London, Saturday, July 14, 1866
Literature
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A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital. By J. B. Jones, Clerk in the War Department of the Confederate States Government. 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Lippincott & Co., London, Trübner & Co.)
After the shoals of worthless books about the American war that have appeared during the last five years, it is a pleasure to open a thoroughly entertaining and, in some respects, very instructive work on a subject that has occasioned so much poor and profitless writing. This Diary is no work of fancy, but a genuine record of four years labour and sad experience, by a man who, from April, 1861, until the fall of Richmond in April, 1865, lived in the highest grade of the official world of the Confederate States—working at the same desk with such men as Major Tyler and Mr. Benjamin; holding constant intercourse with Mr. Jefferson Davis and the members of his cabinet; watching with critical eye the struggles of parties and the sufferings of the multitude; and recording, with a view to future publication, the gossip of cliques, the rumours of offices, and the trials of a capital—in which famine was doing insidious work at a date when the Confederate sympathizers in London were under the impression that their friends in Richmond were abundantly provided with the necessaries of life. Nor was Mr. Jones less fitted by ability than by position to become the diarist of life at the seat of the Confederate Government. A journalist and writer of books, who had steadily advocated the policy of the slave-owners, the fugitive editor of the Southern Monitor (Philadelphia) possessed the literary qualifications for the task which he undertook as soon as the temporary rupture of the Union had been effected.
Having remained at Philadelphia until his safety required instant flight, he quitted the officce of the Monitor not many days before it was visited by a mob, the leader of which had provided himself with a hempen cravat2 for the proprietor of the unpopular journal. Making his first entry in the published Diary on the eve of his departure from his home, wife and children, he wrote, “But I must leave my papers, the accumulation of twenty-five years, comprising thousands of letters from predestined rebels. My wife opposes my suggestion that they be burned. Among them are some of the veto messages of President Tyler, and many letters from him, Governor Wise, &c. With the latter I had a correspondence in 1856, showing that this blow would probably have been struck then, if Fremont had been elected.” A week later he was staying at the Exchange Hotel, where he learned that his place of business at Philadelphia had been sacked by a furious multitude, and that the North was already bestirring itself to preserve the Constitution. To his mind every movement in the loyal states indicated a determination to fight vigorously and without delay; but, strange to say, the Confederate leaders, with whom he was in confidential communication, would not take his view of the crisis. “The greatest statesmen of the South,” he entered in his Diary under date April 22, “have no conception of the real purposes of the men now in power in the United States. They cannot be made to believe that the Government at Washington are going to wage war immediately. But when I placed the President’s proclamation in his (i. e. Gov. Wise’s) hand, he read it with deep emotion, and uttered a fierce ‘Hah!’ Nevertheless, when I told him that these 70,000 were designed to be merely the videttes and outposts of an army of 700,000, he was quite incredulous.” Misunderstanding the North, the Southern chiefs were in their turn equally misunderstood by the Lincoln cabinet, who naturally inferred that the cotton-planters would not resist the vigorous coercion for which they were making no adequate preparation. Whilst the seceders thought that secession would involve only a trifling conflict, it was natural in Mr. Seward to think that ninety days would see the end of their rebellion. It was not long before each party saw its enemy in another light.
To the diarist it appeared that at the outset of the struggle even Mr. Davis was not prepared for a long war. “I told him,” records the ex-editor, at his first interview with the Confederate President, on the 17th of May, “I wanted employment with my pen, perhaps only temporary employment. I thought the correspondence of the Secretary of War would increase in volume, and another assistant besides Major Tyler would be required in his office. He smiled and shook his head, saying that such work would be only temporary indeed; which I construed to mean that even he did not then suppose the war was to assume colossal proportions.” But though the President did not foresee how much labour would devolve upon his War Offïce, he appointed Mr. Jones to the department with the modest salary of 1,200 dollars. Three days later, having made the acquaintance of Mr. Benjamin, who has recently sought refuge in Lincoln’s Inn, the diarist observes, “Mr. Benjamin is, of course, a Jew, of French lineage, born, I believe, in Louisiana, a lawyer and politician. His age may be sixty, and yet one might suppose him to be less than forty. . . . Upon his lip there seems to bask an eternal smile; but if it be studied, it is not a smile—yet it bears no unpleasing aspect.” Soon the war clerk learned to distrust this smiling Hebrew; and none of his sentences are more pungent with personal animosity than some of those which relate to the War Secretary. Towards the close of his chronicles he observes, under date March 9th, 1865, “I saw Mr. Benjamin to–day without his usual smile. He is not at ease. The country demands a change of men in the cabinet, and he is the most obnoxious of all;” and after the lapse of another week he records, “One reason alleged for the refusal of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, is the continuance of Mr. Benjamin in the cabinet.” But at this period of Mr. Benjamin’s extreme unpopularity the Southern chivalry had grown thoroughly sick of the rebellion, and cordially hostile to its original promoters. For many months the popular detestation of Mr. Davis had been so virulent that his assassination would have occasioned neither surprise nor regret to some of his subordinates. Nearly two years earlier his death was wished for by some of his officers, who are thus alluded to: “April 22nd, 1863.—The President is reported to be very ill to-day—dangerously ill—with inflammation of the throat, &c. While this is a source of grief to nearly all, it is the subject of secret joy to others. I am sure I have seen some officers of rank to-day, not fighting officers, who sincerely hope the President will not recover. He has his faults, but upon the whole is, no doubt, well qualified for the position he occupies. I trust he will recover.” As the desperate game approached its end, this hatred of their chief became more general and intense amongst all classes of Secessia, and the ladies assembled in Richmond found a characteristic reason for disliking his wife. On the 19th of March, 1865, the diarist remarks, “Mrs. Davis has become unpopular with the ladies belonging to the old families. Her father, Mr. Howell, it is said, was of low origin, and this is quite enough to disgust others of ‘high birth,’ but yet occupying less exalted positions.”
