Plac­ing the Knife cap­tures the intense emo­tion­al and polit­i­cal land­scape Mary Ches­nut found her­self nav­i­gat­ing after the elec­tion of Abra­ham Lin­coln in 1860, an event that marked the begin­ning of an era she saw as fraught with dan­ger. While trav­el­ing back to South Car­oli­na from Flori­da, she learned of Lin­col­n’s elec­tion through dis­cus­sions among pas­sen­gers on the train, where it was said that “Lin­coln was elect­ed and our fate sealed.” Mary’s imme­di­ate reac­tion was one of cer­tain­ty: she believed that this moment would mark a dras­tic shift in the nation’s tra­jec­to­ry, an irre­versible change that would inevitably lead to con­flict. This per­cep­tion led her to start doc­u­ment­ing her thoughts in a diary, urg­ing the neces­si­ty of main­tain­ing com­po­sure in a time of esca­lat­ing ten­sions. The elec­tion, she believed, not only sig­ni­fied the end of the sta­tus quo but also sig­naled the com­mence­ment of a bat­tle over the sur­vival of the South­ern way of life.

Reflect­ing on her hus­band, U.S. Sen­a­tor James Ches­nut, and his deci­sion to resign in protest of Lincoln’s vic­to­ry, Mary not­ed how his actions aligned with the ris­ing tide of seces­sion in South Car­oli­na. She admit­ted that while she wished he had dis­played more ambi­tion in his stance, she could not deny the bur­den of her own aspi­ra­tions. At thir­ty-sev­en, with­out chil­dren to tend to, Mary found her­self ensnared in the chal­lenges of plan­ta­tion life at Mul­ber­ry, the Ches­nut fam­i­ly estate in Cam­den, South Car­oli­na. Despite the plantation’s beau­ty, which includ­ed expan­sive fields and metic­u­lous­ly main­tained gar­dens, the real­i­ty of life there was deeply tied to slav­ery, an insti­tu­tion that Mary viewed with inter­nal con­flict. While she opposed the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment, she rec­og­nized and mourned the trag­ic abus­es that occurred with­in it, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sex­u­al exploita­tion of enslaved women and girls. This moral decay, she acknowl­edged, was an inescapable stain on South­ern soci­ety, though she could not ful­ly rec­on­cile it with her own way of life.

Liv­ing at Mul­ber­ry, Mary found her­self increas­ing­ly dis­tanced from the vibrant social life she had known in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The bustling social cir­cles and polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions she had thrived in felt like a dis­tant mem­o­ry. As she returned to her plan­ta­tion, it felt like a per­son­al sac­ri­fice, and soon, she grew dis­il­lu­sioned with the slow-paced and iso­lat­ing nature of plan­ta­tion life. The chap­ter offers an in-depth look at how Mary’s per­son­al frus­tra­tions inter­sect­ed with the grow­ing polit­i­cal ten­sions in South Car­oli­na. This was a time when the state expe­ri­enced a surge of mil­i­tant sup­port for seces­sion, and fig­ures like James Ham­mond joined the wave of res­ig­na­tions, align­ing with the move­ment to break away from the Union. As polit­i­cal momen­tum built, Mary’s per­son­al desires col­lid­ed with the nation­al cri­sis unfold­ing around her, cre­at­ing a deep inter­nal con­flict. Her own per­son­al frus­tra­tions mir­rored the larg­er frus­tra­tions of a soci­ety grap­pling with pro­found change, as the South faced the inevitable divi­sion between Union and Con­fed­er­a­cy.

Amidst the tumul­tuous polit­i­cal land­scape, Mary’s intro­spec­tive writ­ings also high­light her recog­ni­tion of the broad­er impli­ca­tions of seces­sion. The frag­ile, yet pros­per­ous, world she knew was crum­bling as South­ern lead­ers pur­sued a path toward rebel­lion, pulling the coun­try into a divide that seemed impos­si­ble to heal. While she found her­self torn between loy­al­ty to her home and her grow­ing frus­tra­tions with the polit­i­cal direc­tion of her state, Mary’s writ­ings offer a unique win­dow into the com­plex dynam­ics of South­ern soci­ety. The plan­ta­tion, once a sym­bol of wealth and sta­bil­i­ty, now embod­ied the moral and polit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties that were begin­ning to con­sume the South. Through her per­son­al reflec­tions and obser­va­tions, Mary Ches­nut pro­vides a poignant account of the inter­nal strug­gle many South­ern­ers faced dur­ing this tumul­tuous peri­od in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, as they stood on the precipice of an irre­versible shift that would soon lead to civ­il war.