The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War

Army 

Reconstruction

1865–1877

The

And
CMH Pub 75–18

Cover: The Freedmen’s Bureau, by Alfred R. Waud

(Harper’s Weekly, 25 July 1868)
by

Mark L. Bradley

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2015

Army 

Reconstruction

1865–1877

The

And

5

Introduction

Although over one hundred fifty years have passed since the 

start of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues to 

matter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destructive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of the 

Union, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. The 

war remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with over 

six hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle. 

Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the American 

Civil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sown 

in the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over the 

existence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict can 

begin without the conscious decisions of those engaged in the 

debates at that moment, in the end, there was simply no way to 

paper over the division of the country into two camps: one that 

was dominated by slavery and the other that sought first to limit 

its spread and then to abolish it. Our nation was indeed “half slave 

and half free,” and that could not stand. 

Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, the 

soldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personal 

reasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passions 

and emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoring 

states’ rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamic 

of being convinced that they were “worth” three of the soldiers 

on the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some went 

to war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continues 

to be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profession of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in the 

fight because of their comrades and because they do not want to 

seem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrink 

to nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell and 

minié ball.

Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly and 

only culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy, 
6

the preservation of the Union, and the end of slavery. These 

campaign pamphlets on the American Civil War, prepared in 

commemoration of our national sacrifices, seek to remember 

that war and honor those in the United States Army who died to 

preserve the Union and free the slaves as well as to tell the story of 

those American soldiers who fought for the Confederacy despite 

the inherently flawed nature of their cause. The Civil War was our 

greatest struggle and continues to deserve our deep study and 

contemplation.

 RICHARD W. STEWART, PH.D.

 Chief of Military History
The Army and Reconstruction

1865–1877

Strategic Setting

Within two months of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s 

surrender at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865, the 

Confederacy had collapsed, and its armed forces had ceased to 

exist. The systematic destruction of the South’s transportation, 

manufacturing, and industrial facilities during the closing months 

of the war had ensured the futility of further armed resistance. It 

also made a swift economic recovery next to impossible, leaving 

ex-Confederates destitute and bitter over their harsh fate. The 

bloodiest war in U.S. history—final death toll estimates range from 

600,000 to over 800,000 fighting men—had settled the critical 

issues of secession and slavery but left much else unresolved, above 

all the former slaves’ civil, political, and economic status in the 

postwar South. 

In the spring of 1865, the U.S. Army faced the unprecedented 

task of occupying eleven conquered Southern states during 

peacetime and administering “Reconstruction”—the process 

by which the former rebellious states would be restored to the 

Union. Two decades earlier, the Army had performed occupation 

7
8 

duty in Mexico both during and after the Mexican War, but that 

was on foreign soil, and Reconstruction was never a part of the 

Army’s mission there. The postwar occupation of California and 

New Mexico did provide Army officers with some experience in 

“nation-building,” requiring them to draft laws and constitutions 

for the territories recently annexed from Mexico.

During the Civil War, the Army oversaw wartime 

Reconstruction in areas of Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and 

Arkansas, giving it invaluable experience in the kind of stabilization and peacekeeping missions it would later perform across the 

entire South. On 24 April 1863, the War Department issued General 

Orders 100, the Union Army’s official code of conduct in the field. 

Drafted by Francis Lieber, an eminent legal scholar, and a panel of 

Army officers, “Lieber’s Code” induced several European nations to 

draft similar documents for their armies. For all its virtues, Lieber’s 

Code exerted little influence on the Union Army’s conduct during 

the Civil War, in part because the Army operated under the assumption that such matters should be left to the local commanders’ 

discretion. Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that 

the Army entered its postwar occupation duties with neither a plan 

nor a doctrine to govern its actions. (See Map 1.)

Worse yet, the U.S. Constitution provided no guidance on 

how the rebellious states should be restored, provoking heated 

debate as to what Reconstruction entailed. On 8 December 1863, 

President Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty 

and Reconstruction, offering a full pardon and restoration of rights 

to persons who resumed their allegiance to the Union by taking 

a loyalty oath and pledging to support the abolition of slavery. 

