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4 Fighting a Losing Battle: Newt Knight versus the U.S. Court of Claims, 1870–1900
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chapter four Fighting a Losing Battle Newt Knight versus the U.S. Court of Claims, 1870–1900 In 1873, on the eve of Southern “Redemption,” former Mississippi congressman John F. H. Claiborne described defeated Confederates to U.S. attorney general George Henry Williams as “bitter and unforgiving” of Southern Unionists. Specifically, he objected to the government’s plan to publish a full digest of the names of Southern Unionists seeking compensation for support of the Union during the Civil War. Claiborne, who years earlier had written an essay extolling the simple virtues of life in rural Jones County, an infamous Unionist stronghold during the Civil War, now warned the attorney general that it was a mistake “to suppose that Southern men who were true to the national government during the war, now repose on a bed of roses, and that that period may now be safely disclosed.”1 The same year that Claiborne made his appeal, Newt Knight’s petition for compensation as a Unionist was buried in committee by the U.S. Congress . Like the vast majority of Southern Unionists, he would never receive a dime from the federal government.2 Still, Newt refused to give up. On the morning of 29 January 1895, twenty-five years after filing that first petition , he appeared at a hearing held in Ellisville, the Jones County seat, for 78 Reconstruction and Beyond his third effort to convince agents of the U.S. government that his Knight Company had fought for the Union Army during the late war. By this time, the political and literary battle over the meaning of the Civil War had been won by a “redeemed” Democratic Party that extolled the noble Lost Cause of the Old Confederacy. The same year that Newt provided his deposition, J. F. “Frank” Parker, editor of the Jones County Democratic newspaper New South, condemned the Knight Company as a band of traitors and murderers. With a rhetorical flourish that had become standard by 1895, Parker revered the “memories of noble, chivalrous deeds achieved by [the] noble, heroic dead, who sacrificed their lives for love of country.” The “bitterness” toward Unionists that Claiborne described in 1873 now appeared as smug contempt for men guilty of the rankest disloyalty to their “country.”3 Seemingly undaunted by an inhospitable political climate, Newt pressed on. His second and third claims, initiated in 1887 and 1891, were subsequently merged and litigated by the U.S. Court of Claims until 1900, when they were finally rejected, once and for all. Newt Knight’s petitions of the government then faded into oblivion, practically lost to historians despite the unparalleled insights they provide into the South’s most famous Unionist uprising.4 Newt’s first claim (1870–73) was prepared by him and his Free State of Jones allies. No lawyer oversaw the process, although B. A. (Benagah) Mathews, a probate judge and close associate of Newt, functioned as one, gathering materials and contacting the appropriate congressmen to gather support for submitting a bill to Congress. The materials that Mathews sent to Congress included Newt’s signed affidavit, certified by Justice of the Peace T. J. (Thomas Jefferson) Collins, which summarized the contributions of the Knight Company to the U.S. government during the Civil War. This affidavit stated that the band was “organized and equipped at a battleground known as Sals Battery, Jones County, Mississippi, on the 13th day of October A.D. 1863.” Calling themselves “Knight’s Company of the United States Infantry,” the men elected Newt Knight their captain and performed the “duties” of an infantry, obeying “any and all orders from United States Officers ,” while furnishing their own “armes, ammunition, and rashens,” until officially disbanded on 10 September 1865.5 The affidavit said nothing about an ordinance of secession from the Confederacy , nor did it mention any oath of allegiance to the U.S. government. Rather, Newt focused on proving that he, as captain of his company, had worked directly with Union military forces in the immediate aftermath of [3.95.233.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:06 GMT) Fighting a Losing Battle 79 the war. To document this assertion, he submitted first a U.S. government requisition form, dated 16 July 1865, that listed large amounts of staples to be transferred at government expense from Meridian to Shubuta. Signed by Captain O. S. Coffin, U.S. quartermaster of Meridian, the form specified that “Mr. Newton Knight” or his assignees would receive the goods.6 Also...