Bloomsbury - Mary Chesnut's Civil War

Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote approximately 10% of her diaries at Bloomsbury. In Professor Woodward’s book Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (1981), chapter XVIII: A World Kicked to Pieces, she tries to reconstruct approximately a year’s worth of diaries. “I destroyed all my notes and journal—from the time I arrived at flat Rock—during a raid upon Richmond in 1863. Afterward—I tried to fill up the gap from memory” (p. 425).

She starts the chapter “September 23, 1863. Bloomsbury. So this is no longer a journal but a narrative of all I cannot bear in mind which has occurred since August 1862” (Woodward, p. 425). The chapter goes from pages 425 through 483 or 58 pages in length.

After the war, the mother plantation of the Chesnut family, Mulberry, had been ransacked by Union forces. It would not be brought back to its’ former splendor for over 50 years. When Mary and her husband James returned to Camden they went to Bloomsbury. She begins her passage of May 4, 1865 with “Bloomsbury. Home again” (Woodward, p. 800). There is no indication that they moved from Bloomsbury for the rest of the diary which ends in Professor Woodward’s book on page 836.

While she may have visited Mulberry on at least one occasion, she made it clear about how she felt on returning there. Her husband’s nephew, Johnny Chesnut, had returned from the war as a Captain in the Confederate cavalry. She writes:

"And Johnny! His country in mourning, with as much to mourn for as [a] country ever had! That cold, calm, unmoved air of his is only good form. Under all he is as volatile, as in consequent, as easily made happy, as any lighthearted son of the South. To my amazement he wants me to
give a picnic at Mulberry. Just now I would as soon dance on my father’s grave" (Woodward, p. 811).

From all indications, Bloomsbury was Mary and James Chesnut residence until their move to Sarsfield in 1873. Bloomsbury is rich in tradition and memory. Bloomsbury is truly “Home again..”