An observant clerk opined on Lee, slavery and strategy.
A deep chasm runs through Civil War literature, separating military and nonmilitary topics. Historians interested in the home front too often explore only politics, society, civilian morale and the economics of the war, and scarcely offer a nod toward the campaigning of massive armies. In many such works it’s possible to lose track of the fact that the largest war in American history was in progress. Similarly, historians interested in strategic and tactical movements often ignore the broader political and social context within which armies maneuvered and fought. Both approaches deny readers an appreciation of the innumerable ways in which the home front and the battlefield intersected. These intersections were especially crucial in a conflict between two democracies, wherein the respective peoples let their political and military leaders know what they expected.
Letters and diaries written by participants highlight the reciprocal impact of events on the home front and the battlefield—how civilian morale rose and fell in response to victories and defeats, for example, and how political imperatives shaped strategic planning. No published primary source offers better insights into this phenomenon than John Beauchamp Jones’ A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital. Published in Philadelphia in 1866 by J.B. Lippincott, its two substantial volumes offer nearly 900 pages of reporting and commentary on the war through the eyes of a man well positioned near the seat of Confederate government. Although frequently cited over the years, Jones’ diary never has been fully exploited, no doubt in part because the absence of an index in the original edition militated against easy access to its many riches. Unsatisfactory two-volume reprints in 1938 and 1982 failed to provide careful annotation and a full index, and a one-volume abridged version edited by Earl Schenck Miers in 1958 deleted so much useful material as to seriously compromise the diary’s integrity. Despite these drawbacks, Jones’ diary merits the attention of all serious students of the war because of the light it sheds on important questions, as well as life in Richmond.
Jones’ discussion of civilian attitudes toward Confederate military strategy illustrates the diary’s value. Historians have expended great effort debating whether the Confederacy should have pursued a more rigorously defensive strategy in order to conserve precious manpower. Robert E. Lee has come in for particularly harsh criticism from scholars such as J.F.C. Fuller, Thomas L. Connelly and Alan T. Nolan (and later writers who parroted those men’s arguments) because his offensive tactics resulted in horrendous casualties. Too often ignored in this debate are civilian expectations in the Confederacy. What kind of military action did the people want? What effect did offensive and defensive operations have on civilian morale?
Jones’ diary makes clear how popular morale often sagged when the people perceived that their armies stood on the defensive everywhere. In late June 1862, to name a crucial instance, Jones described widespread concern that Richmond would be besieged (every major siege of the war, it is worth noting, ended in Confederate disaster—though this was not apparent in the early summer of 1862): “[O]ur people are beginning to fear there will be no more fighting around Richmond until McClellan digs his way to it. The moment fighting ceases, our people have fits of gloom and despondency; but when they snuff battle in the breeze, they are animated with confidence.” Even Lee’s aggressive, and exceedingly bloody, triumph during the Seven Days’ failed to satisfy many Confederates. “Lee does not follow up his blows on the whipped enemy,” Jones observed three days after the Battle of Malvern Hill.
Jones included in his diary a vast amount of useful information and opinion about an astonishing range of events and issues. Early in April 1863, he wrote about the famous bread riots in Richmond. When the commotion began, one of the women in the mob—“seemingly emaciated, but yet with a smile”— told Jones the rioters sought only “to find something to eat.” Noted Jones, “I could not, for the life of me, refrain from expressing the hope that they might be successful.” Just two days later, however, his last entry on the topic repeated a rumor “that the riot was a premeditated affair, stimulated from the North, and executed through the instrumentality of emissaries.”
Jones accorded a good deal of attention to the war’s impact on slavery—and especially to how Union military forces threatened to disrupt Confederate control over black people. In late March 1863, for example, he wrote that “A very large number of slaves, said to be nearly 40,000, have been collected by the enemy…for the purpose, it is supposed, of co-operating with Hooker’s army in the next campaign to capture Richmond.” In January 1865, as Confederates debated whether to arm some slaves in the face of increasing Federal pressure, Jones reacted strongly to a comment that General Lee “was always a thorough emancipationist.” Were that true about Lee, thought Jones (it was not true, I hasten to add), “and if it were generally known…how soon would his great popularity vanish like the mist of the morning!” This passage appears in the diary just a bit more than three weeks after Jones commented that most Confederates, having concluded Jefferson Davis was inadequate to the task of winning independence, “desire to see Gen. Lee at the head of affairs.” Even Lee’s towering reputation, the diary thus suggests, was subject to damage from the rip currents generated by discussions relating to slavery.
On April 17, 1865, Jones and his family prepared to leave Federal-occupied Richmond. “I never swore allegiance to the Confederate States Government,” he wrote, “but was true to it.” The pages of A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary highlight that loyalty, and its pages introduce readers to a very perceptive witness.
Originally published in the June 2014 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
