The State of Jones (26 page)

Dabney Maury, the Confederate commander in Mobile, believed Newton and his fellow Piney Woods yeoman farmers to be the “worst class in our population.”

The Tishomingo Hotel and depot served as a hospital in Corinth. Blood soaked the carpets, and surgeons pitched amputated limbs from the porch.

The battle of Corinth and the fight for Battery Robinett as rendered by
Harper’s Weekly
.

The Confederate dead at Corinth. Colonel Rogers is visible in the foreground, his face blackened by powder.

A Union field hospital.

A meeting of clandestine Southern unionists, as envisioned by
Harper’s Weekly
.

The Deason house of Ellisville, where Confederate officer Amos McLemore was shot to death, allegedly by Newton Knight.

“Contrabands” streamed into Union positions.

Ulysses S. Grant, the tough-minded Union conqueror of Mississippi, about whom Newton would write an admiring line of poetry.

Union commander William Tecumseh Sherman reached to within twenty miles of Jones County on his Meridian campaign, and made contact with a band of Southern unionists, perhaps Newton’s.

The siege caves at Vicksburg. Starved Southern soldiers ate soup of boiled shoestrings.

The destruction of Atlanta.

Adelbert Ames, the Union war hero and “Galahad” turned carpetbagger and Mississippi governor, and patron of Newton Knight. He watched helplessly as ex-Confederates effectively retook control of the state with violence and intimidation at the polls.