The proclamation excluded only a few classes of high-ranking 

Confederate civilian and military leaders. When those taking the 

loyalty oath in any Southern state amounted to 10 percent of the 

votes cast in 1860, the loyal minority could establish a new state 

government with representation in Congress, provided its constitution abolished slavery.

Deeming Lincoln’s “Ten Percent Plan” too lenient, the 

Radical Republicans in Congress introduced their own plan—

known as the Wade-Davis bill—in July 1864. Under its provisions, Reconstruction would not start until the majority of a 

state’s white male voters pledged to support the U.S. Constitution. 

Only then could a state hold an election for delegates to a constitutional convention, with voting restricted to those who could 
9

take the Ironclad Oath affirming that they had never willingly 

supported the Confederacy. Lincoln killed the bill with a pocket 

veto, fearing that it would compel him to repudiate the Southern 

state governments established under his Ten Percent Plan. He 

never intended his plan to serve as a blueprint for postwar 

Reconstruction, but an assassin’s bullet killed him before he 

could develop such a program.

Lincoln’s sudden death and the recess of Congress until 

December 1865 thrust that responsibility on the shoulders of the 

fallen president’s successor, Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee politician who had remained loyal to the Union. During the war he 

had first served as a U.S. senator and then as military governor 

of the Volunteer State before his election to U.S. vice president in 

November 1864. His declaration, “Treason must be made odious, 

and traitors must be punished and impoverished,” indicated that 

Johnson favored a rigorous approach to Reconstruction. At first, 

his actions appeared to confirm his image as a hard-liner. In April 

1865, he had rejected as too generous the terms of surrender 

that Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman initially had offered 

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, and in May, he ordered 

the arrest and imprisonment of numerous former Confederate officials, including the ex-president, Jefferson Davis. But it remained 

to be seen what Johnson’s Reconstruction plan would be, for he 

seemed in no hurry to act.

Operations

Military Government by Default

In the meantime, Army commanders in the South had to 

improvise their own occupation policy, a responsibility they 

preferred to leave to the authorities in Washington, D.C. On 5 

May 1865, Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, the commander of the 

Department of North Carolina, expressed his frustration in a 

letter to his immediate superior, General Sherman. “I hope the 

Government will make known its policy as to organization of State 

governments without delay,” Schofield wrote. “Affairs must necessarily be in a very unsettled state until that is done. The people 

[of North Carolina] are now in a mood to accept almost anything 

which promises a definite settlement.”

When that guidance failed to materialize, Schofield 

presented his own Reconstruction plan to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. 
G

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Grant, the general in chief of the U.S. Army. The department 

commander recommended appointing a military governor who 

would declare the state’s antebellum laws in force if they did 

not conflict with the Constitution or the president’s wartime 

proclamations. In addition to commanding the occupation 

force for North Carolina, the military governor would appoint 

temporary sheriffs and other officials, and call an election for 

delegates to a state convention. Schofield would require the 

convention to repudiate secession, abolish slavery, resume 

federal-state relations, and order the election of a governor 

and state legislature. The acts of the convention would then 

be submitted to the people for ratification. Should the convention fail to accomplish its requisite tasks, Schofield recommended dissolving it and placing the state once more under 

military government “until the people should come to their 

senses.” Grant agreed with Schofield’s plan but noted that Army 

commanders could only act as peacekeepers until the president 

unveiled his Reconstruction policy. 

Schofield, however, decided that the situation called for immediate action. During his month-long tenure in North Carolina, he 

established an ad hoc recovery 

program that provided rations 

and transportation for paroled 

Confederate soldiers, fed and 

sheltered refugees of both races, 

loaned draft horses to destitute 

farmers, formed local police 

companies, created a bureau of 

freedmen’s affairs, and issued 

guidelines for freedpeople and 

their former masters.

Similarly, Maj. Gen. 

George H. Thomas, the 

commander of the Department 

of the Cumberland embracing 

Tennessee and parts of 

Georgia, Alabama, and 

Mississippi, permitted judges, 

sheriffs, and other local officials to continue performing 

their duties according to the 

General Schofield

(Library of Congress)
13

state laws in effect before secession. As for vacancies, Thomas 

encouraged “the loyal people of the neighborhood” to hold 

elections and select worthy candidates.

