Rich Man's War - Poor Man's Fight

I just finished reading an interesting book about the Civil War in Mississippi: The State of Jones.

I had long known that something happened during the war in Jones County, Mississippi. The county became a refuge for deserters and supporters of the Union. The central figure was Newton Knight, a yeoman farmer who opposed the planter class. He not only organized and led a force of Unionists who opposed the Confederacy, he established an interracial community in the county.

I don't know if it was these farmers who invented the phrase, "it's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight," but it might well have been.

Bitter as Newton Knight's fight was during the war, the struggle afterwards was even more challenging as the planter class reestablished control of the state after the war through a reign of terror. They even succeeded to a great extent in reestablishing white dominion over black laborers. How Knight survived the assassination attempts and the violence of the Klan to die in his old age is in itself a remarkable story.

I have also been reading the New York Times' Disunion series of articles. I'm learning a lot about the Civil War I never knew. A complicated tale.