Brief Characteristics of the Plot
The film of Gary Ross, with Matthew McConaughey in the lead role, Free State of Jones, is based on real events taking place during the Civil War. A poor farmer from the South, Newton Knight, was drafted into the Confederate army during the Civil War, but after some time, he deserted from regular units. Newton was persecuted for desertion; fleeing, he appeared in a camp of escaped slaves who were keeping out of sight in a swamp. Soon they were joined by other white farmers who fled from the battlefields. Guided by a sense of justice, Knight organized a militia against the Confederates. He and his associates believed in the ideals of freedom and equality. The rebels were ready to defend their beliefs with weapons in their hands. They even manage to proclaim Jones County a separate state, a state of freedom. However, even when the war was over, under the end of slavery, it took many years to defend a new world order. The hero’s struggle for civil rights did not end there – by a personal example, he legitimized mixed couples, creating a unique precedent in the still slave-owning South. Newton managed to survive until the end of the war, but he was forced to wage the struggle for the civil rights of blacks also in the era of Reconstruction.
The Plot and Historical Facts
Of course, the historical reality was retold not absolutely identically, but the essence of the events was saved. The story is built around a historical figure who played a prominent role in the US Civil War, farmer Newton Knight. The incredible story of the Knight may seem like a figment of the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters, but the life of this amazing person is not fiction.
Newton Knight was an American farmer, soldier, and southern unionist in Mississippi. In general, according to his convictions, he was more devoted to the Union and stood for the abolition of slavery. However, at the start of the Civil War, he ended up in the Confederate Army. Then, after the battle of Corinth in 1862, he deserted from the army ‑ and not just deserted, but led a group of deserters like him who advocated the abolition of slavery (Bynum 14-16). He is better known as the leader of Knight’s squad ‑ a group of deserters from the army of the Confederate States who opposed the confederate troops during the Civil War. After the war, Knight married his grandfather’s freed former slave in a second marriage. Since his wife was black, Mississippi State did not recognize this marriage. When he died at the age of 84, relatives buried him next to her, thus violating the law in force in Mississippi, according to which it was forbidden to bury whites and blacks at the same cemetery (Bynum 57). Thus, although the film anticipates the events of the legalization of mixed marriages, the very concept of the struggle for equality is reflected very expressively in it.
According to historical data, from the end of 1863 to the beginning of 1865, there were fourteen clashes of Knight’s group with the forces of the Confederation. During the same period, Knight led a raid in Paulding, where he and his comrades-in-arms captured five wagons of corn, which they distributed among the local population. Several tax collectors were killed. According to modern research, there were 600 people under the leadership of Knight, and he planned to unite with the northerners (Bynum 33-35). By the spring of 1864, there were reports that Jones County had declared itself a state independent of the Confederation. Attempts to catch them were unsuccessful, but Knight’s people also failed to break through to join the Union army (Bynum 36-44). After the war ended, Knight was tasked by the Union army to distribute food to poor families in the Jones area. He conducted a raid and freed several children held in slavery in a neighboring county (Bynum 50-53). Like many Southern Unionists, he supported the Republican Party.
Historical Context and its Presentation in the Film
Having liberated their county from the Confederate forces, Knight and his fellows in arms failed to get on well with the northerners, so they proclaimed their district as the Free State of Jones. There, they announced the fundamental principles of social relations in their small state, the most noteworthy of which were the following: “You reap what you sow” and “No one should profit from the poverty of another.” These naive and pure slogans crashed against capitalistic reality. After the war, problems and contradictions persisted. The film indicates how the abolition of slavery did not free the US blacks after ten or even a hundred years, which is the historical truth – from the “rolls back” of the Reconstruction to the Jim Crow laws, which existed, in fact, until 1964. Gary Ross spreads the story through time: sometimes, the narrative is interrupted for the depiction of the 1950s, where there is a trial of Knight’s descendant Davis Knight. The latter was accused of 1/8 of the Black in blood, and this was enough to not only deny the right to marry in the southern states but, moreover, to threaten with a prison. This interlude is not accidental: Ross wants to remind the still non-progressive humanity that the harshest lessons of the war cannot “drive out” prejudices from a person.
Throughout the development of the plot, the idea is gradually being introduced into the consciousness of the audience: the truth is not on the side of “gone with the wind.” Nevertheless, the film openly manifests admiration for the northerners, which can be attributed to a drawback. Emphasis is placed rigidly, quite definitely, with no half-tones – some are very positive while others are exclusively negative. The northern states are shown in the film as a ‘paradise on earth’ – or rather, they are not shown at all, but it is told about how beautiful they are. Southerners, on the contrary, are shown as real incarnations of evil. Indeed, even “the great majority of Southern whites,” even poor ones, “vote the “right” way, in the interest of planters – slave-owners (“History,” Lecture 15, slide 5). However, such an image of the northern and southern states is still not quite correct from a historical point of view.
