"Jottings From Dixie": The Civil War Dispatches of Sergeant Major Stephen F. Fleharty, U.S.A. (review)

68CIVIL WAR HISTORY especially while attending Masonic meetings where he and his Union brethren "were treated first rate" and nothing was said about the war. Ayling returned to civiUan life in 1866, when his diary ends. But the military life beckoned. He joined the New Hampshire National Guard in 1877, which he later commanded, and compiled the Register ofthe Soldiers and Sailors ofNew Hampshire in the War ofthe Rebellion (1895). He also gathered wartime memorabilia in scrapbooks , and in 1915, "at the urgent request" of his family, transcribed his wartime diaries, which have since been lost. Editor Herberger worked from the transcription and otherAyling materials to give us this "diary" as AyUng remembered the war and hoped to be remembered as part of it. The extent to which AyUng's postwar life and family audience informed his memory ofthe war and affected his transcription is not known. We are left with a diary/memoir hardly remarkable in its insights or introspection but very readable in its prose. Randall M. Miller Saint Joseph's University "Jottings From Dixie ": The Civil War Dispatches ofSergeant Major Stephen F Fleharty, U.S.A. Edited by Philip J. Reyburn and Terry L. Wilson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii, 262. $29.95.) As a member of the 102nd Illinois Infantry, Stephen F. Fleharty compiled a chronicle of his regiment's Civil War service by authoring fifty-five soldiercorrespondent letters for two newspapers in Rock Island, IlUnois. The letters began in August 1862, following the organization of the 102nd regiment, and continued until the capture of Atlanta in September 1864. The active service impressions voiced by this Illinois soldier-correspondent formed the foundation of a regimental history he wrote after the titanic struggle concluded in 1865. In this new book, Philip J. Reyburn and Terry L. Wilson have done a skillful job ofediting the original Fleharty newspaper dispatches and providing an informative introduction. Before the war, Fleharty worked as a printer in Galesburg, Illinois, thus the role as a soldier-correspondent for the 102nd Illinois fit him well. The regiment began its ware service in the fall of 1 862 by participating int he pursuit ofBraxton Bragg's army in Kentucky, but it was not engaged at the battle of Perryville. The unit was then posted to a number of garrison assignments at vital railroad installations and towns in Middle Tennessee until the spring of 1864. Finally, attached to the 20th Corps oftheArmy ofthe Cumberland, Sgt. Maj. Stephen F. Fleharty and the 102nd Illinois experienced the face of battle in the opening maneuvers of the Atlanta campaign in north Georgia. In the engagement at Resaca, the regiment "saw the elephant" and recorded its costliest battle losses for the war. From this initial combat, the organization actively campaigned throughout the Federal drive to Atlanta. In a dispatch headlined "North Bank of BOOK REVIEWS69 the Chattahoochie [sic] River, September 4, 1864" (245), Fleharty announces the fall ofthe Southern bastion to the victorious national armies commanded by William T. Sherman. Then quite abruptly, with the apparent close of the campaign , he concluded his series of letters and stopped writing to the newspapers. Fleharty informed his readers that his reasons to discontinue his war dispatches were "weighty and most decidedly confidential" (246). The decision to quit sending newspaper dispatches, however, did not end Fleharty's war experiences, for he continued to serve faithfully to the conclusion of the war, marching with Sherman to the Sea and in the advance through the Carolinas. A number of the impressions Fleharty recorded about the final western campaigns, provided in a number of personal letters, are incorporated by the editors in their detailed and generous introduction. Jottings From Dixie provides a welcome study of Fleharty's entire life— from prewar through postwar experiences. The press dispatches illustrate a remarkably open and perceptive mind. Beyond thoughtful accounts ofregimental activities, Fleharty often informed his readers about the natural history and historic sites of the South—such as a personal investigation of the Stones River battlefield—he took the opportunity to visit when off duty. Extremely Uterate, the descriptions arid insights into soldiering during the turbulent years of civil war are clearly written and...