Previously misplaced artifacts at South Caroliniana library tell history
Recently recovered Civil War photos of Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Gen. James Longstreet, Fort Sumter Commander Robert Anderson and other prominent figures are now available for public viewing at the South Caroliniana Library on the Horseshoe.
Diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, late wife of Confederate Brigadier Gen. James Chesnut Jr., collected more than 200 photos while writing about the war.
Her work has been highly praised and republished multiple times over the years. One of the publications, from C. Vann Woodward, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
Mary Boykin Chesnut’s great-great grandniece Martha Daniels of Mulberry Plantation, Camden, S.C., described Chesnut as a lady who had the courage and the realistic ability to look at life and do what needed to be done.
“She came through a great period of American tragedy, and she was able to make the transformation into the new world,” Daniels said. “She was a modern writer. She was a modern thinker. She said slavery is a wrong iniquity, a monstrous system. How many other people said that in that era?”
Even though Chesnut’s family owned slaves, she developed a close friendship with one of them named Molly who stayed with Chesnut even after the war, said Julia A. Stern, English and American studies professor from Northwestern University.
Daniel said that Chesnut was fascinated by the whole panorama of the Civil War and that she wanted to get her hands on as many pictures as she could.
“She didn’t just write about the Confederate generals and ‘rah-rah-rah the Confederacy.’ She collected pictures of Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionists,” Daniels said.
When Chesnut died in 1886, the diaries went to one branch of the family, who eventually gave them to the South Caroliniana Library. Her photographs went to a niece in Baltimore. But when she died in 1931, they disappeared.
For years people read Chesnut’s diary, but aside from the famous people, they didn’t know what the people in the writings looked like, Daniels said.
“It’s perfectly clear to us that she was such a visual person and that she had always meant the two to be together — the pictures and the words,” Daniels said.
Chesnut’s family eventually found the photos in 2007, preparing to be auctioned off at the Heritage Auction Galleries in Texas. They asked all the libraries and museums in South Carolina not to bid against them.
“We promised we’d do the right thing, which is we weren’t just going to bring them home; we were going to share them and reunite them with the diaries,” Daniels said.
The estimated price of the photo album was originally between $125,000 and $375,000, but the Chesnuts got lucky. They ended up reclaiming their late relative’s work for just $77,675. Daniels was thrilled and laughing when they got it.
“It was just a wonderful day,” she said.
After getting the photos back, Daniels spent three years researching all of the photographed figures to compile “Mary Chesnut’s Illustrated Diary,” a two-book volume set of Chesnut’s work that compiles copies of the photo album and her diaries.
These characters show up in Chesnut’s revised works or play cameo roles so the photo album can illustrate the revised narrative, said Stern, who helped Daniels with the project.
“It brings alive, in visual form — some of the richness that’s just in writing,” she said.
The family then gave the photos to the university.
“It was a good day at the auction,” said Henry Fulmer, the library’s manuscripts curator. It was a very significant gift for the university, he added.
“It’s a compelling part of American history,” Fulmer said.
The photographs and diaries will be on exhibit from now until Jan. 28.