The Free State of Jones: A True Story of Defiance During the American Civil War

Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies

by Victoria E. Bynum

Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after their captain, Newton Knight, they set up headquarters in the swamps of the Leaf River, where, legend has it, they declared the Free State of Jones.

Victoria Bynum traces the origins and legacy of the Jones County uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement. She shows how the legend-what was told, what was embellished, and what was left out-reveals a great deal about the South's transition from slavery to segregation; the racial, gender, and class politics of the period; and the contingent nature of history and memory.

Adding further controversy to the legend is the story of Newt Knight's interracial romance with his accomplice, Rachel, a slave. From their relationship there developed a mixed-race community that endured long after the Civil War had ended, and the ambiguous racial identity of their descendants confounded the rules of segregated Mississippi well into the twentieth century. The film The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight and directed by Gary Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit) is releasing in cinemas worldwide in May 2016.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Civil War, American History, War, Race, American

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 10, 2001

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”It was easy to see why the legend had endured. Its characters were larger than life: men bound to one another by kinship, economic status, and membership in a paramilitary band armed against the Confederacy; women equally bound by kinship and unfettered by the chains of ladylike behavior; and even some slaves, although Piney Woods, Mississippi was not a major slaveholding region. Towering above all other characters in popular memory were ‘Captain’ Newt Knight, the grandson of a slaveholder, and Rachel Knight, the slave of Newt’s grandfather. Their relationship added the specter of interracial intimacy to the story.”


Newton Knight

There is a misconception regarding the County of Jones in Mississippi. Some think this county seceded from the Confederacy, but the real truth is they never left the Union. They remained loyal to their federal government, and some men even left to join the Union army, but a group of men, some deserters from the Confederate Army and some slaves, banded together to form a resistance to what they considered to be an invading force.

Rachel was a slave, a pretty woman with light skin. Her descendents tried to convince people that she was of Spanish heritage as a way to excuse her dark eyes, dark hair, and tinted complexion. It is all rubbish, of course, just people putting their racism on display when what they should be is feeling proud that, despite her circumstances, she became a woman to be reckoned with. Ethel Knight wrote a damning biography of Newt but maybe unintentionally revealed the more interesting part of the story. ”Ethel not only restored Rachel’s historical role, but she also unveiled a powerful, larger-than-life woman who had endured slavery, sexual exploitation, the Civil War Reconstruction, and Mississippi’s mounting campaign for white supremacy and racial segregation. Most strikingly, Rachel seemed to have had as much impact on the world around her as it had on her.”


Rachel Knight

Rachel had three children before the Civil War; all the children were obviously from white fathers. As a slave, she didn’t have much choice who bent her over a table and flung her skirt up. The raping of female slaves was an epidemic in the South. ”Between 1890-1920 white Southern literature---especially newspapers---commonly portrayed interracial sexual relations as the product of sex-crazed black ‘fiends’ ravishing innocent, virginal blondes, rather than as the product of white men raping black women or of blacks and whites participating in consensual sexual relations.”

The interesting thing is, when these wealthy planters impregnated their slaves, they were condemning their own offspring to slavery. In their minds, they were helping to create more workers for their plantations. There is a disconnect in this reasoning that has me thinking that sex with their slaves, basically having a harem at their disposal, was more important to them than any thoughts of their own blood being condemned to a life in chains.



I’m sure Hollywood, in the new movie starring Matthew Mcconaughey, will make it a love story between Newt and Rachel. The author Victoria E. Bynum doesn’t necessary disabuse that notion, but I couldn’t help thinking, was this love or was Rachel just being practical? White men found her attractive. Maybe she was with the alpha dog to keep from having to fend off the attentions of the other men. She had children with Newt, but what makes me feel a bit unsettled about buying the love story is that he also rumored to have had children with her daughter. What the heck was going on out there in the deep Mississippi woods? To further complicate the picture, he remained married to his wife Serena for the rest of his life.

