shameless ping :) forgive if not appropriate.
I saw a poster of it when I went to see another movie and did some Googling. Turns out this was a true story and was surprised that it happened. I'm a huge Civil War buff and I still didn't know about this.
I am a history buff but had not heard of this story until the movie was being released. There was a good article about it, in Smithsonian Magazine, IIRC.
How “PC” was it? I was surprised that i had never heard the original history either and looked it up but I got whiffs from the storyline that they had tried to twist the story to suit current memes.
Movie is Hollywood fiction. It’s about a deserter who should have been shot. He was no hero. He also didn’t have a valid marriage to a former slave, as interracial marriages were against the law in the 19th Century. There’s a lot of Southern heroes to make a movie about. This deserter was not one of them.
I saw it advertised a few times but there is no way I am going to watch it.
The History Channel has gotten really PC in the last few years. When I say PC I mean they make stuff up.
Blacks guilt makes more sense than white guilt:
“One study concluded that 28 percent of free blacks owned slaves, which is a far higher percentage than that of free whites who owned slaves.”
https://www.vice.com/read/hey-v12n5
Was wondering about this film. Knew a little about the history, but never really deep into the story.
Good to see it isnt some weird politically slanted production.
You might want to read the reviews of Rudy Leverett’s University Press of Mississippi book ‘The Legend of the Free State of Jones’ to get another view of the ‘Legend’
https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Free-State-Jones-Leverett/dp/1604735716
an example:
Dr. Leverett was the first to publish a scholarly book documenting the history of Jones County, Mississippi before and during the American Civil War. In Legend of the Free State of Jones, Dr. Leverett showed conclusively that Jones County never seceded from the Confederacy and, moreover, that its residents remained loyal to the Confederacy during and after the Civil War. It is true, Leverett explains, that most Jones Countians opposed the political stance of Southern secession from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. The reason? “. . . Jones County was not part of the Old South of manor houses, river boats, privileged gentry and gracious living. On the other hand, the lives of the people in Jones County were probably far more typical of those of the ordinary Southerner of the times than were those of the plantation artistocrats. And, of course, it was the latter and not the former that went with the winds of the Civil War.” Legend at pp. 45-46.
Once invasion by the North seemed imminent, however, residents overwhelmingly aligned themselves with the Confederacy in opposition to the North.
Emblematic of the nuanced views of Jones County residents was Amos McLemore, a school teacher, Methodist-Episcopal minister and merchant whose Southern roots reached back into history nearly two hundred years. Like most of his fellow Jones Countians, McLemore opposed Southern secession from the Union in the months preceding the Civil War — this despite the fact that his business partner supported Southern secession. Nevertheless when war became a foregone conclusion, McLemore raised and commanded a company in the Confederate army, the Rosin Heels.
Major McLemore was later murdered by Confederate deserter Newt Knight, the purported leader of the alleged “Republic of Jones” of legend. McLemore had been temporarily dispatched back to Jones County from the front in order to round up deserters. Having learned of McLemore’s mission, Knight shot McLemore in the back as McLemore and others sat around fireplace at the home of State Representative Amos Deason in Ellisville. Leverett’s book presents evidence that, contrary to legend, Knight was in fact little more than an opportunist and criminal who likely volunteered for the Confederacy, then later deserted.
I saw the film and some parts of it were very good, but it was very disjointed and didn’t ultimately make for a very compelling movie. They tried to cover too much ground. It probably should have been a mini-series.
Free State Ping
Thanks for the review.
Since you were moved by the movie you may want to read the following:
The True Story of the ‘Free State of Jones’
Smithsonian Magazine
By Richard Grant;
Photographs by William Widmer
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/?no-ist
I remember seeing an older movie fifty five years ago about a county inside the Confederacy which proclaimed itself non Confederate.
All I remember is a rider yelling at settlers that If you don’t want to be confederate, “come to (name escapes me)COUNTY!
I’m all Civil Wared out because as a buff in the 90s I went to recreations, conferences and saw the PBS series. I have seen many movies like Gettysburg, Glory and Lincoln. I had no idea about this movie. I moved on at some point to the Wild West. I am into history. I am interested and I will read on it. I now have been consumed since finding FR in 2009 or 2010 with studying Socialism and Communism and Fascism.
I am sure this movie would move me if I ever felt the insane urge to watch this revisionist tripe. I would rather use OTC gelcaps if I have the need to be moved.
Civil War history is a lot more complicated than is taught. West Virginia broke off from Virginia, the Free State of Franklin was nearly revived in western NC and east TN. The Appalachian region in general had a dim view of slavery and the coastal aristocracies that depended upon it. There were substantial religious communities opposed to slavery in the Piedmont region that practiced a form of conscientious objection to serving in the Confederate military. They sent men, as medical personnel, musicians and pastors, but no soldiers. On the other side of the coin, there were black slaveholders. It’s not a clear cut matter at all, particularly once you get away from the coastal plain and river deltas.
Nobody has offered me enough money to go see it.
I agree Free State of Jones was an excellent movie. We loved it and it really humanized those historical times. I’m with you in highly recommending this movie. It’s a must see.
You’re not from here honey
You probably think The Help and Deliverance were both documentaries and quite accurate
My ancestors in Sullivans hollow right above Jones county hated those bastards you’re venerating strictly cause you got some romantic vision and it’s got Matthew
I swoon....,
Jones county was always weird and the Masonite plant there in the 60s had serious labor thug violence and corrupted local govt
I knew some of the mullatoes that descended from Newt and another big mullato name from that locale... the Moffit or Moffat clans
These were quads and octoroons and some of the women were beautiful and most passed as white when I was a boy....I had a crush on one.....she was about 25 and me 12....she carried me home in her convertible one day after she saw me walking about 5 miles from home coming back from the bowling alley....she was a teacher......folks whispered but nobody cared really she was so gorgeous like Claudia Cardinale.....my buddies when they saw her driving me through my leave it to beaver neighborhood to my house
Closest to Summer of 42 I ever got
Most of the left the Leaf River basin for the swamps north of Mobile called appropriately enough Creola
The irony is that area of Smith Scott Simpson Jones and other east south central Mississippi had little plantocracy and most only had maybe one slave family they lived and worked alongside with cattle and substistance farming like most of my people
They treated their slaves better cause ..it was a bigger investment
Newt was a renegade and a deserter raider.....but he was all about interracial sex and fought against his own kind in the confederacy to some point
That silly girl wrote that book and it got optioned......that’s it
Just like Kathryn Stockett
You’re welcome to come down here and I’ll educate about the south and race.....I guarantee you I can open your idealistic well intended eyes in a respectful way
You wish to study an interesting Mississippian and race....try William Dunbar Natchez Mississippi
Presumably an ancestor of mine albeit thru the illegitimate pregnancy upon my great x5 grandma