Newton Knight Quotes
Every one is a man. if you walk on two legs, you're a man. It's that simple.
Knight led a band of whites and blacks who fought off the Confederate Troops sent to Jones County of Missisippi, to eleminate the Free State of Jones which tehy had set up, and seceded from the Confederacy. They had infuriated teh Confederate Government becasue it was an interracial community with a great deal of intermarriage and no discrimination agaisnt Blacks and they welcomed runaway slaves and white deserters from the Confederate Army.
Newton Knight, 4th Principle of his Constitution of the Free State of Jones
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Racial intermarriage was the greatest fear of those who opposed integration.
The editor at the time was Dr. William H. Boyle but no one is sure whether he, the owner, or someone else, wrote the editorial. The quotation illustrated a fascinating twist of logic that was very commonly held at the time. “If God created men of different colors, he must have meant them to be separate.” It is fascinating that virtually no one at the time made a similar argument about hair or eye color, intellect or other differential traits of people. Although this logical fallacy waned in the latter part of the 20th century, there are some who still hold to it.
As enlightened and progressive that his views on Blacks were, he was amazingly racist when it came to Native Americans. See {588991}.
This quotation is very important for in the 20th century Southern revisionists made a major effort to ennoble the Confederate cause by claiming that Slavery and the desire to keep Blacks in bondage and unequal was just of byproduct of the reason for secession—States Rights and the decentralization of government. Many of the school history books were changed to reflect this claim. However, each of the seceding states left a legislative record of secession and the reasons for it. In all cases, Slavery and the preservation of Slavery in the South was the central and in most cases the only reason stated. In this case, Texas made its reasons clear. There was nothing noble therein but racism and racial exploitation.
He would not allow himself to be buried in a cemetery that would not allow Blacks. He was laid to rest in Shreiner's Cemetery, one of the very few racially integrated cemeteries at the time.
One of the most amazing things about Abraham Lincoln is the way he grew and matured over time. In 1854 he was not sure that the Negro could be the equal of the white. As he met more Black leaders, saw more, reflected more, and had more responsibility, he grew and developed his views on race. But it was statements like this that led to the great distrust that the very strong abolitionists like Wendell Phillips had in him.
The Quakers were in the forefront of not only the abolition of slavery but of the integration of the races.
Eight years and a Civil War later, he had changed his mind and was the sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1866—the first Federal civil rights law in America. See {587711}.
The U. S. Navy had Black sailors even before the Civil War. Blacks had shipped out on Northern merchant vessels and whaling ships starting in colonial times. Many Blacks had nautical experience and were welcomed by the Northern Navy and treated very well. The Union Army in contrast was much more ambivalent about Blacks serving. Ironically the Navy was disbanded to save money and when it was reconstituted it was on a racially segregated basis completely foreign to American Naval history. It was the last of the American armed services to integrate and its officer corps has not desecrated as much as the other services.
Jessie Helms was his young assistant who drafted this race baiting ad. There are two vicious but subtle aspects to this kind of attach ads. First, not that the ad does not address the problem of white men working along side of blacks. It only refers to wives and daughter. This interracial sex innuendo played on and increased the fear of whites that Blacks would commonly rape white women. The second nasty aspect of the ad is the specific attack on the opponent. Instead of saying that he favored desegregation, the phrase “mingling of the races” was used which implied that Graham was in favor of biracial intermarriage and children—again another sex innuendo. When integration of the workforce finally occurred in the South, there was no increase in Black men sexually assaulting white women. There has been a substantial increase in racial intermarriage however as racial bigotry has diminished in America.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
This was the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The men were contesting for the U. S. Senate. Douglas won the election.
Newton Knight was an American farmer, soldier and Southern Unionist in Mississippi, best known as the leader of the Knight Company, a band of Confederate army deserters who resisted the Confederacy during the Civil War. Local legends tell of Knight and his men forming the "Free State of Jones" in the area in and around Jones County, Mississippi, at the height of the war. The nature and extent of the Knight Company's opposition to the Confederate government is disputed among historians. After the war, Knight joined the Republican Party and served in Mississippi's Reconstruction government as a deputy US Marshal.
