The State of Jones (53 page)

142
shoot at the dogs first:
W. C. Morrow, “The Bloodhounds,” in
Confederate Battle Stories
, Martin H. Greenberg, Frank D. McSherry, Jr., and Charles G. Waugh, eds. (Little Rock, Ark.: August House Publishers, 1992), pp. 135-47.

142
through the hill country:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 23; Newton Knight deposition,
Newton Knight et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464.

143
Deserter’s Lake:
Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 106; Addie West’s notes on the Reddoch section of Jones County, WPA Collection, Jones County, record group 60, vol. 315, MDAH.

143
evaporated back into the swamps:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 23.

143
shot him down in the yard:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight;
p. 52; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 111.

144
“two severely wounded”:
War Department Collection of Confederate Records, RG 109, Compiled Service Records, 26th Mississippi Infantry, microfilm (M269), NARA; deposition of Joel E. Welborn,
Newton Knight et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464;
OR
, supplement, vol. 33, part 2, p. 761.

144
rounding up deserters:
Bettersworth,
Confederate Mississippi
, p. 260.

145
“millions of living things”:
Solomon Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
(Still-well, Kan.: Digireads Books, 2005), p. 59; Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 106.

145
“those of wild beasts”:
Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” in
Violence in the Black Imagination: Essays and Documents
, ed. Ronald T. Takaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 50.

145
“laws they so much need”:
Letter from H. C. Clock to his brother Warren, February 15, 1863, Leslie Anders Collection, MHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

146
other fugitive memoirs:
According to the volume of Knight genealogy collected by his descendants,
The Family of John “Jackie” Knight and Keziah Davis Knight
, Joe Hatton belonged to Newton’s uncle William Knight and also aided William’s son Dickie Knight, an ardent Unionist who eventually went to New Orleans to join the Union army. Ethel Knight similarly describes Joe Hatton as helping Newton survive in the swamps and considering himself a fellow soldier of Newton’s in
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 122.

146
“more fatal than that of the rattlesnake”:
Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, pp. 58-59. We have drawn from numerous sources to describe the experience of living in the Piney Woods swamps; the most important are Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, pp. 55-66; and Street,
Look Away!
, pp. 39-51. Northup notes that slaves had a competitive advantage in the swamps since whites had not learned how to survive in them.

146
“in a crooked race”:
Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, pp. 58-59; Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 106.

147
“preferred dog flesh”:
Commager,
The Civil War Archive
, p. 541.

147
door would fall shut:
Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, p. 81.

147
to secure her freedom:
Interview with Barbara Blackledge, great-granddaughter of Newton and Rachel, March 29, 2008, Ellisville, Miss., interview with Dorothy Knight Marsh, great-granddaughter of Newton and Rachel, Washington, D.C., June 28, 2008; phone interview with Jules Smith, great-granddaughter of Newton and Rachel, April 6, 2008; Bynum, notes on interviews with Earle Knight, Mississippi Oral History Project, University of Southern Mississippi.

148
his eyes and ears:
Interviews with Barbara Blackledge, Dorothy Knight Marsh, Jules Smith.

148
poisons in the dog food:
Ethel Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 174.

148
“lead poisoning”:
For more on slaves collaborating with white fugitives, see Aughey,
Tupelo
, p. 124; Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 174; Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

148
free slaves from bondage:
Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 75. Although Ethel Knight’s account is at times unreliable and some of her scenes clearly fictionalized, it’s difficult to dismiss her as a source altogether on the subject of Rachel. She alone among historians acknowledged the relationship between Newton and Rachel, and she also recognized that women and blacks aided and in some cases fought alongside the Jones County band.

148
armed with pistols:
Blight,
A Slave No More
, p. 70.

149
“Many a god bless you”:
Diary of George C. Burmeister, May 11, 1863, Civil War Collection, MHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

149
Another woman demanded wages:
“A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg,” pp. 768-74.

150
“don’t you forgit it”:
Rawick,
The American Slave
, supplement, series 1, vol. 10,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 5, p. 2003.

150
“by the loyal public”:
Quoted from Martha M. Bigelow, “The Significance of Milliken’s Bend in the Civil War,”
Journal of Negro History
45:3 (1960): p. 158.

151
“usage of a civilized warfare”:
Cash and Somerville,
My Dear Nellie
, p. 90.

151
“washing for the company”:
As quoted in McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades
, p. 119.

151
at the double-quick:
Hoffman,
Camp, Court and Siege
, pp. 59-60.

153
“employment of Negro troops”:
Bigelow, “The Significance of Milliken’s Bend in the Civil War,” p. 163.

153
a fellow soldier of Newton’s:
Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 122; Thomas, et al.,
The Family of John “Jackie” Knight and Keziah Davis Knight
.

153
“run back to the house”:
Rawick,
The American Slave
, vol. 9,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 4, pp. 1801-1802.

153
“dey would be near by”:
Rawick,
The American Slave
, vol. 8,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 5, p. 2065.