Although Thomas’ policy met with some opposition among 

Southern Unionists, it remained in force, but President Johnson 

would not allow Southern governors or state legislatures to remain 

in office. Acting under Johnson’s orders, Army officers arrested 

two of the more prominent ex-governors—Joseph E. Brown of 

Georgia and Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina—and sent them 

to Washington, for incarceration.

Presidential Reconstruction

On 29 May, President Johnson issued two proclamations 

outlining his Reconstruction policy. Given his prior actions and 

statements, the conditions were surprisingly lenient. The first 

proclamation granted amnesty to all ex-Confederates except those 

who fell into fourteen classes, but the excluded persons could apply 

for a presidential pardon. The second proclamation appointed 

William W. Holden the provisional governor of North Carolina. In 

addition to being the longtime editor of the Raleigh-based North 

Carolina Standard, Holden had been the unsuccessful candidate of 

the state’s peace faction in the 1864 gubernatorial election against 

the popular incumbent Vance. Although an outspoken opponent 

of the war, Holden had stopped short of calling for North Carolina’s 

return to the Union. Even so, Johnson regarded him as the Tar 

Heel State’s most reliable wartime Unionist.

The president’s second proclamation also provided a mechanism for the state to resume its former relations with the federal 

government. Holden would first call a convention consisting of 

delegates elected by loyal citizens “for the purpose of altering or 

amending” the state constitution. At minimum, the convention 

had to declare the secession ordinance null and void and to abolish 

slavery. The proclamation required all voters and electors to take 

an amnesty oath and to meet the qualifications set forth by the state 

constitution in force before 20 May 1861, the day North Carolina 

passed its secession ordinance. This meant that no freedmen 

could vote for delegates. The proclamation officially restored the 

authority and functions of federal law, federal tax and customs 

collectors, federal courts, and the U.S. Post Office in the Tar Heel 

State. Aside from Johnson’s appointment of a civilian governor, his 

Reconstruction plan was almost identical to Schofield’s.
14 

The paragraph regarding the military’s role in Presidential 

Reconstruction was brief. The department commander and his 

troops were to “assist the said provisional governor in carrying into 

effect this proclamation.” They were also “to abstain from in any 

way hindering, impeding, or discouraging the loyal people from 

the organization of a State government as herein authorized.” That 

was all—Johnson’s proclamation was silent on martial law and 

lacked a clear definition of the Army’s role in Reconstruction. The 

president’s vague instructions all but ensured a conflict between 

the provisional governor and the military commander over their 

respective powers. Lacking specific guidelines, the department 

commander regarded his authority as supreme in North Carolina 

pending the resumption of civil government. In the coming weeks, 

Johnson issued similar proclamations for Alabama, Florida, 

Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, leaving intact the 

loyal governments established in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, 

and Virginia under Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. 

While President Johnson unveiled his Reconstruction plan, 

General Grant focused his attention on the volatile situation 

in Texas. As of mid-May, the Confederate Trans-Mississippi 

Department had not yet surrendered, and French imperial forces 

occupied Mexico in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The 

previous year, the Archduke Maximilian had declared himself 

emperor of Mexico and had established cordial relations with the 

Confederate government. The Union general in chief sought to 

compel the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Confederates and 

drive the French Army from Mexico. On 17 May, Grant sent his 

trusted subordinate, Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, west to take 

charge of the newly established Military Division of the Southwest, 

which included Texas, southwestern Arkansas, the Indian 

Territory, and most of Louisiana. Grant considered the situation in 

Texas so urgent that he denied Sheridan’s request to participate in 

the Grand Review on 23–24 May. In the Lone Star State, Sheridan 

would have at his disposal three infantry corps and two cavalry 

divisions—over 30,000 troops in all. 

