The Spirits of Bad Men Made Perfect:
The Life and Diary of Confederate Artillerist William Ellis Jones

by Constance Jones

“Engaging the Civil War” Series
Southern Illinois University Press,
2019

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This remarkable biography and edited diary tell the story of William Ellis Jones (1838–1910), an artillerist in Crenshaw’s Battery, Pegram’s Battalion, the Army of Northern Virginia. One of the few extant diaries by a Confederate artillerist, Jones’s articulate writings cover camp life as well as many of the key military events of 1862, including the Peninsula Campaign, the Second Battle of Manassas, the Maryland Campaign, and the Battle of Fredericksburg.

In 1865 Jones returned to his prewar printing trade in Richmond, and his lasting reputation stems from his namesake publishing company’s role in the creation and dissemination of much of the Lost Cause ideology. Unlike the pro-Confederate books and pamphlets Jones published—primary among them the Southern Historical Society Papers—his diary shows the mindset of an unenthusiastic soldier. In a model of contextualization, Constance Hall Jones shows how her ancestor came to embrace an uncritical veneration of the army’s leadership and to promulgate a mythology created by veterans and their descendants who refused to face the amorality of their cause.

Jones brackets the soldier’s diary with rich, biographical detail, profiling his friends and relatives and providing insight into his childhood and post-war years. In doing so, she offers one of the first serious investigations into the experience of a Welsh immigrant family loyal to the Confederacy and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Civil War–era Richmond and the nineteenth-century publishing industry. Invitingly written, The Spirits of Bad Men Made Perfect is an engaging life-and-times story that will appeal to historians and general readers alike.

Publications in this Series

Introduction

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Not long after I declared I was writing a book about my great-great-grandfather William Ellis Jones, a volume that would encompass not only his Civil War diary, but also aspects of his family history, along with a comprehensive pre and post-war biography, I started getting the question, “But why?” I confess, […]

Chapter Two

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Portrait photograph believed to be of Thomas Norcliff Jones (c. 1800 – Sept 3, 1864) This unidentified image is believed to be a late 19th century copy of an earlier-era photograph of Thomas Norcliffe Jones. The subject’s manner of dress suggests to some that the individual in the image is female, […]

Chapter Three

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Thomas Norcliffe Jones’s United States Citizenship petition and naturalization papers Transcript of Naturalization Petition. “Virginia At a circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for the County of Henrico and City of Richmond, held at the Capitol in said city the 1st day of June, one thousand eight-hundred and forty. Thomas […]

Chapter Four

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Newspaper advertisement placed in the Richmond, Virginia Daily Dispatch, September 2, 1862, by William B. Jones of Jones & Company, 15th Street between Main & Cary Streets, Richmond, Virginia. The Confederate Conscription Act of April, 1862 established that any white male between the age of 18 and 35 was required to […]

Chapter Eight

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones The following PDF file is a Google Books Scan of the original What is Our True Policy? *     *     * The “Engaging the Civil War” Series is published by Southern Illinois University Press in collaboration with Emerging Civil War.

Appendix

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Letter to the Richmond Whig attributed to William Jones *     *     * The “Engaging the Civil War” Series is published by Southern Illinois University Press in collaboration with Emerging Civil War.

Online Appendixes

by Emerging Civil War

by Constance Hall Jones Click here for the exclusive on-line chapter “The Descendants of William Ellis Jones (and what became of his legendary library).” *     *     * William Ellis Jones, Steam Book and Job Press The following is an incomplete list of the surviving books, periodicals, pamphlets, and other materials published […]