The variations of Southern feeling towards England are carefully recorded by the war clerk; and one of his passages respecting this country will not tend to diminish our satisfaction with the policy which we maintained in spite of transient irritations and the inflammatory agitation of Confederate partisans. “It is,” writes Mr. Jones, on the 23rd of December, 1861, “with much apprehension that I see something like a general relaxation of preparation to hurl hack the invader. It seems as if the Government were waiting for England to do it; and after all, the capture 0f Slidell and Mason may be the very worst thing that could have happened. Mr. Benjamin, I learn, feels very confident that a rupture between the United States and Great Britain is inevitable. War with England is not to be thought of by Mr. Seward at this juncture, and he will not have it. And we should not rely on the happening of any such contingency. Some of our officials go so far as to hint that in the event of a war between the United States and Great Britain, and our recognition by the former, it might be good policy for us to stand neutral. The war would certainly be waged on our account, and it would not be consistent with Southern honour and chivalry to retire from the field and leave the friend who interfered in our behalf to fight it out alone.” Had a rupture between England and the States taken place, we should have concurred with Mr. Jones on this delicate question of national honour; but since the South was fortunately never called upon to decide as to this matter between the promptings of the basest selfishness and the dictates of honour, we will waste no words upon the chivalrous officials who hinted that in case England was foolish enough to help the Confederacy, she should be left to fight it out alone with President Lincoln. Mr. Seward’s concession to the legitimate demands of Great Britain occasioned deep chagrin in the Richmond War Office; and, despairing of assistance from our Government, official chivalry began to speak and write saucily about the perfidy and cowardice of the old country:—“A Mr. Bunch, British Consul,” writes the war clerk, “has written an impudent letter to the department, alleging that an Irishman, unnaturalized, is forcibly detained in one of our camps. He says his letters have not been answered, which was great discourtesy, and he means to inform Lord John Russell of it. This letter was replied to in rather scathing terms, as the Irish man had enlisted and then deserted. Besides, we are out of humour with England now, and court a French alliance.” For the disappointment caused by the English Government, the Confederates found an inadequate solace in the overtures of London tradesmen. On the Christ mas Eve of ’62 the diarist recorded :—“A Mr. Hart, agent for S. Isaac Campbell & Co., London, proposes to clothe and equip 100,000 men for us, and to receive certificates for specific amounts of cotton. This same house has, on this, it is said, advanced as much as 2,000,000 dollars on our account. This looks cheering. We have credit abroad. But they are Jews.” Succeeding no better in her attempts to wheedle France than she had succeeded in her endeavours to draw England into the quarrel, the Confederacy began to rage furiously, and even to long for reconstruction of the Union, in order that the combined armies of North and South might forthwith humiliate the two European powers which had courteously declined to take any part in the War of Slavery. “Files of papers from Europe,” observed the war clerk on July 15, ’63, “show that Mr. Roebuck and other members of parliament, as well as the papers, are again agitating the question of recognition. We shall soon ascertain the real intention of France and England. If they truly desire our success, and apprehend danger from the United States in the event of a reconstruction of the Union, they will manifest their purposes when the news of our recent calamities shall be transported across the ocean. And if such a thing as reconstruction were possible, and were accomplished (in such a manner and on such terms as would not appear degrading to the Southern people), then, indeed, well might both France and England tremble; the United States would have millions of soldiers, and the Southern people would not owe either of them a debt of gratitude.” Brave words these from a combination of unrecognized States, on the point of losing everything for which they had combined!
