On June 21, 2023, Vincent J. Venturini presented “The Civil War Diary of Belle Daniel” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
On May 14, 1863, Union forces under the control of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson, then abandoned it to lay siege to the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg. When that river city surrendered on July 4, Grant shifted his focus back to Jackson and Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's “Army of Relief.” The resulting Jackson Campaign, led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, ended on July 17 after a week-long siege.
During that time Susan Arabella “Belle” Daniel lived with her family on the Clinton Road (now Capitol Street) in Jackson. Her mother Mary Hart Daniel was a homemaker, and her father Henry Coleman Daniel was a surveyor and the city engineer.
“In her small notebook the seventeen-year-old Belle recorded the events of the battle, including her family’s search for safety and her treatment at the hands of Union soldiers,” said Venturini. “When the Union forces returned shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Belle Daniel again wrote about how civilians, mainly women and girls, survived.”
After her death many years later, Daniel’s son transcribed what she had written in her small notebook. Eventually a copy of that was bought at an estate sale by a friend of Venturini’s.
“I was amazed when I read through this virtually unknown firsthand account of the battle and siege of Jackson,” said Venturini. “And I knew that I had to do what I could to get the information out to the world.”
Vincent J. Venturini retired as associate provost at Mississippi Valley State University in 2014, where he had worked since 1992. The Jackson native earned his BA in sociology from Mississippi State University, MS in social work from the University of Southern Mississippi, and PhD in social work from the University of Alabama. He is the author of Once We Crowned Royalty: Tales of Downtown and West Jackson and co-author with Doug Shanks of One Direction Home: A History of South Jackson.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
