Sick­ened by the unfold­ing events in Charleston, Edmund Ruf­fin read Lincoln’s inau­gur­al address, which had been telegraphed to the Mer­cury on March 4. As the pub­lic gath­ered to lis­ten to Lincoln’s address, Ruf­fin found his belief in the inevitabil­i­ty of war becom­ing even stronger. The speech, he believed, only con­firmed what he had long suspected—that a direct con­fronta­tion was immi­nent. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Con­fed­er­ate Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard might move to strike Fort Sumter soon felt like an unavoid­able real­i­ty. Ruf­fin also pre­dict­ed that the president’s deci­sion to attempt a rein­force­ment of the fort would cer­tain­ly pro­voke a mil­i­tary response. The excite­ment and fer­vor with­in the crowd reflect­ed an under­ly­ing cer­tain­ty that the con­flict was no longer avoid­able. Every­one around him was ready for the com­ing con­fronta­tion, not out of fear, but with an antic­i­pa­to­ry ener­gy that things would soon come to a head.

Mean­while, in Mont­gomery, Mary Ches­nut car­ried on with her social oblig­a­tions, mov­ing between events and meet­ings. Despite ful­fill­ing her role with­in soci­ety, she wrote about her dis­dain for the peo­ple she encoun­tered, call­ing some of them “fat and stu­pid” and express­ing dis­con­tent about the qual­i­ty of social gath­er­ings. This under­ly­ing sense of dis­sat­is­fac­tion ran through her inter­ac­tions, reflect­ing a deep­er sense of frus­tra­tion with her envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, amid this dis­con­tent, she also found her­self the sub­ject of atten­tion from for­mer Gov­er­nor John Man­ning, whose admi­ra­tion for her did not go unno­ticed. Mary seemed puz­zled by this atten­tion, even express­ing con­fu­sion at it, giv­en that she did not con­sid­er her­self a strik­ing beau­ty, remark­ing, “I nev­er was hand­some.” Nev­er­the­less, her attrac­tive­ness to those around her seemed an inescapable part of her social life, some­thing that she did not ful­ly grasp but qui­et­ly accept­ed.

Mary’s vis­it to Vari­na Davis pro­vid­ed a con­trast to the oth­er­wise tense atmos­phere. As the wife of the Con­fed­er­ate pres­i­dent, Vari­na wel­comed Mary warm­ly, and the con­ver­sa­tion shift­ed to lighter top­ics, such as the Prince of Wales’s recent vis­it to the Unit­ed States. This con­ver­sa­tion brought a momen­tary respite from the polit­i­cal unrest, offer­ing a dis­trac­tion from the increas­ing­ly volatile sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, lat­er that day, as Mary observed a slave auc­tion on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, the tran­quil­i­ty of her social cir­cle was shat­tered. Wit­ness­ing the sale of a mulat­to woman, Mary was left deeply dis­turbed by the scene and could not shake the par­al­lels it drew between the treat­ment of women in mar­riage and that of enslaved indi­vid­u­als. Despite being a slave­hold­er her­self, the harsh real­i­ty of the auc­tion scene left her feel­ing phys­i­cal­ly ill, as the dehu­man­iz­ing objec­ti­fi­ca­tion struck at the very core of her moral com­pass. It was an expe­ri­ence that left an indeli­ble mark on her, shak­ing her belief sys­tem and forc­ing her to con­front the ugly real­i­ties of her world.

The next morn­ing, after read­ing Pres­i­dent Lin­col­n’s inau­gur­al address, Mary’s unease about the unfold­ing polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion deep­ened. She was skep­ti­cal of the president’s true inten­tions and wor­ried that Lin­coln might aim to divide the Con­fed­er­a­cy by cre­at­ing ten­sions with­in the South­ern states and the bor­der states. Reflect­ing on the speech, she feared Lin­coln was try­ing to weak­en the South­ern cause, pos­si­bly using the Union’s polit­i­cal strate­gies to make the Con­fed­er­a­cy crum­ble from with­in. To artic­u­late her con­cerns, she turned to a bal­lad from 1808, using the char­ac­ter Lochin­var, known for his bold and dar­ing actions, as a metaphor for how Lin­coln might deal with the seces­sion cri­sis. This com­par­i­son between a leg­endary hero and Lin­coln was a way for Mary to express her anx­i­eties about the pres­i­den­t’s actions, which she believed could lead to war. As the men in her social cir­cle became increas­ing­ly vocal in their calls for war, Mary remained doubt­ful, even as ten­sions grew. Despite the mount­ing pres­sure, she could not bring her­self to believe the sit­u­a­tion would esca­late into full-scale con­flict, writ­ing, “Still I do not believe it,” a state­ment that cap­tured her reluc­tance to accept the loom­ing cer­tain­ty of war.

This peri­od of reflec­tion marked a piv­otal point for Mary as she wres­tled with the dual­i­ty of her role in a world on the brink of con­flict. Though she could see the inevitable move­ment toward war, the social dynam­ics around her offered an escape from the grow­ing ten­sion, where flir­ta­tion and social events allowed her to tem­porar­i­ly avoid the deep­er issues sur­round­ing her. Still, the dark cloud of war loomed ever larg­er, and Mary’s thoughts on Lincoln’s speech only fur­ther deep­ened her unease about what was com­ing next.