Men joined Newt out of fear for their lives. They didn’t want to die on a battlefield, fighting Yankees for rich planters. It wasn’t exactly safe being with Newt’s band; many were caught and hung or shot. They were also suffering economic hardship from being away from their homes to go to war. When the Confederacy passed the Twenty Negro Law which allowed any Southerner with twenty or more slaves to leave the war to go home to help with harvest, it became clear to many men that the Confederate Government was only worried about the very richest of the rich. Does the man with twenty slaves really need to go home? It seems to me that this small demographic had plenty of help to bring in the harvest. It was the man with no slaves, with a wife and a passel load of children, who needed to go home to help.

Of course, the bulk of the soldiers were poor men with either a small acreage or were sharecroppers without land. If you let those guys go home, there would be no army. I know many thought they were going to war to defend their “raights,” but in reality they were fighting to defend a system in which they had no skin in the game.



12.2% of the population of Jones County were slaves. This was the lowest percentage of any county in Mississippi. These were not men who aspired to be slave owners. Bynum traces back the history of these men as their ancestors came from Georgia and South Carolina to Mississippi to live simple lives and avoid the corruption of ”over civilisation.”

There was always something a little different about Jones County.

Victoria E. Bynum is descended from one of the men who joined Newt Knight in his armed resistance to the Confederacy. I’ve done some research on my own family, and one of the things that happens is that as you collect the data and begin to put together a picture of who your ancestors are, you start to change how you think about yourself. Discovering your roots is important, but there is always the risk that you will discover that you are descended from scalawags or unscrupulous men or a murderer. To me that just adds spice to the stew that is a family tree. Bynum confessed that, once she finished this book, she was going to miss living every day with these people who were so unique, so brave, and who resisted when many more should have.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Significant, Obscure in Civil War History [full disclosure: main character, Newt Knight, is my first cousin, 4 times removed]

short ad for movie released today 6/24

from Smithsonian mag:
Matthew McConaughey thought the Free State of Jones script was the most exciting Civil War story he had ever read, and knew immediately that he wanted to play Newt Knight. In Knight’s defiance of both the Confederate Army and the deepest taboos of Southern culture McConaughey sees an uncompromising and deeply moral leader. He was “a man who lived by the Bible and the barrel of a shotgun,” McConaughey says in an email. “If someone—no matter what their color—was being mistreated or being used, if a poor person was being used by someone to get rich, that was a simple wrong that needed to be righted in Newt’s eyes....He did so deliberately, and to the hell with the consequences.” McConaughey sums him up as a “shining light through the middle of this country’s bloodiest fight. I really kind of marveled at him.”


My Review
This is the definitive history of a 2+ year insurrection against the Confederate States of America led by Newton Knight (my first cousin, 4 times removed) and the Knight Company (a band of Civil War deserters) in Jones County, Mississippi (where I was raised). The background and reasons for this insurgency against the Confederacy are complex, and primarily relate to class: Jones County had the lowest slave population in all of Mississippi, not being blessed with the fertile lands of the Mississippi Delta region and many felt they were wrongfully called to fight the rich man plantation/slave owner's war for slaves and cotton.

Newt Knight, a yeoman farmer who owned no slaves, enlisted for service early on and was injured in late 1861. Already angry upon hearing of the Confederacy's recent passage of the Twenty-Negro law allowing an exemption from Confederate army service of one rich white male for every 20 slaves he/his family owned, Knight decided to desert after hearing how his family was treated by an unsavory character with Confederate ties as well as how Knight's only horse had been appropriated by the Confederate cavalry as a Confederate tax levied. After returning to Jones County, he and his band unleashed hellfire upon Confederates.

Quite a suspenseful drama is the whole story, including Knight's long-time affair with Rachel Knight, a slave of his father; the two had children together and ultimately became common law husband and wife.

The racist drama continued well into the 20th century with a 1948 miscegenation trial of Davis Knight, one of the male descendants who'd married a "white lady." The trial turned upon whether Davis' great-grandmother, Rachel, was a "full-blooded Negro" or was partly Indian. If the latter then Davis would not be the proscribed 1/8 black (a so-called "octoroon").

Bynum paints the story perfectly with her well-documented, thorough research and her more than capable recounting. In my opinion, this book betters the later book on the same subject by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, The State of Jones: The Small Southern County that Seceded from the Confederacy, that's based in large part on Bynum's hard work.

