A diary from Dixie Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut Isabella D Martin Myrta Lockett Avary 9781177810647 Books
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A diary from Dixie Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut Isabella D Martin Myrta Lockett Avary 9781177810647 Books
To get the full value of this book you probably need to be a historian. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it, but it is full of footnotes on nearly every page about who she is spending time with, nearly all of which are people of importance at that time; fascinating for anyone living in her area. There are parts that are difficult to understand because of the vernacular used which is unfamiliar to me, yet . . . the basic history, the events, and the attitudes of the time that she imparts is why I'm reading it and I could be more fascinated or curious. I feel like I need to establish a little data base that would list each of the people she mentions, then to look them up and see what else I can find.Product details
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A diary from Dixie Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut Isabella D Martin Myrta Lockett Avary 9781177810647 Books Reviews
Along with Co. Aytch the reader is provided with easily accessible views of the war from both the civilian and military perspectives. I try tp read both on the days mentioned to get better "vibes". In reading Mrs. C's entry for September 2, she writes "They say General (John Hunt) Morgan has been killed." According to sources, Morgan wasn't killed until September 4. This discrepancy has caused me to wonder if she didn't re-create some of the diary from memory after the war. If so, might her views on other topics such as slavery have undergone revision?
I've read a lot from the Northern perspective but this is the first from the Southern. If you have an imagination, it's not hard to picture yourself in her world because her descriptions are so vivid. Some of the best parts are the little, gossipy tidbits (someone was asked to play "Yankee Doodle" without the "Yankee") but it's very suspenseful too as loses her fortune and moves from one city to the next, relying on the kindness of friends and strangers. She's very likable although completely oblivious to her own racism. She and her "servant" stop at a rest stop where she paid for two chairs. She sat on one and put her feet up on the other while her servant sat on the floor. She writes this as if there's nothing wrong with it. But that's part of what makes the book so important and unique. It's a birds-eye view into the mind of a Southerner at the time. They're so convinced that they're in the right but almost certain from the beginning that they can't win the war. American history is best told from the mouths of the people who lived it and this diary is very enlightening. I came away amazed that the country could have come together at all after the Civil War with all its destruction and resentment.
A DIARY FROM DIXIE is absolutely fascinating. As a southern woman, I enjoyed reading of many areas back then that I know in modern times. More interesting, though, are the emotions, observations, and experiences felt by Mrs. Chestnut during such a horrendous time in our history. I highly recommend this book to any history buff, but especially to those who want to know the humanity behind this era's historical data.
If the Confederacy had survived Lincoln's invasion, Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut might be a household name in the literary world.
And that's pretty good when one considers that her oeuvre was written without the slightest whiff of literary pretension or ambition.
highwayscribery is not sure if a deep interest in the Civil War, from the southern side of things, is necessary for her scribbling prowess to impress. But if it's there, "A Diary from Dixie" is for you.
Chesnut was well-positioned to chronicle Dixie's misery both as a South Carolina lady intimate with Jefferson Davis and his wife, and wife to a Confederate officer whose competence is apparent in his upward trajectory throughout the book's (and war's) course.
The authoress succeeds in engaging the reader without any real structure other than the natural chronology of events as she lives them. The gentle lady moseys from one happening to another, recounting those things she witnesses, and those others have told her about, with nary a transition.
But the recounting is so casual, the prose so clean, the reader is niever tried, taxed or bored. Chesnut was a feeling, seeing person with the literary chops to put what she felt and saw into words, as in this passage describing the family plantation, Mulberry, in Camden, South Carolina
"It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest -- the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here -- with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter."
There are fascinating, first-hand insights in "Diary" as to the way slaves and masters interacted, and the ambiguous attitude of negroes in the south when freedom beckoned, but their familiar world crumbled.
Chesnut's tones are not the stark blacks and whites of Harriet Beecher Stowe's south, rather a wide array of grays.
The relations between the furiously independent member states are also depicted, with Virginians, and Kentuckians, and Carolinians both north and south, remarked upon for their peculiar, geographically bound traits.
In these times, as a single electronic culture inexorably engulfs humanity, it is interesting to read about the differences between neighboring communities and see how they celebrated those differences.
The book's tone morphs from light to dark as the northern noose tightens around the Confederacy's neck. Noteworthy is the early opinion, expressed by rebels in high places, that the South had no chance of winning the war.
"Diary" tells us that had clearer heads prevailed, the cataclysm might have been averted.
The dominant portrait is that of a small, agrarian society confronting a behemoth that will leave no stone unturned, no home unburned, and kill-off a generation of fine young men -- not all of them enamored with slavery -- so much as loyal to their homeland.
"Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs; von Boreke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat. Isabella said, 'We have all kinds now, but a blind one.' Poor fellows, they laugh at wounds. 'And they yet can show many a scar.'"
Chesnut is in the rearguard, her lofty status slowly reduced to a state of hunger bourn with ladylike dignity. Hers is the Confederate women's story, a dreadful enumeration of lost sons, sundered families, and mothers literally dying from grief.
"Isabella says that war leads to love-making. She says these soldiers do more courting here in a day than they would do at home, without a war, in ten years."
Perhaps most valuable are those anecdotes Chesnut recorded which give the war between the states, and the Confederacy in particular, a greater depth and richer texture.
Without her we might not have known that President Davis' little boy died at home, nor of the suspicions that a turncoat on staff, or a spy snuck into the house, actually killed him in a cruel effort to demoralize Dixie.
The tragic deaths of innocents stepping out from a cave for some air in Vicksburg during the Union siege might have gone unrecorded. We could not be aware that France's last Count de Choiseul had thrown his lot in with the south and died for it, too.
Without her desperate scribblings, we would have known only the winner's account, and been denied the terrible beauties associated with losing, which is so much a part of life.
A very good personal view of the civil war. I almost felt like I was living it alongside this confederate woman of some wealth. Her husband was in the inner circles of President Jeff Davis 's White House. At times it was slow reading being a personal diary as she wrote it as she thought it and she didn't always explain who and how people were related . She went discomfort and wealth to poverty and dependent on others for food. Also the viewpoints about slaves were enlightening. Not always what we expect. Not for the reader who likes light romance but you will learn a lot about history and the social mores of the time.
Mary Chestnut seemed to be everywhere during the Civil War including Charleston S.C. when fort Sumter was fired upon. She was the wife of a former US senator from South Carolina and knew or met most of the significant and influential people in the South including Jefferson Davis and his wife. Times were tough. She would sew gold coins into her dresses to keep them safe. Food was hard to get. Confederate currency became worthless. At the bitter end Southeners were eating their cloths.
To get the full value of this book you probably need to be a historian. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it, but it is full of footnotes on nearly every page about who she is spending time with, nearly all of which are people of importance at that time; fascinating for anyone living in her area. There are parts that are difficult to understand because of the vernacular used which is unfamiliar to me, yet . . . the basic history, the events, and the attitudes of the time that she imparts is why I'm reading it and I could be more fascinated or curious. I feel like I need to establish a little data base that would list each of the people she mentions, then to look them up and see what else I can find.
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