Indeed, Southern planters considered themselves elite and stated that they “were keeping slaves for their own good and not for profitability” (“History,” Lecture 15, slide 12). Also, it is true that northerners were more hardworking (“History,” Lecture 16, slide 13-16). Unlike Southern women, who were “busy” with parties, poems, and courtship of gentlemen, women in the North constituted a noticeable part of workers in factories, for example, Lowell factories (“History,” Lecture 16, slide 15). Also, northerners, mainly due to their occupations, were more committed to the principles of freedom and equality. However, these beliefs in freedom and equality were not quite extended to blacks. “We didn’t get involved in this war to end slavery,” said President Lincoln, who canceled several civil liberties at the beginning of the conflict, closed many opposition newspapers, and arrested more than 13,000 opponents of the war (Dilorenzo 12-19).
The war of the industrial North against the agricultural South in 1861-1865 was by no means only a war for the abolition of slavery but a successful attempt by the North to prevent the secession of the South. The most widespread and enduring myth represents northerners in the form of supporters of progress, and southerners are shown as ruthless exploiters. This is not completely true – the true reasons for conflict were rather of economic nature. The opinion that the northerners fought for a lofty idea does not fully reflect reality, especially in the first stage of conflict. For example, in the 1850s, an unsolvable conflict arose over import tariffs. The South, which exported cotton and tobacco to Europe and imported industrial products, demanded free trade, while the North, experiencing the industrial revolution, needed protectionism.
The Union was not that utopia, as it is demonstrated in the Free State of Jones. In the North, where plantation farming, due to special economic and climatic conditions, was less common, slavery was never used so widely as in the South. Nevertheless, in the northern states, slaves also existed, mainly as domestic workers, farm laborers, etc. The northerners also believed that blacks were inferior to whites in development and did not at all strive for complete equality. Although Lincoln believed that the phrase of founding fathers “All men are created equal” refers both to whites and blacks, his opinion still did not imply that they deserve the same rights in the social and political sphere. He expressed his views quite clearly in 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races” (Gates and Yacovone 104-105). His position on “equality” of blacks and whites was based on the idea that blacks have the right to “improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor,” – namely in this, he considered them equal to white, thus calling slavery as unjust (Gates and Yacovone 105-106).
In addition, the war was mostly fought on the territory of Southern states and was far from always chivalrous. General William Sherman used scorched-earth policy in Georgia, which anticipated the total wars of the next century. Even more debatable is the question of why the South got involved in the war. For most Americans, this issue has long been resolved: Southerners wanted to maintain slavery. They cite the words of their vice president, Alexander Stevens, who declared in 1861 that the cornerstone of the Confederation is that great truth that “a Negro is no match for a white man” and that slavery, submission to a higher race, is a natural and normal state of affairs (Vorenberg 9-18). Nevertheless, critics note that among the causes of the Civil War, there is not only slavery but also economic factors and states’ rights (Dilorenzo 250-253). Thus, the attempt to “squeeze” into the framework of today’s political correctness negatively affects the observance of the principle of historicism and the artistic value of the film.
Overall Implications
The positive side is the lack of large-scale battle scenes. In the film, this is not the main thing ‑ the viewer is offered rather thoughts on the following topic: what prompts people to make a particular choice? After all, it was not suddenly that Knight was imbued with the idea of justice and equality and began to fight along with blacks for their rights. When gradually dissatisfied and runaway slaves began to flock to him, to their questions if they fight for the northerners, he replies: “No, but we have common enemies. This is not my war – I have no slaves!” (Free State of Jones). The general of the northerners, Sherman, did not recognize them and was not going to help, which speaks in favor of the already mentioned motivation of the northerners in the Civil War. In 1935, Knight’s son, Thomas Jefferson Knight, published a book about his father, where he portrayed him as Robin Hood, who refused to fight for the ideas he disagreed with (Knight et al. 22-24). Knight really was a kind of Robin Hood, standing above political declarations, as well as the personal interests and intrigues of politicians. He fought for what he believed inequality. Namely being led by a sense of justice, Knight organized a militia against the Confederates; he and his associates believed in the ideals of freedom and equality. It can be said that the film is a kind of “ideal model” of the events of the Civil War and its participants, and in this sense, it represents both scientific and artistic value.
Not all Knight’s dreams came true ‑ although the Democrats won the 1876 election, despite the Ku Klux Klan activity, government troops were withdrawn, and hundreds of blacks were killed. The Reconstruction did not go smoothly, and this is also shown in the film. However, the film may well claim historical objectivity with the building of artistic fiction around the protagonist. This is a real biographical story about a simple human dream – freedom, woven into the fabric of historical events.
Works Cited
Bynum, Victoria E. The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Dilorenzo, Thomas J. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Crown Forum, 2003.
The Free State of Jones. Directed by Gary Ross, STX Entertainment, H. Brothers, Tang Media Productions, 2016.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Donald Yacovone. Lincoln on Race and Slavery. Princeton University Press, 2011.
“History.” PowerPoint presentation. Lecture 15.
“History.” PowerPoint presentation. Lecture 16.
Knight, Thomas Jefferson, et al. The Free State of Jones and The Echo of the Black Horn: Two Sides of the Life and Activities of Captain Newt Knight. E-book, Racehorse, 2016.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press, 2004.