Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography (review)

BOOK REVIEWS373 Studies of relatively minor figures such as Kargé and Krzyzanowski alone will not suffice to relate the immigrant story during America's middle period, but they are an essential foundation for an accurate understanding of the whole. Weaknesses aside, both works are good contributions to our knowledge of the foreign-born experience and should be of interest to Civil War and immigrant scholars and local historians alike. Earl J. Hess Purdue University Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography. By Elisabeth Muhlenfeld. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Pp. xv, 271. $20.00.) She penned the most quoted journal in American history; and while A Diary from Dixie is cited in practically every scholarly volume on the southern Confederacy, diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut herself has long been a figure shrouded in obscurity. No longer does such neglect exist. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, a doctoral graduate of the University of South Carolina, has produced so solid a study that it is not only the first but in all likelihood the final biography of Mrs. Chesnut. Mary Miller was born in 1823 amid the kind of South Carolina aristocracy that Hollywood exploits. Much of her education came at an exclusive French finishing school in Charleston. At seventeen she became the wife of a highly cultured, highly capable attorney, James Chesnut, Jr. Not only was he formal and stiff; he was unusually tall and thus towered over his wife, who was barely five feet in height. Chesnut was a conservative voice in both the antebellum South and the U.S. Senate. He and his wife had a comfortable marriage. Together they were an engaging couple who were mainstays in high society affairs. Southern secession in 1860-61 altered their lives to the extent that Richmond rather than Washington became Mrs. Chesnut's center of activity. She "regarded herself as superior to most people she knew" (p. 102), but she also had the ability to move easily in the upper echelons of Confederate life. Muhlenfeld presents this picture of Mrs. Chesnut in 1861: "Although she was neither young nor beautiful at thirty-eight, her charm, her intelligence, the irreverent delight she took in all the foibles of mankind had always drawn people to her, and she enjoyed a reputation wherever she went as a brilliant conversationalist, a woman of 'literary' leanings, a lady whose drawing room was likely to hold attractive and important people" (p. 4). Her wartime activities live in the diary that she maintained. It is a revealing document. It could be very snippy—as, for example, Mrs. Chesnut's observation that army commander Braxton Bragg "always stops to quarrel with his generals." On the other hand, she candidly confessed that on her first visit to Chimborazo Hospital she fainted at the sight of such mass suffering. In its original form the diary was crypti- 374CIVIL WAR HISTORY cally written, packed with names and brief phrases written hastily between social engagements. In the postwar years, living comfortably but not lavishly in South Carolina, Mrs. Chesnut began transforming the journal into book form. She never completed the task. Ill health, a shrinking family, and a deepening loneliness hampered her final years. It would remain for others to finish what she began. This biography gives equal and deserved attention to Mrs. Chesnut and her diary. The biography is exhaustively researched; the narrative is written in a chatty style that the South Carolina diarist would have loved. Any reputable Civil War library has at least one edition oíA Diary from Dixie in its collection. The Muhlenfeld study is a natural and necessary companion volume. James I. Robertson, Jr. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University COMMUNICATIONS To the Editor of Civil War History: During the past few years, problems impacting on Civil War historic sites have seemed to multiply rapidly. Or perhaps, thedesecration of the objectionable observation tower at the Gettysburg battlefield just brought the problem to the forefront of our attention. Our organization has been deeply involved in these recent years in combating these threats to our Civil War heritage. We assisted in the project that blocked the theme park on the boundaries of Manassas National Battlefield Park, and carried that project onward to the...