My family is from Jones County which is called The Free State of Jones. I lived there for a long time. There are to this very day still active family rivalery that comes out of that whole time. I know all the Knight family.
What many people do not know is that Newt Knight and his men fought BOTH the Union and The Confederates and both armies chased, caught, and hung members of his band. Newt and his men did not want to participate in the war on either side. They said they were poor Scottish red dirt farmers and they had no reason to fight anybody about anything. But they ended up fighting everybody and attacking both the Yankees and the Confederates when they came into The Free State.
I hunted along Leaf River in the exact spots Newt Knight and his men used for hide outs. Newt and many of his band continued to wage war against the yankee carpet baggers that decended on the south like a swarm of locust after the war. They called it Reconstruction. It was actually 12 years of rape and robbery. There are many stories still told by people removed from that time by only one generation. I personally talked to Tom Knight who was one of Newt's sons when Tom was 90 years old. He was blind, but his mind was as sharp as ever and he remembered everything.
If any of you are really interested, you can get Ethel Knight's book The Echo of the Black Horn on Amazon. She tells the story like it really happened. I have bought several rifles and shotguns over the years from The Free State Sporting Goods store in Laurel. And that war continues to this day because the truth about it has never been told to the American public and it never will be because if it were to be told, people would realize that many of the laws used today are illegal because the 14 th and 15 th admentments to the Constitution were NEVER legally ratified by all the state legislatures which is required by the Constitution.
It's all water under the bridge now, but the America as our founders envisioned it died the day Lee surrendered and the all powerful Imperial Federal Government we have now was born. THAT is what the war was about. It was about power and control. It was not about slavery. Slavery was the excuse and it only came up after the war had been going on for three years in order to justify the carnage caused by the way. The victors always get to write the history and most of what you have been taught about that war is wrong.
Last edited by BobWills; 07/24/16.
