The State of Jones

Starred review from June 22, 2009
The grandson of a wealthy Mississippi slave-owner, Newton Knight was an abolitionist and two-time rebel deserter who actively fought against the Confederacy, and bore a large family with a former slave. His home, Jones County, Miss., saw great hardship during the Civil War; Confederate taxes "pushed small farm families, who provided the rank and file foot soldiers, to the brink of destitution." Jenkins (The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation) and Stauffer (Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln) employ painstaking research into Knight and Jones County, resulting in an engaging and original portrait of life inside the Confederacy. Knight's Scouts, formed after Vicksburg set off a wave of rebel desertions, carried out their own justice in Jones County, using clever techniques for communication, intimidation and warfare against the home team ("the sorts of exploits" that Sherman would appreciate). Knight's post-war efforts for equality included building an integrated school; when residents objected to his own mixed-race children attending, however, Knight burned it to the ground. Spanning more than 100 years, this family story brings home the lasting effects of hate and fear, love and acceptance, as well as the strides that have brought us to where we are.

July 1, 2009
The myth of the Lost Cause persists: a unified South stood valiantly against Northern efforts to degrade and ultimately destroy Southern rights and culture. In an unabashedly subjective work, the authors attempt to deal a deathblow to the myth. Their focus is Jones County, Mississippi, a hotbed of anti-secessionist sympathy before and during the Civil War. There, pro-Union men resisted Southern conscription, aided and sometimes joined the Union army, and fought a guerrilla war against Confederate militia and regular forces. Jenkins and Stauffer make clear from the outset where their sympathies lie, and they paint the Jones resisters in a rather heroic light. At the center of their narrative is a farmer, Newton Knight, portrayed credibly as a man of immense physical and moral courage. Knight, descended from slave owners, despised slavery. Like many other Southerners, he viewed the Confederate cause as a rich mans war, poor mans fight, and he fought valiantly against it. Despite occasional lapses into hyperbole, this is an excellent work that casts light on an obscure aspect of the Civil War.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)