[Maya B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very dry read. This book felt like a genealogy of the entire Knight family. It was a lot to take in and a lot to keep up with. I would compare this book to a textbook. It would have been great if the book focused on Newt Knight. His life seemed to be very interesting from what I read in this book

[Marion Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book months ago and still cannot believe that there is so much hidden about the South during the Civil War that I have been oblivious to. The book introduced me to real people of the South, who did not own slaves, saw the war for what it was, and then seceded from the Confederacy. Bynum does the best anyone has to date to separate fact from the myths that arose to cover up the horrible wrongs that were committed or to excuse ingrained practices, including miscegenation.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of my best friends would probably unfriend me if I tried to talk about this book and got my facts wrong, so I'm just going to say I enjoyed the book, and I'm fascinated with the topic.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't often pick up a book after seeing a movie, much less a movie trailer, but in this case I am glad I did. Victoria Bynum presents a detailed history of a rebellion of small farmers, deserters from the Confederate Army, and escaped slaves against the Confederate slave holding aristocracy. Loyal to the Union, Captain Newton Knight successfully fought off repeated Confederate cavalry raids from 1863 to the end of the Civil War, and was notorious throughout the next century not only for his successful resistance to the "Lost Cause," but also for his extended mixed race family. Knight has been alternately lauded for his daring and initiative in fighting off the Confederate Army and sustaining the people of a poor county in Mississippi and vilified for his defiance of the South's increasingly draconian segregation. Despite Professor Bynum's measured academic tone, the moving story of a gallant band who stood fast against the dark tide of secession and segregation shines forth. I highly recommend this book not only as an antidote to racist Southern mythology but also to the caricature of the South as uniformly illiterate and bigoted. Careful in its analysis, this story is also refreshing and inspirational in its humanity. One place where interested readers can continue the conversation is Professor Bynum's blog, Renegade South.

[Matt Cleere · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look inside the Civil War south. Contrary to what confederate flag waiving Southerners like to think, not everybody in the South was keen on secession from the North. My family on my Mom's side are from Jones and Forest counties and many of them still live in that area. The "white" Knights of Jones county are something of a legend down there. This book really fleshes out that legend. Highly recommended.

[Delway Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is soon to be a movie. I have long been fascinated how individuals caught in the great tides of history, can often have completely different experiences. Individual histories are not monolithic. The fictional novel, Cold Mountain, touched on the fact that the American Civil War was not all about epic battles. Ms. Bynum is a historian and this book reads like a text book, heavily based on genealogy. Keeping the characters even half-way straight took considerable effort and I was often lost. The history is of a corner of the American South that chose not to secede. In the piney woods of what is now southern Mississippi, yeoman farmers, mostly non-slaveholders, chose to desert the Confederate army and walk home. There they formed around a charismatic leader, Newt Knight, who established a paramilitary force to oppose the Confederacy. They fought guerrilla-style and while dozens were caught and hanged, most survived. Knight himself is a considerable mystery. He seems to have fathered many children, by three different women, two of whom were former slaves. He chose not to tell his story. Much of what we know of him are oral histories, many of which are suspect or outright wrong. His legacy gave rise to a mixed race community, called "white negroes," that persists until today. This also leads to the paradoxes and irreconcilable incongruities of race, the Civil War, and the nation today. The final point of the book is a trial that took place in 1948 in Mississippi, accusing a Knight descendent of miscegenation, marrying across the color line. This leads to the confused state of a mixed race person, a common occurrence today, in those biased times. DNA testing today solves the problem quickly, but then it was a matter of appearance, human perception and experience, which is entirely subjective. It will be interesting to see how Hollywood handles all this.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I zoned out several times while listening to this. I think I struggle with history books, especially in audio (see Understanding Japan: A Cultural History). Mahershala Ali, the narrator, is not at fault for my struggles though. He did an excellent job keeping an interested tone without over dramatizing anything (which I find some narrators of non-fiction will do in an attempt to be more engaging).

So, the history of Newt Knight is interesting and I like how Bynum structured the book:

I began the Civil War saga by tracing the roots of Jones County dissent back to the Revolutionary War era, and I ended it by connecting the story to the modern Civil Rights era.

I found it particularly neat that many of Knight's ancestors, and the ancestors of the men who joined The Knight Company, were involved in the Regulator Movement in North Carolina prior to the Revolutionary War. I am only aware of the Regulator Movement because it serves as the historical backdrop to the fifth book in the Outlander series, The Fiery Cross. I love when books connect to other books.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in Mississippi history. I'm no historian, but it seemed to be heavily researched and Bynum seems to be passionate about the subject. I may have to listen to this a second time around for any of the historical facts and details to stick with me, but that's this reader's problem, and shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the book itself (or the narrator).

Further Reading:
Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners

[Debbie Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deciding on how to rate this book was the most difficult decision I have ever had to make when it comes to rating a book. The story is fantastic, almost unbelievable, but the writing is stuffy, chronological history that really needed some life in it. I would have liked to get a better feeling for the characters. You really had to be interested in pursuing this story to not get bogged down in the detailed writing that tells rather that shows the story. It's hard to imagine a county that broke off from the Confederacy and declared itself an independent state. I wanted to really feel the people who made that decision. That need to see and feel those people is what kept me reading and that is why I gave The Free State of Jones a four. There's a lot to imagine for the movie coming out in June.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only got about 1/2 through this book before it was due at the library. And I never saw the movie. But I have a feeling this was everything (scholarly research using primary docs & oral histories to reveal intricacies of racial politics large & small as seen through black communities, white communities, mixed communities, folks who pass, and white supremacists) that the movie wasn't (hollywood boom boom simplicity). Makes me think the real story was a truly fascinating microcosm of race in America.

The most powerful recommendation, I think: white Mississippi 'traditionalists' (ahem) are as committed to disparaging the Free State of Jones as they are to upholding the honor & virtue of the Confederacy. If they see something nefarious here, I know there's something real re: race!

[Timothy Shea]

A well written, easy to read book.

I learned a lot about anti-slavery efforts in the south as well as the anti-secessionist movement among yeoman farmers in Mississippi. Interesting stuff.

I was particularly disgusted to learn of the origins of some racist myths that are still perpetuated today, some of which have come out of my state's governor's mouth.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very dry, and as much as I like Mahershala Ali as an actor, his quiet narration of the audiobook left something to be desired. The information is good and well-researched, but reads like a genealogy of the Knight family and a textbook history of race-relations in Mississippi.

[Judy Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating story that helped me understand the nuances of the south during the Civil War. Incredible research. For my full review please see: https://medium.com/@jujulew98/a1093ee...

