The flir­ta­tion between Mary Ches­nut and John Man­ning began on March 30, when James Ches­nut, accom­pa­nied by fel­low men, ven­tured out to explore the forts in Charleston Har­bor. Mary decid­ed to remain behind, trou­bled by the strong winds and dust on the islands. Upon return­ing to her rooms, she was greet­ed with a bou­quet of ros­es from friends and antic­i­pat­ed a peace­ful Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, her qui­et after­noon was dis­rupt­ed by a loud knock at the door. When she opened it, she was met by John Man­ning, who had mis­tak­en­ly knocked on the wrong door. He invit­ed her to join their gath­er­ing at Quinby’s, a well-known pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio, where por­traits were being tak­en. Mary agreed, and the two spent the day tour­ing the city in an open car­riage, mak­ing var­i­ous social calls. Mary ini­tial­ly referred to Man­ning as “my hand­some ex-gov­er­nor” in her diary but lat­er revised it to sim­ply “the.”

Mean­while, James returned from his excur­sion in a foul mood, accus­ing Mary of stay­ing behind to flirt with Man­ning. Mary, frus­trat­ed and upset, went to bed dis­tressed over the accu­sa­tion, feel­ing mis­un­der­stood. Despite the ten­sion between them, she could not ignore the grow­ing con­nec­tion she felt with Man­ning, which had start­ed as a sim­ple social inter­ac­tion but was begin­ning to stir con­flict­ing emo­tions. The fol­low­ing evening, Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard vis­it­ed their home, but Mary chose not to greet him, remark­ing in her diary that he was being cel­e­brat­ed as a hero despite his rel­a­tive­ly low rank as a cap­tain. The events of the day did lit­tle to ease James’s foul mood. On March 31, the day after the social gath­er­ing, James’s dis­plea­sure lin­gered, and ten­sions at home only wors­ened. They had friends over for tea, includ­ing some rel­a­tives and acquain­tances with com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ries. In the midst of this, John Man­ning took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with Mary pri­vate­ly, which only fur­ther fueled James’s dis­plea­sure.

As these per­son­al dynam­ics unfold­ed in Charleston, the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion around Fort Sumter con­tin­ued to esca­late. Gov­er­nor Pick­ens, locat­ed at the Charleston Hotel, expressed grow­ing impa­tience regard­ing the sta­tus of the fort. He had received assur­ances from Pres­i­dent Lin­col­n’s emis­sary, Ward Lam­on, about the fort’s immi­nent evac­u­a­tion, but so far, noth­ing had occurred. Pick­ens com­mu­ni­cat­ed these details to the Con­fed­er­ate com­mis­sion­ers in Wash­ing­ton, fur­ther ignit­ing dis­cus­sions about the fort’s future. Mean­while, Sec­re­tary of State William Seward found him­self caught between con­flict­ing mes­sages, as he had informed the com­mis­sion­ers that an impend­ing sur­ren­der was pos­si­ble, but his cab­i­net favored a dif­fer­ent approach. This left the sit­u­a­tion in a pre­car­i­ous state, with the promise to update the com­mis­sion­ers on April 1 adding fur­ther uncer­tain­ty. The con­trast between the pri­vate social intrigues of Mary and Man­ning and the esca­lat­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis sur­round­ing Fort Sumter high­light­ed the ten­sion between per­son­al desires and the larg­er forces at play, with both cre­at­ing a sense of antic­i­pa­tion that could not be eas­i­ly resolved.

Mary’s inter­ac­tions with Man­ning, cou­pled with the grow­ing polit­i­cal tur­moil, under­scored the com­plex­i­ty of life in Charleston dur­ing this peri­od. On one hand, there were the per­son­al dynam­ics, such as her flir­ta­tion with Man­ning, which added emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty to her dai­ly life. On the oth­er hand, there were the rapid­ly devel­op­ing polit­i­cal ten­sions, which had the poten­tial to dis­rupt the lives of every­one involved. Mary’s per­son­al tur­moil, along­side the uncer­tain­ty of the polit­i­cal land­scape, paint­ed a vivid pic­ture of the momen­tous changes occur­ring in the South dur­ing the ear­ly days of the Civ­il War. Both her emo­tion­al respons­es to Man­ning’s advances and the polit­i­cal cli­mate sur­round­ing Fort Sumter were reflec­tive of the larg­er unrest brew­ing through­out the nation, where per­son­al and nation­al strug­gles were becom­ing increas­ing­ly inter­twined. The grow­ing sense of con­flict in both spheres pro­vid­ed a pow­er­ful back­drop to the unfold­ing dra­ma, as Charleston stood on the precipice of war, with its inhab­i­tants caught between their pri­vate con­cerns and the polit­i­cal events shap­ing their futures.