Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. In her book on the American Civil War, Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general, describes a woman seeking a pardon for her husband: “She was strong, and her way of telling her story was hard and cold enough. She told it simply, but over and over again, with slight variations as to words – never as to facts. She seemed afraid we would forget.” This passage is but one of many in the book that signals Chesnut’s desire to tell the story of the South during the Civil War. She wants to document history so that her readers won’t forget. At the same time, she wants to record more than just the facts of history, by telling her story over and over again artfully. Thirty years ago, I first encountered Chesnut’s writing and fell in love (total love!) with her firsthand, play-by-play accounts of the Civil War. Chesnut lived in or visited various locations throughout the South, most notably Montgomery, Alabama, Columbia, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia,