176CIVIL WAR HISTORY two year old Emma Holmes is no Mary Boykin Chestnut. She is less reflective and more prone to making snap decisions, a tendency that afflicted her from an early age. A mentor said of the eightyear oldchild: "On the whole Emma is a good little girl, her chief defect being an inclination to quickness." For example, Emma was quick to claim victory for the South, even at Gettysburg, and as Marszalek conceded, she was "very inaccurate in her presentation of war news." Moreover, the reader may find much of what Emma has to say superficial and boring. Nevertheless, we are indebted to theauthor for presenting to the public a diary that describes in detail the impact of the war on the old Southern elite. Emma Holmes and her aristocratic associates considered themselves the last of a race. "We, the free-bom descendants of the Cavalier," she asked, "to submit to the descendants of the witch burning Puritans, whose God is theAlmightyDollar. Never! I thank GodI am a Southerner and South Carolinian." Despite such pretensions and chauvinism, she faithfully reflected and presented the impact the war and death had on South Carolina's best families: "I sometimes think my journal will be merely a catalogue of deaths, for almost each day brings us intelligence of the loss of some one in whom we feel interested for their own or their family's sake." Emma Holmes ultimately attributed the South's defeat to its' loss of righteousness, and was appalled how Charleston's elite, "the ultra Fashionables . . . seem to have forgotten alike the dead & the living and with the grass scarce green on the graves of their brothers, cousins & other near relatives. . . . gave & went to balls & are now making themselves conspicuous by the extremes of fashion to which they go." The Holmes Diary also sheds light on other important topics, including inflation during the war, the great Charleston fire of 1861, and lastly, the frustrations of an intelligent and unmarried woman living in a male-dominated society. Emma sought a job teaching school "to earn my own livelihood and be independent if possible—to have something to make life worthwhile], for this aimless, useless existence is dreadful to me." Emma Holmes would have appreciated a comment made by one of my Charlestionian colleagues: "If you really want to know what happened to the elite of Charleston during the war, read Emma Holmes's Diary." Edmund L. Drago College of Charleston Shvery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Sfove Narratives. By Paul D. Escort. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Pp. xv, 221. $12.50.) In this slim volume, Paul D. Escott performs a dual service to students of Afro-American slavery. He contributes to our understanding of slavery BOOK REVIEWS177 from the point of view of its victims, the slaves; and he analyzes and evaluates an important, but neglected, body of primary source materials. This study is based on the slave narratives produced from interviews with former slaves conducted by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930's. The author also uses narratives produced by interviewers working under the auspices of Fisk University. Escott subjected these sources to methodology drawn from the traditional canons of history and supplemented with computer technology. His goal was to present a "systematic, not merely impressionistic, analysis of the slavenarratives" (p. 183). The resulting study ranks with the works ofJohn Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Leslie Owens, Herbert G. Gutman, and Albert J. Raboteau in furthering our understanding of the slaves as active participants in the shaping of American history. The narratives as sources present a number of problems to the student of slavery. For example, those interviewed did not constitute a random sample of slaves. Many were too young to have directly experienced the full impact of slavery, a disportionate number of those interviewed had been house servants, and many of interviewers werewhite persons. The author found that some problems were not as serious as anticipated and the others did not "present insuperable difficulties." So, one of his aims in writing this book was to foster "greater use and examination of the slave narratives" (p. 17). He makes convincing arguments in support of his position. The author...