4. The Confederacy Tried To Take Down The Knight Company By Sending A Confederate Major
Not only was Newton Knight arrested for refusing to go back to the Confederate Army after they released he had gone AWOL, but the Confederacy also tried to take down the Knight Company on multiple occasions. It was after the loss at Vicksburg that Newton Knight and many other deserters who joined the Knight Company left the Confederate Army. Many of them walked back to Jones County, where one went home to learn that his wife had starved to death because the Confederate Army took most of the food they had, and she gave the rest to her children.
It was the anger of these men that created the Knight Company, and after making the Confederacy aware that they were going to do everything in their power to take down the Confederacy, the Confederate leaders quickly acted. One of their actions included sending Confederate Major Amos McLemore, who was from Jones County and knew of the swampy areas the Knight Company would hide. During his mission, McLemore had managed to capture about 100 of the deserters before he was shot dead on October 5, 1863. While there are no valid documents to state which Knight Company member shot McLemore, most people feel it was Newton.