Newton Knight (10 November 1829 – 16 February 1922) was an American southern unionist who, during the American Civil War, deserted from the Confederate States Army and formed the rebellious "Free State of Jones" in south-east Mississippi.
Biography[]
Free State of Jones[]
Knight while serving as a medic, 1862
Newton Knight was born in Jones County, Mississippi in 1829, and he came from a family of yeoman farmers. He joined the Confederate States Army in July 1861, serving as a medic; he survived the Second Battle of Corinth, during which his nephew Daniel Knight was killed. Knight decided to desert to take his nephew's body home, and he was enraged when he found that the Confederates had pillaged farmers' homes for "taxes", as well as by a law allowing for people with over 20 slaves to be exempted from military service, subjecting the poor to service while excusing the rich. In October 1862, he deserted from the army and joined the escaped slave community led by Moses Washington in the swamps of Mississippi. He was soon joined by Confederate deserters who fled following the Siege of Vicksburg in July 1863, and the blacks and whites formed a rebel group which looted and burned houses in Jones County and ambushed Confederate convoys. From 1863 to 1865, Knight and his rebels fought fourteen skirmishes with the Confederate States Army, and Knight even killed Major Amos McLemore, who was sent to hunt down the deserters. Knight also married Rachel, a learned runaway slave, and they had a mixed-race family; his great-grandson Davis Knight was convicted of miscegenation in 1948, despite looking white and being of mostly white descent.
Reconstruction[]
After the war, Knight took part in the distribution of food to struggling families in Jones County, and, as a Southern Unionist, he became a Republican Party supporter. In 1870, he unsuccessfully petitioned for the US government to compensate the Free State veterans. He supported Governor Adelbert Ames' Republican administration, and he became a deputy US Marshal in 1872. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, he withdrew from politics, and he died in 1922.