In Charleston, on March 4, Edmund Ruf­fin read the inau­gur­al address, which was deliv­ered via tele­graph to the office of the *Mer­cury*. As the crowd gath­ered to fol­low along, Ruf­fin not­ed in his diary that the address con­firmed his belief that war was immi­nent. He looked for­ward to Con­fed­er­ate Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard tak­ing action against Fort Sumter and antic­i­pat­ed that Lin­coln might pro­voke an imme­di­ate con­flict by try­ing to rein­force the fort. The excite­ment in the air was pal­pa­ble, as Ruf­fin observed no expres­sions of regret or fear among the crowd, only a sense of antic­i­pa­tion that mat­ters would soon come to a head.

Mean­while, in Mont­gomery, James Ches­nut’s wife, Mary, engaged in the social activ­i­ties typ­i­cal of her role. Her diary reflect­ed a crit­i­cal view of her inter­ac­tions, labelling sev­er­al women in atten­dance as “fat and stu­pid” and express­ing her dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the qual­i­ty of din­ners she attend­ed. Mary also seemed to enjoy some flir­ta­tion from for­mer Gov­er­nor John Man­ning, who showed a fond­ness for her. She was accus­tomed to atten­tion and won­dered why she attract­ed it, not­ing, “I nev­er was hand­some.”

Mary’s call on Jef­fer­son Davis and Vari­na led to an ami­able encounter, with Vari­na wel­com­ing her and shar­ing the lat­est news from Wash­ing­ton, albeit avoid­ing polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions. Their con­ver­sa­tion shift­ed focus to roy­al vis­its, notably that of the Prince of Wales, which added a delight­ful tone to their meet­ing.

How­ev­er, on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, Mary wit­nessed a slave auc­tion that left her deeply unset­tled. Observ­ing a mulat­to woman on dis­play at the sale, she drew a par­al­lel between the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women in mar­riage and the slave trade, yet the raw real­i­ty of the auc­tion proved too dis­tress­ing. Despite being a slave­hold­er her­self, she felt her soul “sick­ened,” grap­pling with the hor­ror of the scene before her.

The fol­low­ing day, upon read­ing Lincoln’s address, she con­tem­plat­ed its impli­ca­tions for peace ver­sus war, chan­nel­ing her thoughts through an 1808 bal­lad ref­er­enc­ing the char­ac­ter Lochin­var. Mary was skep­ti­cal of Lin­col­n’s inten­tions, fear­ing he might aim to detach the bor­der states from the Con­fed­er­a­cy. As the atmos­phere shift­ed around her, among the men were grow­ing calls for war, which left her skep­ti­cal of the loom­ing con­flict, stat­ing, “Still I do not believe it.”