• Nonfiction

• Type: Diary

Mary Chesnut's Civil War is a Pulitzer Prize winning history trade book by diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut and historian C Vann Woodward chronicling Mary Chesnut's experiences during the American Civil War. The text contains A DIARY FROM DIXIE as written by Mary Boykin Chesnut with annotations by C Vann Woodward. - AsNotedIn

I have always kept a journal after a fashion of my own, with dates and a line of poetry or prose, mere quotations, which I understood and no one else, and I have kept letters and extracts from the papers. 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 and one's breath is taken away to think what events have since crowded in. Like the woman's record in her journal, we have had "earthquakes, as usual" - daily shocks.

People

• George Washington Custis Lee, Neither side now cares a fig for these beloved negroes, and would send them all to heaven in a hand-basket, as Custis Lee says, to win in the fight.
• James Chesnut Sr, Old Colonel
• Jefferson F Davis, General Lee and Mr Davis want the negroes put into the army.

Places

• Camden, SC, South Carolina Home again at Mulberry. In those last days of my stay in Charleston I did not find time to write a word.
• Charleston, SC, South Carolina From my window I can hear a grand and mighty flow of eloquence. Bartow and a delegation from Savannah are having a supper given to them in the dining-room below.
• Chester, SC, South Carolina Mrs Da Vega is young, handsome, and agreeable, a kind and perfect hostess, and as to the house, my room is all that I could ask and leaves nothing to be desired, so very fresh, clean, warm, and comfortable is it.
• Columbia, SC, South Carolina Had an appetite for my dainty breakfast. Always breakfast in bed now. But then, my Mercury contained such bad news. That is an appetizing style of matutinal newspaper.
• Elm Bluff, AL, Alabama At Portland, we met a man who said: "Is it not strange that in this poor, devoted land of ours, there are some men who are making money by blockade-running, cheating our embarrassed government, and skulking the fight?"
• Fauquier Springs Country Club, Warrenton, VA This water is making us young again. How these men enjoy the baths. They say Beauregard can stop the way with sixty thousand that many are coming.
• Flat Rock, NC, North Carolina Being ill I left Mrs McMahan's for Flat Rock. It was very hot and disagreeable for an invalid in a boarding-house in that climate. The La Bordes and the McCord girls came part of the way with me.
• Lincolnton, NC, North Carolina 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 has passed over my head since last I wrote and wept over your forlorn pages.
• Montgomery, AL, Alabama My brother Stephen brought the officers of the "Montgomery Blues" to dinner. "Very soiled Blues," they said, apologizing for their rough condition. Poor fellows! they had been a month before Fort Pickens and not allowed to attack it.
• Richmond, Virginia Soldiers everywhere. They seem to be in the air, and certainly to fill all space. Keitt quoted a funny Georgia man who says we try our soldiers to see if they are hot enough before we enlist them. If, when water is thrown on them they do not sizz, - MBC
• Warrenton, VA, Virginia Saw across the lawn, but did not speak to them, some of Judge Campbell's family. There they wander disconsolate, just outside the gates of their Paradise: a resigned Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States resigned, and for a cause ....