NF Free State Of Jones

Non-Fiction
Several Union cavalry raids went in and near Jones County during the existence of Knight's outlaw gang. The "Unionist guerillas" never gave any aid to these raiders. And the Union raiders never make any mention of Knight's gang.
Apparently the Union Cavalry failed to notify Knight and the boy's via cell phone or social media exactly when and where they would be.
How exactly was the Union Cavalry supposed to coordinate with local guerrillas?
Leftyhunter
 
Morality has to win that fight. It is one of the things that separates man from other animals that we can control our primal urges. I refuse to believe that biology rules on the fidelity front. It is choice, not chromosomes, that makes men jump from bed to bed.
After thousands of years of morality based religion I am not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Leftyhunter
 
I will try to put together a new sourced thread on the good and brave Newt Knight this weekend.
Leftyhunter

We look forward to it.
Under your Theory, it would appear that Negroes who were Cooks, Bodyguards and Wagon Drivers would of been Soldiers or maybe Guerrilla fighters. Their services were detrimental to the Union Cause and greatly benefited the CSA standard. You are beginning to make sense.
 
Apparently the Union Cavalry failed to notify Knight and the boy's via cell phone or social media exactly when and where they would be.
How exactly was the Union Cavalry supposed to coordinate with local guerrillas?
Leftyhunter
Odd confederate guerrillas, that were actually guerrillas with the support of the population didn't seem to have a problem finding and cooperating with the confederate army, raiders or recruiters.......But guess its like after Newts band is largely destroyed he also claimed he couldn't find a way through the lines to join the union army and cause......Confederate guerrillas did that routinely too, going to Texas and back every winter.........Either he wasn't very devoted to the union cause or was apparently particularly inept, I'd lean towards the former which is why he's just a outlaw.........

Unless you think the confederates had superior cell phone technology and social media.........they apparently did have a higher degree of social cooperation with word of mouth intelligence being passed from neighbor to neighbor to the the guerrillas, but that support is a hallmark of successful guerrillas.......bandits usually don't have such support, which would also account for ease Maury and Lowry had in tracking down effectively disrupting the band, they apparently weren't being warned of the confederate movements by the populace.........
 
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I have a friend that lives in Jones county MS and he told me that although the film was well done, it is revisionist history and jones is "hated" there
 
There were other attempts st Free state of Jones throughout the South... here are two in Georgia...

African Americans in Georgia also found means of resistance, particularly in their attempts to secure freedom from enslavement. Rebellion attempts involving both black and white Georgians were put down in Calhoun County in 1862 and in Brooks County in 1865.

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/civil-war-dissent

Three white citizens of Calhoun County, Georgia, were arrested for supplying area slaves with firearms in preparation for a rebellion. Slaves in neighboring Brooks County conspired with a local white man, John Vickery, to take the county and hold it for the Union.

Remember the Free State of Jones... the argument about the war...

A Rich Man's War
On April 5, 1865, only days before the Confederacy's collapse, an Early County newspaper, the Early County News, published an editorial that reflected a common feeling on the Georgia home front. "This has been 'a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.' It is true that there are a few wealthy men in the army, but nine tenths of them hold positions, always get out of the way when they think a fight is coming on, and treat the privates like dogs. . . . There seems to be no chance to get this class to carry muskets." Such attitudes had long since undermined support for the Confederacy and have led many scholars to conclude that internal dissent, as much as the invading armies, was a significant, perhaps decisive, factor in the war's outcome.

Here is a couple of paragraphs on those three men in Calhoun county revolt 1862

https://books.google.com/books?id=q...re put down in Calhoun County in 1862&f=false

 
I came across this today:

POSTED ON AUGUST 5, 2021

Did Jones County Secede?

