Mary ChesnutRecensioni

I picked this book up because when I was younger, someone told me how interesting it was to read a firsthand account of what the Civil War was like. While I appreciated reading all the details and plans about the war and getting an insight into the opinions and thoughts of the Confederates, I wasn’t very impressed by this book. It’s rather boring, mostly because Chesnut is so disconnected from the true atrocities of the war and comes across as very superficial and arrogant without having any real substance about her.

The other problem is that this book is said to be heavily edited so as not to contain anything that would be unflattering to the Confederates, which is entirely ridiculous to me. It most likely would have been much more interesting if it contained everything, but it really just talks about inflation, traveling from one city to another, and the parties the higher up Confederates threw for each other.

Overall, I could see using snippets of this to supplement a civil war lesson in a class, but it’s not worth reading the diary in its entirety.

Also posted on Purple People Readers.

Realistic insight into Civil War and its society of the time

Mary Chesnut was a South Carolina socialite who was friends with the leaders of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her war diary tells of her personal feelings and experiences as she survives one of the greatest upheavals in American history. A cast of characters, many unknown to history and some famous, such as John Bell Hood and Jefferson and Verina Davis pass in and out of her recollections. It is important to note that this was a personal diary. So not a lot of explanation is given for the numerous people that are mentioned in it. My copy had helpful footnotes that explained who some of them were or moments of historical significance that are mentioned. Mary Chesnut's diary is a fascinating read, but probably best enjoyed by those who already have studied the Civil War and the general history of America during the middle nineteenth century.

This book was very good. I am an avid reader and among my interest is first hand accounts of the civil war. Mary Chestnut does a good job through the words in her diary presenting an account of the war from inside the circles of the Confederate's presidency. She expresses how slavery was truly represented during the war for both sides showing that the north and south didn't differ much in their sentiments about slavery. She showed many cases of inhuman behavior and generosity from both sides. It supports a common analogy about the civil war being a war about state's rights. But after saying all of this, one has to realize that the book is bastardized from a southern prospective, regardless of how that is altered from modern day reality.

considered to be one of the best eye witness journals of the civil war and on a par with the best novels written on the war. Thanks to C Vann Woodward for his great work editing the original book of Mary Chesnut and congrats on winning the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History for his work.. A great book for the Civil War enthusiast. This is not a story about civil war battles, but of the upper echelon society and people who actually managed the war for the South out of Richmond Va.Mary has keen insight in the hearts and minds of fellow elites and her relationship to her slaves is very interesting. One slave family insists on staying after the war and is the only bread winning person in the household selling food in the local market. This is a unique civil war book. She gives us a striking picture of the elaborate parties, food and drink, as their world, the confederacy, crumbles around them

The author was a friend and admirer of Jefferson Davis on the eve of the Civil War, but was great enough as a conscious person to realize her admiration was abused. This is a personal diary of a Southern Lady. She also recognized that the white men were not really fighting for "state's rights", but for enslavement of Africans, from which they drew their "black harems".

This single diary pretty much gives The Lie to the propaganda which Southern plutocrats dispensed to the poor white males upon which they depend for their political support, then and to this day. Poor white male Southerners are poor, ignorant, and kept that way.

In writing about the actual events in her life and privy to the rulers of the South, Ms Chesnut has done a great service. Her diary should be studied by the Tea Party to sober them up.

Perfectly good book no doubt. However, one must be interested in the social life of the top one percent of the southern aristocracy, which I am not, finding them to be a particularly stupid and uninteresting group, even by usual aristo standards. The capacity of this group to bring about a war based on slavery - slavery! - and then lose that war against the odds, suggests Mary Chestnut should have written even more of a satire than she did write.

What a fascinating memoir by a woman who lived in the South during the turmoil of the Civil War. We are given insight into how the progress of the War was perceived by Southerners. Chestnut was close friends with Jefferson Davis and his wife, General Hood, Custis Lee and other notables of the Southern leadership. Because of her friendship with the President Davis, she seemed to overlook his weaknesses and defends him against all critics. She also chronicles the infighting amongst the Confederate leadership and although she doesn't seem to recognize it herself, the downside of the Confederacy's insistence on state's rights. Boykin is very clear from the beginning of her diary that she thinks slavery is over no matter who wins the war because it is unsustainable. However, her view of the Africans, as she calls them, is condescending and once the Proclamation is issued by Lincoln, she thinks the slaves are just waiting to steal her valuables and flee to the Yankee side even though there is amble evidence from her experience with her own servants that this is not occurring. To her credit, there are moments in the Diary that she mentions having read earlier portions of it and realizing that she was wrong in her conclusions about the leadership of certain officers or individuals. There are also moments that we are permitted to see the strains the War has wrought on her marriage; however there are also moments when we see she & her husband have a warm, passionate relationship. A truly inside look at the Civil War from a the Civilian side.

I kept thinking of Scarlett O'Hara while reading this. It's the portrait of a hot-blooded, cocky, pugnacious society that was teetering on the brink of destruction, like Carthage during the Punic Wars.

