The counties of Jones, Mississippi and Winston, Alabama—similarly-sized and trapezoidally-shaped—were never officially declared the Free State of Jones and the Republic of Winston, did not secede the way their legends and tourist attractions would have it. They were only slightly less Confederate than the counties surrounding them, slightly less committed to those secessionist inclinations on account of being slightly less prosperous; on account of the pine forests that would not be cleared to make room for plantations, the soil itself limiting the size of their farms and number of farmhands. It was a numbers game, like the Twenty Negro Law that exempted one white man from military service for every twenty slaves owned, thereby exempting nearly no one from Jones and Winston. It's true that a few citizens considered seceding from the secessionists, the cost benefit analysis being simple enough that any dirt farmer could manage the math of it without the aid of a ledger. It would have been reasonable to establish unConfederate enclaves in Mississippi and Alabama, but when all was said and done it was a numbers game, and the odds were stacked against the existence of a Free State of Jones and a Republic of Winston.