The war had not lasted many months before the Southern chiefs, exhibited in their countenances the trouble that gnawed their hearts; and it was whispered that, under the pressure of adversity, President Davis had learnt his need of divine assistance, and meant to turn religious, in the hope of winning recognition from a higher power than France or England. “The President is thin and haggard,” says the Diary, April 18, 1862; “and it has been whispered in the street that he will immediately be baptized and confirmed. I hope so, because it may place a great gulf between him and the descendant of those who crucified the Saviour. (This touch for the smiling Mr. Benjamin ). Nevertheless, some of his enemies allege that professions of Christianity have sometimes been the premeditated accompaniments of usurpations. It was so with Cromwell and with Richard the Third. Who does not remember the scene in Shakspeare, where Richard appears on the balcony, with Prayer book in hand, and a priest on either side?” But neither baptism nor confirmation could replenish the empty exchequer of the South. The military successes which dazzled and captivated many thoughtless spectators on this side the Atlantic did not conceal from the
Southerners the desperate state of their affairs; and at Richmond, where every blow to their cause was known immediately and felt acutely, public opinion was made up of suspicion, despondency, and gloomy wrath. As the hopelessness of the struggle became more and more manifest, Southern chivalry became less and less willing to fight. On the 12th of September, 1864, the diarist records, “Over 100,000 landed proprietors, and most of the slave owners, are now out of the ranks, and soon, I fear, we shall have an army that will not fight, having nothing to fight for. And this is the result of the pernicious policy of partiality and exclusiveness, disintegrating society in such a crisis, and recognizing distinction of ranks,—the higher class staying at home and making money, the lower class thrust into the trenches.’ At the opening of ’65 the difficulty of finding recruits caused the President to turn his attention to the proposal for black soldiers. “The proposition,” runs the Diary, January 1, 1865, “to organize an army of negroes gains friends, because the owners of the slaves are no longer willing to fight themselves; at least, they are not as ‘eager for the fray’ as they were in 1861; and the armies must be replenished, or else the slaves will certainly be lost.” For months before the date of this last entry the mean whites had imitated the superior classes in shirking their military obligations; and, in some cases, recruits were actually brought in chains to General Lee. On the 10th of April, 1864, the writer says, “To-day, I saw two conscripts from Western Virginia conducted to the cars (going to Lee’s army) in chains. It made a chill shoot through my breast.”
Whilst soldiers were thus dragged in fetters to the battle-field, the physical sufferings endured by the inhabitants of Richmond were intense; and long before Grant’s terrible combination of armies bore down upon the doomed capital, the necessaries of life were sold in the markets at famine-prices. Even so early as the 3rd of February, 1863, the quotations of the markets gave the following prices of provisions:—“Butter, 3 dols, per pound; beef, 1 dol.; bacon, 1.25 dol.; sausage-meat, 1 dol, and even liver is selling at 50 cents per pound.” To pay such prices for the necessaries of life the war clerk had to raise money by the sale of trinkets and portable possessions, and by application to money-lenders; for his narrow official salary—paid in Confederate paper money—was insufficient for the requirements of himself and family. It is under such circumstances that a man learns how to be grateful for small benefits; and, certainly, the terms in which Mr. Jones expresses thankfulness for the loan of a few Confederate notes—equivalent, perhaps, to 10 £ in gold—are likely to appear extravagant to readers who have never felt the fear of actual starvation. Having obtained a loan of 300 dols. in Confederate paper, he writes in his journal, “This is the work of a beneficent Providence, thus manifested on three different occasions, and to doubt it would be to deserve damnation.” Three weeks later he writes, “My tomatoes are now maturing, and my butter-beans are filling rapidly, and have already given us a dinner. What we shall do for clothing the Lord knows—but we trust in Him.” Elsewhere, with a fervour that is not without a touch of the ludicrous, he writes, “Yet it seems to me that, like the Israelites that passed through the Red Sea, and Shadrach and his brethren who escaped unscorched from the fiery furnace, my family have been miraculously sustained. We have purchased no clothing for nearly three years, and had no superabundance to begin with, but still we have decent clothes, as if time made no appreciable change in them.” By degrees the war clerk reduced the allowance of meat consumed in his family to one ounce a day to each person. Soon meat ceased to form any part of their ordinary diet; and they lived as they best could on bread, fruit, vegetables and water, with such choice luxuries as a cup of coffee or a pint of shin-bone broth on holidays and high festivals. Whilst government officials endured these straits, the lower classes—comprising a large number of women and children, whose husbands and fathers were doing duty as “mean whites” in the Southern armies—were actually dying under the famine which had first swept away the cats and tamed the rats of the Confederate capital. The diarist writes, under date October 22nd, 1863, “A poor woman yesterday applied to a merchant in Carey Street to purchase a barrel of flour. The price he demanded was 70 dollars. ‘My God!’ exclaimed she, “how can I pay such prices? I have seven children; what shall I do?’