It's hard to have much sympathy. Chesnut is snide, hard-nosed, delusional, insightful, and vulnerable all at the same time. Her view into the minds and actions of the Confederate upper crust as things crumble around them touched my heart even as their motivations escaped me.

The irony is that once the hotheads had their way they were shoved aside and spent the rest of the war kvetching on the sidelines, excreting the same poisonous grease on their own side as they'd poured on Lincoln and the North a few scant months before.

Chesnut's book was originally published in a truncated edition after her death. Here Woodward has pieced together and deciphered her original text giving Chesnut's portraits of the Civil War's most compelling personalities a modern freshness that everyone can enjoy.

I had to read this book for a program about the Civil War. As a primary historical document, I'm sure it is amazing. As a book fitting into a Civil War series....gads. The war plays a backdrop to parlor visits and headaches.

I've read the introduction and the first couple entries. I can't wait to find time (after college) to finish reading it! I have high expectations. It's not just a diary of reflections, but also includes conversations. The editor has added very helpful historical notes

Reviewed April 16, 2008

Wow, where do I start? In my civil war class we often referred to Mary Chestnut’s writings, I knew when I got the chance that reading this diary would help round out my understanding of the American civil war. I must note here that without the prior class, understanding this diary would be near impossible. Also, when reading a diary, (especially one meant for publication as this one is) the reader must understand that some entries might be embellished, or omitted. Mary Chesnut is a well educated wealthy Southern woman. She married into wealth, position and government. James Chesnut became Jefferson Davis’s aide-de-camp during the war, this put Mary in the position of being present where things were happening. She saw the bombing of Fort Sumner, and fled Richmond and other Southern cities before invasion by the Yankees. Sherman’s March to the Sea went though many of the towns she had lived in, having great impact on her home state, South Carolina. Through Mary’s eyes we see military hospitals where she and friends spent many mornings feeding the wounded, also intimate details of her friends lives, prominent people like General Sam Hood and President Davis. The relationships with her slaves/servants were the most interesting to me, a complicated matter that she does not spend enough time on. Often she mentions feeling she knows nothing about how her servants feel on the slavery issue. Several times Mary proclaims her belief that women are slaves to their fathers, then their husbands, there is no freedom for these women. In the end Mary’s servants, though freed continue to work for her with no pay. In fact after the war, one female servant is the only wage earner for the family, selling eggs and cheese. When the husband of her maid asks for money, Mary tells him that she has no money, his wife is free to go whenever she chooses. The servants live free of charge on her land and home, and can go if they want. They do not choose to go, I know this happened, especially in homes where slaves lived for many years, their families are nearby, and feel they have no where to go anyway, so they stay. Mary is very well educated, which surprised me greatly, she is always reading (read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” twice in her diary). Mary reads quite a lot of French books, she also could read German. Many times Mary chides the North for having horrible spellers amongst their soldiers. In my civil war class we discussed the horrible starving conditions the South lived in during the war. Mary does not experience this until the very end, in early 1865. Up until this point her diary entries are full of exotic balls, weddings and plays, and the dinners, brunches, breakfasts, desserts.... She eats her way through the civil war, they pull taffy, make mint juleps, and entertain with food all the time. Only when the end is very near, is Mary forced to travel to “safer” cities and away from her comfortable home and larder. She is careful to bring her maid everywhere though. Caspian asked me near the end of the book if Mary still thought the South had a chance to win. After thinking about it a bit, I think she believed it in the beginning of the war, but by 1864 she wrote about winning battles if they just did this or that, but even when Sherman cut a path through the South, Mary only talks about staying one step ahead of Sherman, not winning the entire war. I think like most of the South thought France and/or England would step in and recognize the Confederacy, this would force the North to allow the South to break free. At times the diary is very confusing to follow, you do not always know who is speaking, and to whom. She references poems, and novels often, sometimes you do not know when her quotes end and Mary’s narrative begins. Dates are not always plentiful, nor is her location always clear. Interesting read 9-2008

3328. Mary Chesnut's Civil War, Edited by C. Vann Woodward (read July 17, 2000) This won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for history, and I thought I should read it. I have only read about half of the Pulitzer History prizewinners, and I have found some are real duds--I think of The Transformation of Virginia, which I read Feb 16, 1999, and thought was a complete waste of time for me. But this book is one that really takes one into the time as seen by a well-educated and perceptive woman who moved in the ruling circles of the Confederacy--she was a big friend of Jeff Davis's wife, e.g. The diary is superlatively edited and reading this book is certainly a highlight of my recent reading, even tho some of the account of social events which preoccupied Mrs. Chesnut did not interest me much. Very worth reading.½

One of the most interesting journals of the Civil War. A woman who was well-educated, extremely candid, sharp-tongued, and informed.

This was an excellent example of journal writing. She was an interesting woman who had interesting friends. She wrote about the Civil War from the secession to the carpetbaggers, not as an historian, but as a person living there and how it all affected her each day. She had a lively wit, which made for good reading. I was most interested to hear about all the issues from someone living in the South. This is a must read if you are going to say you know anything about the people and events of the Civil War.

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