Virginia Historical Society Podcast

On Friday, April 29, James I. Robertson, Jr., delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Civil War's Most Valuable Diarist." At the Confederate States CapitalMaryland-born John Beauchamp Jones was an established editor and novelist when civil war began. He was one of the few people who envisioned the struggle as the large-scale, all-consuming war it became. In May, 1861, he accepted a high-ranking clerkship in the Confederate War Department. For the next four years he kept a meticulous, day-by-day journal. Nothing escaped Jones's eyes and ears. Verbal descriptions of individuals, confidential reports, personal opinions, rumors, weather, inflation, newspaper articles, life inside the bloated Confederate capital—all received attention. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary appeared posthumously in 1866. This mass of information has remained only partially used because of the absences of identification of persons and events, as well as lack of an index. James I. Robertson, Jr., has edited a new edition of the diary, which in