Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: July 13, 1861

The Secretary made peace yesterday between the general and the colonel, or a duel might have transpired.

To-day the colonel carried into the Secretary a number of applications for commissions as surgeons. Among the applicants were some of the colonel's friends. He returned soon after in a rage, slamming the door after him, and then throwing down the papers violently on the floor. He picked them up the next moment, however, and sitting down beside me, became instantaneously as gentle as a dove. He said the men of science were thrust aside to give way to quacks; but, laughing, he remarked that the quacks would do well enough for the wounded. Our men would have too much sense to submit to their malpractice.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 62

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