A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, By John Beauchamp Jones

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 29TH.—After all, it appears that only a few hundred of the enemy’s cavalry came up the Peninsula as far as Bottom’s Bridge, from whence they quickly fell back again. And this alarm caused Gen. Elzey, or the government, to put in movement nearly 20,000 men! But something else may be behind this demonstration; it may be the purpose of the enemy to strike in another direction, perhaps at Hanover Junction—where, fortunately, we have nearly a division awaiting them.

            The Hon. Mr. Dargan’s letter, received at the department a few days ago, saying that the reinstatement of Gen. Pemberton in command would be the ruin of the cause, was referred by the Secretary to the President, with some strong remarks, to the effect that popular opinion was almost universal against Pemberton. It came back to-day, with the following indorsement of the President: “The justice or injustice of the opinion will be tested by the investigation ordered.—J. D.” If the President desires it, of course Pemberton will be exonerated. But even if he be honorably and fairly acquitted, the President ought not to forget that he is not a ruler by Divine right to administer justice merely, but the servant of the people to aid in the achievement of their independence; and that their opinions and wishes, right or wrong, must be respected, or they can deprive him of honor, and select another leader.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 28TH.—Another letter, from Gen. Whiting, calls vehemently for reinforcements, artillery, cavalry, and infantry—or else the city and harbor are soon to be at the mercy of the enemy. He is importunate.

            After all, Morgan’s head was not shaved—but his beard, and that of his officers, was cut, and their hair made short. This I learn from a letter at the department from Morgan’s Assistant Adjutant-General.

            The tocsin was ringing in my ears when I awoke this morning. Custis packed his haversack, and, taking blanket, etc. etc., joined his department comrades, and they were all marched out the Brooke turnpike. Yesterday the enemy in considerable force came up the Peninsula and attacked the guard (70 men) at Bottom’s Bridge, killing, so report says, Lieut. Jetu, of South Carolina, and some twelve or fifteen others. But I believe the attacking party have recrossed the Chickahominy. We shall know in a few hours. Gen. Lee is still here. Gen. Wise’s brigade, with the militia, the department companies, and the convalescents from the hospitals, must number some 8000 men in this vicinity. If the enemy be in formidable numbers, we shall soon be reinforced.

            We have nothing from Charleston since Tuesday evening, when, it is said, the “first assault” was repulsed. It is strange we get nothing later.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 27TH.—There is trouble in the Conscription Bureau. Col. Preston, the new superintendent, finds it no bed of roses, made for him by Lieut.-Col. Lay—the lieutenant-colonel being absent in North Carolina, sent thither to compose the discontents; which may complicate matters further, for they don’t want Virginians to meddle with North Carolina matters. However, the people he is sent to are supposed to be disloyal. Gen. Pillow has applied to have Georgia in the jurisdiction of his Bureau of Conscription, and the Governors of Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee unite in the request; also Generals Johnston and Bragg. Gen. Pillow already has Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, etc.—a much larger jurisdiction than the bureau here. Col. Preston, of course, protests against all this, and I believe the Secretary sympathizes with him.

            Prof. G. M. Richardson, of the Georgia Military Institute, sends some interesting statistics. That State has furnished the army 80,000, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. Still, the average number of men in each county between sixteen and eighteen and forty-five and sixty is 462, and there are 132 counties: total, 60,984. He deducts 30 per cent. for the infirm, etc. (18,689), leaving 42,689 men able to bear arms still at home. Thus, after putting some 500,000 in the field (if we could put them there), there would yet remain a reserve for home defense against raids, etc. in the Confederate States, of not less than 250,000 men.

            Gen. Winder sent to the Secretary of War to-day for authority to appoint a clerk to attend exclusively to the mails to and from the United States—under Gen. Winder’s sole direction.

            Major Quantrel, a Missouri guerrilla chief, has dashed into Lawrence, Kansas, and burnt the city—killing and wounding 180. He had Gen. Jim Lane, but he escaped.

            Gen. Floyd is dead ; some attribute his decease to ill treatment by the government. [click to continue…]

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 26TH.—H. C. ——, a mad private, and Northern man, in a Georgia Regiment, writes to the President, proposing to take some 300 to 500 men of resolution and assassinate the leading public men of the—United States—the war Abolitionists, I suppose. The President referred the paper, without notice, to the Secretary of War.

            Gen. Whiting writes that Wilmington is in imminent danger from a coup de main, as he has but one regiment available in the vicinity. He says he gives the government fair warning, and full information of his condition; asking a small brigade, which would enable him to keep the enemy at bay until adequate reinforcements could arrive. He also wants two Whitworth guns to keep the blockaders at a more respectful distance, since they captured one steamer from us, recently, nine miles below the city, and blew up a ship which was aground. He says it is tempting Providence to suffer that (now) most important city in the Confederate States to remain a day liable to sudden capture, which would effectually cut us off from the rest of the world.

            Gen. Beauregard telegraphs for a detail of 50 seamen for his iron-clads, which he intends shall support Sumter, if, as he anticipates, the enemy should make a sudden attempt to seize it—or rather its debris—where he still has some guns, still under our flag. None of his vessels have full crews. This paper was referred to the Secretary of the Navy, and he returned it with an emphatic negative, saying that the War Department had failed to make details from the army to the navy, in accordance with an act of Congress, and hence none of our war steamers had full crews.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 25TH.—Hon. A. R. Boteler, after consultation with Gen. Stuart and Capt. Moseby, suggests that the Secretary of War send up some of Gen. Rains’s subterra torpedoes, to place under the track of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, in possession of the enemy. Gen. Stuart suggested that a man familiar with their use be sent along with them, as they are dangerous weapons.

            We have a report, to-day, that our expedition from this city has succeeded in boarding and capturing two of the enemy’s gun-boats in the Rappahannock.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 24TH.—We have nothing further from Charleston, except that Beauregard threatened retaliation (how?) if Gilmore repeated the offense, against humanity and the rules of civilized war, of shelling the city before notice should be given the women and children to leave it. To-day, at 11 A.M., it is supposed the shelling was renewed.

            This day week, I learn by a letter from Gen. Whiting, two 700-pounder Blakely guns arrived in the Gladiator. If these could only be transported to Charleston, what a sensation they would make among the turreted monitors! But I fear the railroad cannot transport them.

            The Secretary of the Treasury asks transportation for 1000 bales of cotton to Wilmington. What for?

            To-day I saw a copy of a dispatch from Gen. Johnston to the President, dated at Morton, Miss., 22d August, stating that he would send forward, the next day, two divisions to reinforce Gen. Bragg in Tennessee. This signifies battle.

            The Secretary of the Treasury notified the Secretary of War, to-day, that the appropriation of fifty millions per month, for the expenditure of the War Department, was greatly exceeded; that already this month (August) the requisitions on hand amounted to over $70,000,000, and they could not be met—some must lie over; and large sums for contracts, pay of troops, etc. will not be paid, immediately.

            Exchange on London, I learn by a letter written by Mr. Endus to his agent in London, detained by Gen. Whiting and sent to the Secretary of War, is selling in Richmond at a premium of fifteen hundred per cent.

            The post-office clerks have returned to duty, the Postmaster-General promising to recommend to Congress increased compensation.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 23D.—Dispatches from Charleston, yesterday, brought the melancholy intelligence that FortSumter is but little more than a pile of rubbish. The fall of this fort caused my wife a hearty cry—and she cried when Beauregard reduced it in 1861; not because he did it, but because it was the initiation of a terrible war. She hoped that the separation would be permitted to pass without bloodshed.

            To-day we have a dispatch from Beauregard, stating the extraordinary fact that the enemy’s batteries, since the demolition of Sumter, have thrown shell, from their Parrott guns, into the city—a distance of five and a half miles! This decides the fate of Charleston for they are making regular approaches to batteries Wagner and Gregg, which, of course, will fall. The other batteries Beauregard provided to render the upper end of the island untenable, cannot withstand, I fear, the enginery of the enemy.

