Queen Bee of the Confederacy

Mary Boykin Chesnut with her husband, James, in 1840.
The Granger Collection, New York

When I first encountered Mary Chesnut as a starting point for exploring the American Civil War while an undergraduate at Harvard, I could not have been more fortunate. She provided a riveting antidote to the “fiddle-dee-dee” school of southern womanhood on which I had been weaned as a teenager in the 1960s. Although Scarlett O’Hara was a beguiling screen heroine, Mary Boykin Chesnut was a flesh and blood Rebel, whose wartime scribbling brought to life intimate and important aspects of southern culture. Since its publication in 1905, Chesnut’s diary has become compelling reading.

Via Kimberly, Belle Grove