This is probably the best book I've read this year. I like to think of myself as a well read, historically knowledgeable man. But I was surprised and embarrassed that I had never heard of this story's hero, one Mr. Newton Knight. Well there's no shame in being ignorant but there is shame in staying so.

Newton Knight should be as well known as John Brown, perhaps even more so because unlike Brown he was from the South. Knight stood up and did the right thing at great personal risk. He was anti-slavery and pro-Union, as much for religious and moral reasons as for class ones. He led an anti-Confederacy insurrection in Mississippi for over two years. He was constantly hunted and nearly killed many times. But at the high point of his guerrilla war, his home of Jones County Mississippi was a very dangerous, virtual no-go area for Confederate soldiers, and especially for Confederate tax collectors. Knight maintained two families, one black and one white and had both blacks and whites fighting and working under his leadership. This was quite scandalous.

By 1863 Knight had become the leader of Jones County "insurrectionists", mostly white men who swore Union allegiance. Armed only with shotguns, older muskets and terrain knowledge, they launched a pro-Union revolt. Eventually they received supplies from and shared intelligence with the Union Army. By war's end this force had become interracial. Knight also embarked upon a relationship with Rachel Knight, a woman previously owned by his extended family. Rachel Knight provided the group with food, medicine and most importantly information. She became Knight's common law wife, despite the fact that he was already married to Serena Knight.

After the war many of Knight's white neighbors and fellow soldiers, although they had been happy enough to take his food and protection during hard times, now looked askance at his default (interracial) bigamy and stubborn insistence on black political, social and economic rights. For example Knight provided the capital and much of his own labor to build a school for the county's children. But when the school opened Knight's black children by Rachel were turned away while his white children with Serena were accepted. Shortly afterwards the school was burned down and I'll give you one guess as to who did it.

This was alternatively an exciting and depressing book. The book detailed Mississippi's transformation into the terror state it would remain for a century after the Civil War. Knight gradually withdrew from public life but even as an old man his well earned reputation for putting people in the ground, protected his family, with a few tragic exceptions. I really enjoyed reading this story and learning about someone I had never heard of before.