Hey everyone Jody here just letting you know that it is the heart of the summer which means that the members of the this day crew are taking some little trips getting some family time in some downtime hopefully you are as well anyway that means that here is a favorite episode from the vaults, but rest assured, we will be back with brand new episodes real soon.

See you then.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

To this day, October 12, 1863, in Jones County, Mississippi, a group of local residents led

by a man named Newton Knight began to act up, upset about the state of the Confederate leadership,

the imposition of new taxes, and perhaps a little bit of sympathy for the union cause,

these southern men began to fight back. There were skirmishes, killings, and ultimately an open rebellion leading to what came to be known as the free state of Jones.

Jones County, Mississippi, maybe kind of seceding from the Confederacy. By the way, that of course is theing from the Confederacy.

By the way that of course is the name of a movie that was made about this incident,

which is how many people know this story, the Free State of Jones movie that starred Matthew

McConaughey.

We've been wanting to get to the real free state of Jones story for a long time

as I would say historians have a bit of a hard time figuring out exactly what this incident was. It was somewhere

between a series of skirmishes to a full on righteous war of independence.

So here to discuss as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. So before we go to Jones

County, Mississippi, which is kind of I'd say in the South Central Mississippi,

but before we go there, can we talk about 1863 in a larger context of the Civil War?

I mean, my sense, Kelly, is that this is the year in which the war just really starts to

like grind and feel like a real.

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