Jack Hinson’s One-Man War

2,242 words

Tom C. McKenney
Jack Hinson’s One-Man War
Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2009

Pitting oneself against the modern world can be a lonely endeavor. Sure, we can find company on the Internet. But if any of us has fellow travelers in our day-to-days lives, then we should consider ourselves lucky. I am sure we all can appreciate the lone person who stands athwart history, yelling “Stop!” and meaning it at the same time. It’s a rough road, but if you do it well, it can be a splendid thing.

In Jack Hinson’s One-Man War, author Tom McKenney tells us exactly how splendid it can be.

In late 1862, Jack Hinson underwent a startling transformation. As a leading resident of Stewart County, Tennessee, he had been an ardent Unionist, despite not bearing a grudge against neighbors who supported secession. He lived with his wife, ten children, and numerous slaves on a 1,200-acre farm they called Bubbling Springs. Hinson was a successful farmer, an astute businessman, a hard worker, and a tough, fair-minded individual who had garnered tremendous respect from everyone in the county, black and white.

His was an isolated neighborhood, part of a long, inland peninsula — between the Tennessee River to the west, the Cumberland River to the east, and the Ohio River to the north — known colloquially as “Between the Rivers.” During the time of the United States Civil War, there were no bridges; guests, travelers, traders, and, as we shall see, the US military could only rely on boats to get in, out, or through this region. This suited the mostly Scots-Irish residents of Between the Rivers just fine. They were self-reliant, traditional, and clannish. They cared deeply about chivalry and honor, and wanted most of all to be left alone. They took revenge seriously as well, which plays a critical role in Jack’s Hinson’s singular story.

The area known as “Between the Rivers.” Dover was the county seat of Stewart County, where the Hinsons lived.

Civil War buffs will certainly recognize the geography of Hinson’s milieu. During the fall of 1861, military men from both sides blundered through what was shaping up to be a crucial, if chaotic, period of the war, with much fighting taking place on or near Jack Hinson’s land. The South had the chance to fortify an excellent defensive position called the Birmingham Narrows, but failed to do so. After losses at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and an utterly shameful surrender by politician generals John Floyd and Gideon Pillow (over the livid protests of lower-ranking warrior generals such as Nathan Bedford Forrest), the Confederacy forever lost the upper hand in Kentucky and Tennessee. McKenney calls it “one of the most flagrant examples of incompetent, self-serving leadership in our history.” It made the fall of Vicksburg — and of the Confederacy itself — an inevitability, regardless of General Robert E. Lee’s accomplishments in the east. McKenney lays the blame squarely on the Southern high command’s ineptitude in the area, and gives almost no credit to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, whom he often portrays as a rank mediocrity. In his entire work, McKenney doesn’t even once mention Grant’s first name.

Jack Hinson was content to remain neutral at first. The presence of invading Northern troops near his home, however, and the increasingly savage guerrilla reaction from Southern irregulars, as well as from marauding criminals known as bushwhackers, was making neutrality difficult. Despite remaining on cordial terms with Confederate commanders and having his oldest son fighting for the Confederacy in Virginia, he did at one point offer advice to General Grant and entertained him later as a guest in his home.

Hinson’s neutrality was shattered however, when a Union Lieutenant captured two of his sons as they were hunting in the woods. Having been instructed by Colonel Lowe back at Fort Donelson to deal harshly with guerrillas and bushwhackers, the Union soldiers executed both boys, mutilated them, and placed their heads on gate posts before the doorstep of Bubbling Springs. This had been done directly in front of Hinson and his horrified family and slaves.

As with any great revenge story, things were never the same again. Jack Hinson

would never again be a friend to the Union. Instead, he would become an implacable enemy, a fire-breathing avenger, an ongoing nightmare for Colonel Lowe, his successors, and all other Union Forces in the area. He would exact a particularly heavy toll on the officers and crews of Federal shipping on the Twin Rivers, contributing to a problem so severe as to significantly affect the Union Navy Department’s policies in far-off Washington City. He would become a deadly Confederate sniper, a terrifying phantom of the forest, killing and disappearing for the rest of the war.

But revenge for an atavistic genius such as Jack Hinson takes time. He knew what he needed to do, but his farm and family kept him busy. He studied Union movements as often as he could and reacquainted himself with every square inch of his territory between the rivers. Where could he kill? Where could he sleep? Where could he hide? Where could he escape to? How could he remain one step ahead of the enemy at all times? And how could he protect his family from the inevitable Union backlash?

Just as important as these concerns was Jack Hinson’s need for the ultimate weapon — one which would have to be specially made for his grim purpose. His ordinary flintlock rifles were fine for hunting squirrels and deer, but were not so good for firing a kill shot at an unsuspecting Union officer 600 yards away. There are many passages which sparkle in Jack Hinson’s One-Man War, but none more so than McKenney’s description of how Hinson built the perfect rifle for killing Yankees:

The maple wood for the full stock had to be a single piece, flawless, well cured, clear of knots, and tight grained. Jack bought the lock assembly with its hammer, triggers, and springs already made. The best ones were manufactured far from Dover and would have to be imported. On occasion, an area gunsmith would make his own, but jack wanted the very best. A local blacksmith would make the heavy barrel, or the gunsmith would make it himself, slowly and patiently, protecting its temper and strength. Afterwards, the gunsmith would bore it to a rifled .50 caliber, put the sights on it, brown finish it with vinegar, and assemble the completed rifle: lock, stock, and barrel. The barrel had to be seated perfectly in the full maple stock, carefully carved and chiseled to an exact fit. Otherwise, some accuracy would be lost. After the finished rifle was assembled, the gunsmith would test fire it until he was satisfied that it was perfect. There could be no gas leak around the breach plug or the nipple, the hammer must be tight and the trigger function soft and smooth, and, most importantly, the firearm needed to be accurate, consistently accurate at ranges beyond a half mile. This rifle had a job to do, and it had to be right.[1]

