Mary Chestnut was a feminist and an abolitionist. She believed that
             women had a valuable public as well as private role in political life. She
             believed that eventually slavery would no longer be a necessary part of the
             South's economic life, despite its dependence on King Cotton.' Yet Mrs.
             Chestnut, a wife of a prominent politician, also counted herself a
             supporter of the Confederacy and the Southern Cause. Although she hoped
             the Confederacy would abolish slavery, she still believed in state's rights
             as a fundamental political principle. She believed that a true cultural
             and political abolition would only occur if each state decided to do so on
             its own, rather than having the value of equality between the races being
             imposed upon it by a federal authority.
             Above all, Mary Chestnut valued the diversity of the Southern states,
             as distinct from the culture of Northern life. In contrast to the coldness
             of the urban and industrialized life, Mary Chestnut believed that the South
             offered a slower, less rushed, less commercialized approach to human
             existence that was more appreciative of beauty, closeness between other
             individuals. She believed the best of the South was infused with a sense
             of refinement and a positive sense of reliance upon others that was absent
             from the Union states. The races' she believed were actually closer in
             the South, on a personal basis, than in the North.
             Mary Chestnut was a devoted diarist. Mary Chesnut's Civil War, the
             author's chronicle of the social and historical life she witnessed during
             the Civil War, paints a specific picture of South Carolina from 1861-1865.
             Because Mary Chesnut was the wife of a prominent politician of the day she
             take a particular interest in political affairs and women's roles in
             political affairs. The Southern way of life, she despairs, towards the end
             of her narrative, was never appropriately valued by th...