Description:

John Cowart edited this hitherto unpublished diary of a Confederate soldier. John Thomas Whatley’s diary has been hidden away for almost 150 years and is here presented for the first time. Whatley, of Coweta County, Georgia, wrote in a bound farmer’s ledger from March 2, 1862, till November 27, 1864. 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 diary portion of 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.