In *Plac­ing the Knife*, the chap­ter details Mary Ches­nut’s reflec­tions in the wake of Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s elec­tion, which she inter­pret­ed as a cat­a­lyst for impend­ing war. Trav­el­ing back to South Car­oli­na from Flori­da, she learned the news on a train, where it was broad­ly dis­cussed that “Lin­coln was elect­ed and our fate sealed.” Con­vinced that sig­nif­i­cant changes were on the hori­zon, she began doc­u­ment­ing her thoughts in a diary, empha­siz­ing the neces­si­ty for calm deter­mi­na­tion as the Con­fed­er­a­cy faced dire stakes.

Mary not­ed her hus­band, U.S. Sen­a­tor James Ches­nut, had resigned in protest of Lincoln’s elec­tion, align­ing with South Carolina’s seces­sion­ist move­ments. While she wished he had shown more ambi­tion, she rec­og­nized her desire for action was both a bur­den and a curse. At thir­ty-sev­en, Mary had no chil­dren and lived on the expan­sive Ches­nut fam­i­ly plan­ta­tion, Mul­ber­ry. This grand estate in Cam­den, South Car­oli­na, boast­ed a rich array of flo­ra and thrived through the labor of hun­dreds of enslaved Black indi­vid­u­als who main­tained the gar­dens, fields, and house­hold.

The plan­ta­tion, while beau­ti­ful and self-suf­fi­cient, also rep­re­sent­ed the stark real­i­ties of South­ern life, includ­ing the moral com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing slav­ery. Mary her­self opposed abo­li­tion but open­ly lament­ed the griev­ous abus­es inher­ent in the sys­tem. She described the infamy asso­ci­at­ed with the sex­u­al exploita­tion of enslaved women and girls, remark­ing on the moral decay it rep­re­sent­ed.

Despite the charm of Mul­ber­ry, Mary felt iso­lat­ed com­pared to her life in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where her social engage­ments flour­ished. Return­ing home from the cap­i­tal felt like a sac­ri­fice, and she expressed her grow­ing frus­tra­tion with the monot­o­ny of plan­ta­tion life. The chap­ter also unfolds the polit­i­cal atmos­phere as South Car­oli­na expe­ri­enced a surge of excite­ment and mil­i­tance in response to seces­sion, along­side James Ham­mond’s res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate as he aligned with the seces­sion­ist wave.

The polit­i­cal and social ten­sions of the time left an indeli­ble mark on Mary, who nav­i­gat­ed the com­plex dynam­ics of fam­i­ly and soci­ety while grap­pling with her own ambi­tious desires amid a swift­ly chang­ing nation­al land­scape .