@George
Again, the fictitious "Free State of Jones" rears it's ugly head. I had ancestors who served in the same regiment as that "Mississippi farmer" you invoke. One of them died at Corinth in 1862, one died immediately after the war from maltreatment as a prisoner of war incarcerated in Camp Douglas, the the oldest had a leg amputated in Wayside and Receiving Hospital Number 9 in Richmond in 1865, eventually dying of complications decades later. The brother who survived the war as an amputee stated that he would "kill Newt Knight" if at all possible. Knight had deserted from the regiment shortly before the battle of Corinth, returned as a fugitive and deserter to Jones County, and terrorized and tormented the elder, the women and even children (all able-bodied men were away, in the service of the CSA), hiding in the Eastabuchie swamp when any authorities were present. The movie was liberal, anti-southern fiction. Knight did kill a Confederate colonel, but not as depicted in the movie. He crept up to a window and shot the colonel in the back as the officer was eating dinner (the house is still standing in Ellisville, Mississippi). He was no hero to the people of Jones County, and when he died in the 1920s he had to be buried in another county, as no church in the county he victimized was willing to provide a grave for him.
Again, the fictitious "Free State of Jones" rears it's ugly head. I had ancestors who served in the same regiment as that "Mississippi farmer" you invoke. One of them died at Corinth in 1862, one died immediately after the war from maltreatment as a prisoner of war incarcerated in Camp Douglas, the the oldest had a leg amputated in Wayside and Receiving Hospital Number 9 in Richmond in 1865, eventually dying of complications decades later. The brother who survived the war as an amputee stated that he would "kill Newt Knight" if at all possible. Knight had deserted from the regiment shortly before the battle of Corinth, returned as a fugitive and deserter to Jones County, and terrorized and tormented the elder, the women and even children (all able-bodied men were away, in the service of the CSA), hiding in the Eastabuchie swamp when any authorities were present. The movie was liberal, anti-southern fiction. Knight did kill a Confederate colonel, but not as depicted in the movie. He crept up to a window and shot the colonel in the back as the officer was eating dinner (the house is still standing in Ellisville, Mississippi). He was no hero to the people of Jones County, and when he died in the 1920s he had to be buried in another county, as no church in the county he victimized was willing to provide a grave for him.
Tell Your Friends