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WHEN 17 YEAR-OLD EMMA LECONTE walked past the cottage of Mary Chesnut in Columbia, South Carolina on her way to school, she had no idea that Mrs. Chesnut was writing a diary of the stirring events of the day. A few blocks away, Emma was also keeping a diary. When General Sherman’s cannons sounded in February 1865, Mrs. Chesnut fled Columbia, but Emma remained to record eyewitness details of the invasion, sack, and burning of the city by Federal troops. Her vivid, passionate reports of all that was going on around her paint an unforgettable picture of destruction, horror and tragedy.
This first fully annotated edition of Emma’s diary preserves her words as she wrote them and gathers illustrations depicting the places and events she described. The result is proof that she was a careful, accurate recorder of events. Her diary also reveals an exceptional intellect, and sheds light on her family life and the prewar society of Columbia, which her father, the famous scientist Joseph LeConte, called “the most pleasant and cultivated I have ever known.” These included the societies of Harvard, Philadelphia, Berkeley, California, and Athens, Georgia.
Emma’s diary is a powerful and moving account of one of the darkest hours in the history of South Carolina, and a reminder of how much of its culture, both tangible and intangible, was destroyed and lost forever.