I was born and raised in south Mississippi and am intimately familiar with this story besides all that I’ve read from original sources as well as authors such as you and Mrs. Bynum. I haven’t yet read what Mrs. Bynum said about your book and I don’t have a dog in this fight. But I have read your book and in all honesty, I have never read a “history” book that contains so many obvious errors as this one. It is so fraught with errors that I found it not only difficult to read, but even moreso difficult to seriously consider this book as a thoroughly researched scholarly work to depend on for truth in this subject. Following are just a handful of the errors I couldn’t help but NOTICE as I struggled to read this book. Many of them are minor, but nonetheless consequential when the authors claim to be preeminently knowledgeable on their subject matter. If you can’t get the simple things straight, how can you expect to interpret the more complex parts correctly.

p. 48 “A vast, dark, meandering cypress marsh ran through the region, known as the Dismal Swamp.”
The authors must be confused with the Dismal Swamp located in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. I’ve never heard of or seen Dismal Swamp in south Mississippi. I can’t even find reference to it on the internet.

p. 49 “…colossal pines that shot sixty feet in the air,…” These would be middling sized pine trees. Longleaf pine, which are the predominant native species in the area, easily grow as tall as 100 feet, and before the virgin timber was cut out in the late 1800′s, they reportedly grew as tall as 150 feet tall.

p. 54 “He attempted to impose his morality on a flock full of unruly and unrepentant backwoodsmen, censuring various members for offenses such as drinking, dancing, fiddling, and fornicating.” It appears the authors completely misunderstand what they have read about Baptists from this time and era. Devout Baptists, at least in 19th century south Mississippi, truly believed these were evils based on their own experiences and on the Biblical text. It was common practice to exclude individuals with a democratic vote by the remainder of the congregation if that person had “sinned” and was unrepentant.

pp. 56, 62, 131, etc. The authors erroneously refer to New Augusta as a town during the time of their story. New Augusta did not exist until many years later when the railroad from Hattiesburg to Mobile was laid through the county on the south side of Leaf River. “Old” Augusta, simply known as Augusta during the Civil War, was north of Leaf River and remained the county seat of Perry until 1906. I’ve got my doubts that McLemore made his headquarters there for the purpose of rounding up deserters in Jones and Covington Counties. It was an isolated hamlet in a low population density county many miles south of both of these counties.

p. 58 “His kin founded Meridian, the second-largest city in the state,…” Meridian was founded only in 1860. Here is a quote from the March 30th 1862 journal entry of William Pitt Chambers, a private in what became company B (the Covington Rebels) of the 46th Regiment Mississippi Infantry. “I expected to find a “town” at Meridian, but was sadly disappointed. In fact, there is not a fine building in the place, no stores and no streets.”

p. 76 “He dubbed it ‘the Rosinheels’, a term for the rearing of an eager horse. Where did this outlandish definition for Rosin Heels come from? I evidently made the assumption, being raised in south Mississippi, that its definition was self-apparent. Obviously not. Rosin Heels actually refers to pine rosin that commonly sticks to your heels when you walk barefooted in south Mississippi. It has the same connotation as North Carolina “Tar Heels”. It would have been a coloquial reference to regional pride.

p. 80 “…an uncontrolled retreat…” In military terms, even common terms, this is usually coined “a rout”. I just thought this was strange.

p. 100 “Union forces had seized every other Confederate asset along the Mississippi River: Forts Donelson and Henry,…” I’m sorry, even the geographically illiterate civil war historian should know that neither of these forts is on the Mississippi River….not even close.

p. 100 “Vicksburg, 225 miles above New Orleans, was the last citadel and stronghold” (on the Mississippi River) Wrong again, Port Hudson was very much in Confederate control and did not surrender until after Vicksburg.

p. 134 “Their senses were concussed, their ears ringing, and their eyes filled with the bitter cordite smoke.” (Regarding McLemore’s fellow soldiers immediately after the assassin shot and killed him.) Once again, cordite was not invented until 1889 in the UK. One of its advantages over gunpowder was that it was “smokeless”.

Okay, I think I’ve made my point. No offense Doc, but this wasn’t a very well researched book. Some of your interpretations are really way off base too. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue.

We do not “claim” that Newton Knight served at Vicksburg; we offer an assessment based on the available sources and acknowledge that any interpretation is necessarily speculative, given the paucity of evidence. And we also make clear that whether or not Newton was at Vicksburg is ultimately irrelevant to our larger argument about his Unionism. And yet you and Bynum assert that our interpretation is a major problem, without explaining why.

…flagrantly mis-states what is in the book, it puts to rest Bynum’s characterization. It would be rare for an author to directly misquote their own published work in order to defend it. Reading the book will I hope provide a much more detailed picture.

Thanks so much for the comment. You said: “It does appear that Bynum exaggerated how firmly Stauffer rested claims of fact on undisputedly speculative evidence.” What are we to make of this point if you admittedly haven’t read the book?

If everyone recognizes that such research is filling in blanks in a picture we can never be entirely certain of, there seems little to fight over. Bynum is correct that women of African descent didn’t have a lot of choice when approached by a “white” man, but there are many accounts, autobiographical and scholarly, of inter-racial couples which were based on mutual affection. The Delaney sisters’ family history, and the more recent book My Confederate Kinfolk come to mind. If Stauffer and Jenkins suggested that Knight was close to unique, they’ve missed a good deal of the background. One reason southern culture is rife with phrases like “a spoonful of Negro blood” or “a touch of the tar brush” is because inter-racial marriages, or voluntary liaisons, were rife, and most southern families were in fact of partial African descent, although most tried to set it aside. (I generally assume that my mother’s mother’s family is among these families.) I find it difficult to give much credence to debate as to whether the voters of Jones County held a formal meeting to adopt a Constitution of the State of Jones. They were, after all, in the middle of a war. That the county, by and large, successfully resisted Confederate authority and flew the flag of the United States connotes an independent de facto political existence, tied to an evident political loyalty. I look forward to reading ALL the books referenced in this debate, and hopefully overlooking whatever sniping and rivalry may continue between the authors. IF Bynum is motivated by a desire to claim or retain turf, to say so adds nothing to the debate. She would no doubt make that self-evident in the fullness of time.

Wow.