Ron Paul interviewers arrested in Mississippi

[RidleyReport]

Arrested for videotaping a traffic stop, apparently...the activists at MotorHomeDiaries.com are now out of jail. They had just interviewed Dr. Paul in person a few days earlier. I understand all three are Free Staters and at least one is a resident of Keene, New Hampshire.

Diggable at: http://digg.com/politics/Ron_Paul_intervie..._in_Mississippi

[Selene]

Ridley:

What county and township did this take place in in Mississippi?

Adam

[Chris Grieb]

Hit& Run, the Reason blog, has been carrying reports on this arrest.

[Selene]

Thanks as usual.

[sbeaulieu]

Arrested for videotaping a traffic stop, apparently...the activists at MotorHomeDiaries.com are now out of jail. They had just interviewed Dr. Paul in person a few days earlier. I understand all three are Free Staters and at least one is a resident of Keene, New Hampshire.

Diggable at: http://digg.com/politics/Ron_Paul_intervie..._in_Mississippi

Interesting...Keene is where I was born, though it's unlikely I know the person from there.

~ Shane

[RidleyReport]

In response to the question...this happened in Jones County. Rural part of it I think. Also the guys just made it on to Fox News freedom watch

Here's another vid about their situation:

[Selene]

Sorry this is just too funny!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_County,..._State_of_Jones

"Free State of Jones

The Free State of Jones is a name synonymous with Jones County, Mississippi (formed in 1826). Popular lore claims that the county seceded from the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. While it is true that Jones County was a seedbed of opposition to the Confederate cause during the war (as were neighboring counties in the Pine Belt region of the state), the county government never actually seceded from the Confederacy. In fact, many Jones Countians enlisted and fought with the Confederacy, forming two Confederate companies: the "Ellisville Invincibles" (Co. K of the 8th Mississippi Infantry) and the "Rosin Heels" (Co. B of the 27th Mississippi Infantry).

In fact, the label "Free State of Jones" actually predates the Civil War. According to alternate theories of the term's origin, "Free State of Jones" came to be associated with Jones County for one of two reasons: 1) in reference to the county's reputation as a sparsely populated "backwater" of the young state, whose few residents were notorious for their disdain for organized governmental authority, or 2) due to a period of time in the early 1840s when, due to low population numbers and lack of legal proceedings, the county was left without duly-inducted legal and/or civil authorities. The true origin of the nickname could be traced back to either or both of these conditions.

As Mississippi debated the secession question, the state called a session convention which met in January 1861. Two men from Jones County vied to represent the county at the convention: J.M. Bayliss was the pro-secession candidate and John Hathorne Powell, Jr. was the anti-secession candidate. Powell was elected to represent Jones County at the convention but when he did so, he voted for secession. For his vote, he was supposedly burned in effigy in Ellisville, the county seat.

By far the most authoritative study of this strange episode of American history is The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War by Victoria E. Bynum, Professor of History at Texas State University, published by Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Bynum, whose father was born in Jones County, became interested in researching the county’s Civil War uprising after learning of its alleged secession from the Confederacy. Her book is a deeply-researched people’s history of the Free State, one that emphasizes the cultural, geographic, economic, and kinship roots of the anti-Confederate outrage that plunged the county into a bloody inner civil war between 1863 and 1865. Bynum takes this history well beyond the Civil War, however, by examining the interracial relationship between guerrilla leader Newt Knight and Rachel Knight, a former slave, and by tracing its legacy into the twentieth century.

Excerpt from Bynum, Free State of Jones, pp. 115, 117:

“ In the days surrounding April 15, 1864, several deadly confrontations erupted on the borders of Jones and Covington Counties, near the Leaf River, as the Knight Company clashed with cavalry led by Col. Robert Lowry. By the time the skirmishes ended, one cavalryman had been killed and ten deserters “summarily executed” by the cavalry. . . .

Growing fears of collaboration between deserter bands and the Union Army . . . influenced Confederate authorities’ decision to send Colonel Lowry into the region. Members of the several bands of deserters in the Jones County region apparently had frequent contact with one another and moved back and forth between bands when convenient, On March 29, [Capt.] W. Wirt Thomason reported rumors that “Yankees are frequently among” the Jones County deserters. Nine days later, and only one week before the Lowry raids, Daniel P. Logan warned Provost Marshal Major J.C. Denis that “large numbers” of Jones County deserters “have gone down Pearl River to and near Honey Island where they exist in some force . . . openly boasting of their being in communication with the Yankees.”

According to Newt Knight, during this period his company continually sought connections with the Union Army. He recounted how Jasper Collins had traveled without success to Memphis and Vicksburg to seek the company’s recruitment into the Union Army. Newt also recalled that “Johnny Rebs busted up the party they sent to swear us in,” explaining that a company of Union forces sent to recruit men of the Knight Company was waylaid by Confederate forces at Rocky Creek. After that, he said, “I sent a courier to the federal commander at New Orleans. He sent us 400 rifles. The Confederates captured them.” Newt concluded that “we’ll all die guerrillas, I reckon. Never could break through the rebels to join the Union Army.”

”

Famed film director Gary Ross is currently producing the movie The Free State of Jones."

Adam