The Bravest Confederate Sniper You've Never Heard Of and Why They Could Not Catch Him

In the autumn of eighteen sixty-two, a Union patrol stopped two young men on a road outside Dover, Tennessee. They were brothers, out hunting deer. By the end of that day, they were dead, and what was done to their bodies afterward turned their father, a fifty-five year old farmer who had opposed secession and fed officers from both armies at his own table, into something the United States Army could not catch. His name was John W Hinson. He was called Jack. For the next two and a half years, alone in the high country between the Cumberland and the Tennessee rivers, with one heavy rifle built on the Whitworth pattern, he hunted the army that had killed his sons. Elements of four Union regiments were sent to find him. None of them did. By the end of the war, the count of notches on his rifle barrel had passed one hundred. This is not a Lost Cause story. It is not a story about a hero or a monster. It is a story about a peaceful man, a line that should never be crossed, and what happens on the other side of that line when an army crosses it for him. He was not a monster. He was not a hero. He was a father, and he was there. 📚 Sources and further reading Tom C McKenney, Jack Hinson's One-Man War, Pelican Publishing, two thousand and nine Clarksville Weekly Chronicle, obituary of John W Hinson, sixteenth of May, eighteen seventy-four Kentucky Historical Marker number eight hundred and eighty-one, Land Between the Lakes Tennessee State Library and Archives, Stewart County records National Park Service, Fort Donelson National Battlefield archives 🔔 Subscribe for more stories the textbooks cleaned up, got wrong, or never told at all. New episodes every week. 💬 Tell me in the comments where you are watching from tonight. The city, the state, the country. I read every single one. 📜 They were not monsters. They were not heroes. They were men, and they were there. #CivilWar #AmericanHistory #CivilWarHistory #JackHinson #ConfederateSniper #UnionArmy #CivilWarStories #CivilWarSniper #HistoryChannel