Synopsis:
Excerpt from A Diary From Dixie
In Mrs. Chesnut's Diary are vivid pictures of the social life that went on uninterruptedly in the midst of war; of the economic conditions that resulted from blockaded ports; of the manner in which the spirits of the people rose and fell with each victory or defeat, and of the momentous events that took place in Charleston, Montgomery, and Richmond. But the Diary has an importance quite apart from the interest that lies in these pictures.
Mrs. Chesnut was close to forty years of age when the war began, and thus had lived through the most stirring scenes in the controversies that led to it. In this Diary, as perhaps nowhere else in the literature of the war, will be found the Southern spirit of that time expressed in words which are not alone charming as literature, but genuinely human in their spontaneousness, their delightfully unconscious frankness. Her words are the farthest possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely intellectual. They ring so true that they start echoes. The most uncompromising Northern heart can scarcely fail to be moved by their abounding sincerity, surcharged though it be with that old Southern fire which overwhelmed the army of McDowell at Bull Run.
In making more clear the unyielding tenacity of the South and the stern conditions in which the war was prosecuted, the Diary has further importance.
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About the Author:
Mary Boykin Chesnut (nee Miller) was an American diarist and author who is best known for her Civil-War memoir, A Diary from Dixie. Born to a prominent southern family, she was married James Chesnut, a U.S. Senator and later aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and it was this association that afforded Chesnut a unique perspective on events leading up to and throughout the American Civil War. In addition to her diary, Chesnut wrote two novels, The Captain and the Colonel, and Two Years of My Life, both of which were published posthumously. Chesnut died in 1886.
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