The State of Jones (56 page)

221
“present themselves to view”:
McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades
, p. 161.

221
“Four men were shot down”:
OR
, series 1, vol. 45, part 1, p. 714.

222
prongs of a broken fork:
Roberts and Moneyhon,
Portraits of Conflict
, p. 283.

222
burned with powder:
Nehemiah Davis Starr letters, Leslie Anders Collection, MHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

222
“I do not admire the mode of warfare”:
“Anson Hemingway, A Legacy of War Reporting.”

223
“fight to the last men”:
Nehemiah Davis Starr letters, Leslie Anders Collection, MHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

223
“keep him awake”:
Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 185.

223
smuggled Yankees:
Roberts and Moneyhon,
Portraits of Conflict
, p. 281.

223
four Unionists who tried to vote:
Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 127; Silver, “The Breakdown of Morale in Central Mississippi in 1864,” pp. 99106.

224
paroled twenty-one men:
Letter from Amos Deason to Governor Charles Clark, September 1, 1864, Governors’ Papers, series 768, box 950, MDAH; Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 23; Leverett,
The Legend of the Free State of Jones
, pp. 113-14.

224
cook all of her chickens:
Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 127.

224
frightened a local slave:
Rawick,
The American Slave
, supplement, series I, vol. 10,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 5, interview with Martha Wheeler, pp. 2262-71.

224
serving the Union in New Orleans:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief”; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 127.

226
They used the leather for shoes:
Frost, “The South’s Strangest Army Revealed by Chief”; Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 35.

227
his rear end roasted:
Thomas, et al.,
The Family of John “Jackie” Knight and Keziah Davis Knight
, p. 128.

227
buckshot dappled in the bark:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 64.

227
lay in state at the White House:
McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
, pp. 851-52.

227
“virtually at an end”:
McPherson,
Ordeal by Fire
, p. 485; Jay Winik,
April 1865: The Month That Saved America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 320. On May 26, the last of the trans-Mississippi Confederates surrendered, which officially ended the war.

228
energy, manpower, and morale:
According to official records, tallied by Mark Weitz in
More Damning than Slaughter
, 103,400 men deserted Confederate service by the end of the war. Of those, 11,604 were Mississippians. For more on the effects of desertion on the army, see Weitz,
More Damning than Slaughter
, p. ix; Mallard, “I Had No Comfort to Give the People,” pp. 78-86.

228
“in the fight on the other side”:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, p. 63.

228
rations for his men:
Deposition of Newton Knight,
Newton Knight, et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464.

229
a noble but Lost Cause:
David W. Blight,
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 1-30.

229
“after our armies are whipped”:
Cash and Howorth,
My Dear Nellie
, p. 211.

230
“with the help of the Klan”:
Rawick,
The American Slave
, supplement, series I, vol. 6,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 1, pp. 10-19.

231
official business with them:
Accompanying Papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA; it does not appear that Anson Hemingway was in Ellisville. Beginning on July 25, 1865, he was on detached service in Natchez as a subcommissioner in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, the agency in charge of protecting blacks and ushering them to emancipation. Hemingway remained in Mississippi until he was honorably discharged on March 19, 1866, when he returned to Chicago and became “an easygoing real estate man with much more interest in outdoor living than in making money,” according to his descendants. He marched every year with his comrades in the Army of the Republic parades. In 1909, he gave his grandson Ernest a twenty-gauge shotgun. He died in 1926 at the age of eighty-two. Anson Hemingway file, Compiled Service Records, 70th U.S. Colored Infantry, RG94, NARA; “Anson Hemingway: A Legacy of War Reporting.”

232
forty-eight plantations for sale or lease:
William C. Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1967), pp. 18-36, quotation from p. 19; John Townsend Trowbridge,
The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities
(1866; reprint, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan University Library Historical Reprint Series), p. 377; David M. Oshinsky,
“Worse than Slavery,” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
(New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), p. 13.

232
their husbands dead as well:
Walter Lord, “Mississippi: The Past That Has Not Died,”
American Heritage
16:4 (June 1965), online at
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1965/4/1965_4_4.shtml
.

233
more common to see a dead man:
Oshinsky,
“Worse than Slavery,”
p. 12.

233
“this country was as flat”:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi
, pp. 18-36, quotation from p. 19; notes on the Whitfield Community Meeting, June 4, 1926, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.

233
“Molasses”:
Bill of Lading, Accompanying Papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA.

234
“I understand that you are commissioner”:
Letter from Capt. J. Fairbanks, 72nd USCI to Newton Knight, July 21, 1865, Accompanying Papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA.

234
“Sir this colored man informs me”:
Letter from Capt. J. Fairbanks, 72nd USCI to Newton Knight, July 24, 1865, Accompanying Papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA.

235
allow their boy to go:
Knight,
The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight
, pp. 4-5.

235
“hold the Negroes or their boy”:
Ibid., p. 4.

235
“Mississippians have been shooting”:
Oshinsky,
“Worse than Slavery
,” p. 24.

