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enough to make his way in and out of the main streets as he pleased (though he would never take the oath). Then, just when Colonel Higginson decided to raid the interior, higher-ups suddenly ordered the Union regiments out of Jacksonville, probably because white troops were needed in Charleston and the black regiments could not sustain the Florida operation alone. Most observers agreed that it was the white soldiers who set fire to the city, just before leaving. Some said that black men helped out or at least watched with satisfaction as the spring breezes fanned the flames. When the vessels left the docks, a good third of Jacksonville was burning. Fire consumed Dorman’s entire home and law office, scorching even his fences and shrubbery. Sure that the Union forces had invaded his property before they set the building aflame, Dorman declared his losses in a claim filed with the Confederate government: more than sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of property, either stolen or burned. In the same distinctively flat and wide handwriting found in his journals, Dorman itemized everything, from furniture, firearms, and fishing equipment to a gold watch, a chess set, and a silk umbrella—even a hat brush and a dog whistle. Most egregious of all was the destruction of his nearly four-hundred-volume law library. 10
    Union forces, including the black men of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, returned to occupy Jacksonville in early 1864, and this time theystayed. One soldier described the city as “heaps of ashes.” Another saw former slaves meeting hungry former mistresses in the sutler stores and noted the once grand homes of white people serving as hospitals for his comrades. In early April, President Lincoln conveyed his pleasure to the abolitionist general David Hunter. “I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville,” he wrote. “It is important to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in precisely the same proportion it is important to us that it
shall
.” Still, Rodney Dorman declined to leave, for Jacksonville was the only home he knew. Just to walk in and out of town, he now needed a pass, which he felt sure Union officials would deny him in light of his refusal to take the oath. But Dorman managed to exempt himself from declaring allegiance to the United States by having someone vouch for him—probably his brother, the better-known lawyer Orloff Dorman, who had moved from New England to Chicago to Saint Augustine. Orloff, who had remained a Unionist and served as a paymaster for the Union army in the Department of the South (the Civil War did indeed pit brother against brother), likely assured the occupying authorities that Rodney generally minded his own business. 11

    Newly free African Americans in Jacksonville, Florida, pose in front of the building appropriated as the Union Provost Marshal’s office, in 1864. The presence of freedpeople and Union army soldiers, especially black soldiers, continually infuriated Rodney Dorman.
Courtesy of Jacksonville Historical Society, with assistance of Dr. Daniel R. Schafer
.
    By the time the Confederacy surrendered, Rodney Dorman lived a mostly isolated life. Though he recorded occasional interactions with like-minded locals, his journal was his steadiest companion. The first extant tome (the volume covering 1862 and 1863 was destroyed in the fire) opens in 1864, and six more take him through 1886. Each notebook, free of printed dates, contains hundreds of pages of writing. The third and fourth volumes comprise the year 1865 and run nearly seven hundred pages apiece. Dorman later entitled his wartime journals “Memoranda of Events that transpired at Jacksonville, Florida, & in its vicinity; with some remarks & comments thereon,” the last phrase referring to the fact that he inserted additional commentary when he copied them over in the postwar years. Dorman penned lengthy meditations on legal and