Chesnut, Mary Boykin (1823-1886)

US diarist. A staunch supporter of the Confederacy, she is remembered for the diary she kept during the American Civil War. The most extensive diary of the Civil War, it provides a frank, detailed, and perceptive account of the South in this period. Though a passionate defender of the Southern way of life, including slavery, she was aware of the social and moral problems created by slavery and sympathetic to the suffering of slaves. Her diary was first published in 1905 as A Diary from Dixie.

She was born in Statesboro in Southern Carolina, the daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller, a US senator and governor of South Carolina. In 1840 she married James Chesnut, Jr, a wealthy plantation owner who was elected to the US Senate in 1858 as a Democrat; resigning when Abraham Lincoln was elected, he then played a leading role in Confederate politics and fought in the Confederate army. Accompanying her husband throughout his political career, Mary Chesnut met many of the leading figures of the day and developed an intimate knowledge of the period's political, economic and social issues. She began her diary in February 1861 and ended it in August 1865, though she extensively revised and expanded it during the 1880s.