By the time he reached his headquarters at New Orleans, 

Louisiana, Sheridan discovered that the situation in Texas had 

changed drastically. General Edmund Kirby Smith had surrendered 

the Confederate forces there on 2 June, resulting in the collapse of 

state and local authority. For weeks, lawlessness prevailed in the Lone 

Star State, as former Confederate troops plundered and vandalized 
15

with impunity. In mid-June, 

Union forces began to arrive in 

eastern Texas and quickly restored 

order there, but owing to the 

vastness of the state and the lack of 

civilian law enforcement, stability 

operations had to take precedence over Reconstruction in the 

coming months. In the meantime, 

the War Department assigned 

Sheridan to a new geographic 

command, the Military Division 

of the Gulf, encompassing Florida, 

Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

Elsewhere in the South, 

the occupation force executed a 

rapid demobilization in accordance with a plan drawn up by 

the War Department and approved by Secretary of War Edwin 

M. Stanton and General Grant. On 29 April 1865, the aggregate 

strength of the Army stood at 1,052,038 officers and men, with 

622,102 present for duty. By November 1865, the War Department 

had mustered out and sent home more than 800,000 troops, or 

in the case of the regulars and still-serving volunteers, transferred 

them elsewhere. From June 1865 to January 1866, the occupation 

force in the South shrank from roughly 270,000 to 87,550 soldiers.

To reduce the high cost of upkeep, the War Department 

wasted no time in disbanding volunteer cavalry regiments. In early 

May, while Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi remained 

in the field, the adjutant general issued an order to muster out all 

cavalrymen whose enlistments would expire within four months. 

By the fall of 1865, only a handful of cavalry regiments remained in 

the Southern states. This left occupation commanders at a decided 

disadvantage when responding to emergencies. An Army officer 

in South Carolina reported that infantry stationed there “show a 

very credible efficiency but they frequently have to march long 

distances to quell disturbances and often arrive too late to do good. 

A small force of cavalry would be of infinite service.” An Army 

captain serving in Arkansas described the white population in his 

district as “hostile in the extreme.” He claimed that “nothing deters 

them from . . . the foulest crimes, but the dread of our soldiers, for 

General Sheridan

(Library of Congress)
16 

whom they entertain feelings of ‘holy horror.’ . . . The importance 

of . . . small forces of Cavalry can not be fully realized until one has 

had to do with these half whiped barbarians.”

In many areas of the former Confederacy, the majority 

of troops who remained on occupation duty were black, due to 

the comparatively late enlistment dates of most U.S. Colored 

Troop (USCT) regiments. White Southerners found this state of 

affairs doubly humiliating, for the presence of African American 

soldiers not only reminded 

them of their defeat but also 

shattered the familiar stereotype of the “servile negro.” In 

North Carolina, Governor 

Holden appealed to Brig. Gen. 

Thomas H. Ruger, Schofield’s 

replacement as department commander, on behalf 

of numerous citizens who 

complained of abuses suffered 

at the hands of undisciplined 

black soldiers. “Now that the 

rebellion has been suppressed,” 

Holden wrote, “it does seem to 

me that a great and magnanimous government like ours, 

is not obliged to keep colored 

troops in our midst.” 

Although Ruger believed that “the acts complained of, if 

committed by white troops, would probably not have been the 

cause of formal or persistent complaint,” he nevertheless attempted 

to comply with Holden’s request by reducing the number of black 

soldiers in the state and stationing the remainder at coastal forts 

and other remote locales. On 8 September, the War Department 

ordered the discharge of all black regiments raised in Northern 

states, a development that no doubt pleased white Southerners 

everywhere. By mid-December, the men of thirteen USCT regiments stationed in the South had returned home.

Another problem arising from demobilization was the rapid 

reduction of Army personnel available for duty with the Bureau of 

Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—or the “Freedmen’s 

Bureau,” as it was popularly known. Congress and President Lincoln 

General Ruger

(Library of Congress)
17

had established the bureau as an agency of the War Department on 

3 March 1865 to protect freedpeople from injustice, to assist them 

in finding work and receiving fair wages, to provide them with a 

rudimentary education, to aid the destitute of both races, and to 

administer Southern lands abandoned by their owners during the 

war. The commissioner—or head—of the Freedmen’s Bureau was 

Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, and assistant commissioners handled 

the bureau’s state-level administration. Local affairs were the 

responsibility of field agents, each of whom presided over several 

counties. Due to a lack of funding, most agents were Army officers.

The assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 

North Carolina, Col. Eliphalet Whittlesey, soon discovered that his 

greatest bureaucratic headache was constant personnel turnover 

due to the continual mustering out of Army officers who served 

as his field agents. He complained that his organization had nearly 

been “broken up” three times during its first three months of 

operation. In October 1865, nearly half of all agent posts remained 

vacant. Whittlesey tried filling the vacancies with civilians but was 

disappointed with the experiment. Most civilian agents expressed 

open contempt for freedpeople that boded ill for their ability to 

deal fairly with their black charges. Compared with active-duty 

Army officers, even former soldiers “fail to command respect,” 

Whittlesey reported. “They do not inspire the freedmen with 

confidence.” The Freedmen’s Bureau experienced similar difficulties in other Southern states.

In the meantime, news of the Morant Bay Affair in Jamaica, 

in which rebellious blacks had killed more than twenty whites, 

followed by reports of a foiled insurrection conspiracy in 

Mississippi, inflamed fears of racial uprisings across the South. 

As early as 16 September, Freedmen’s Bureau head General 

Howard had written the assistant commissioner for North 

Carolina on the subject. While dismissing rumors of an insurrection as groundless, Howard nevertheless recommended that 

General Ruger reassure the white populace by stationing troop 

detachments where they most feared an outbreak. As had often 

been the case with purported slave rebellions, rumor had it that 

the insurrection would occur between Christmas and New Year’s 

Day, so Ruger deployed troop detachments at several locations 

along the coast—where the state’s largest proportion of blacks 

lived—during the holidays. The period was free of disturbances, 

so Ruger returned the detachments to their permanent posts 
18 

on 3 January 1866. Ruger’s opinion regarding the insurrection 

scare manifested itself in the steady reduction of troop strength 

in his department until just three volunteer regiments—two 

white and one black—remained at the end of 1865. Between 

June and December 1865, roughly 42,000 troops departed from 

North Carolina, leaving Ruger with an occupation force of 2,209, 

a reduction of 95 percent. With the exception of Texas—where 

the Army had to patrol the western frontier and the border with 

Mexico—the occupation force in the rest of the South experienced a comparable downsizing.

As the Army’s presence steadily shrank during the summer 

and fall of 1865, the Southern provisional governors called 

conventions and the voters elected delegates—mostly Union 

Whigs—who then met to amend the state constitutions. As the 

president had directed, the conventions voted to declare secession null and void and to abolish slavery, though not without 

considerable debate. In October, Johnson added a third condition: repudiate the Confederate war debt. This triggered such a 

violent reaction among delegates in the North Carolina convention that the president sent a pointed message to the assembly 

ordering the debt to be repudiated “finally and forever.” The 

next morning, the chastened delegates passed the repudiation 

measure by a voice vote.

Having fulfilled the requirements of Presidential Reconstruction, the Southern states then elected governors, state legislators, and U.S. congressmen. In the Upper South, the voters chose a 

mixture of wartime Unionists and ex-Confederates, but in the lower 

South, nearly all those elected were former Confederate officeholders. In many Southern states, it appeared that the old ruling 

elite had returned to power. When the Thirty-ninth Congress met in 

December 1865, the Republican majority in both houses demanded 

unmistakable proof that the South accepted the consequences of 

defeat, but the recent elections indicated that the former Confederate 

states remained openly defiant. In addition, numerous reports from 

the South indicated that Northerners and native Unionists were 

being persecuted and that violence against blacks was on the rise. As 

a result, the Republicans in Congress refused to seat the Southern 

representatives and instead established a Joint Committee on 

Reconstruction to investigate conditions in the postwar South.

While Congress deliberated, the Southern state legislatures 

enacted a series of laws known collectively as “Black Codes.” Aimed 
19

at the freedpeople, the Black Codes conferred certain legal rights, 

but the laws also discriminated against them in such matters as 

mobility, vagrancy, apprenticeships, contracts, weapons ownership, criminal prosecution, and testifying in court. The intent of 

the laws was to keep the black workforce under a condition as 

close to slavery as the Southern legislators dared.

