Mary Boykin Chesnut

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Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886), better known as Mary Boykin Chesnut, was a South Carolina author noted for writing a sophisticated diary describing the American Civil War and her circles of Southern society. In 1991 historian C. Vann Woodward reissued Chesnut's diary in an edition with his annotations, under the title Mary Chesnut's Civil War. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Contents

[edit] Early life

She was born Mary Boykin Miller in Stateburg, South Carolina, in the High Hills of Santee, to Mary Boykin and her husband, Stephen Decatur Miller. Mary B. Miller was born to the elite planter class. Her father served as a U.S. Representative (1817-19). He was later elected governor of South Carolina (1829-30) and a U.S. Senator (1831-31). Her family lived in Charleston then and Mary was educated at Mme. Talvande's French School for Young Ladies, where she became fluent in French and German and received a strong education.[1]

[edit] Marriage and society

On April 23, 1840, Miller married planter James Chesnut, Jr., who was elected to the US Senate in 1850. Also of the elite class, he was somewhat older and his first wife had died. Once the Civil War broke out, James Chesnut, Jr. became an aide to President Jefferson Davis and a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. The Chesnuts lived in Charleston, South Carolina.

Mary Boykin Chesnut began her diary on February 15, 1861, and ended it on August 2, 1865. During much of that time she lived at their house called Mulberry Plantation in Camden, South Carolina, in the midst of thousands of acres of plantation and woodland but with many visitors. The diary was of her impression of events as they unfolded during the Civil War, but she also edited it after the war for publication. She was very politically aware, and analyzed the changing fortunes of the South and its various classes. She also portrayed southern society and the mixed roles of men and women, including the complex and fraught situations related to slavery. For instance, Chesnut confronted the problem of white men fathering children with enslaved women in their own extended households.

She was conscious of trying to create a work of literature and described the people in penetrating and enlivening terms. She revised it in the 1870s and 1880s for publication, but kept its character of unfolding and surprising events. Literary scholars have called the Chesnut diary the most important work by a Confederate author. Chesnut captured the growing difficulties of all classes of the Confederacy.

Mary Boykin Chesnut died in 1886 and was buried next to her husband in Knights Hill Cemetery in Camden, South Carolina.[2] Because Chesnut had no children, before her death she gave her diary to her closest friend Isabelle D. Martin and urged her to have it published.

[edit] Publication history

Chesnut's diary was first published in 1905 as A Diary from Dixie. An expanded edition, edited by Ben Ames Williams and annotated to identify the many different people and places, was published in 1949.

In 1981, an edition edited by southern historian C. Vann Woodward and entitled Mary Chesnut's Civil War was published.

[edit] Honors and Legacy

In 1982, Mary Chesnut's Diary, edited by C. Vann Woodward, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ken Burns used extensive readings from Chesnut's diary in his 1992 documentary television series, The Civil War. Academy Award-winning actress Julie Harris read these sections.

On March 1, 2000, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that Mulberry Plantation, the house of James and Mary Boykin Chesnut in Camden, South Carolina, had been designated a National Historic Landmark, the highest designation, due to its importance to America's national heritage and literature.[3] The plantation was where Mary Boykin Chesnut resided when she wrote most of her diary. She recorded events of the Civil War and her observations on their effect on the home front and the South. The plantation and its buildings was also representative of James and Mary Chesnut's elite social and political class.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Nomination for Mulberry Plantation National Park Service, accessed 29 May 2008
  2. ^ Mary Boykin Chesnut, Find A Grave listing
  3. ^ Nomination for Mulberry Plantation National Park Service, accessed 29 May 2008

[edit] External links