The State of Jones (46 page)

We often do not include endnotes in every paragraph or after every quotation, since we sometimes quote the same source in multiple paragraphs. To find the source for a quotation that lacks an immediate citation, refer to the next endnote.

ABBREVIATIONS

MDAH: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

OR: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

MHI: Military History Institute

NARA: National Archives and Records Administration

PROLOGUE: THE SOUTH’S STRANGEST SOLDIER

Page

2
“Just a fightin’ fool when he got started”:
Meigs O. Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief,”
New Orleans Item
, March 20, 1921.

3
“I believe in giving the devil his due”:
B. D. Graves, address to the Hebron Community, June 17, 1926, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.

3
“like George Washington, with his long white hair”:
“Captain Knight’s Life Remains Controversy,”
Laurel Leader Call
, October 21, 1967.

3
“What he did after the war was worse than deserting”:
Interviews with Knight descendants Barbara Blackledge, March 28, 2008, and Jules Smith, April 6, 2008; conversations with Knight genealogists Ken Welch and Martha Welborn, March 28-29, 2008; quotation from B. D. Graves, address to the Hebron Community, June 17, 1926, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.

4
remained loyal against all odds:
In the 1860 presidential election, almost all disunionists voted for John Breckinridge, who received only 44 percent of the Southern popular votes. More Southerners voted for John Bell, the Unionist Southern candidate. Breckinridge campaigned to protect slavery, but he trusted “that the time may never come” either to secede or to demand that the federal government “interfere for the protection” of our rights.
After Lincoln’s election, Breckinridge denied that the time had come for secession. In the state secession conventions, only one state (Texas) allowed a popular vote. In all the other Southern states, delegates voted on secession, and many of them defied their constituencies by voting in favor. See William W. Freehling,
The Road to Disunion
, vol. 2, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 339-40, 495-96; quotation from p. 339. See also Georgia Lee Tatum,
Disloyalty in the Confederacy
(1934; reprint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Carl N. Degler,
The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1982); Jon L. Wakelyn, ed.,
Southern Unionist Pamphlets and the Civil War
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999); Richard N. Current,
Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992); Phillip S. Paludan,
Victims: A True Story of the Civil War
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981); Daniel W. Crofts,
Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); John C. Inscoe and Robert C. Kenzer, eds.,
Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001); Margaret M. Storey,
Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004).

4
formally enlisted in the Union army in New Orleans:
Mark A. Weitz,
More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. ix. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 92, Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Louisiana, 1st New Orleans Regiment, “Tisdale’s,” microfilm (M396), NARA. Also copies of Jones County Union pension records, courtesy of archivist Kenneth Welch. William W. Freehling,
The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

4
eroded its fierce will to fight:
While most scholars today acknowledge the role of blacks in the Confederacy’s defeat, they downplay or ignore the role of poor Southern whites. There are a few exceptions: as Steven Hahn notes, yeoman farmers “pushed the Confederacy to the edge of internal collapse as the Yankees pressed to victory on the battlefield.” See Steven Hahn,
The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890
(1983; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 131; and Weitz,
More Damning than Slaughter
, pp. ix-x. On the role of Southern blacks
and
yeoman whites in defeating the Confederacy, see Albert Bushnell Hart, “Why the South Was Defeated in the Civil War,”
New England Magazine
11:3 (November 1891): 372-376. On the role of blacks leading to the South’s defeat, see Freehling,
The South vs. The South
, part 3; and Joseph T. Glatthaar, “Black Glory: The African-American Role in Union Victory,” in
Why the Confederacy Lost
,
Gabor S. Boritt, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 133-62. The authors are especially grateful to Kenneth Welch for sharing his insights into Jones County’s Unionism, as well as his authoritative knowledge of Knight family genealogy.

4
“hidin’ out and bushwhackin’”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

5
“how many men they killed or wounded”:
Thomas J. Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight and His Company and the Free State of Jones
(Ellisville, Miss.: printed by the
Progress Item
, c. 1934), p. 19. Despite their difficult relationship, Tom published an admiring if spare account of his father’s life.

5
predisposition toward silence on the subject:
Newton Knight filed claims for Union compensation through Congress in 1871, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1895, and 1900. Four bills with identical wording were introduced in the U.S. Congress on behalf of Newton Knight from 1871 to 1873. H.R. 2775 was introduced on January 16, 1871, by Representative George Washington Whitmore. H.R. 1814 was introduced on March 4, 1872, by Representative Legrand W. Perce. And H.R. 822 was introduced by Albert Howe on December 18, 1873. In addition, Senator Adelbert Ames introduced the same bill as S.219 in the U.S. Senate on December 18, 1873.
Congressional Record
, Library of Congress. See
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Forty-third Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 1, 1873, in the Ninety-Eighth Year of the Independence of the United States
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1873), p. 85.

5
“the true facts about Jones County during the war”:
J. M. Arnold to Dunbar Rowland, January 15, 1920, Newton Knight subject file, M.D.A.H.

