The State of Jones: The Small Southern County that Seceded from the Confederacy

Sally Jenkins & John Stauffer, New York: Doubleday. 416 pages. Hardcover, $27.50.

Review by Thomas L. Breiner, 2010

© Cincinnati CWRT and Thomas L. Breiner 2010

The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer is a truly intriguing tale of Jones County Mississippi during the Civil War. It is also the tale purported to be a biography of the infamous Newton Knight, a very controversial figure in story of Mississippi, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Newton Knight and with him Jones County Mississippi seceded from the Confederacy in 1863 after the fall of Vicksburg. Knight and 69 fellow Jones County residents were forced into Company F 7th Mississippi Battalion after General P.T.G. Beauregard evacuated Corinth in May of 1862. Newton was present at the Battle of Corinth in October 1862. He quickly deserted in November. Unfortunately, he was captured and agreed to return to his unit rather that face a firing squad, probably a good decision. The 7th Mississippi was attached to the forces defending Vicksburg. Newton deserted for a second time after the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. This time he successfully returned to Jones County and formed an unofficial company, the Jones County Scouts, in which he was elected captain.

Jones County was strongly Unionist. Newton Knight was elected the county’s delegate at the secession conference, but never got to vote against secession. He was an uneducated, antislavery farmer in a poor Mississippi county. He had two families that over time became intertwined due to their being isolated from the rest of Mississippi. He had one white and one black family. His relationship with a slave name Rachel developed during his years avoiding Confederate attempts to end his control over Jones County during 1863 through 1865. The end result of this relationship is that Newton Jones ended up enslaving both of his families.

This work is a very interesting and compelling story that purports to be the history of Jones County and the life of Newton Jones; however, to me it is more fiction than history. The authors do a fantastic job of collecting the minimal amount of date available and have created a very interesting, but largely unsubstantiated tale of the events that transpired in Jones County during the last years of the Civil War. Newton Knight did not write reports and for the majority of his life refused to discuss the Civil War and his participation in it. The unofficial unit that he commanded supposedly tried to join the Union Army, but never succeeded in being officially enlisted. Newton finally agreed to talk with a newspaper reporter in 1921, shortly before his death. He was 92 years old. The information he provided can hardly be called reliable at that stage in his life; fifty-six years after the war. There were no diaries, letters or reports to help him recall accurately of the events that transpired and definitely identify places and persons involved.

The problem with this type of history is that there are insufficient first hand accounts and time has a tendency to make events larger than life or less significant. While I admit that this is a very well written book and I found it extremely interesting, I cannot state that it represents the true story of Jones County or for that matter the life of Newton Knight. I recommend this work for anyone interested in a truly remarkable piece of historical fiction. The authors fail to adequately footnote statements and instead use endnotes to hide the lack of supporting documentation. The endnotes are weak and the bibliography is slim with no way to substantiate events. The authors do not even give you a good map of where Jones County in located in the state or where these events supposedly occurred. Just like in the 1948 trial of Davis Knight for polluting a white woman, the verdict was overturned on appeal because, just like the history of Jones County, the court could not tell the difference between black and white. It is said that history is written by the victors and in this case the Confederates won. The tale of these Unionists is more myth and folklore rather than hard history. Unfortunately, the real history of Jones County and the Civil War will never be known.