A Book by Tom C. McKenney

Jack Hinson was by all accounts a mild-mannered but serious man – one of those guys that would give you the shirt off of his back unless you cross him – then you better watch out. He tried to stay neutral during the opening salvos of the Battle Between the States, but the murders of his sons finally pushed him over the edge. Becoming a one-man kill squad, he waged a “one man war” against Union officers, who he blamed for his sons’ deaths. In many ways he can be seen as the nineteenth century version of Marvin Heemeyer, the man that famously built a large homemade tank called “The Killdozer” and took on his local government. I make that comparison two-fold – it was the story of a man that was fighting back against what he saw as a great injustice to himself, as with Hinson. That story, however, was mutated and embellished on until it bore little resemblance to what actually happened.

That is what appears to have happened here, as the author has basically written a historical fiction book by filling in numerous gaps in the historical record, so who knows what really happened? Furthermore, this book is very much planted into the realm of “Lost Cause Mythology”, something that honestly makes anything in this book pretty suspect. While I will commend the author for tackling a somewhat “lost” story of the American Civil War, there are some major problems with Jack Hinson’s One-Man War – A Civil War Sniper that I cannot overlook.

“The true story of one man’s reluctant but relentless war against the invaders of his country. A quiet, wealthy plantation owner, Jack Hinson watched the start of the Civil War with disinterest. Opposed to secession and a friend to Union and Confederate commanders alike, he did not want a war. After Union soldiers seized and murdered his sons, placing their decapitated heads on the gateposts of his estate, Hinson could remain indifferent no longer. He commissioned a special rifle for long-range accuracy, he took to the woods, and he set out for revenge. This remarkable biography presents the story of Jack Hinson, a lone Confederate sniper who, at the age of 57, waged a personal war on Grant’s army and navy. The result of 15 years of scholarship, this meticulously researched and beautifully written work is the only account of Hinson’s life ever recorded and involves an unbelievable cast of characters, including the Earp brothers, Jesse James, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.”

I mentioned that this book is more-or-less a “Lost Cause Mythology” book, and I say this because the author takes great pains to try to either play “whataboutism” or downplay the severity of slavery during The Civil War. Rather than discuss the subject at hand (Jack Hinson), large swaths of real-estate are occupied with large paragraphs talking about how “Washington DC also had slaves, it was a way of life everywhere”, and “in many cases the relationship between masters and slaves was almost family-like”. I honestly should have stopped reading there, but I trudged through a litany of the greatest hits of this sort of historical thinking.

He goes out of his way to talk trash on John Brown, try to make Abraham Lincoln seem racist (I mean, most people were back then), or try to paint Southerners as completely separated from Slavery, even when discussing the life of a man that was considered to be upper middle class, if not outright wealthy THAT OWNED SLAVES. I’m sure he’d be all okay with it if suddenly his slaves were free because he was such an upstanding guy that only wanted to seek revenge. This meandering serves no purpose other than to build an argument against any criticism of the Confederacy during The Civil War, something that is factually tenuous and far and away distant from the entire supposed point of this book.

My other main issue is that most of the book is basically historical fiction presented as fact. Jack Hinson didn’t exactly keep a day-to-day diary of what he was feeling or thinking at any given time, so any of this in the book is complete conjecture. This treatment is obviously done to attempt to make Hinson into a noble hero of the war, a man that went on a huge killing spree only so he could save his homeland and avenge his sons. I think that if you look at the man’s actions on paper, he seems somewhat less than virtuous, so something had to be done to mythologize his reputation and clean it up. Honestly, this is very slimy and unprofessional for a historian. I know one can’t be without bias, I mean my review clearly shows my opinion on this sort of writing, but Jack Hinson’s One-Man War – A Civil War Sniper is so one-sided you would think it had been published by a Neo-Confederate organization.

Overall, this could have been a great book, but honestly, I’d recommend skipping it.