Much has been made of the martial atmosphere of antebellum Charleston as she ushered in the Confederacy. Relatively little, however, has been said of the heightened mood of sensuality that transfused the Lowcountry on the eve of hostilities.
As it was in the age of chivalry when the pursuit of arms and armor was equaled only by the pursuit of that which was amorous, so was the giddiness of aristocratic Carolinians as war clouds loomed in 1861 over Fort Sumter.
Of all those who have left diaries, letters, and recollections, none reveal so much the sensuousness of the age as the revelations that come down to us from Mary Boykin Chesnut about the beautiful, tempestuous and flirtatious Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the first lady of South Carolina — the one many called “the queen of the Confederacy”:
“April 3. - Met the lovely Lucy Holcombe, now Mrs. Governor Pickens, last night at the Isaac Haynes’s. Old Pick [Governor Francis Pickens, husband to Lucy —who was less than half his age] has a better wig. [S]aw Miles begging in dumb show for three violets she had in her breastpin. She [Lucy Holcombe] is silly and affected, looking love into the eyes of the men at every glance. . . . And so we fool on into the black cloud ahead of us.”
Lovely Lucy Holcombe Pickens was the Confederacy’s “Helen of Troy,” the face that inspired battalions and bewitched brave men. Privileged by birth, fair of face and figure, coy by nature, and born to intrigue, fiery Lucy Holcombe arced across the Carolina sky like the Parrott shells lobbed into Charleston by Union batteries.
How did the aged, twice-widowed, dour Governor Francis Pickens of Toogoodoo in St. Paul’s Parish wind up with the Confederacy’s Belle of the Ball?
Woodstock plantation in La Grange, Tennessee, was the site of Lucy’s nativity, but her hard-gambling papa lost the deed by betting on a horse race in 1850. Lucy and her sister were away in boarding school when a letter came telling them that they were moving to Marshall, Texas.
Marshall, the up-and-coming cotton capital of the West, was a boom town for adventurers as well. Louis Wigfall, a former fiery congressman from Edgefield, had moved to Marshall after assisting Preston Brooks in caning nearly to death Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner in 1856.
It’s fair to say that aristocratic Carolinians such as Mary Boykin Chesnut viewed the Holcombes as nouveau riche and opportunist. However, the prevailing atmosphere in Charleston on the eve of war was decidedly frolicsome and full of intrigue.
A week prior to the firing upon Fort Sumter the air around Charleston was charged with electricity. Young gallants of both sexes made amorous connections that sparked.
The annual ball of the St. Cecilia was one of the social events that Mary Chesnut attended on April 4. She recorded in her diary: “What are your feelings to those of the poor old fellows leaning against the walls, watching their beautiful young wives waltzing as if they could never tire, in every man’s arms in the room. Watch their haggard, weary faces! The old husbands have not exactly a bed of roses; their wives twirling in the arms of young men, they hugging only the wall!”
That Sunday Chesnut attended St. Philip’s with her teenaged sons and this was her diary entry: “At church I had to move my pew. The lovely Laura was too much for my boys. They all made eyes at her, and nudged each other, and she gave them glance for glance. Wink, blink and snigger as they would, she liked it.”
The gaiety was intoxicating for our state’s first lady, Lucy Holcombe Pickens, as well.
In a city known for beauty Charleston men succumbed quickly to the charms of the alluring Lucy. Her auburn hair and soft blue eyes captivated every male to whom she awarded a glance. Women were less enthralled, and some openly gossiped about Lucy’s romantic past.
There was the story of her engagement to the dashing Colonel William Logan Crittendon of Kentucky - the boy rogue who was last, or “goat,” of his West Point Class of 1845 and hero of the Mexican War.
Lucy would have married Crittendon in a heartbeat except for the fact that he became one of General Narcisco Lopez’ filibusterers in an attempt to overthrow Spanish rule in Cuba. When Crittenden was captured and executed, Lucy, age 19, went into mourning at her father’s grand cotton plantation at Marshall, Texas. Lucy wrote a novel about Crittendon and his swashbuckling adventurers which she titled The Free Flag of Cuba (1855).
Another tongue wagged that Lucy’s father took his daughters every year to The Greenbrier at White Sulphur Springs and paraded them every evening in front of the eligible bachelors who frequented the resort.
It was even whispered further that twice widowed Francis Pickens of South Carolina was so smitten by pretty Lucy, who was younger than his own daughters, that he penned ridiculous puppy-love letters to her two and three times a week.
Lucy seldom responded to his advances until she learned that Pickens was to be made Minister to Russia by President Polk. When Pickens was about to depart for St. Petersburg, Russia, Lucy Holcombe accepted his proposal and hastily married her aged suitor.
While in Russia, Lucy became the darling of Czar Alexander II. He covered her in jewels and rich furs, and some at court spread the tale that the Czar was actually the father of Lucy’s only child, the lovely Francis Eugenia Olga Neva Pickens. The infant was forever called Douschka, or “little darling” in Russian. It was the Czar’s pet name for the child. John Edmunds, the biographer of Francis Pickens, does not believe that the Czar fathered the child. Douschka was a legendary beauty around Edgefield and was the “Queen of Hampton’s Red Shirts” in 1876.
The years in Russia nearly bankrupted Francis Pickens as his beautiful wife shopped in all the great fashion houses of Europe. Pickens’ return to SC and his run for governor was made when his personal fortune was collapsing.
Let it be said that Lucy Holcombe Pickens sold many of her Russian jewels to finance a regiment that bore the name Holcombe Legion in her honor. There was romantic fire mingling with patriotic passion in the early days of the Confederacy.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. You can visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com).