The State of Jones

The good folks at Doubleday sent me a review copy of The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer. It is available for pre-order now from WigWags Books and will be published on June 23rd.

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (June 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385525931
• ISBN-13: 978-0385525930
• Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches

This is the story of Newton Knight who was a Unionist living in Mississippi and strongly anti-slavery. The authors suggest that he was “the South’s strangest soldier.”

Some quick facts:

• In Jones County Mississippi, fifty-three men had not only fought as anti-Confederate guerrillas, but formally enlisted in the Union army in New Orleans
• Knight’s group of guerrillas “remained unconquered though surrounded by Confederate Armies from start to finish.”
• Jones was drafted into the Confederate army but refused to fight and eventually deserted.
• Knight had two families, one white and one black. His black family was with a slave named Rachel who was owned by his family and who helped him during the war. He acknowledged her children as his own.

I profess to getting behind in my reading for school because of this book. I promise to write a proper review after I’m finished reading it. I can say that it is VERY well written.

Newton Knight’s story is being made into a film currently in production. Filmmaker Gary Ross is writer, director, and  one of several producers.

Sally Jenkins is an award-winning journalist currently with the Washington Post. She has authored eight books, three of New York Times bestsellers.

John Stauffer is Professor of English and African American Studies and Chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees in the History of American Civilization at Harvard.
His prior book, GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, I mentioned in a previous post which you can read here.