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James E. Beard

By Tony Bridges

This essay tracks, to the extent that is possible, the life of James E. Beard. No books will ever be devoted to James Beard. He did nothing that was not shared by scores of others in his lifetime. Indeed, prior to this study, James existed to the historical record simply as numbers in a census and a small collection of letters and diary entries. Yet none of this prevents his life, and the process required to uncover it, from being fascinating. Therefore, in the interest of telling a story that would otherwise never be heard, I present the life of James Beard.

James E. Beard was born in 1822 to William Beard. His mother remains unknown since none of the Beard family can reliably be located on the 1850 census, and no earlier record of the county is available. Little can be said for certain about his life before the 1860 census, but by that time he was the eldest of three brothers. The next brother in line was born the year after him, and named after his father; he was followed by Thomas in 1827. With them lived Mary (born 1838), who was certainly married to one of the brothers, but which is unclear. They had a son, William H. Beard (born 1855). His father owned a decent sized farm, at 225 acres, which was valued in 1860 at $5400. Accounting for inflation, this same farm might be valued at $107,000 today (2008). The family owned no slaves, and probably hired day laborers to help with the harvest, which consisted mostly of corn, but also included oats, wheat, rye and Irish potatoes.1

In Augusta County, Virginia, the family could not have helped but notice the Confederate army gathering and recruiting in Staunton, the most important town in the area. But it was after the army had left major operations in Staunton and just before the corn harvest when, for reasons lost to history, James Beard decided to enlist at the age of 39. It was at this time that he began his diary.2

James Beard reached the 5th Infantry Regiment at Manassas on August 13th, missing the First Battle of Manassas by a few weeks, but nonetheless he comments on the remains of the battlefield, describing “many wrecks of different kinds, from effects of a routed army”. ‘Almost there’ seems to describe the bulk of James’ military career. His first military assignment is as a picketer near Fairfax. Standing guard at the top of Mason’s Hill, without the clutter of modern buildings, he can see clear across the river into Washington D.C., granting “a view of the dome of the once Capitol of the U.S.’ It is amazing to think: a raw recruit in the confederate army whiled away his time looking at the Union capitol building, rifle in hand. Once again James, in addition to the whole of the south, was almost there.3

James’ life for the next couple months, as in most of his military career, consisted of marching and maneuvering. The next excitement came in December, when D company, James’ company, was chosen as one of four to destroy dam No. 4, near Shepherdstown. The first record of James firing his rifle came when Union boats were spotted moving up the river as D company advanced on its target. The soldiers opened fire, and the boats returned it, but to no effect on either side. Interestingly, when James gets his orders he records his target as dam No. 4 near Shepherdstown, but when he records the successful destruction, it is of dam No. 5 near Martinsburg. This could be related to “Stonewall” Jackson’s misdirection, wherein he sent soldiers to dam No. 4 to distract Union forces from the actual target, dam No. 5. Official records describe considerable combat involved in this maneuver, but James simply says “we stayed overnight and fell back in the morning, acting in this way until the morning of the 21st” and gives no mention of combat or an enemy presence at all.4

James would not see combat again until March 23rd, which gives us an opportunity to discuss two aspects of the Civil War in general that seem to have effected him more than combat: transportation and disease. Railroads had a major impact on military maneuvers, and this shows in James’ diary. A simple example can be found by comparing speeds between two equivalent trips: On the morning of January 13th, the regiment struck camp and marched 45 miles to Romney, arriving late in the evening, ragged and exhausted from their “heavy and toilsome march’. By contrast, at 7 in the evening on the 8th of November, they struck camp and left Manassas by rail for Strasburg, a linear distance of 50 miles. They arrived by daybreak, and though they met no battle, they were much more refreshed than after a hard march through the hills and mountains of Virginia.5

But marching has been the lot of soldiers for millennia, and so has disease. James encountered this in the form of a sore throat, on January 23rd of 1862. This may not seem like much, but it was enough to put James in the hospital until February 3rd. But James was not one to play up illness, since when he got the mumps–less than three weeks later–he played it down for five days before letting himself be taken back to the hospital. He stayed there this time until the 6th, when he met back up with his regiment.6

The first real fight that James describes is on March 23rd, wherein his regiment reinforced the Artillery and Cavalry, and simply says they were repulsed twice and left the field in good order. The next day the enemy counter-attacked, hitting them before breakfast and “throwing bombs” at them, and the 5th fell back. James does not recount any follow-up to that engagement.7

The next month was taken up with maneuvers, until on April 13th James was assigned to guard Headquarters. He remained there until his service ran up on the 22nd and he went home. However, he was home less than a week before he re-enlisted and headed back out to meet his regiment, quite possibly because his brother, Thomas, had joined his same company in March, though there is no mention of this in his diary. On May 8th, after only a couple weeks back in the service, the 5th encountered the enemy and drove them all the way back to Franklin. They encountered the enemy again on the 25th, being struck by artillery shells and clearing all the nearby towns of Union soldiers. They then set upon a force of 3,000 Union soldiers, taking 800 prisoners and chasing the rest to the ferry. On the 30th, D company was called up as skirmishers, and chased the Union pickets back to their lines, according to James, without the Union firing a shot. They then spent several days maneuvering, apparently in proximity to the enemy, until June 8th, when the Union attacked them early in the morning from both front and rear. The front routed but the rear held for four hours until reinforcements arrived, and the battle lasted until dark. They counter-attacked the next day, and while James does not do a very detailed job of describing the events, it seems that they won, but narrowly.8

After this fight, James is tasked with writing payroll, which keeps him occupied for weeks until the 23rd of June. Then he leaves home, where he had gone to work on the payroll, and meets up with the regiment on the 2nd of July, the day after three people he knew, in addition to others in his company, were killed in a battle. But from then until the Second Battle of Manassas, on August 28th, James did nothing but maneuver and drill, the most interesting thing being the public execution of a deserter on the 19th of August. Finally, at Manassas, James is involved in one of the big battles of history. However, early in the day a ball struck him in the leg and he was sent to the hospital, missing almost the entirety of the battle. After he recovered, which took until the 20th of September, James went home, possibly without permission, as his military record simply records that he did not show up for muster after release from the hospital.9

James was done with the war but the war was not done with him. We can not be sure when or how his father died, but he passed before the 1870 census, probably of old age. Meanwhile the last of James’ brothers went to war in 1863. While James stayed at home, probably working the farm, his brothers continued to fight. Thomas faced a protracted illness in a military hospital from January 1863 to December 1864, but lived until 1892, while William died of an unstated disease in 1864. James continued to manage a reduced farm, while Mary ran a boarding house out of their home, housing 28 other people. According to his military record, James lived until 1906, dying at the age of 84.10

  1. Augusta County, Virginia, 1860 Population Census, Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/govdoc/pop_census.html), Augusta County, Virginia, 1860 Agricultural Census, Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/govdoc/agr_census.html), Augusta County, Virginia, 1860 Slaveowner Census, Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/govdoc/slave_census.html).
  2. James E. Beard. Augusta County: Diary of James E. Beard (186-1862). Virginia: Virginia Center for Digital History, 1998. (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/), August 3rd
  3. Diary, August 28th
  4. Diary
  5. Diary, Google Earth
  6. Diary, Feb 3rd-March 6th
  7. Diary, March 23rd
  8. Diary
  9. Diary, Soldier Records
  10. 1870 Popular census, 1870 agricultural census, Soldier Records