6
in an age when the average male height was about five feet seven:
On average heights we’ve relied on Richard H. Steckel, “A History of the Standard of Living in the United States,” especially the table “Average Height of Native-Born American Men and Women by Year of Birth,” in EH. Net Encyclopedia, online at
http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=steckel.standard.living.us
.

7
one friend remarked:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.” On backwoods fighting see Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,”
American Historical Review
90:1 (February 1985): 18-43.

8
exposing his scandal-ridden administration:
“Noted Author Meigs O. Frost Dies,”
New York Times
, June 10, 1950.

8
“What is it you want me to tell you?”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

9
“the evacuation of Corinth”:
Peter Cozzens,
The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 33.

9
“chiggers, fleas, and niggers”:
Ibid., pp. 19-22. 10
just outside the front porch:
Ibid., p. 18.

10
“I shall ever be an advocate of peace”:
James M. McPherson,
Ordeal by Fire
, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), p. 50; James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 413; Herman Melville, “Shiloh. A Requiem,” in
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
(1866; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), p. 63.

10
caused some of the doctors and nurses to pass out:
McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
, pp. 477, 479; Cozzens,
The Darkest Days of the War
, pp. 19, 22; Richard B. Harwell, ed.,
Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse
(1959; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), pp. 9-40.

11
“The Bloody Sixth”:
General Clement A. Evans, ed.,
Confederate Military History
, vol. 9 (1899; reprint, Wilmington, Del.: Broadfoot Publishing, 1987), pp. 263-64.

11
home to his wife:
Letter from William L. Nugent to his wife, Eleanor, June 22, 1862, quoted from William M. Cash and Lucy Somerville Howorth, eds.,
My Dear Nellie: The Civil War Letters of William L. Nugent to Eleanor Smith Nugent
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1977), p. 90.

11
“‘Our fathers were at the battle of Corinth’”:
“General P. G. T. Beauregard to his soldiers, May 2, 1862,”
OR
, series 1, vol. 10, part 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), p. 482; “How the Rebels Win Victories,”
Harper’s Weekly
, May 3, 1862, p. 288.

12
“The salt sparkled and glistened in it”:
Diary of Joseph K. Nelson, Civil War Collection, MHI, U.S. Army History and Education Center, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

12
his latest was typical:
Cozzens,
The Darkest Days of the War
, p. 7.

12
cavalier general named Dabney H. Maury:
Ibid., p. 137.

13
It was a testament to Knight’s sheer vigor:
Rudy H. Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984), p. 50, citing records of the 7th Mississippi Battalion.

13
hard didn’t bother him:
Quotation from Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

13
“rather than be conscripted”:
Ibid.; quotation from the address of M. P. Bush before the meeting of the DAR, February 17, 1912, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.; Victoria E. Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
(Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 99.

14
“I did organize the men as conscripts”:
Deposition of Joel E. Welborn in Congressional Case 8013-8464,
Newton Knight et al. v. United States.
Knight appealed three times to Congress for payment for service to the Union; this was his last try, and the Court of Claims denied him. Although some neo-Confederate historians have contended that Knight was a Confederate
volunteer, the testimony of Welborn, who was no ally, makes clear he was a draftee.

14
like-minded men who shared their wretched experiences:
Gary Fisher,
Rebel Cornbread and Yankee Coffee
(Birmingham: Crane Hill Publishers, 2000), p. 10.

14
“Buzzards would not eat it at any season of the year”:
Bell Irwin Wiley,
The Life of Johnny Reb
(1943; reprint, Baton Rouge, London: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), p. 98.

15
“a more regular issue of rations”:
Notation by Captain Walter A. Rorer, Company B, 20th Mississippi Infantry, October 23, 1862,
Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
, part II,
Record of Events, Mississippi (Conf.)
, vol. 33, p. 569; Wiley,
The Life of Johnny
Reb
, pp. 104-105.

15
The canteen would split open and flatten:
Wiley,
The Life of Johnny Reb
, p. 98.

15
refused to be conscripted:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 60; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 59.

16
“on all the face of the earth”:
T. J. Knight identified his father as a Primitive Baptist in his memoir (p. 18). Rachel Knight’s granddaughter, Anna Knight, stated that Newton “did not believe in slavery” in her memoir of her childhood,
Mississippi Girl
(Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, 1952), p. 1. On some Primitive Baptists’ antislavery views (especially yeoman farmers’), see Randy J. Sparks,
On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Mississippi, 1773-1876
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), pp. 87-90, 109-11, 115-25, 132-34, 137, 142, 144.

16
“help nurse sick soldiers if they wanted”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

16
“the captain threatened to have him shot”:
Deposition of O. C. Martin,
Newton Knight et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464, November 29, 1890.

16
land and resell it:
1860 United States Federal Census, Jones County; By-num,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 65.

17
as his neighbors:
Letter from William L. Nugent to his wife, Eleanor, August 22, 1863, in Cash and Howorth,
My Dear Nellie
, p. 129; Dabney Herndon Maury,
Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian and Civil Wars
(1894; reprint, New York: Scribners and Sons, Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy, Reprint 2007, p. 246; Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
, p. 18.