their sayings, but sleep and heat overcame me.

Richmond, VA - 15 August 1861

The men rave over Mrs. Randolph's beauty; called her a magnificent specimen of the finest type of dark-eyed, rich, and glowing Southern woman-kind.

Richmond, VA - 16 August 1861

Mr. Barnwell says, Fame is an article usually home made ; you must create your own puffs or superintend their manufacture.

Richmond, VA - 17 August 1861

Captain Shannon, of the Kirkwood Rangers, called and stayed three hours.

Richmond, VA - 18 August 1861

Found it quite exciting to have a spy drinking his tea with us perhaps because I knew his profession. I did not like his face.

Richmond, VA - 23 August 1861

A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that "recruiting up there is dead."

Richmond, VA - 24 August 1861

Mr. Lowndes said we have already reaped one good result from the war.

Richmond, VA - 25 August 1861

Mr. Barnwell says democracies lead to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false; so both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits.

Richmond, VA - 26 August 1861

The Terror has full swing at the North now. All the papers favorable to us have been suppressed. How long would our mob stand a Yankee paper here?

Richmond, VA - 27 August 1861

The North is consolidated ; they move as one man, with no States, but an army organized by the central power.

Richmond, VA - 29 August 1861

Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off and searched for papers. Bustles are " suspect." All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn; so they are ruthlessly torn off.

Richmond, VA - 31 August 1861

Congress adjourns to-day. Jeff Davis ill. We go home on Monday if I am able to travel.

Richmond, VA - 1 September 1861

North Carolina writes for arms for her soldiers. Have we any to send ? No.

Richmond, VA - 2 September 1861

No discouragement now felt at the North. They take our forts and are satisfied for a while.

Camden, SC - 9 September 1861

The British are the most conceited nation in the world, the most self-sufficient, self-satisfied, and arrogant. But each individual man does not blow his own penny whistle ; they brag wholesale.

Camden, SC - 19 September 1861

It is a crowning misdemeanor for us to hold still in slavery those Africans whom they brought here from Africa, or sold to us when they found it did not pay to own them themselves.

Columbia, SC - 20 February 1862

Fort Donelson has fallen, but no men fell with it. It is prisoners for them that we can not spare, or prisoners for us that we may not be able to feed

Columbia, SC - 21 February 1862

Toombs is out on a rampage and swears he will not accept a seat in the Confederate Senate given in the insulting way his was by the Georgia Legislature

Columbia, SC - 22 February 1862

What a beautiful day for our Confederate President to be inaugurated! God speed him; God keep him; God save him!

Columbia, SC - 23 February 1862

John Cochran and some other prisoners had asked to walk over the grounds, visit the Hampton Gardens, and some friends in Columbia.

Columbia, SC - 24 February 1862

Congress and the newspapers render one desperate, ready to cut one's own throat. They represent everything in our country as deplorable.

Columbia, SC - 25 February 1862

They have taken at Nashville more men than we had at Manassas; there was bad handling of troops, we poor women think, or this would not be.

Columbia, SC - 5 March 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.

Columbia, SC - 7 March 1862

We called to see Mary McDuffie. 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.

Columbia, SC - 10 March 1862

I write daily for my own diversion. These memoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am.

Columbia, SC - 11 March 1862

Cotton is five cents a pound and labor of no value at all ; it commands no price whatever. People gladly hire out their negroes to have them fed and clothed, which latter can not be done.

Columbia, SC - 12 March 1862

In the naval battle the other day we had twenty-five guns in all. The enemy had fifty-four in the Cumberland, forty- four in the St. Lawrence, besides a fleet of gunboats, filled with rifled cannon.

Columbia, SC - 13 March 1862

Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From the poor old blind bishop downward everybody is besetting him to let off students, theological and other, from going into the army.

Columbia, SC - 14 March 1862

There are no negro sexual relations half so shocking as Mormonism. And yet the United States Government makes no bones of receiving Mormons into its sacred heart.

Columbia, SC - 15 March 1862

When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren Nelson, propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature.

Columbia, SC - 17 March 1862

I am nearly forty, and they do my understanding the credit to suppose I can be made to believe they admire my mature charms. They think they fool me into thinking that they believe me charming.

Columbia, SC - 18 March 1862

Mr. Chesnut's negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says one man can not do it. The whole country must agree to it.

Columbia, SC - 19 March 1862

He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer business.

Columbia, SC - 20 March 1862

The Merrimac is now called the Virginia. I think these changes of names so confusing and so senseless.

Columbia, SC - 24 March 1862

At the post-office a man saw a small boy open with a key the box of the Governor and the Council, take the contents of the box and run for his life.

Columbia, SC - 28 March 1862

One night, just before we left the Congaree House, Mr. Chesnut had forgotten to tell some all-important thing to Governor Gist, who was to leave on a public mission next day.

