Mary Boykin Chesnut’s diary, 1865

Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last of his men not gone, as Louis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied. Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the…

You do the Anabasis business when you want to get out of the enemy’s country, and the Thermopylæ business when they want to get into your country. But we retreated…

Yesterday I broke down—gave way to abject terror under the news of Sherman’s advance with no news of my husband. To-day, while wrapped up on the sofa, too dismal…

My husband is at home once more—for how long, I do not know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place. The drilling and the…

The Bazaar for the benefit of the hospitals opens now. Sherman marches constantly. All the railroads are smashed, and if I laugh at any mortal thing it is that I…

A change has come o’er the spirit of my dream. Dear old quire of yellow, coarse, Confederate home-made paper, here you are again. An age of anxiety and suffering…

Here I am, thank God, settled at the McLean’s, in a clean, comfortable room, airy and cozy. With a grateful heart I stir up my own bright wood fire. My bill for…

The Fants say all the trouble at the hotel came from our servants’ bragging. They represented us as millionaires, and the Middleton men servants smoked cigars. Mrs.…

Isabella has been reading my diaries. How we laugh because my sage divinations all come to naught. My famous “insight into character” is utter folly. The diaries…

I want to get to Kate, I am so utterly heart-broken. I hope John Chesnut and General Chesnut may at least get into the same army. We seem scattered over the face of…

The Pfeifers, who live opposite us here, are descendants of those Pfeifers who came South with Mr. Chesnut’s ancestors after the Fort Duquesne disaster. They have…

Mrs. Munroe offered me religious books, which I declined, being already provided with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Psalms of David, the denunciations of Hosea,…

Is the sea drying up? Is it going up into mist and coming down on us in a water-spout? The rain, it raineth every day. The weather typifies our tearful despair, on…

To-day came a godsend. Even a small piece of bread and the molasses had become things of the past. My larder was empty, when a tall mulatto woman brought a tray…

Colonel Childs came with a letter from my husband and a newspaper containing a full account of Sherman’s cold-blooded brutality in Columbia. Then we walked three…

Went to church crying to Ellen, “It is Lent, we must fast and pray.” When I came home my good fairy, Colonel Childs, had been here bringing rice and potatoes, and…

Better to-day. A long, long weary day in grief has passed away. I suppose General Chesnut is somewhere—but where? that is the question. Only once has he visited…

My husband at last did come for a visit of two hours. Brought Lawrence, who had been to Camden, and was there, indeed, during the raid. My husband has been ordered…

Lawrence says Miss Chesnut is very proud of the presence of mind and cool self-possession she showed in the face of the enemy. She lost, after all, only two bottles…

Another flitting has occurred. Captain Ogden came for me; the splendid Childs was true as steel to the last. Surely he is the kindest of men. Captain Ogden was…

I have been ill, but what could you expect? My lines, however, have again fallen in pleasant places. Mrs. Da Vega is young, handsome, and agreeable, a kind and…

I have moved again, and now I am looking from a window high, with something more to see than the sky. We have the third story of Dr. Da Vega’s house, which opens on…

I was awakened with a bunch of violets from Mrs. Pride. Violets always remind me of Kate and of the sweet South wind that blew in the garden of paradise part of my…

Mr. Prioleau Hamilton told us of a great adventure. Mrs. Preston was put under his care on the train. He soon found the only other women along were “strictly…

Saw General Preston ride off. He came to tell me good-by. I told him he looked like a Crusader on his great white horse, with William, his squire, at his heels. Our…

Miss Middleton’s letter came in answer to mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me. “We long,” she says, “for our own small sufficiency of wood,…

Richmond has fallen and I have no heart to write about it. Grant broke through our lines and Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville. They are…

What a week it has been—madness, sadness, anxiety, turmoil, ceaseless excitement. The Wigfalls passed through on their way to Texas. We did not see them. Louly told…

A letter from Mrs. Davis, who writes: “Do come to me, and see how we get on. I shall have a spare room by the time you arrive, indifferently furnished, but, oh, so…

Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed up-stairs, pale as a sheet, saying, “General Lee has capitulated,” I saw it reflected in Mary Darby’s face before I heard him speak.…

This yellow Confederate quire of paper, my journal, blotted by entries, has been buried three days with the silver sugar-dish, tea-pot, milk-jug, and a few spoons…

My silver wedding-day, and I am sure the unhappiest day of my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher Hampton. Portman told of Miss Kate Hampton, who is perhaps the…

In Chester still. I climb these steep steps alone. They have all gone, all passed by. Buck went with Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary, Mrs. Huger, and Pinckney took…

Since we left Chester nothing but solitude, nothing but tall blackened chimneys, to show that any man has ever trod this road before. This is Sherman’s track. It is…

Home again at Bloomsbury. From Chester to Winnsboro we did not see one living thing, man, woman, or animal, except poor William trudging home after his sad…

A letter from a Pharisee who thanks the Lord she is not as other women are; she need not pray, as the Scotch parson did, for a good conceit of herself. She writes,…

We are scattered and stunned, the remnant of heart left alive within us filled with brotherly hate. We sit and wait until the drunken tailor who rules the United…

A feeling of sadness hovers over me now, day and night, which no words of mine can express. There is a chance for plenty of character study in this Mulberry house,…

They say Governor Magrath has absconded, and that the Yankees have said, “If you have no visible governor, we will send you one.” If we had one and they found him,…

The New York Herald quotes General Sherman as saying, “Columbia was burned by Hampton’s sheer stupidity.” But then who burned everything on the way in Sherman’s…

Andy, made lord of all by the madman, Booth, says, “Destruction only to the wealthy classes.” Better teach the negroes to stand alone before you break up all they…

An awful story from Sumter. An old gentleman, who thought his son dead or in a Yankee prison, heard some one try the front door. It was about midnight, and these…

Saturday I was in bed with one of my worst headaches. Occasionally there would come a sob and I thought of my sister insulted and my little sweet Williams. Another…

I do not write often now, not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear, and why dwell upon those things? Colonel Chesnut, poor old…

Dr. Boykin and John Witherspoon were talking of a nation in mourning, of blood poured out like rain on the battle-fields—for what? “Never let me hear that the blood…