In early 1866, the Republican majority in Congress responded 

with two bills designed to protect the freedpeople from Southern 

white oppression. The Freedmen’s Bureau bill extended the life of 

the agency and authorized military tribunals to try cases involving 

blacks who were denied rights enjoyed by whites or who faced 

unequal punishment for the same offense. The Civil Rights bill was 

even more ambitious, conferring citizenship on all native-born 

Americans except Indians and defining their rights under federal 

authority. The bill authorized judicial and law enforcement officers 

to prosecute state or local authorities suspected of denying citizens 

their rights. President Johnson vetoed both bills on the grounds 

that they were unconstitutional and because the bills would require 

“a permanent military force” in the South to enforce them. The 

vetoes all but guaranteed a bitter struggle between the president 

and congressional Republicans over Reconstruction policy.

One week after the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights bills 

reached the Senate floor, the War Department issued General 

Orders 3, instructing commanders in the South to protect Army 

and Freedmen’s Bureau personnel and native loyalists from prosecution for acts committed under military authority. The order also 

included blacks “charged with offenses for which white persons are 

not prosecuted or punished in the same manner or degree.” The 

Army was further charged with protecting the rights enumerated 

in the two bills.

In the meantime, the Congressional Joint Committee on 

Reconstruction conducted its hearings on conditions in the South. 

The committee interviewed 144 witnesses, including some Army 

officers, and it received plenty of unsolicited advice via the U.S. mail. 

In one letter, a former Union colonel named George F. Granger 

urged Republican committee member Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of 

Pennsylvania to ignore white Southerners’ appeals to withdraw the 

military and restore civil law. “In my humble opinion,” Granger 

wrote from North Carolina, “no law can be Established here at 

present except that law which is enforced by United States troops, 

at the point of a bayonet.” The committee evidently agreed with 
20 

Granger, concluding that the Southern states could not be trusted 

to manage their own affairs.

While the president and Congress split on Reconstruction, 

the civil authorities and military commanders in the South 

clashed over their respective powers. In August 1865, Provisional 

Governor William L. Sharkey of Mississippi issued a call for militia 

without informing Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, the senior Army 

officer in that state. Five days later, Slocum canceled Sharkey’s 

proclamation because he believed that the state authorities would 

use the militia companies to control the black workforce, much as 

the slave patrols had functioned before the war. Slocum’s action 

led the governor to protest to the president that the Union occupation force in Mississippi—which numbered about 14,000 soldiers 

at the time—was inadequate to maintain law and order. Although 

Johnson advised Sharkey to call on Slocum for federal troops 

instead, the War Department directed Slocum to rescind the order 

prohibiting the formation of militia companies.

Another source of friction was the appointment of local 

officials. To expedite the restoration of civil government in South 

Carolina, Provisional Governor Benjamin F. Perry issued a proclamation in July 1865 enabling men who had held office at the end 

of the war to resume their duties after taking a loyalty oath. But the 

commander in the Palmetto State, Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, 

canceled Perry’s initiative because he believed the governor had 

exceeded his authority. As for elections, the Army attempted 

to remain in the background unless called on by civil officials 

such as Provisional Governor William G. “Parson” Brownlow of 

Tennessee. Concerned that the western and middle sections of the 

state had been rebel hotbeds during the war, the loyalist Brownlow 

requested that troops be stationed in strength there to deter disturbances during the July 1865 elections. The presence of federal 

soldiers had the desired effect, but much to Brownlow’s chagrin, 

voters chose conservative candidates for most of the offices.

Department commanders closely monitored Southern newspapers for “seditious and treasonable language” and suspended 

publication in the more extreme cases. In North Carolina, General 

Ruger ordered the Salisbury Union Banner to shut down its presses 

on 21 July 1865, because of a “disloyal” editorial that accused him 

of assuming “the power to say what we shall drink and wear.” The 

accusation referred to Ruger’s orders prohibiting the wearing of 

Confederate insignia and regulating the sale of alcohol. An indig-
21

nant Ruger dismissed the editorial’s assertions as “false,” noting 

that an order “prohibiting the wearing of insignia and badges of 

rank, by persons lately officers of the insurgent forces, and one for 

the prevention of the sale of liquor, as a police regulation, cannot 

honestly be construed as assuming ‘the power to say what we 

shall drink and wear.’” One week later, the owner of the Banner 

informed Ruger that his son-in-law was the editor of the paper and 

had published the editorial without his knowledge. He assured the 

general that the incident would not be repeated. Ruger accepted 

the owner’s explanation and lifted the suspension on 31 July.