Columbia, SC - 2 April 1862

Dr. Trezevant, attending Mr. Chesnut, who was ill, came and found his patient gone ; he could not stand the news of that last battle.

Columbia, SC - 14 April 1862

Our Fair is in full blast. We keep a restaurant.

Columbia, SC - 15 April 1862

The enemy have flanked Beauregard at Nashville.

Columbia, SC - 15 April 1862

Gladden, the hero of the Palmettos in Mexico, is killed. Shiloh has been a dreadful blow to us.

Columbia, SC - 21 April 1862

So here I am, stranded, laid by the heels. Battle after battle has occurred, disaster after disaster. Every morning's paper is enough to kill a well woman and age a strong and hearty one.

Columbia, SC - 23 April 1862

On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged seventeen ; consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was thirty-nine.

Columbia, SC - 26 April 1862

Telegrams say the mortar fleet has passed the forts at New Orleans.

Columbia, SC - 27 April 1862

New Orleans gone and with it the Confederacy.

Columbia, SC - 29 April 1862

A grand smash, the news from New Orleans fatal to us.

Columbia, SC - 30 April 1862

The last day of this month of calamities. Lovell left the women and children to be shelled, and took the army to a safe place.

Columbia, SC - 6 May 1862

Mine is a painful, self-imposed task : but why write when I have nothing to chronicle but disaster ?

Columbia, SC - 12 May 1862

Everything in Charleston is so much more satisfactory than it is reported. Troops are in good spirits. It will take a lot of iron-clads to take that city.

Columbia, SC - 18 May 1862

Norfolk has been burned and the Merrimac sunk without striking a blow since her coup d etat in Hampton Roads.

Columbia, SC - 24 May 1862

The enemy are landing at Georgetown. With a little more audacity where could they not land? But we have given them such a scare, they are cautious.

Columbia, SC - 29 May 1862

Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.'s, has been sold to a telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto ever gets to be, and clever in every kind of work.

Columbia, SC - 2 June 1862

A battle is said to be raging round Richmond. I am at the Prestons .

Columbia, SC - 3 June 1862

Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines in Charleston to blow the Yankees up ; pretty name they have, those machines.

Columbia, SC - 4 June 1862

Battles occur near Richmond, with bombardment of Charleston. Beauregard is said to be fighting his way out or in.

Columbia, SC - 5 June 1862

Beauregard retreating and his rear-guard cut off. If Beauregard's veterans will not stand, why should we expect our newly levied reserves to do it?

Columbia, SC - 6 June 1862

Mrs. Rose Greenhow is in Richmond. One-half of the ungrateful Confederates say Seward sent her. My husband says the Confederacy owes her a debt it can never pay.

Columbia, SC - 7 June 1862

If this battery should be captured John's Island and James Island would be open to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly.

Columbia, SC - 9 June 1862

It has come home to us ; half the people that we know in the world are under the enemy's guns.

Columbia, SC - 10 June 1862

Governor Pickens called to see me. His wife is in great trouble, anxiety, uncertainty. Her brother and her brother-in-law are either killed or taken prisoners.

Columbia, SC - 12 June 1862

New England's Butler, best known to us as "Beast" Butler, is famous or infamous now. His amazing order to his soldiers at New Orleans and comments on it are in everybody's mouth.

Columbia, SC - 13 June 1862

Beauregard's telegram: he can not leave the army of the West. His health is bad. No doubt the sea breezes would restore him, but he can not come now.

Columbia, SC - 14 June 1862

All things are against us. Memphis gone. Mississippi fleet annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly apathetic as if it were a story of the English war against China which happened a year or so ago.

Columbia, SC - 24 June 1862

Mr. Chesnut, having missed the Secessionville fight by half a day, was determined to see the one around Richmond. He went off with General Cooper and Wade Hampton.

Columbia, SC - 25 June 1862

I forgot to tell of Mrs. Pickens's reception for General Hampton.

Columbia, SC - 27 June 1862

Telegram from Mr. Chesnut, Safe in Richmond ; that is, if Richmond be safe, with all the power of the United States of America battering at her gates.

Columbia, SC - 28 June 1862

Victory! Victory heads every telegram now ; one reads it on the bulletin-board.

Columbia, SC - 30 June 1862

The girls went to see Lucy Trezevant. The doctor was lying still as death on a sofa with his face covered.

Columbia, SC - 1 July 1862

Edward Cheves, only son of John Cheves, killed.

Columbia, SC - 3 July 1862

If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure after all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees, it is Lincoln's proclamation freeing the negroes.

Columbia, SC - 5 July 1862

Poor Ben McCulloch another dead hero.

Columbia, SC - 8 July 1862

This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous.