236
a pistol shot rang out:
The account of Newton’s ride through Ellisville is from Ethel Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, p. 233. That Newton stirred strong emotions when he appeared in public, and that political and racial violence threatened to erupt around him, is verified by other sources, including T. J. Knight and Jones County resident Ben Graves. See B. D. Graves, address to the Hebron Community, June 17, 1926, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Miss.

236
new Jones County sheriff:
Jones County Mississippi to his Excellency William L. Sharkey, July 15, 1865, Governor’s Papers, Sharkey, Letters, Petitions, Telegrams July 15-18, 1865, series 771, box 955, MDAH.

237
He decided to let the appointments stand:
Bettersworth,
Mississippi in the Confederacy
, p. 148; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 132.

237
“Capt. You will sease a civilian lot of wool”:
Letter from Lt. H. T. Elliot to Newton Knight, July 31, 1865, Accompanying Papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA.

238
property of the U.S. government:
Letter from Capt. A. R. M. Smith, 70th USCI, to Newton Knight, August 19, 1865, and letters from Lt. Simon Smith, 70th USCI, to Newton Knight, Sept. 2, Sept. 8, 1865, Accompanying papers, H.R. 1814, Newton Knight file, record group 233, box 16, NARA.

238
“duty bound will ever pay”:
“To the Senate and House of Representatives
of the State of Mississippi, Oct. 16, 1865,” in Bettersworth,
Mississippi in the Confederacy
, p. 148; M. P. Bush, address to the meeting of the DAR, February 17, 1912, Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Mississippi;
The Daily Picayune
, December 3, 1865; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, p. 135.

239
“poorest county in the State”:
Daily Picayune
, December 3, 1865.

239
“must rule the South”:
Foner,
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 176, 177, 276.

240
Johnson chose the latter:
Foner,
Reconstruction
, pp. 179, 180, 181.

240
recognize the Union at all:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi
, pp. 38, 52-58; Roberts and Moneyhon,
Portraits of Conflict
, pp. 334-35; Oshinsky,
“Worse than Slavery,”
p. 24.

241
“the people are afraid”:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi
, pp. 71-72.

241
“make him feel his inferiority”:
Lord, “Mississippi: The Past That Has Not Died.”

241
“the infernal sassy niggers”:
Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery,” p. 18.

241
“breaking of the neck of the free Negro”:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction
, pp. 104-140; Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery,” p. 25.

241
“to aid but not to interfere”:
Foner,
Reconstruction
, pp. 190-91, quotation from p. 191; “General Slocum at Vicksburg,”
Harper’s Weekly
, October 21, 1865, p. 658 (quoted); Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction
, pp. 16, 71-76, 61 (quoted).

243
He tore the Indian down:
Memoirs of Lewis F. Phillips, Civil War Collection, MHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

243
their personal shotguns:
Newton Knight, et al. v. United States
, Congressional Case 8013-8464.

243
“a state of virtual slavery”:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction
, p. 72.

243
allowing him to take office:
Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery,” p. 20.

244
“their sudden emancipation”:
Harris,
Presidential Reconstruction
, p. 134; Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery,” p. 20.

244
“whip ’em well”:
Oshinksy, “Worse than Slavery,” p. 11.

244
hired out to whites:
The complete text of Mississippi’s Black Codes can be found online at
http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/blmississippi_blackcodes.htm
.

245
allegiance to the United States of America:
Storey,
Loyalty and Loss
, pp. 175-76, quotation from p. 176; Foner,
Reconstruction
, p. 185.

245
“see the free niggers starve”:
Trowbridge,
The South
, p. 365.

246
“despotic compulsion”:
Trowbridge,
The South
, pp. 330-37.

247
“belong to the whites at large”:
Foner,
Reconstruction
, p. 150.

247
“did not believe in slavery”:
Knight,
Mississippi Girl
, p. 2; Rawick,
The American Slave
, supplement, series 1, vol. 10,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 5, interview with Martha Wheeler, former slave belonging to Jackie Knight, pp. 2262-71.

247
acreage to work as her own:
Knight,
The Echo of the Black Horn
, pp. 25354; the U.S. Census for 1870 shows Rachel living next door to Newton and Serena
and lists her occupation as “keeping house.” She has six children and a net worth of fifty dollars.

248
“he moved her to his place”:
Knight,
Mississippi Girl
, pp. 11-14; Rawick,
The American Slave
, supplement, series 1, vol. 10,
Mississippi Narratives
, part 5, interview with Martha Wheeler, former slave belonging to Jackie Knight, pp. 2262-71; Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, pp. 144-45 and Knight family genealogical chart, p. 206; U.S. Federal Census Records, 1870.

248
a double-digit number of heirs:
Bynum,
The Free State of Jones
, Rachel Knight genealogical chart, pp. 206-7.

248
life sentence in the state penitentiary:
The Mississippi miscegenation law, enacted in 1865, was repealed for ten years beginning in 1870, owing to federal pressure during congressional Reconstruction. The miscegenation law was restored in 1880, with penalties of up to a $500 fine and ten years imprisonment, until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in
Loving v. Virginia
, struck down all bans against miscegenation because they violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Peter Wallenstein, “Reconstruction, Segregation, and Miscegenation: Interracial Marriage and the Law in the Lower South, 1865-1900,”
American Nineteenth Century History
6:1 (March 2005): 58-59.