Communications

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 point of assisting in the passage of national legislation to protect and preserve the boundaries of Manassas. We have also been actively involved in projects to help Chickamauga & Chattanooga NMP, Stones River NB, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP, Gettysburg NMP, the Beauvoir Shrine (last home of Jefferson Davis), Prairie Grove (AR) State Battlefield Park, and various other Civil War historic sites. But more needs to be done. Everyone interested in Civil War history should write his or her U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator to express support for historic preservation with respect to Civil War sites. If there are any Civil War sites in their state, they should write state legislators, state parks agencies, and local and county officials, voicing this same concern and support for Civil War historic site preservation. communications375 We have been cited in the U.S. Congress, and by Civil War Times Illustrated, as one of the leading organizations in the area of Civil War historic preservation, and we invite your readers to join with us in our efforts. A letter to us at P.O. Box 7388K, Little Rock, Arkansas 72217, will bring full information on our efforts and how they can help. Thank you for this opportunity to present this important message to your readers. We Who Study Must Also Strive To Save! Jerry L. Russell, National Chairman Civil War Round Table Associates Little Rock, Arkansas To the Editor of Civil War History: A man from Mars who read Ludwell Johnson's "Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln as War Presidents: Nothing Succeeds Like Success" in the March 1981 issue would certainly be convinced that Davis was incomparably superior, so forcefully is logic applied to the facts as recited. With qualifications, of course, if he happened to read also the article printed so unfortunately (?) coincidentally in the same issue: Richard M. McMurry's "The Enemy at Richmond: Joseph E. Johnston and the Confederate Government." Flaws, however, soon become apparent to readers with ordinary knowledge gained elsewhere of the Civil War. To begin with, a tip-off on the author's bias is given by his frequent sneers at the North, begun most distastefully with his quotation of "with malice toward none, with charity for all . . ." with immediate contradiction from his own exhibits of malice. The writer's thesis appears superficially logical because of its extreme oversimplification. So much has been left out. To an extent it is like comparing Sparta with Athens. Ignored completely is the vast difference in the natures of the two governments: one party in the Confederacy (if I'm wrong, what were the names of its two parties, and who were Davis' duly nominated opponents?) and a two-party government in the Union run democratically through the nation's greatest war with minimum interference with citizens' rights. The author can sneer at the "political...