ALAMANCE AND THE FREE STATE OF JONES There is nothing more American, perhaps, than mixed blood; unless it might be a good stout voice of strongly held anti-authoritarian sentiment. Oddly both intersected in the Piney Woods District in backwoods Jones County Mississippi during the Civil War. It resulted in a situation in which residents of Jones County and two adjacent counties voted to secede from the Confederacy. It did not, however, start there. Civil disobedience in America began in 1676 with the Bacon Rebellion in Virginia. Nathaniel Bacon opposed Governor Berkeley’s frontier Indian policy, gathered some followers who burned Jamestown to the ground, and sacked Berkeley’s home. The rebellion fell apart after Bacon got dysentery and pooped himself to death. Twenty seven of his followers were subsequently hanged and Berkeley was recalled to London. Berkeley favored
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