Read The State of Jones Online
Authors: Sally Jenkins
The Confederate leader looked at his men. “Boys I guess we’d better get out of here,” he said.
One old man named Reeves was picking pears on Sally Parker’s property when rebel horsemen surrounded him and demanded to know if he had seen any of the guerrillas. Reeves decided to tease them. He replied, “Do you see that fence down yonder? Well there is two men in every corner of that fence ready to shoot.”
In his later years, Newton boasted of how he and his men taunted Lowry’s men, stealing up on them and scattering them with horn blasts and shotgun fire. On one such raid, a Confederate had trouble unhitching his horse and had been abandoned by his fellow troopers. As the rebel struggled with the tether, the Scouts teased him with gunfire, shooting to scare him but not to hit him, from different directions. When the rebel finally got his tether loose, horse and rider bolted down the road at a full gallop. “You could almost have rolled marbles on his coat tail behind him, he ran so fast,” Newton joked.
But matters turned deadly serious again at the end of April. Newton received intelligence, perhaps from Rachel, that fifty of Lowry’s men were to spend a night in Ellisville. Newton arrayed his men along the banks of Rocky Creek, where the Confederates were sure to cross. The guerrillas heard the rebels before they saw them cantering up the path and laughing in high spirits. Newton and his men rose up out of the creek bed and fired a volley that swept over the rebels like a lethal hailstorm. The front line of horses and men tumbled into the dust, screaming, while the rest of the men frantically wheeled around and galloped toward Ellisville. Newton counted fifteen
wounded men and three dead horses in the road. He had his revenge for the hangings.
The ambush apparently finally moved Lowry to mount a large operation into the swamps. On April 25, he divided his men into squads of fifty and charged up the ravines and creek beds, searching out the guerrilla camps. Newton was encamped near the Jones-Jasper county line in a boggy triangle at the fork of two creeks, findable only by lifelong local woodsmen. With him were ten of his men, members of his innermost circle. They had just finished their breakfast when a watchman came sprinting down a narrow footpath breathlessly reporting that a large body of horsemen and dogs were crashing through the thickets straight toward their camp.
With just ten guns to meet fifty or sixty rebels and their dogs, Newton knew the Scouts couldn’t stand them off. He decided they would try to run for it. “God be our leader,” he told the men. They splashed through the bog and mire for nearly two miles, staggering through brush that raked at their faces, climbing over downed trees, and cutting through fields as the sound of dogs closed the distance behind them. Finally they cut into another obscure swampland called Clear Creek by crossing over some hidden foot-logs. As the last man stepped from the logs, Newton sprinkled them with red pepper. The men pushed deeper into the marsh, and to their relief, they heard the dogs coughing and sneezing as the red pepper blistered their snouts.
Newton believed he and his men had escaped thanks to divine protection. He had seen the Lord’s will “demonstrated in his favor.” It was only “God’s power that delivered him from the enemy, the ones that were trying to take his life,” he told his son.
But Jones County Scouts at other encampments had no such divine protection. Newton’s muster roll recorded eighteen men captured by Lowry that day. Among them were some of his closest friends, men he had grown up with and fought alongside both in and out of Confederate uniform, men like John Valentine, William Welch, Younger Welborn Jr., Merida Coats, Dick Hinton, James Ewlen, and Lazrous
Mathews. Most dishearteningly, several members of the Collins family were taken, including the man he designated his first lieutenant, forty-five-year-old Simeon Collins. He was in Lowry’s custody with three of his sons. Newton would never see some of them again.
A smaller band of five men, among them Riley Collins and Prentice Bynum, were driven so deep into the swamps, and found themselves so isolated and cut off from home, that rather than risk a return they decided to keep moving. They floated via rivers to New Orleans and joined the Union forces there, as Dickie Knight had. They arrived in the Crescent City in May and enlisted in the 1st New Orleans Infantry under Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Tisdale, serving out the war in federal blue at Fort Pike, Louisiana.
