John Beauchamp Jones (March 6, 1810 – February 4, 1866) was an American writer whose books enjoyed popularity during the mid 19th century. Jones was a popular novelist (particularly of the American West and the American South) and a well-connected literary editor and political journalist in the two decades leading up to the American Civil War. During the war, he worked as a clerk in the Confederate War Department in Richmond, Virginia. His diary of those years was published shortly after his death.
In 1864, during the Second American Revolution, Robert E. Lee was directed to Colonel Custis Lee's office by John Beauchamp Jones. Upon finishing his business and returning to the foyer, General Lee overheard Jones telling another clerk how Jones' son Custis kept a pet parrot which was eating the family's precious ration of meat. Lee was reminded of his own household's troublesome pet, Custis Morgan the squirrel.[1]
At the end of the Revolution, Jones was in charge of giving soldiers their pay and sending them home. Nate Caudell found Jones to be very unemotional, as if parroting a memorized phrase.[2]
Jones still worked at the War Department in 1865, the year after the Revolution ended.[3]
