Jack Hinson

A prosperous land and slave-owner[2] of Scotch-Irish descent, Hinson at the beginning of the war was neutral and only the crimes committed by unionists against his family made him choose to fight with the confederates .[3] He had welcomed Union General Ulysses S. Grant to his home when Grant was in the area during the Union attack on Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862. However, Hinson took up arms after his two sons were mistaken for bushwhackers while hunting and summarily executed, decapitated, and their heads put on fence posts at the Hinson plantation by unionists.The family was turned out of their home by Federal troops without any compensation later in 1862. The house was later burned.[4]

For the remainder of the war, Hinson used a 50 caliber Kentucky long rifle to conduct a personal war against the Union Army. He targeted Union soldiers at distances as great as a half mile on land and on military transports and gunboats on the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River. Hinson has been credited with as many as one hundred kills, although his rifle had only 36 notches on it. (It has been suggested that the notches were for officers only.)[5]

Hinson served as a guide for Nathan Bedford Forrest during his successful cavalry raid on the Union supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee in November 1864. Hinson's son Robert led a guerrilla band in the area until he was killed in action on September 18, 1863. Hinson himself evaded capture, despite elements of four Union regiments being assigned at different times to pursue him.

After the war, he lived the rest of his life peacefully, mostly in Stewart County, settling the estate of his son George, voting, paying his taxes, etc.[6] In 1867, he sold 7 acres of timber off of his "Bubbling Springs" farm to the first Superintendent of the new National Cemetery.[7]

Hinson died on April 28, 1874, at his residence in the White Oak/Magnolia area of Houston County, Tennessee. On the morning of his death, he complained of a severe pain between the shoulders. Remedies were applied, but no relief came and he died six hours after being taken. The attack was supposed to be meningitis. He is buried in the family plot in the Cane Creek Cemetery, off White Oak Road, near McKinnon, Tennessee. A monument to him is also located in the Boyd Cemetery in the Land-Between-the Lakes area. His 1874 obituary stated that he was interred at the Boyd Cemetery.[8] Area newspapers in 1873 had been full of stories about the pursuit and capture of "Captain Jack", but those references are to Modoc chief Kintpuash, not to Hinson.

Hinson is commemorated in a roadside marker just across the state border in Kentucky,[9] and his story has been told in two books by Tom McKenney:

• Battlefield Sniper: Over 100 Civil War Kills, Tom C. Lt. Col. McKenney[10]
• Jack Hinson's One Man War.[11]