Why didn’t Newton go to New Orleans and join the army there? It was a hazardous journey, and it meant leaving his family—and Rachel—unprotected in the midst of an anarchical war zone. Union service in New Orleans was far from the front line of Newton’s personal conflict. Though he respected those men who made the journey to serve in blue at Fort Pike, he believed their role there amounted to “guard duty.” Nevertheless, they hazarded everything to serve their country and some would die for it. Riley Collins would die in August of 1864, at the age of thirty-nine, felled by dysentery.
Lowry and his men were triumphant: they had put the Jones County Scouts on the run. Newton’s company of 125 men was surely shattered: 32 men had been killed, captured, or wounded by Lowry, and the rest were desperate and cut off in the bogs. Newton’s own hat was riddled with bullets.
Years later, Newton recalled for journalist Meigs Frost how outnumbered and outgunned he and his men had been, with only their shotguns, against Lowry’s men. Frost asked him if he was ever wounded.
“No—but they did their best. They shot off my hat and powder horn,” he said. “All we had was muzzle loaders, shotguns mostly. They had these new repeatin’ rifles.”
Lowry and his men finally wound up their work in Jones County
on May 12. As they departed, “they destroyed all that Knight and his men had,” according to Jones resident B. A. Mathews. They left behind them homes in flames and families in mourning. They took with them a line of captured men in irons, to be returned to duty.
They had ranged across seven counties in pursuit of deserters and arrested about five hundred men, while “several hundred more” had surrendered rather than risk capture. “We have changed the status of things in Jones, Perry, and Smith, and expect to reestablish in all South Mississippi a healthy loyalty to the powers that be,” wrote one of Lowry’s officers, Colonel William N. Brown of the 20th Mississippi.
But Brown was somewhat troubled, too, and not entirely satisfied with what they had done. Brown was a privileged Confederate officer, the son of one of former president James Polk’s business partners and the owner of a seven-thousand-acre plantation in Bolivar County. He had risen to his colonelcy through seniority, and he wasn’t an especially gifted officer—his subordinate Walter Rorer seems to have believed him incompetent—but he was observant. Whatever satisfaction he felt at the completion of the mission in Jones County was tempered by an awareness of the deeper problems causing resistance in the Piney Woods.
Just before he left Jones County, Brown wrote a long description of the expedition to Governor Clark. The yeomanry had good reason to be aggrieved by the Confederacy, Brown saw. Local women were reluctant to give up their husbands to conscription for fear of outright starvation. The rebel government had preyed upon everything they had. If the Confederacy would only send a load of corn to the conscripts’ wives and children, Brown implored Governor Clark, it might improve the political sentiment. For one thing, “it would [convince] them that we have a government, a fact which they are inclined to doubt,” he wrote.
Above all Brown believed the Piney Woods yeomanry was incited to open rebellion by the abuses they had suffered at the hands of crooked so-called Confederate tax officials, who had seized their
livestock, crops, and goods. “These acts have done more to demoralize Jones County than the whole Yankee army,” he wrote frankly.
His report summed up all he had observed in a month in the Piney Woods:
As you are perhaps aware my Regt comprises part of a detachment of Lorings Division now engaged in arresting and returning deserters to their commands from South Miss. and East La. under the command of Col Robt Lowry of the 6th Miss. we have been at this duty since the 23rd March and in that time have been over the country including Smith Co. Scott, Jasper, Jones and a part of Wayne, Perry and Covington counties. We have arrested and sent to Department Hd about 500 men. Several hundred more have eluded us or reported to their commands rather than be charged and sent under arrest. Lt. Gnl Polk estimates that 500 had reported to one Brigade alone and that this one success would no doubt do much towards determining and achieving the great object of the War (This information is a digression as my object is more particularly to refer to what is yet to do rather than boast of what has been done.)
