Kemble did not publish her account until 1863, long after their divorce in 1849 and after her daughters had reached their majority. According to the historian Catherine Clinton, King Jr.'s granddaughter, Julia King, wrote to a friend in 1930, saying that Kemble had told lies about her grandfather because he refused to return her affections. The historian Bell documented that the marriage of Kemble and Pierce Butler was fraught with conflict by that time, and was undermined by episodes of spousal infidelity. It ended in separation in 1847 and divorce in 1849. But, Kemble's observing that white planters and managers had mixed-race children with slave women was consistent with other reports of the times, such as Mary Chesnut's diary of the Civil War era, and numerous other accounts.