You can't raise a cane back up when it's in defeat.

  I just got through writing almost 2,000 words on the Free State of Jones County for a friend. He wanted background for a character in an RPG he plays, so I gave him that with food on top. The FSJ is one of my favorite topics in history. I haven't seen the movie but here is an excellent book on the topic by Victoria Bynum.

 So I wrote a lot and did a lot of research and had me a real good time. So, of course, my hands hurt and I have a throbbing headache, and quite frankly, I think I've done my 500 words. Let this be known, if you want background on a character, I'm good at that. Drop me a line.

 In any event, I've put the results of my research - sans anything directly connected to my friend or his character - below the jump. This isn't an exhaustive dissertation, of course, more of an article-type deal. What all this means is I might come back to write later this evening but I really doubt it.

 So, there you go. More below the jump, as they say.

BACKGROUND FOR A JONES COUNTY BOY WHERE THE SOUTH WON

 I haven’t seen the Matthew McConaughey movie, so I don’t know how much that would help. From what I understand, it’s fairly close to accurate though it gets caught up in the “white savior” narrative too much. It’s partly based on a book of the same name by Victoria Bynum that’s highly recommended.

 However, one thing to keep in mind is that up until fairly recently, almost all scholarship on the Civil War came from pro-Confederate sources, like the Daughters of the Confederacy or the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Things like the Free State of Jones infuriates them because it damages the myth of a United South, which didn’t even come close to existing. Large swaths of just about every state were either pro-Union or just weren’t particularly interested. East Tennessee, South Florida, and a good bit of the bayou country in Louisiana basically chose not to participate.

ABOUT JONES COUNTY, THEN AND NOW

 What made Jones County interesting is that folks there operated as an active guerilla force against Confederate forces. They tear up railroad tracks, wreck bridges, attack Confederate forces, that sort of thing. And for the most part, they were a thorn in the Confederate government’s side from roughly 1863 on, and the people who were the biggest thorns remained so through the fall of Reconstruction in 1870.

 These days, Jones County is a decent-sized place. There are a little over 63,000 folks living there, making them the 10th most populous county. For reference, Itawamba County - where I live - comes in at 40 out of 82 with 23,000 people. However, up until the 1900s, it was pretty sparsely populated. Most of it is in the Piney Woods belt, full of almost impenetrable wilderness and swamps. DeSoto National Forrest runs through it. The lumber companies came in at the turn of the century and that’s where the population boom came from. These days it’s mostly chicken plants.

 It’s pretty white and has always been overwhelmingly conservative. It’s gone for the Republican candidate for president every year since 1964, except for 1968 when George Wallace ran. Today the racial make-up is roughly 70-30 white to not-white and around 20 percent Black. It’s a little whiter than the Mississippi average and, for the most, a bit more middle-class.

 The county seat is Ellisburg and the main town is Laurel, and both were there during the Civil War. An interesting note, Jones County was such a pain in the ass during the War, the state changed the name of the county and Ellisburg to Leesville. The voters changed it back in 1870. Tying this all back to our topic, there’s a tee-niny little town called Soso. It’s almost completely mixed-race and that all comes from a guy named Newton Knight.

THE BALLAD OF NEWT KNIGHT

 He was the grandson of one of the county’s slave-owning elite, but Knight was a small, hardscrabble farmer. Remember, Mississippi was probably the richest state in the Confederacy because of cotton but Jones County didn’t have the soil, so had the smallest number of slaves in the state. When the South seceded, Jones County’s delegate was supposed to vote against succession but wound up voting with the majority. He was burned in effigy in Ellisburg.

 That all being said, Jones County sent plenty of soldiers to fight against the Yankees, including Newt Knight. He was a volunteer and according to all accounts was good at being a soldier. He was released from service after about a year but was conscripted that same year. The draft was massively unpopular and the Confederate Army was pretty heavy-handed. Knight rejoined as a medic and took part in the Battle of Corinth, one of the bloodiest Confederate defeats in the war.

 So a lot of the Jones County boys got sick of the war, including Knight and his lifelong friend and partner Jasper Collins. A real stickler for the poor farmer was something called the “Twenty Slave Law”. Basically, this meant anyone who owned twenty slaves was exempt from conscription. This infuriated folks like Knight, substance farmers who saw this as a rich man’s war fought by poor men. He and his boys headed for home, but he was eventually arrested and tortured for desertion. Just before the fall of Vicksburg, he escaped again and pretty much disappeared into the Piney Woods.

 This was before the Battle of Gettysburg, probably the deciding loss of the Civil War, but the South was nevertheless up against the wall. The way the country was formed initially worked against it making a united front, and that was sort of the whole reason they left the United States. The Army would take everything poor farmers had, from livestock to crops to food, as well as any able-bodied male, including boys younger than 12. The Jones County boys decided the enemy who was whoever attacking them, so they formed the Knight Company with Newt as the captain.

 The company engaged in guerilla tactics like robbing supply trains and tax collectors as well as assassinating Army officials. The Confederate Army would send groups into Jones to crush the rebellion from time to time and hung quite a few of the rebels but they never found Knight. The Company would slip into the Piney Woods and the swamps in the area and were supported by most of the local populace.

 Perhaps the most significant thing about Knight’s group is that, unlike most other guerrilla groups, took in runaway slaves. In fact, he married one of his grandfather’s former slaves and had several children with her. This is what pissed off people the most. He claimed her and his kids by her, and that infuriated white society. It still pisses them off to this day.

 During Reconstruction, he worked to help black folks integrate into society, even leading raids to rescue black children that white landowners refused to give up. His boys also worked as bodyguards for black voters in the very bloody 1870 election. This was, however, where Reconstruction died. Knight pretty much disappeared into the woods after that because people wanted him hanging from a tree, not just for his betrayal of the Confederacy but mostly because of his mixed-race children. Even so, he supported any effort he could to help former slaves and mixed-race children.

 Knight gave only one interview in 1921 and died in 1922. After his death, most of his descendants had to leave Jones County because he was a life-long rough cob of a fellow that no one messed with. When he died, the white society took out their anger on his children and grandchildren. In 1948, one of his grandsons was tried and convicted for marrying a white woman because of the one-drop rule. 

 To this day, Knight’s legacy is contentious. Some say he was just a gangster taking advantage of the chaos and some say he was a Robin Hood/John Brown figure. He did have pro-Union sentiments and raised the American flag over the courthouse in Ellisburg even though he was a volunteer soldier in the Confederate Army. If nothing else, he's a prime example of how nothing in Mississippi is completely black or white.