The Previously Unpublished Civil War Diary of John Thomas Whatley, C.S.A.

Little Susie came home from school saying, "Mama, guess what? In school we learned how to make babies today."

The mother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool.

"That's interesting," she said, "How do you make babies?"

"It's simple," replied Susie, "You just change the Y to an I and add ES”.

Oh the joys of grammar!

You guessed it — I’m spending the day proofreading again.

Oh the thrills and excitement!

Spelling. Punctuation. Subject/verb agreement. All the reasons I became a writer!

Surges of creativity sweep through my veins as I edit the text of Rebel Yell: The Civil War Diary Of John Thomas Whatley, CSA, — a book I hope to have published online by the end of this week.

How did a nice guy like me get entangled in such a project? After all, Whatley’s diary sat around in a box unpublished for 150 years, how did I happen to get involved?

The introduction I wrote for the diary explains:

Tracing A Promise:
An editorial note

In 1952 Mrs. Florence Pagnini O’Flynn, of Jacksonville, Florida, bought a box of books. In this box she discovered a small ledger, the kind farmers once used to keep running accounts of their expenses.

The ledger had a worn, faded brown cover. The stationer who printed the pages ruled lines, marked columns, and stamped consecutive page numbers at the top of each leaf. The pages measured five inches wide by eight inches tall.

Confederate soldier John Thomas Whatley of Coweta County, Georgia, used this farmer’s ledger as his diary from March 2, 1862, till November 27, 1864.

Whatley recorded his daily experiences in the first pages of the diary; he used the back pages to jot down lines of poetry and historical facts he wished to remember.

In neat Spencerian script Whatley’s diary opens with his accounts while preparing for the defense of Savannah, Georgia; most of the diary’s pages record events there. The text ends with his serving near Petersburg, Virginia. Apparently, much of this time he served with General William J. Hardee’s cavalry.

The Yankees killed Whatley at Bentonville, North Carolina, on April 14, 1865 — the same day President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Attorney John Merrett, who transcribed the text, said, “The diary opens with an extremely poetic, quite well written, series of entries detailing the life of a garrison recruit. Later entries however, have a deeply sobered tone. With his naiveté worn away by disease and battlefield experiences, Whatley describes the feelings of a veteran in somber hues rather than in the greens and golds of his early entries. The process implicit in the change in tone is no less fascinating than the facts and words by which it is conveyed… Whatley describes the common experience of soldiers with uncommon depth.”

This diary captivated Mrs. O’Flynn.

For years she kept it locked in a safe deposit box to protect it. She launched a campaign to recruit help in publishing the diary. She enlisted many, many volunteers to help her in this task. She contacted officials of the National Park Service, various historical societies, genealogical groups, and a whisky distiller as she sought aid in publishing the diary.

Included in the names I find in the Whatley file folder are attorney John Merrett, historian Smith Scott, genealogist Walter Stovall, novelist Eugenia Price, and historian and Congressman Charles Bennett. All these people contributed time, talent and energy to Mrs. O’Flynn’s project. They exercised great patience and deserve great thanks.

However, volunteers involved in the project labored under an odd constraint: as Mrs. O’Flynn grew older, she came to believe that the ghost of John Whatley issued her specific instructions about the publication of his diary. Mrs. O’Flynn was adamant about following the envisioned instructions, but in 1987, her health failed and she abandoned the project — almost.

By then she was in her 70s and well-known as a political activist. She appealed to Congressman Charles Bennett again for help publishing.

Congressman Bennett authored a number of books on the history of Florida. I had written a few newspaper and magazine articles on Jacksonville history which he had read. One Sunday afternoon he called me and asked if I’d talk with Mrs. O”Flynn about the diary.

I found the old lady in poor health yet full of determination to publish the diary exactly, precisely, without exception, as the ghost she saw dictated.

While John Whatley was a fine writer, his ghost seemed to know little about the constraints of publishing.

I could not put my life and work on indefinite hold to get enmeshed in Mrs. O’Flynn’s project according to her rigorous specifications.

She did not take readily to editorial suggestions. Once when she was sick and bed-ridden, as my wife and daughter tended her, she got so angry that she threw a bowl of hot soup in my face when I suggested a way to treat the text.

Yet, the sheer force of Mrs. O’Flynn’s personality extracted a promise from me. I promised her that if it were ever in my power to see John Whatley’s diary into print, that I would do it.

She let me examine the original autograph and gave me a Xerox copy of a diary transcript along with a file folder full of bits and pieces of research various people had done over the years.

I stuck all these papers away in a file drawer for years; I encountered them again recently in an office cleanup and I remembered my promise to Florence.

This present book fulfills that promise to the best of my ability.

I have no idea what happened to the original autograph of the diary upon Mrs. O”Flynn’s death several years ago.

Notes I added to this text are clearly marked. I’ve inserted appropriate drawings and photographs from the Library of Congress’ on-line collection in places related to events Whatley mentions.

Since Whatley confined each day’s entry to a single page, I have broken the text into reasonable paragraphs; but I have retained his abbreviations, spellings, capitalization, and other punctuation.

And — except for keeping Mrs. O’Flynn’s title, Rebel Yell — I pay no attention whatsoever to the instructions and directions she claimed John Whatley’s ghost had given her.

If Florence Pagnini O’Flynn is out there somewhere reading this — here’s the book I promised. … and, it’s ok about the soup.

— John W. Cowart
Jacksonville, Fla.
September, 2006