Mary Boykin Chesnut

“We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so.”

“God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system... Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children.”

“There is no slave, after all, like a wife.”

“Grief and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women as men die on the battle-field.”

“Cotton is king.”

“This Southern Confederacy must be supported now by calm determination and courage.”

“I do not know when I have seen a woman without a knitting needle in her hand.”

“I think this journal will be pleasanter if I write about what I see and hear, and not what I feel.”

“The very heavens seemed to scowl and frown, and the air was full of farewells.”

“Charleston is smashed, and we are smashed with it.”

“Men are awfully mistaken if they think we care for their calling us 'the weaker sex.'”

“Not one word of what is going on does anyone tell me. I am a woman, and that is enough.”

“Lincoln is a barbarian.”