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have wanted to read this book for a long time because it takes place in Jones County, Mississippi where my ancestors lived during the Civil War. I wish they had been part of the Knight Company rebels, but my folks were fighting with the Confederates not against them. However, these men and women were their neighbors/cousins raised with all the same issues, culture, history and social codes. With over 100 pages of endnotes, bibliography and family trees, the scholarly work has given me a lot to research.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a highly detailed and fabulously researched book about a fascinating and important subject. So it is a little disappointing that it is such a slog to read. Bynum's scholarship is beyond question, not just in assembling meticulous research among the locals of the region, but also in her analysis of the various factors leading both to the Union-sympathising rebellion and the mixed-race isolated community one of the rebels subsequently founded. But the book is overwhelmed by genealogical detail, and various anecdotes, never finding a clear narrative throughline. Which is a shame, because this story: this is a seriously awesome story.
Part of the structural issue of the book is that Burnam is at pains *not* to make this the story of Newt Knight. Her reasons for this are really important: she is keen to clarify that the rebellion wasn't the result of one man's mission, but rather a reflection of broader schisms within Southern whites - the difference between cash-crop-based, slaveowning, capitalist-aspiring planters and self-sufficient libertarian farmers, whose priority was independence not wealth. She achieves this very well - the strongest parts of the book are the early chapters, which give context and background to Mississippi settlement and the communities which developed prior to the Civil War.
The problem with not focusing on Newt, is that the second part of the book, which deals with the mixed-race community, is not based on that broader movement but rather just Newt, his wife Serena and Rachel Knight. Both Rachel and Serena seemed to have supported the rebellion, but their roles are left entirely unclear. Information about how Rachel arrived in the County is provided, but then she kinda slips out of the wealth of detail, re-emerging only in the final chapters to be very significant. Her role during the rebellion - even such basic things as whether she fled or not - is unremarked on.
Bynum is also at lengths not to over interpret. But when it comes to race issues, this makes the book very disjointed. She pretty much abstains on what Newt's moral views on slavery were (nevermind anyone else's) - because there is no evidence - but it makes the whole discussion of the rebellion seem completely separate to the issues of race-based slavery, and equality. The book feels almost like two separate books, with the fairly crucial issue of how one led to the other: the rebellion to the mixed-race community - completely absent. And it is kinda the most interesting question.
In contrast, the descendents of Newt and Rachel get better treatment, leading to some interesting musings on the nature of race, and it's essentially social nature.
Overall, I would recommend this book, but I also think the topic is ripe for a treatment with a stronger focus on the through narrative of the community.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this book. Readers should be aware that this is a micro-history and not an adventure novel. So, it necessarily involves digging into one particular community and what makes people make the particular choices they make. In this case, Victoria Bynum explores the Knight family of the Jones county in Mississippi. In 1948, there was a miscegenation trial of Davis Knight, a man who had some African American ancestry, and had married a "white" woman, Junie Lee Spradley. This brought to the fore questions about the relationships of his ancestors, Newton Knight, a "white" man, and Rachel Knight, a woman of African descent. Newton had, it turns out, both formed a band of deserters and refugees from the Confederate army, and had interracial relationships including with Rachel and possibly her daughter (from another man) Georgeanne. Further, their children had also had interracial relationships and formed something of a racial island in Jim Crow Mississippi. She does a good job of exploring how this community was formed, its religious and social background that formed how they reacted to the formation of the confederacy and to conscription and also how they reacted to the Reconstruction, the so-called Redemption (which was the violent white overthrow of the Reconstruction to institute white supremacist governments) and Jim Crow, how they viewed themselves racially, and how they were viewed by society.

A lot of reviewers here complain that she goes into a lot of unnecessary detail, but this is actually what makes histories like this worth reading. They are not just a recounting of adventurous tales, or the stories of heroes (at any rate, Newt Knight makes for a rather odd kind of 'hero'), but explorations of why people do what they do, and how communities function under stress and hostility. Her bibliography is very impressive, both in terms of the primary sources she uncovers and presents, and in terms of the range of secondary literature she brings to bear on this.

Among other things, books like this show how complicated Southern society was, and how controversial and often elitist secession and secession-sympathy was, which should help dispel the view that secession was about independence from central control which should make us sympathetic to secessionists: in fact, secessionism and the confederacy frequently found themselves having to violently repress many local communities and their very different racial and social ideas and mores.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up partly because of the recently released movie, but also because it was a part of Civil War history I was previously unaware of. I really enjoyed this book , not only the incredible thoroughness of the research, but also how it portrayed history as I like it; messy, conflicted and full of philosophical, moral and political contradictions. It was mind-blowing to me to realize that even in the deeply racist, heart-of-the-Confederacy, there were men and women who did not buy into and actively fought against a system that favored wealthy, slave-owning, white males at the expense of almost everyone else. It gave me a much better understanding of the economic underpinnings of the Confederacy, and the role that southern Baptist churches played in leading the way to civil war rather than helping to avoid it., The book especially makes me hate the perpetuation of the systematic racism that permeates the south, including the revisionist, racist myth that is the legend of the unified, "lost cause", "glorious" south. I will never be able to watch "Gone With the Wind" with a clear conscience again.

[Geoffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredibly inciteful to countless different experiences of marginalized groups in the South, mainly by focusing on just a few families' histories in Jones County. It gives so many examples of how government, at any level, can help and harm. I've never read a history like this, but I hope it becomes the norm.

Determining the stories of these poor, marginalized people, whom most of the people in the South would have preferred to be forgotten, must have been incredibly difficult to do so accurately, but Bynum put in the work and always made clear when they were going off rumor and the potential biases of the people telling their story.

