Roland Ward Jones

Roland Ward Jones was a Mississippi lawyer, planter and Confederate officer born in 1829. During the American Civil War he served as a captain and was badly wounded in the leg during the Battle of Franklin on 30 November 1864, one of the Confederate army’s most destructive assaults. He was taken to Carnton, the McGavock family home south of Franklin that had been converted into a major field hospital after the battle.

Jones remained at Carnton for an extended period while recovering and later spent time in a Federal hospital in Nashville. During his convalescence he became close to Elizabeth “Lizzie” Clouston, a governess who helped care for wounded soldiers. Their surviving correspondence documents the relationship that developed amid the aftermath of battle. Jones and Clouston married in December 1865 and settled in Mississippi, giving their story unusual documentary value as a personal aftermath of the Franklin campaign.

Tamera Alexander’s With This Pledge draws directly on the surviving courtship letters of Captain Roland Ward Jones and Elizabeth Clouston. Wounded at the Battle of Franklin and facing possible amputation at the Carnton field hospital, Jones meets Lizzie while she helps care for Confederate casualties. Their developing attachment is complicated by her prior engagement and opposition to the Confederate cause, allowing the novel to place their documented romance inside arguments over slavery, loyalty, faith and the human cost of war.