Mary Chesnut's Civil War

Archival Summary & Scope

Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History.

*Mary Chesnut’s Civil War* presents the incomparable diaries of Mary Chesnut, offering an unparalleled eyewitness account of the Confederacy's collapse. Married to a high-ranking Confederate official, Chesnut was ideally positioned to record the South's headlong plunge to ruin. This aristocratic, slave-holding Southern lady, who privately called herself an early abolitionist, captured with intelligence and passion the turbulent events of politics, war, and the complex society around her.

Hailed as "a feast for Civil War buffs... Electrifying" (Newsweek) and "a great epic drama of our greatest national tragedy" (William Styron, *New York Review of Books*), her journals provide an unsurpassed record of the old regime's death throes.

Edited by eminent historian C. Vann Woodward, this full and reliable edition restores Mary Chesnut to her rightful place in American history and literature.