[The following is in regards to Newton Knight, a Confederate deserter in the American Civil War who returned to Jones County in Mississippi and fought a guerrilla war against the Confederacy.]
As the men continued shuttling corn out of the warehouse, a group of empty-eyed, ragged, beggar-like men and women approached Newton. They were Irish indigents, despised by the local Confederates because their men refused to serve in the army. They were out of bread and their families were starving. Could Newton and his men give them some supplies from the warehouse? “They were pretty hard off,” Newton remembered. “They didn’t want to fight, and the Confederates wouldn’t give ‘em or sell ‘em anything.”
The wagons were brimming and heavy on their axles with sacks of corn. As the Jones County men were mounting their horses and climbing onto the buckboards to depart, Newton halted them. He turned to the Irish. “Take all you want,” he said. The families eagerly helped themselves to all of the corn they could carry. When their arms were full, Newton said the Lord’s Prayer.
The wagon train then resumed its slow procession out of Paulding and back toward Jones County, where the men “distributed corn out to all who needed it,” Newton recalled.
Source:
Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. “The Third Front.” The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy. Anchor Books, 2010. 178. Print.
Further Reading:
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