            If the government had sent the long-range guns of large caliber when so urgently called for by Beauregard, and if it had not sent away the best troops against the remonstrances of Beauregard, the people are saying, no lodgment could have been made on Norris Island by the enemy, and Sumter and Charleston would have been saved for at least another year.

            At all events, it is quite probable, now, that all the forts and cities on the seaboard (Mobile, Savannah, Wilmington, Richmond) must succumb to the mighty engines of the enemy ; and our gunboats, built and in process of completion, will be lost. Richmond, it is apprehended, must fall when the enemy again approaches within four or five miles of it; and Wilmington can be taken from the rear, as well as by water, for no forts can withstand the Parrott guns.

            Then there will be an end of blockade-running; and we must flee to the mountains, and such interior fastnesses as will be impracticable for the use of these long-range guns. Man must confront man in the deadly conflict, and the war can be protracted until the government of the North passes out of the hands of the Abolitionists. We shall suffer immensely; but in the end we shall be free.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 22D.—All the guns of Fort Sumter on the south face have been silenced by the land batteries of the enemy on Morris Island; and this account is two days old. What has taken place since, none here but Gen. Cooper and the President know. But our battery, Wagner, dismounted one of the enemy’s Parrott guns and blew up two magazines. It is rumored to-day that Sumter has been abandoned and blown up; also that 20,000 of Grant’s men have been ordered to New York to quell a new émeute. Neither of these rumors are credited, however, by reflecting men. But they may be true, nevertheless.

            Passengers from Bermuda say two monster guns were on the steamer, and were landed at Wilmington a few days ago, weighing each twenty-two tons; carriages, sixty tons; the balls, 15 inches in diameter, length not stated, weighing 700 pounds ; the shells, not filled, weigh 480 pounds ; and 40 pounds of powder are used at each discharge. They say these guns can be fired with accuracy and with immense effect seven miles. I wonder if the President will send them to Charleston? They might save the city.

            The balls fired by the enemy are eight inches in diameter, and two feet in length; 2000 of these, solid and filled, have struck the southern face of Sumter.

            It is now positively asserted that Morgan’s head was shaved, when they put him in the penitentiary.

            Night before last all the clerks in the city post-office resigned, because the government did not give them salaries sufficient to subsist them. As yet their places have not been filled, and the government gets no letters—some of which lying in the office may be of such importance as to involve the safety or ruin of the government. To-morrow is Sunday, and of course the mails will not be attended to before Monday—the letters lying here four days unopened! This really looks as if we had no Postmaster-General.

by John Beauchamp Jones

            AUGUST 21ST, FRIDAY.—This is a day appointed by the President for humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Yet the Marylanders in possession of the passport office report the following in the Dispatch of this date:

            “Passports.—The passport office was besieged yesterday and last night by large crowds of persons soliciting permission to leave the city, in order that some relaxation might be had from its busy scenes. Among those who obtained them were His Excellency Jefferson Davis and his Honor Joseph Mayo, both designing to pay a short visit to the neighboring County of Chesterfield.”

            We fast, certainly—and feel greatly humiliated at the loss of New Orleans and Vicksburg—and we pray, daily.

            Yesterday FortSumter suffered much from the enemy’s batteries, and much apprehension is felt for its fate.

            Gen. Lee, it is said, is not permitted to follow Meade, who is retrograding, being weakened by detachments. A few weeks hence the fall campaign will open in Virginia, when the very earth may tremble again with the thunders of war, and the rivulets may again spout human blood.

            There were no letters to-day, for the reason that last night the clerks in the post-office resigned, their salaries not being sufficient to support them. I hope a force will be detailed, to-morrow, to distribute the letters.

            I met Prof. A. T. Bledsoe to-day as he was ambling toward the passport office. He said he was just about to start for London, where he intended publishing his book—on slavery, I believe. He has a free passage on one of the government steamers, to sail from Wilmington. He asked me if I fasted to-day; I answered yes, as usual! He then bid me good-by, and at parting I told him I hoped he would not find us all hanged when he returned. I think it probable he has a mission from the President, as well as his book to publish.