J. Franklin Dyer: The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon (review)

This book presents a highly placed medical officer's first-hand account of what he saw and experienced in three years of war. Jonah Franklin Dyer (1826-79), a native of Eastport, Maine, received his medical degree from Bowdoin College in 1849, practiced medicine in Essex County, Massachusetts, and married Maria Davis in 1854. He was mustered into the 19th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on 3 August 1861 as an assistant surgeon with the rank of second lieutenant. He rose to surgeon-in-chief of the 2d Division of the 2d Corps with the rank of major, but, ineligible for further promotion and unable to get a pay raise, he chose not to reenlist. Mustered out on 28 August 1864, he returned home, rebuilt his medical practice, became active in Republican politics, and was elected mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, just before his death.

Dyer's text is a wealth of primary source material for battlefield impressions as well as medical and surgical conditions at Ball's Bluff, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Mine Run, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the Crater. His letters offer personal reflections on the characters of Generals McClellan, Burnside, Gibbon, Sedgwick, Hooker, Howard, Couch, Hancock, Meade, and Grant. Like most well-educated medical men of the time (and not all were well-educated), he was a skilled observer, a severe critic, and a fine prose stylist.

The word "journal" in the title refers to Dyer's own compilation of extracts from letters he wrote to his wife from 19 August 1861 to 25 August 1864, together with a few other letters and bits of narrative. He finished the work in August 1866. His beautifully written 365-page leather bound manuscript volume and accompanying letters and artifacts are still owned by his descendants.

Whenever one reads Civil War letters, one is struck by the difference between them and World War II V-Mail. The uncensored testimony of Union and Confederate soldiers at the front freezes and encapsulates the full poignancy and impact of each immediate situation, but V-Mail, censored almost to the point of meaninglessness, conveys none of that direct feeling. Dyer's letters contain candid and sometimes detailed descriptions of troop movements, standing orders, punishments, and even soldiers murdering their commanding officers (called "fragging" in Vietnam era slang). World War II censors would not have allowed any of that to pass by.

Chesson's scholarship is impeccable. His apparatus includes a biographical introduction, an explanation of editorial policy, a biographical epilogue, sixty-five pages of editor's notes, and an uncommonly effective 19-page index. The text of the journal itself runs to 202 pages, not counting Dyer's four appendixes, i.e., a letter to Henry Kemble Oliver, six letters to Maria about Gettysburg, a New York Times clipping about Gibbon's division at Gettysburg, and a roster of medical officers under Dyer's command in May 1864.