On March 30, James Ches­nut embarked on a jour­ney with fel­low men to explore the forts in Charleston Har­bor, while Mary chose to stay back, con­cerned about the strong wind and dust on the islands. She received a bou­quet of ros­es from friends upon return­ing to her rooms, antic­i­pat­ing a peace­ful Sat­ur­day, which was soon inter­rupt­ed by a loud knock at her door. When she opened it, she found John Man­ning, who had mis­tak­en­ly knocked on the wrong door. He invit­ed her to join their gath­er­ing at Quinby’s, a pop­u­lar pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio, where every­one was eager to have their por­traits tak­en.

Mary oblig­ed and spent the day tour­ing the city with Man­ning in an open car­riage, accom­pa­ny­ing him on var­i­ous social calls. In her diary, she ini­tial­ly referred to him as “my hand­some ex-gov­er­nor,” but lat­er revised it to “the.” Mean­while, James returned from his excur­sion in a foul mood, accus­ing Mary of stay­ing home to flirt with Man­ning. Mary, feel­ing exas­per­at­ed, went to bed dis­tressed over the accu­sa­tion.

Lat­er that evening, Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard vis­it­ed their home, but Mary chose not to greet him, not­ing in her diary that he was being cel­e­brat­ed as a hero despite hav­ing only held posi­tions as a cap­tain. The fol­low­ing day, March 31, did not seem to alle­vi­ate James’s bad mood. They had mul­ti­ple friends over for tea, includ­ing rel­a­tives and acquain­tances, some of whom car­ried their own tumul­tuous back­grounds. Notably, John Man­ning took the ini­tia­tive to speak with Mary pri­vate­ly, which only fueled James’s dis­plea­sure.

In the back­ground of these social events, Gov­er­nor Pick­ens, at the Charleston Hotel, expressed his impa­tience regard­ing the sit­u­a­tion at Fort Sumter. He had received assur­ances from Lincoln’s emis­sary, Ward Lam­on, about the fort’s immi­nent evac­u­a­tion, but noth­ing had tran­spired. On the same Sat­ur­day, Pick­ens com­mu­ni­cat­ed these details to Con­fed­er­ate com­mis­sion­ers in Wash­ing­ton, ignit­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sions about the fort’s sta­tus. How­ev­er, Sec­re­tary Seward found him­self caught between con­flict­ing mes­sages, as he had informed the com­mis­sion­ers of an impend­ing sur­ren­der while the cab­i­net favored a dif­fer­ent approach, leav­ing the sit­u­a­tion in a pre­car­i­ous state as he promised to update them on April 1.