A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital

For anyone curious about what the Confederacy actually looked like from the inside, this diary is an extraordinary time capsule. J.B. Jones was a Maryland-born clerk who fled his home in New Jersey when Southern states began seceding, and he made his way to Richmond to take a position in the Confederate War Department. What follows is his daily record of the first year of the Civil War, from the moment the Ordinance of Secession passes to the escalating chaos of a nation preparing for war. Jones writes with surprising candor about the personalities, petty rivalries, and mounting desperation in the Confederate capital. He describes the electric atmosphere in the streets, the shortages that began almost immediately, and the way ordinary people grappled with extraordinary circumstances. His entries reveal a man caught between ideological fervor and personal anxiety, having left his family behind, uncertain whether he'd ever see them again, while also fully invested in the revolutionary cause he believed he was witnessing. This is not romanticized history. It's a working clerk's unfiltered account of how a city, a government, and a people tumbled toward conflict.