The Leverett Letters: Correspondence of a South Carolina Family, 1851-1868. (Book Reviews).

The Leverett Letters: Correspondence of a South Carolina Family, 1851-1868. Edited by Frances Wallace Taylor, Catherine Taylor Matthews, and J. Tracy Power. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2000. Pp. [x], 543. $49.95, ISBN 1-57003-333-1.)

This selection of 229 letters from the personal collection of Frances Wallace Taylor and one letter from papers in the South Caroliniana Library details the lives of a South Carolina planter family before, during, and after the Civil War. The family consisted of the Reverend Charles Leverett, his wife, Mary Maxcy Leverett, and their nine children, two of whom were adopted nephews. The correspondence covers Charles's career as a clergyman and author, the boys' experiences at college and in Europe, family activities in the army and on the home front during the Civil War, and their efforts to restore their fortunes during Reconstruction.

The Leveretts constantly worried about finances. Many of the early letters allude to the sacrifices made to provide the boys with the education and accoutrements of gentlemen. The war forced the Leveretts to leave their coastal plantation and townhouse and take refuge at "The Farm" near Columbia. Three of the sons enlisted in the C.S.A., and the remaining Leveretts joined the family slaves in raising subsistence crops, tending livestock, and producing homespun goods and other household items.

Family critiques of Confederate personnel echo those in Mary Chesnut's famous Civil War diaries. "Oh that I could lift up my voice and blow a trumpet blast in the ears of the President & Secretary Benjamin.... I am disgusted with men, since this war began," Mary Maxcy Leverett wrote in 1862 (p. 129). Like Mary Chesnut, the Leveretts were eager for the promotion of their loved ones and disappointed when such preferment was not forthcoming. The family was quite conscious of the larger historical context in which they wrote. Charles requested (and received) complete details of military engagements from his sons. Milton Leverett reminded the family to "always put down the whole date of your letter and your name[s] perhaps ought to be in full, but I lay great stress on the date, especially in these times as historical records" (p. 105; emphasis in original).

The correspondence contains considerable material on health and medicine. Edward suffered from a serious lung disease and was prescribed "raw beef & hominy, cod liver oil, bitters, goats milk, rubbing at night with turpentine & morning with flesh brush" (p. 98). Coughs were treated "with Salts, Blue pill Castor oil, and.., mustard plaster" (pp. 57-58), and fevers with quinine. While serving with the army, Charles and Frederic were stricken with "chronic diarrhea" (p. 195)--perhaps a sign of dysentery. Diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, and yellow fever all threatened family and friends. Within a six-year period, the Leveretts lost three children and a son-in-law to illness.

Historians seeking detailed analyses of individuals and issues will be disappointed with the volume. The introduction is quite brief (only four pages), and the contextual framework is provided by short commentaries between letters and an appendix with biographical details of the Leveretts and their contemporaries. But the contents of the correspondence more than compensate for the brevity of the analysis. The Leverett Letters offers a compelling narrative of life in mid-nineteenth-century South Carolina, and the editors should be commended for making them available to a wider audience.