154
“treachery to freedom”:
Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” p. 47.

154
“You find out who you are”:
W. H. Auden,
Lectures on Shakespeare
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 48.

155
Newton came to belong more to Rachel:
Authors’ interviews with Barbara Blackledge, Dorothy Knight Marsh, Jules Smith; Bynum, notes on interviews with Earle Knight, Oral History Project, University of Southern Mississippi.

155
a comrade of blacks:
Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 100.

155
spared their sexual attentions:
Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, pp. 86-87; Sumrall and Welch,
The Knights and Related Families.
Fannie Knight’s birth date is taken from census records.

156
“faithful, loyal, and true”:
These quotes are drawn from ex-slaves who acknowledged the love between white men and black women: William Wells Brown,
Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter
(1853; reprint, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), p. 100; John Roy Lunch,
Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 6.

156
“seduction under the implicit threat of force”:
Eugene Genovese,
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
(New York: Vintage Books, 1976), p. 428.

156
“as it is known in other countries”:
Albert T. Morgan,
Yazoo; Or, On the Picket Line of Freedom in the South: A Personal Narrative
(1884; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), p. 212.

156
“than to submit to compulsion”:
Harriet A. Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
, Jean Fagan Yellin, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 55. As the scholar Eugene Genovese notes, even relationships whose initial overtures were exploitive often developed into more. “They were not supposed to, but they did—and in larger numbers than they or subsequent generations of black and white southerners have ever wanted to admit.” See Genovese,
Roll, Jordan, Roll
, p. 413.

For our understanding of Newton’s relationship with Rachel, we have also benefited from the following sources: White,
Arn’t I a Woman;
Stephanie M. H. Camp,
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Thavolia Glymph,
Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Catherine Clinton,
Tara Revisited: Women, War, and the Plantation Legend
(New York: Abbeville Press, 1995); Marie Jenkins Schwartz,
Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000); Virginia Elise Lemire,
“Miscegenation”: Making Race in America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Annette Gordon-Reed,
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); David J. Libby, Paul Spickard, and Susan Ditto, eds.,
Affect and Power: Essays on Sex, Slavery, Race, and Religion in Appreciation of Winthrop D. Jordan
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005); Randall Kennedy,
Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, and Adoption
(New York: Pantheon, 2003); Carl Plasa and Betty J. Ring, eds.,
The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison
(New York: Routledge, 1994); Martha Hodes, ed.,
Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North America
(New York: New York University Press, 1999); and Martha Hodes,
White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

157
“tortured as well as degraded”:
Genovese,
Roll, Jordan, Roll
, p. 419.

157
“Amalgamation is incest”:
Ibid., p. 418.

158
“marry our daughters to the niggers”:
McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades
, p. 109.

158
“a long train of evils”:
Cash and Somerville,
My Dear Nellie
, p. 129.

158
“there’s lots of ways I’d ruther die”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

160
“mustered into the U.S. service”:
Deposition of Joel E. Welborn in
Newton Knight et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464.

161
“army in the woods”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

162
until the horns sounded:
Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
, pp. 82-83; this account of the wagon raid is based on Leverett’s excerpt from a private unpublished memoir by William Fairchild’s descendants, titled “The House of Fairchild.” Although the account contains some errors, it generally conforms to other accounts of a raid by Newton on a Confederate wagon train in early 1864, including Newton’s own, and mentions contained in official reports.

162
“they cut and run”:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief.”

163
brazenness of the attackers:
Leverett,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 83.

163
“an old buck”:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, pp. 82-83.

163
“killed them both”:
Ibid.

164
“Newt pluged him”:
Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
, p. 84, excerpts from “The House of Fairchild.”

164
rode out behind his animals:
Tom Knight refers to McGilvery as “Angus,” apparently mistaking him for his son. William McGilvery owned half a dozen slaves and $5,480 in land and stated his personal wealth at $18,910, according to U.S. Federal Census Records for 1860. Amos Deason was the executor of his estate, according to Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 253, n. 66.

165
he died that night:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 30.

165
John Carlyle:
Interview with J. C. Andrews, in Jean Strickland and Patricia N. Edwards, eds.,
Miscellaneous Records of Jones County
(Moss Point, Miss: n.p., 1992), p. 99; there is a reference to Rushton being shot “in his bed by a deserter” in “Points of Interest in Jones County,” WPA Collection, Jones County, record group 60, vol. 315, MDAH; M. P. Bush, address to the meeting of the DAR, February 17, 1912, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.

165
Their houses began to burn:
Devall to Governor Charles Clark, March 21,
1864, as quoted in Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
, p. 81; letter from James Hamilton, CSA Major and Controlling Quartermaster Tax in Kind for Mississippi and East Louisiana, to Col. T. M. Jack, Assistant Adjutant-General, March 31, 1864,
OR
, series 1, vol. 32, part 3, pp. 727-28.