As promised, McKinney gives a gripping account of Jack Hinson’s one-man war against the United States. It wouldn’t take long for Union military leaders to figure out that Hinson had become a renegade sniper. But by that time, Hinson had ushered his large family and loyal slaves to safety across the Tennessee River. McKenney gives us details of Hinson’s favorite routes, perches, and campsites. He gives intimate glimpses of how Hinson set up his bed and tent, prepared his food, and stayed warm in the winter. He offers almost by-the-minute accounts of Hinson’s exploits shooting Union men in gunboats and transports that were chugging up the river. Both rivers flowed north to the Ohio, and sometimes the currents were exceedingly rough. This meant that while their engines struggled against the river, many men in blue uniforms became sitting ducks for an unseen sniper with almost preternatural accuracy.

You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s young adult novel The No College Club here.

At one point, Hinson had beleaguered a Union gunboat so badly that its Captain actually surrendered. According to McKenney, this is the only time in recorded history in which an armed boat of war surrendered to one man. Of course, Hinson could not capitalize on the surrender, and out of fair play, he allowed the boat to eventually escape.

This sense of fair play was another crucial aspect of Hinson’s character. Yes, he was a “fire-breathing avenger,” but he never targeted civilians, he never targeted non-combatants such as mail carriers or medics, and he always preferred officers to enlisted men as victims. Jack Hinson was never officially part of the Confederate Army, but he had the honor to know that he may as well have been. Like a gentleman at war, he behaved accordingly.

And so did the Union, believe it or not. During the war, as McKenney describes, Union forces:

. . . committed against [Hinson] the assets of at least two cavalry regiments, seven infantry regiments, and a specially equipped amphibious task force of sailors and marines, both infantry and mounted.

Jack Hinson, according to McKenney, shot and killed over 100 US soldiers and sailors throughout the war. Thus, the urgency with which Union commanders tried to deal with their problem makes perfect sense. But after the war, without anything formally declared by either party, the victorious bluecoats left Jack Hinson alone to tend to his shattered family.[2] Hinson died of natural causes in 1874. McKenney quotes Winston Churchill in saying that the US Civil War was “the last war fought between gentlemen.” Beheading and mutilating innocent boys was certainly not gentlemanly, but abstaining from hanging Jack Hinson as a war criminal after Appomattox certainly was.

The only known photograph of Jack Hinson, taken when he was an old man.

One last notable facet of Jack Hinson’s One-Man War is its historiography. Prior to this volume, very little was known about Jack Hinson. While researching him in the 1990s, McKenney had to do the legwork by consulting family bibles, local libraries, court records, contemporary news accounts, and other primary and secondary sources scattered about between the rivers. He even managed to interview the elderly great-granddaughter of one of Hinson’s neighbors, who remembered much of what her ancestors had told her about Hinson. McKenney also went to Hinson’s living descendants, but Hinson’s last surviving grandson had died in 1963, and for many years the family had suppressed the story, so there was limited potential there.[3]

In order to flesh out his subject from mythical forest boogie man to real human being, McKenney had to not only do a lot of sleuthing, he also had to occasionally insert speculation into his prose based on probabilities and educated guesses. Fortunately, he lets us know when he does this. At times, Jack Hinson’s One-Man War reads like top-notch historical fiction. McKenney often gets into Jack Hinson’s mind, telling us what the man must have been thinking or feeling. McKenny also justifies some of his conclusions whenever evidence is scanty. For example, he feels it insufficient to rely solely on the Hinson family account of the beheadings. He explains that the atrocity story is supported by an independent source, namely that of:

. . . Mrs. Frances Love Black of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Mrs. Black heard the story from her great uncle, Maj. Charles W. Anderson, adjutant general to Forrest, whom she knew as “Uncle Charley.” Anderson knew Jack Hinson well, served with him on at least three of Forrest’s raids, and heard the story from him. The Love-Black-McFarland family is a prominent, respected old family in Murfreesboro, one in which family traditions are taken seriously and preserved as carefully as is family honor. The validity of this account is highly credible if not unassailable.

Reading about how Tom McKenney compiled this riveting history was almost as fun as the history itself.

Aside from being a terrific story, Jack Hinson’s exploits resonate for metapolitical reasons. Here was a white man, steeped in work, honor, and tradition and living with his large family in a feudalistic time capsule between the rivers who found himself crossed by the inexorable forces of universal progress. He took it upon himself at great risk to stem that tide when it dearly needed to be stemmed. And despite the South’s ultimate defeat, he did so successfully and with a strong sense of justice and fair play.

What’s not to admire in that?

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Notes

[1] As an interesting side note, McKenney actually tracked down the very rifle that Jack Hinson used during his one-man war. He shares photographs of himself holding it, as well as a close-up of the barrel upon which Hinson etched notches for every Union fighter he killed. In the appendix, McKenney also provides the weapon’s chain of possession from the Civil War to today.

[2] Hinson’s family had indeed been shattered during this time. Aside from the two boys whom Union forces murdered, the Hinsons lost an additional five children either during or because of the war. McKenney clarifies, however, that they had lost “at least” seven children, given that in numerous instances between censuses there had been time for Mrs. Hinson to give birth to a child which later died, a tragically common occurrence back then.

[3] In the appendix, McKenney traces the genealogy of Jack Hinson’s descendants down to the 1990s. These involve interesting stories of their own, and span the Spanish-American War and both world wars. McKenney stops at the fourth generation, noting that in the mid-1990s, when he was writing, two of Jack Hinson’s great-grandchildren were still living.