This essay by Alexander Lee Bondurant appeared in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. 1 (pp. 104-6), printed for the Society in Oxford, Mississippi in 1898. Other entries include “Mississippi as a Field for the Student of Literature”, by W.L. Weber, “Suffrage in Mississippi”, by R.H. Thompson and “Some Inaccuracies in Claiborne’s History in Regard to Tecumseh” by Charles Riley.
Most alumni of the University of Mississippi will find Professor Bondurant’s name familiar if only for the classes they took in Bondurant Hall, though some of the most hard-core Ole Miss fans will remember him as the man who established the University of Mississippi football team and served as its coach during its first season in 1893. For the record, the Rebs had a 4-1 season, losing only to the Southern Athletic Club in New Orleans (0-24) on Nov. 30; they stayed in the city long enough to beat Tulane there two days later (12-4). Bondurant was also a classics scholar with degrees from the University of Virginia and Harvard.
I reproduce his essay refuting the existence of the Free State of Jones out of historical interest. I myself remain solidly convinced that the Free State of Jones was never a cohesive entity, much less one with noble objectives, most likely nothing more than a handful of outlaws protecting themselves and their families against the depredations of a moribund, corrupt local regime.

Did Jones County Secede?
It seems that many within and without the State would answer this query in the affirmative, and even their ordinance of succession is given by one writer on the subject as follows:
“WHEREAS, The State of Mississippi, for reasons which appear justifiable, has seen fit to withdraw from the Federal Union; and,
WHEREAS, We, the citizens of Jones County, claim the same right, thinking our grievances are sufficient by reason of an unjust law passed by the Confederate States of America forcing us to go into distant parts, etc., and therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That we sever the union heretofore existing between Jones County and The State of Mississippi, and proclaim our independence of the said State and of the Confederate States of America; and we solemnly call upon Almighty God to witness and bless this act.”
Such being the case, it has seemed to me in order to advert to a discussion in The Nation beginning March 24, 1892, which throws considerable light on the question. In the paper of this date Samuel Willard, of Chicago, writes that he had been a soldier in the army which invaded Mississippi, and that he had never during the war heard of such an occurrence. When, therefore, he saw the statement made in The New England Magazine for November, 1891, the author being professor Hart, he doubted its accuracy. It may be stated just here that Professor Hart, in a subsequent history of The Nation, gives as his authority Mr. Galloway, historian of the Sixth Army Corps, who published in The Magazine of American History for October, 1886, an article entitled “A Confederacy Within a Confederacy”; but upon what authority Mr. Galloway based his statements does not appear. He therefore wrote to the Governor of the State of Mississippi and to the clerk of Jones County, and elicited replies from both of these gentlemen, and Governor Stone enclosed a letter from his predecessor, Hon. Robert Lowry, who was sent to Jones County during the war in command of troops for the purpose of arresting deserters. The texts of the letters are too long to quote in full, so a few passages will have to suffice. Gov. Stone writes:
“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the whole story is a fabrication, and there is scarcely any foundation for any part of it. To begin with, Jones County furnished perhaps as many soldiers to the army of the Confederacy as any other county of like population. * * * Many of them declined to go into the army in the beginning, but so far as formal withdrawal or resolution to that effect is concerned, no such thing ever occurred in Jones County. Hon. Robert Lowry was sent to Jones County during the war for the purpose of arresting and returning deserters to their commands, and there was some little fighting with these bands of deserters, or rather bush-whacking of his men by the deserters; and some of the deserters were arrested and executed, but only a few. The whole story is the veriest fabrication, and I presume few persons of intelligence will believe any of it.”
Ex-Governor Lowry writes: “The county furnished nearly and probably its entire quote of soldiers, many of whom did splendid service. No such effort as establishing a separate government was ever attempted. The story of withdrawal and establishing a separate government is a pure fabrication—not the shadow of foundation for it.”
Governor McLaurin, in a recent letter to me on this subject, writes: “I was a boy thirteen years old when the war commenced. I was ‘raised’ in Smith County, a county adjoining Jones. I was at home the first three years of the war, and, if there was any attempt by Jones County to secede and set up a separate government, I did not hear anything of it. I was in a brigade that intercepted a federal raid that started from Baton Rouge to Mobile in November or December, 1864, and we passed through or very near Jones County, and I never heard of any attempt to set up a separate government in the county. I think it safe for you to negate the whole story.”
E.B. Sharp Esq., chancery clerk, writes: “The report is utterly false in every particularly.”
free-state-of-jones.jpg


https://jesseyancy.com/did-jones-county-secede/

There are so many threads about the "Free State of Jones".
I didn't know where to post this article.

But I chose this one this one as it was one of the first to appear in the search results.

Yes, it's an old thread ... but a good one to "bump".

I hope ya'll enjoy !
 
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