"A General Wool* says, 'This war is an attempt to extend the area of slavery.'
Can that be, when not one-third of our volunteer army are slave-owners—and not one-third of that third who does not dislike slavery as much as Mrs Stowe or Greeley?** And few have found their hatred or love of it as remunerative an investment."
*War of 1812 veteran U.S. Brigadier General John Ellis Wool, quoted from a speech in New York, 15 August 1861.
**Harriet Beecher Stowe was author of the 1852 bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, Horace Greeley editor of the New York Tribune.
Mary Boykin Chesnut is one of the most important voices of the American Civil War with her unique perspective from inside Confederate halls of power. Her husband James Chesnut, Jr, served in the South Carolina legislature, and in 1858 was elected to the U.S. Senate. He resigned from office after Lincoln's 1860 win, then returned south to help draft the ordinance of secession and attend the First Confederate Congress. He was a close aide to Jefferson Davis for much of the war as history unfolded.