From representations made to us we had expect[ed] to find [irregular] organizations among the disloyal for the purpose of resisting our authority. During the first five days operations we obtained a Flag from the family of one Hawkins who lives on the line of Smith and Scott Co, this led us to believe they had “Hung out the banners on the outer wall” and bitter stubborn resistance might be expected. In one or two cases this proved to be true. A small party under Lt. Evans of the 6th Miss was fired into and one man (Srgt Tillman) was killed, two others were wounded including Lt. Evans who we since have learned is dead. This was done by a single man, Daniel Reddoch who was afterwards caught and executed. Another party under Major Borden of the 6th Miss was ambushed and one man of my Rgt wounded this was done by Captain Newton Knight with 5 men two of which were captured and executed on the spot and Capt Knight narrowly made his escape.
At Knights Mill Jones Co on the 16th four men two brothers
named Ates and two others named Whitehead were found guilty of desertion and of armed resistance to the civil and military law and were sentenced to death by hanging before our military court. Accordingly the four men were executed. This made ten who have forfeited their lives for treason. All of them were clearly guilty and some of them had been wounded in skirmishes with the cavalry which had been sent to this country at different times. This for there has not been an example made from the citizens of the county, all have been soldiers and yet these men have often been mislead by some old and influential citizens perhaps their fathers or relatives who have encouraged and harbored them. We find great ignorance among them generally and many union ideas that seem to be [prompted] by demogauges of the agrarian class.
Among the women there is great reluctancy to give up their husbands and brothers and the reason alleged is the fear of starvation and disinclination to labor in the fields. More than half, I might say nearly all the soldiers wives are reduced to this strait.
Provisions are now scarce particularly corn. We estimated the supply inadequate for the maintenance of the poorer classes and particularly the females of such as are in the army. If something could be done to ameliorate their condition by State authorities it would be productive of a much improved moral and political sentiment…. A few wagons loads of corn distributed through this country from the most convenient depot on the Mobile & O Rail Road would not only improve the political [tone] of the people here but would greatly encourage the men in the army from this quarter and in my opinion would greatly lessen desertion and the excuses to desert. Could not a train of wagons be organized for this purpose? I make the suggestion which I hope you will not take as [offensive] and will not pretend to argue the case to one of your [noble] administrative ability. Some complaint has been made of the commissioners whose duty it is to provide for the destitute families of soldiers. Of this I am not able to say except that very little seems to have been done by any one, and what was done is said to be for the families of particular favorites.
Another important item to which I would call the attention of
your Excellency to the importance of [supplying] women of this country with cotton and woolen cards. The females are decidedly of the working part of the population and are greatly in want of these necessary articles. There seem to be considerable wool and enough cotton to keep them engaged, as they are now provided they manage to clothe the soldiers from this country and if encouraged would add greatly to the comfort of many more a good article of jeans sometimes sells for $6 per yard. I found today a widow of a soldier who was killed by the cavalry and having no cards she had taken to working [horn] combs. A specimen I send to you which for workmanship and ingenuity compares with the “yankee.” The husband of this woman having been killed by our cavalry perhaps by mistake call to mind the many outrages that have been committed by many small commands of cavalry sent into this country on the duty now assigned to our command. Such at least are the many complaints we hear every day.
Brown was not the only officer of the 20th Mississippi with a troubled conscience. Walter Rorer had been left behind in Demopolis to sit on a military tribunal that heard court-martial cases of the captured deserters. Rorer had deep qualms about sitting in judgment on the absentees chased down by his unit. “A sad business it is, every day good men are tried and sentenced to infamy for going home to see wife and children,” he wrote to his cousin Susan.
“I am weary of it,” Rorer continued. “There is folly, mismanagement and meanness everywhere in the army … I have no heart to punish men for the disobeying of the orders of fools, still it must be done or we would have no army. If men could only be tried before Courts Martial for want of sense and common honesty I think our Court would have to try half the army.”
If anyone in the high command followed Brown’s commonsense suggestion that some food and relief from corruption would go a long way toward pacifying the Piney Woods farmers, there is no evidence of it. Lowry and his men left Jones on May 12 with their consciences
unbothered. In the end, they chose to believe that the dissent and packed shotguns they had encountered were simply the expressions of a sullen peasantry. Lowry dismissed Newton as “an ignorant, uneducated man” and the action of his company as “bushwhacking.”