—‘I don’t know, madam,’ said he, coolly, ‘unless you eat your children.’ Such is the power of cupidity; it transforms men into demons.” Sometimes the gaunt women and pallid, dull-eyed children gathered together in crowds, and plundered the stores of provision-dealers; but they never begged. At periods when famine was prevalent amongst the very poor, the war clerk was surprised that the less indigent were never importuned by street mendicants. What occasion for surprise? The wretched creatures knew the uselessness of asking alms from men who could tell mothers to eat their own children. In the January of 1865 beef was sold at 8 dols. per pound; two months later the price of bacon was 20 dols. per pound, the price of meal 140 dols. per bushel; and while the Confederate troops were evacuating Richmond the war clerk thought himself lucky to buy a bushel of potatoes for 75 dols. Of course these prices were paid in Confederate notes,—of the depreciation of which currency we heard so little from the noisy gentlemen who were incessantly laughing in our clubs and hotels about honest Abe’s greenbacks. On January the 27th, 1865, “gold sold at 47 dols, for one at auction”; on March the 5th, the diarist observes, “the government gives 1 dol. of gold for 60 of its own paper; but were it to cease selling gold, it would command 100 dols, for 1 dol.” But the time was fast coming when Confederate notes were worth no more than any other kind of waste paper. After Mr. Jefferson Davis had fled from the seat of his falling government, and Abraham Lincoln’s black troops had taken possession of the burning city, the war clerk wrote in his note-book, “Confederate money is valueless, and we have no Federal money. To such extremity are some of the best and wealthiest families reduced, that the ladies are daily engaged making pies and cakes for the Yankee soldiers of all colours, that they may obtain enough ‘greenbacks to purchase such articles as are daily required in their housekeeping.” Can any greater humiliation for mortal pride be imagined than this dramatic degradation of the aristocratic daughters of the South, who thus became the hired cook-maids of negro soldiers?
Here and there the grim pages of this Diary are enlivened by laughable stories. For instance, under date January 18, 1863, the writer says—
“Our military men apprehend no serious consequences from the army of negroes in process of organization by the Abolitionists at Washington. Gen. Rains says the negro cannot fight, and will always run away. He told me an anecdote yesterday which happened under his own observation. An officer, when going into battle, charged his servant to stay at his tent and take care of his property. In the fluctuations of the battle, some of the enemy’s shot fell in the vicinity of the tent, and the negro, with great white eyes, fled away with all his might. After the fight, and when the officer returned to his tent, he was vexed to learn that his slave had run away, but the boy soon returned, confronting his indignant master, who threatened to chastise him for disobedience of orders. Caesar said: ‘Massa, you told me to take care of your property, and dis property’ (placing his hand on his breast) ‘is worf fifteen hundred dollars.’ He escaped punishment.”
This also is good—
“Custis (my son) received a letter to-day from Miss G., Newbern, viâ underground railroad, in closing another for her sweetheart in the army. She says they are getting on tolerably well in the hands of the enemy, though the slaves have been emancipated. She says a Yankee preacher (whom she calls a whitewashed negro) made a speculation. He read the Lincoln Proclamation to the negroes: and then announced that none of them had been legally married, and might be liable to prosecution. To obviate this, he proposed to marry them over, charging only a dollar for each couple. He realized several thousand dollars, and then returned to the North. This was a legitimate Yankee speculation; and no doubt the preacher will continue to be an enthusiastic advocate of a war of subjugation. As long as the Yankees can make money by it, and escape killing, the war will continue.”
In conclusion let us notice a typographical defect which should be amended in future editions of this entertaining work. Each page of a printed diary should bear upon its margin the date of the year to which the entries refer. Through neglect of this convenient rule the reader of ‘A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary’ is put to much needless trouble.
1. Francis, John (publisher); The Athenæum, Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts; London, Saturday, July 14, 1866; pp 41-43; Printed by James Holmes, Took’s Court, Chancery Lane; Published at The Office, 20, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.
2. Hempen, cravat, the hangman’s noose —Hotten, John Camden, 1832-1873; The Slang Dictionary; Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal; pub. Chatto & Windus; London, 1913; page 191