Newton Knight
[1] Jones County elected John H. Powell, the "cooperation" (anti-secession) candidate, to represent them at Mississippi's secession convention in January 1861.In an interview many years later, Knight suggested that many voters of Jones County, not understanding how limited Powell's choices were, felt betrayed by his action.The men of Jones County and the region were disturbed by news from home reporting the poor conditions, as their wives and children found it hard to keep up the farms.However, many believe Knight's principal reason for desertion was his anger over the Confederate government's passing of the Twenty Negro Law."[2] After making his way 200 miles home from deserting in the retreat following the defeat at Corinth, Knight, according to relatives, shot and killed Morgan.[11] A local quartermaster, Captain W. J. Bryant, reported that "the deserters have overrun and taken possession of the country, in many cases exiling the good and loyal citizens or shooting them in cold blood on their own door-sills."[12] General Braxton Bragg dispatched Major Amos McLemore to Jones County to investigate and round up deserters and stragglers.One skirmish took place on December 23, 1863, at the home of Sally Parker, a Knight Company supporter, leaving one Confederate soldier dead and two badly wounded.[4]: 107 During this same period, Knight led a raid into Paulding, where he and his men captured five wagonloads of corn, which they distributed among the local population.Polk stated that the band of deserters were "in open rebellion, defiant at the outset, proclaiming themselves 'Southern Yankees,' and resolved to resist by force of arms all efforts to capture them.[2] General Polk initially responded to the actions of the Knight Company by sending a contingent under Colonel Henry Maury into the area in February 1864.[2] Shortly afterward, Polk dispatched a veteran contingent of soldiers from the 6th Mississippi Infantry Regiment led by Colonel Robert Lowry, a future governor who would later describe Knight as an "ignorant and uneducated man.[2] After the end of the war, the Union Army tasked Knight with distributing food to struggling families in the Jones County area.He provided sworn statements from several individuals attesting to his loyalty to the Union, including a local judge and a state senate candidate.[4]: 2 A great-niece, Ethel Knight, wrote a 1951 history entitled Echo of the Black Horn: An Authentic Tale of 'The Governor' of the 'Free State of Jones.'In separate interviews or publications, these three men made the same point: that it was their belief that Jones County had never left the Union in the first place.[26]Bynum explored the regional history beyond the War, examining the common-law marriages of Newton Knight and Rachel, a freedwoman, and of two pairs of their grown children, forming three interracial families.[27] Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer wrote a popular account, 'The State of Jones', that expands marginally on Leverett's and Bynum's research.The authors emphasize the extent to which Knight and his close allies ended Confederate control of Jones County during the war and continued to express anti-racist, pro-Unionist sympathies during Reconstruction.[4]: 2 The book was the basis of the 1948 film, Tap Roots, directed by George Marshall and starring Van Heflin and Susan Hayward.[citation needed] In 2016, the film Free State of Jones, directed by Gary Ross and starring Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, was released.