The Southern Mind Under Union Rule

James Rumley was the 48-year-old, well-educated, Clerk of the Carteret County Court when the Union forces arrived in his hometown of Beaufort on March 25, 1862. He began a diary at the moment of Union occupation and continued to keep the diary until August 1865, when civil authority was returned to local white residents. Rumley maintained a decidedly secessionist view from the very beginning of Union occupation. In fact, he was unique, because he was a staunch Confederate who nevertheless befriended Union agents, hid his pro-secessionist feelings, and was able to stay within Union lines at a...

James Rumley was the 48-year-old, well-educated, Clerk of the Carteret County Court when the Union forces arrived in his hometown of Beaufort on March 25, 1862. He began a diary at the moment of Union occupation and continued to keep the diary until August 1865, when civil authority was returned to local white residents. Rumley maintained a decidedly secessionist view from the very beginning of Union occupation. In fact, he was unique, because he was a staunch Confederate who nevertheless befriended Union agents, hid his pro-secessionist feelings, and was able to stay within Union lines at a time when the Union army was actively compelling those with Confederate sympathies to leave the region. While projecting a neutral façade in public, he secretly spouts his anger and disapprobation of Union policy into the privacy of his diary. While there are numerous “colorful” phrases in the diary, especially regarding the autonomous actions of local African Americans (of which he strenuously disapproved), Rumley was a highly educated man, who prided himself on his classical allusions, and who had a very sophisticated view of the nature of Union and of civilian actions in the region.