Mary+Chestnut

=__Mary Boykin Chesnut__ = Mary Chesnut, born March 31, 1823 in Stateboro, South Carolina, was the eldest child of the Miller family. Her father was a U.S. congressman and senator in 1826 and was governor of South Carolina. When she was 13 years old, Mary was sent to a French boarding school. When her father died, she came back to Camden. In April of 1840, she married James Chesnut, Jr., who was the only surviving son of one of South Carolina’s largest landowners.

In 1858, James was elected to Senate. Mary joined him in Washington, where she made plenty of friends, friends that would soon become major leaders of the Confederate States. James became a general and served as an aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis. Mary followed her husband through the entire south, where she often was able to get vital information on the secession and the battlefront news. This was a large part of the material used to create her famous diary.

The first version, which was poorly edited, was called //Mary Chesnut’s Civil War//. The second and now most commonly known is //A Diary From Dixie//. Mary died on November 22, 1886, before she actually finished the diary. It is seen as one of the finest literary work of the Confederacy, today.

Questions: 1. What made you want to write? 2. Why a diary?