"A Rebel War Clerk's Diary At the Confederate States Capital" Volume II: August 1863 - April 1865, by J.B. Jones, Clerk in the War Department of the Confederate States Government, a facsimile reproduction of the first 1866' edition, Collectors Library of the Civil War, 1982.

Hard boards, leather with blind embossed illustration of marching soldiers on front board, gold lettering on front board and spine; 5.3/4" x 8.1/2"; marbled endpapers, 480 pages, red ribbon marker, all page edges are gilt [a little wear]; very good/ fine condition.

"Amidst the vast literature of the Civil War, one of the most significant and enlightening documents remains largely unknown. A day-by-day, uninterrupted, four-year chronicle by a mature, keenly observant clerk in the War Department of the Confederacy, the wartime diary of John Beauchamp Jones was first published in two volumes in 1866.

A Maryland journalist/novelist who went south at the outbreak of the war, Jones took a job as a senior clerk in the Confederate War Department, where he remained to the end, a constant observer of men and events in Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy and the principal target of Union military might. As a high-level clerk at the center of military planning, Jones had an extraordinary perspective on the Southern nation in action-- and nothing escaped his attention.

Confidential files, command-level conversations, official correspondence, revelations, rumors, statistics, weather reports, and personal opinions: all manner of material, found nowhere else in Civil War literature, made its meticulous way into the diary. Jones quotes scores of dispatches and reports by both military and civilian authorities, including letters from Robert E. Lee never printed elsewhere, providing an invaluable record of documents that would later find their way into print only in edited form. His notes on such ephemera as weather and prices create a backdrop for the military movements and political maneuverings he describes, all with the judicious eye of a seasoned writer and observer of southern life." [a review]

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ------------ $16.50
Canada: Priority (c.2-6 weeks) ----- $32.50
World: Priority (c.2-8 weeks) ------ $48.50