Mary Boykin Chesnut's Writing

Mary Boykin Chesnut was born on March 31 of the year 1823. She became famous because of her diary she wrote during the Civil War. Her diary was called A Diary from Dixie. She accompanied her husband on his military missions. She recording her views and observations on February 15, 1861, and closed her diary on August 2, 1865. Her diary was published long after her death in 1905. She grew up in a country family home in Stateburg, Plane Hill. That’s South Carolina now. When she was only 12 she started her independence when her family moved to Mississippi and she stayed back and enrolled in Madame Talvande French. She did amazing in school and she got married in 1840 to an old classmate. His name was James Chesnut, Jr. The Chesnuts had no children,

In 1845 she became really ill. So upon Mary’s death in 1886, the diary passed to her closest friend, Isabella D. Martin, who received the family’s blessing to seek publication. That’s how Mary’s diary made her famous.

William Tecumseh Sherman- in a two month period General Sherman led 60,000 soldiers from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. His purpose was to scare the Georgia citizens into leaving the Confederate cause.