Columbia, SC - 10 July 1862

My husband has come. He believes from what he heard in Richmond that we are to be recognized as a nation by the crowned heads across the water

Columbia, SC - 12 July 1862

An Englishman told me Lincoln has said that had he known such a war would follow his election he never would have set foot in Washington, nor have been inaugurated.

Columbia, SC - 13 July 1862

Halcott Green came to see us. Bragg is a stern disciplinarian, according to Halcott. He did not in the least understand citizen soldiers.

Columbia, SC - 21 July 1862

Jackson has gone into the enemy's country. Joe Johnston and Wade Hampton are to follow.

Flat Rock, NC - 1 August 1862

The cars were crowded and a lame soldier had to stand, leaning on his crutches in the thoroughfare that runs between the seats. One of us gave him our seat.

Flat Rock, NC - 8 August 1862

Before Chancellorsville, was fatal Sharpsburg. My friend, Colonel Means, killed on the battle-field; his only son, Stark, wounded and a prisoner. His wife had not re covered from the death of her other child

Portland, AL - 8 July 1863

My mother ill at her home on the plantation near here where I have come to see her.

Montgomery, AL - 30 July 1863

Coming on here from Portland there was no stateroom for me. My mother alone had one. My aunt and I sat nodding in armchairs, for the floors and sofas were covered with sleepers, too.

Richmond, VA - 10 August 1863

I screamed again and again until my whole household came rushing in, and then came the negroes from the yard, all wakened by my piercing shrieks. This may have been a dream, but it haunts me.

Richmond, VA - 7 September 1863

He had an odd habit of falling into a state of incessant winking as soon as he became the least startled or agitated. In such times he seemed persistently to be winking one eye at you.

Camden, SC - 10 September 1863

Lee has proved to be all that my husband prophesied of him when he was so unpopular and when Joe Johnston was the great god of war.

Camden, SC - 24 October 1863

James Chesnut is at home on his way back to Richmond; had been sent by the President to make the rounds of the Western armies; says Polk is a splendid old fellow.

Camden, SC - 27 October 1863

Young Wade Hampton has been here for a few days, a guest of our nearest neighbor and cousin, Phil Stockton.

Camden, SC - 5 November 1863

For a week we have had such a tranquil, happy time here. Both my husband and Johnny are here still. James Chesnut spent his time sauntering around with his father

Richmond, VA - 28 November 1863

Our pleasant home sojourn was soon broken up. Johnny had to go back to Company A, and my husband was ordered by the President to make a second visit to Bragg's Army.

Richmond, VA - 30 November 1863

I must describe an adventure I had in Kingsville. Of course, I know nothing of children : in point of fact, am awfully afraid of them.

Richmond, VA - 30 November 1863

Anxiety pervades. Lee is fighting Meade. Misery is everywhere.

Richmond, VA - 2 December 1863

Bragg begs to be relieved of his command. The army will be relieved to get rid of him. He has a winning way of earning everybody's detestation. Heavens, how they hate him !

Richmond, VA - 4 December 1863

In the street a barrel of flour sells for one hundred and fifteen dollars.

Richmond, VA - 5 December 1863

Wigfall was here last night. He began by wanting to hang Jeff Davis. My husband managed him beautifully. He soon ceased to talk virulent nonsense

Richmond, VA - 9 December 1863

Come here, Mrs. Chesnut, said Mary Preston to-day, " they are lifting General Hood out of his carriage, here, at your door."

Richmond, VA - 10 December 1863

Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Lyons came. We had luncheon brought in for them

Richmond, VA - 14 December 1863

Drove out with Mrs. Davis. She had a watch in her hand which some poor dead soldier wanted to have sent to his family.

Richmond, VA - 19 December 1863

A box has come from home for me. Taking advantage of this good fortune and a full larder, have asked Mrs. Davis to dine with me.

Richmond, VA - 24 December 1863

As we walked, Brewster reported a row he had had with General Hood.

Richmond, VA - 25 December 1863

Yesterday dined with the Prestons. Wore one of my handsomest Paris dresses (from Paris before the war).

Richmond, VA - 1 January 1864

General Hood's an awful flatterer I mean an awkward flatterer. I told him to praise my husband to some one else, not to me.

Richmond, VA - 4 January 1864

My husband came in and nearly killed us. He brought this piece of news: " North Carolina wants to offer terms of peace ! !"

Richmond, VA - 5 January 1864

At Mrs. Preston's, met the Light Brigade in battle array, ready to sally forth, conquering and to conquer.

Richmond, VA - 8 January 1864

Snow of the deepest. Nobody can come to-day, I thought. But they did!

Richmond, VA - 9 January 1864

At Mrs. Davis's the hired servants all have been birds of passage. First they were seen with gold galore, and then they would fly to the Yankees, and I am sure they had nothing to tell.

Richmond, VA - 12 January 1864

To-night there will be & great gathering of Kentuckians. Morgan gives them a dinner. The city of Richmond entertains John Morgan.