Chesnut is today known chiefly for her firsthand account of life in the Confederate States of America, and her drawing room was a social center for many of the most prominent political and military figures in the Confederacy. Muhlenfeld traces her life in South Carolina as the daughter of a governor and United States senator, through her marriage to a wealthy South Carolina planter, and into the later years of her life, when Chesnut did her most serious writing and her major works.