Being a descendent of the Knight family, this story was very close to me. I was enthralled to learn about my ancestors' history, especially considering how difficult it is to trace a family tree from people like these. It has given me further incite on how my own family and I came to be and the cause and effects of people and institutions from hundreds of years ago has had on my life. Thank you to Bynum for giving this to me.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for two reasons: The Read Harder Challenge and the movie is in the theaters. I'm trying to persuade others to read it for one reason: it really challenges our modern ideas of race, slavery, and the South.

The author owns up to a theme that race is a social construct, not a biological fact. She does a good job of arguing her point with the (Mc)Knight/Night/Nite families. Although it was tough going with the genealogy (I wish I'd seen the appendices earlier!), I appreciate the thoroughness of the research to figure out what shaped Newt and his companions. I appreciate that she began with the family from colonial times and followed them to the 1960s. I looked at the photos and contemplated my own thoughts of race. Did I see a black person or a white one? Should what I see matter? Why?

This was definitely a thought-provoking book. I hope the movie lives up to the promise.

[Coleen Dailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book before I saw the movie. The book provided a terrific background as to how the yeomen farmers in Jones County came in to being - from their routes in North and South Carolina and the Regulator Movement and the Baptist movement, along with their move west to Mississippi. It is a story of the Civil War and some men's desire to remain in the Union even though Mississippi had seceded. It is also a story of race relations, interracial marriages, and trying to survive in very difficult times. It is a story of bravery in fighting against the Confederacy while you live in some of the deepest poorest parts of the South and in fighting discrimination throughout the years in the families that lived in that county. Well worth the read.

[Seth D Michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new thing I learned: there was a small but real interracial anti-Confederate insurgency in southeastern Mississippi during the Civil War. The book is a little academic, with all that entails - it's quite narrow, somewhat dry, and takes for granted that you're well-read on the larger context. You have to read between the lines to get to the real meat of it, but when you do, there's a ton of fresh insight on the complicated relationship of race, gender and class in the South. The author's afterward, in which she explains her decision to let the book be the basis for a movie, is a great look at the role of the historian.

[Wynn Netherland · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the whole, this is a well-researched book that pierces the fog of the Lost Cause myth to reveal a complex picture of Southern antebellum culture where economic pressures and bloodlines determined political loyalties more than pure ideology. For those (like me) who haven't seen the movie and were not already familiar the history of Jones County, Mississippi, Bynum's panoramic historical lens makes it difficult to see the main storyline during the Civil War period. Instead of laying a groundwork, the early chapters often render the latter anticlimactic.

Though I liked it, this could have been a truly great book with a little more narrative structure.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are my kind of people!

[Karleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another part of history not well known

When I started the book I had hoped it would be based on the movie. I was disappointed to find the book more of a documentary than a story. I, however, came to enjoy it as a documentary and history lesson. My mother’s maiden name is Knight so I have a personal interest in this ancestry. I am proud to at least by in the Knight name lineage. Newt was a brave man to live by his beliefs and convictions. Sadly, he seems to have been vilified and shunned in history.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating and thorough study of Jones County and the Free State of Jones, exploring familial roots and race as a social construct from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War, through today.
I was looking for more exploration of the wartime tactics and strategies employed by the Knight Company, but the book is a product of a historian, rather than a military historian, and the book does not suffer from this distinction.
The book is formulated much like a textbook, with incredibly thorough sourcing, and those seeking a novelization of the film should look elsewhere.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! All the things we did not learn in American History...... this book was great. More than history too of course. It addressed political, cultural, economic and social issues. And what a fascinating look at family dynamics and the classic way people re-write their family story to suit their needs and wishful thinking. I have not seen the movie but I am guessing it will be great because this is a very rich story.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but very dry.

[Leeann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew that there were Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War? I don't remember learning that in school. In the South. The story is more than just the Civil War. It's also the story of Newt Knight, his family, and the possible race of the various members. The author did extensive research, compares and contrasts with other books written about Newt Knight, and the result is fascinating! I recommend the audiobook as the reader is terrific.

[Daryl Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read about a subject I before knew nothing about. Before reading this book about the County of Jones Mississippi I thought I was a student of the Civil War. I learned a lot about Black history reading this book and the large part they had during the Civil war and this section of the country.