Mary chestnut's View on Slavery

This is an excerpt from Mary Chestnut's Diary


Page 114

"I hate slavery. I hate a man who - You say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this - to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters? He holds his head high and poses as the model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him. From the height of his awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. 'You with that immoral book!' he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight. You see Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes Legree a bachelor." " Remember George II. and his likes."

Mary Boykin Miller Chestnut

Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886) was a South Carolina woman famous for keeping an extremely detailed diary describing the American Civil War.

She was born in Statesburg, South Carolina, to Mary Boykin and Stephen Decatur Miller, who had been a U.S. Senator and governor of South Carolina. On April 23, 1840, she married James Chesnut, Jr., who was elected to the Senate in 1850.

Once the Civil War broke out, James became an aide to Jefferson Davis and a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. They lived in Charleston, South Carolina.

Mary's diary began on February 15, 1861, and ended on August 2, 1865. It was a diary on her impression of events as they unfolded during the Civil War. Because she had no children, the diary passed to one of her friends upon her death. It was first published in 1905 as A Diary from Dixie, and an expanded edition was published in 1949. Yet another edition, edited by C. Vann Woodward and entitled Mary Chesnut's Civil War, was published in 1981 and won a Pulitzer Prize the next year.

Readings from her diary play an important role in the documentary television series, The Civil War by Ken Burns. Chesnut's diary entries were recited by Academy Award-winning actress Julie Harris.

On March 1, 2000, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that the James and Mary Boykin Chesnut House in Camden, South Carolina, had been designated as a National Historic Landmark due to its importance to America's national heritage and literature.
The plantation house was the location in which Mary Boykin Chesnut resided when she recorded in her diary events of the Civil War and her observations on their effect on the home front and southern society. Her diary is acknowledged by literary scholars as the most important piece of literature produced by a Confederate author. It also reflects the growing difficulties of the Confederacy.

There is evidence to suggest that she owned part of my family that originated from Darlington County South Carolina but was brought to DeSoto parish, Louisiana. At least 2 of my relatives, Chestnut Morris and Chestnut Jefferson wore that name. They were brought to Louisiana by her 2nd cousin, Boykin Witherspoon.

Family of James Chestnut, Jr. Mary's husband

James Chestnut Jr. .
Husband of Mary Boykin Chestnut

Col. James Chestnut, Sr. (upper right)



Below is the family of Chestnut's of South Carolina (white family), husband of famed Mary Boykin Chestnut. Both family are intertwined with the Witherspoon (Boykin) family of Darlington South Carolina, later of Desoto Parish, Louisiana. I believe at least part of my family was originally owned by the Chestnut family at some point because the names Chestnut appears in my known family line in Desoto Parish on several occasions, ie. Chestnut Morris and Chestnut Jefferson. Their roots are the same area of South Carolina and most of that family line was brought to Louisiana by Boykin Witherspoon. James Chestnut's wife, Mary Boykin Miller Chestnut was 2nd cousin to Boykin Witherspoon on his mother Elizabeth Boykin's side. There is also evidence to suggest that
Boykin was related to James Chestnut too since Boykin's sister Sarah
Sarah Cantey Witherspoon shared the same name as James Jr.
grandmother.


Husband's Name
James CHESNUT, Sr. Born: 19 Feb 1773, Place: Camden, , South Carolina, Died: 17 Feb 1866
Married: 20 Sep 1796. Sources list him as one of South Carolina's largest landowners. His parents were Father: John CHESNUT; Mother: Sarah CANTEY-(Note, She has the same name as Boykin Witherspoon's sister, Sarah Cantey)

James Wife's Name, Mary COX. Born: 22 Mar 1775, Place: New Brunswick, Middlesex, Nj
Died: 13 Mar 1864Married: 20 Sep 1796. Her Father: John COX.

Their children were:

James CHESNUT, Jr. married to the famed Mary Boykin Miller Chestnut who wrote the civil war diaries. Born: Abt. 1815 Place: Camden, South Carolina. Died: 1885.
On April 23, 1840 she married James Chestnut, Jr.. It appears from her Boykin name which came from her mother that she is related to Boykin Witherspoon too. James Chestnut, Jr. was a Confederate General and also an aide to President Jefferson Davis. He was a United States Senator, a signatory of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, and a Confederate Army officer. His wife was the well known Mary Chesnut, whose diary reveals valuable observations of Southern life in the American Civil War. Chesnut was a wealthy Southern planter, a defender of slavery, and a staunch secessionist. He graduated from the law department of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1837, and initially rose to prominence in South Carolina state politics. Admitted to the bar in 1837, he commenced practice that year in Camden and was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives (1842–54) and the South Carolina Senate (1854–58). He had also been a delegate to the southern convention at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1850. Chesnut was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1858 to replace Josiah J. Evans, and served there for two years before withdrawing on November 10, 1860, and participating in the South Carolina secession convention. (He was expelled from the Senate the next year.) When the Civil War broke out, he served the Confederate army as a colonel, brigadier general, and an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he returned to the practice of law in Camden.
He died in Camden in 1885; interment was in Knights Hill Cemetery, near Camden


Mary Cox CHESNUT Born: 1802; Place: Camden, South Carolina; Died: 1899

Harriet Serena CHESNUT Born: 1809; Place: Camden, South Carolina; Died: 2 Dec 1835
Place:

Emma CHESNUT; Born: 1812. Place: Camden, South Carolina, Died: 1847;

Sarah CHESNUT; Born: 1813; Place: Camden, South Carolina; Died: 1889;

F
Esther Serena CHESTNUT (AFN:NC2B-VH) She was married to John Nicholas WILLIAMS
Born: 2 Jul 1797, Place: Society Hill, Darlington Dist, South Carolina. Died: 12 Apr 1861
John Nicholas Williams later married Sarah Cantey WITHERSPOON Born: 19 Nov 1810
Place: South Carolina, U.s.. Died: 16 Aug 1907. Married: 29 Sep 1831. Place: , South Carolina, U.s.. Her father was John Dick WITHERSPOON. Her mother was Elizabeth BOYKIN. Their child was Constance WILLIAMS. She was the sister of Boykin Witherspoon. Could that be how the Chestnut name made it into my family? Through Boykin's brother-in-law's first wife, Esther Serena Chestnut who happened to be the sister of famed Mary Chestnut's husband James, Chestnut. Notice also that Sarah Cantey Witherspoon has the same name as Ester Serena Chestnut's grandmother. Could John Nicholas Williams have married cousins?


John CHESNUT Born: 23 Dec 1799; Place: Camden, South Carolina; Died: 19 Dec 1839