To prevent further misunderstanding, the department 

commander issued an order reminding North Carolinians that 

the state remained under martial law. “Until the restoration 

and full operation of civil laws,” Ruger announced, “publishers 

of newspapers, as well as public speakers, will be subject to the 

restrictions existing under military rule, and will not be permitted 

to discuss and criticise the acts of the military authorities with 

that freedom allowed where civil law is in full operation.” In the 

meantime, Ruger arrested several newspapermen for violating 

his restrictions, including the editor of the Charlotte Carolina 

Times, who declared that the South was languishing “under a 

more grinding despotism than has heretofore found a place upon 

the face of the earth.” In February 1866, General Grant assumed 

the responsibility of censoring Southern newspapers, relieving 

Ruger and other department commanders of an unpleasant and 

thankless task.

No less unpleasant were the Army’s efforts to administer 

justice in the occupied South during Reconstruction. The Army 

employed three types of courts. The court-martial tried military 

personnel accused of criminal offenses under the Articles of 

War and the rules and regulations of the Army. Acting under the 

authority of martial law, the military commission tried civilians for 

war crimes as well as for violations of state and local laws in areas 

where the civil courts either had not been re-established or had 

failed to dispense justice impartially. The provost court derived its 

name from “provost marshal,” the name for the Army’s military 

police commanders, and its purpose was to lighten the military 

commissions’ caseload by handling lesser criminal charges. A 

fourth type of tribunal over which Army officers presided was 

the Freedmen’s Bureau court, which adjudicated disputes between 

black laborers and their employers.
22 

The use of military commissions to try civilians soon led to a 

conflict between generals and governors as state and county officials re-established civil courts in the Southern states. In North 

Carolina, the controversy began in late July 1865, when Ruger 

denied Governor Holden’s request to turn over three white men 

accused of assaulting a freedman. “This is a matter in which I 

conceive the civil courts have sole and exclusive jurisdiction,” 

Holden wrote, “and I have every confidence that strict and impartial justice will be administered.” Ruger took a different view of the 

matter. He maintained that martial law remained in force in North 

Carolina, and until the “complete restoration” of civil law, “military 

tribunals have jurisdiction in all that relates to the preservation 

of order, including the trial and punishment of those guilty of 

acts of violence.” Ruger noted that before the Army’s arrest of the 

three assault suspects, “no civil court had taken cognizance of the 

matter.”

The two men managed to reach an agreement on the jurisdiction of civil and military law in the Tar Heel State. Until the 

General Assembly revised the state law to admit freedpeople’s 

testimony in trials involving white citizens, military commissions 

would try cases involving blacks, while the civil courts would try 

cases involving only whites. Ruger’s superior, Maj. Gen. George 

G. Meade, approved the compromise and assured Holden, “When 

ever the laws of the state and the practice of the courts are such as 

to leave no doubt the freedman will have justice done him[,] there 

will be no occasion for the use of military courts, except for purely 

military offenses.”

One of the most notable military commissions was a war 

crimes tribunal held in Raleigh. The defendant was John H. Gee, 

a former Confederate major and commandant of Salisbury Prison 

in central North Carolina. Gee was charged with murder and 

violating the laws of war in his mistreatment of more than 10,000 

Union prisoners who had jammed the six-acre stockade in late 

1864. One appalling statistic looms above all others: just over onethird of the inmates at Salisbury had died within its walls. No other 

Civil War prison could match that horrific mortality rate—not 

even the notorious Andersonville prison in Georgia. This chilling 

fact seemed to augur that Gee would share the fate of Capt. Henry 

Wirz, the former commandant of Andersonville. After a military 

commission in Washington had convicted him of war crimes, 

Wirz was hanged on 10 November 1865.
23

Gee’s trial began on 21 February 1866 and consumed fiftyseven days over a four-month span, during which the prosecution 

and the defense cross-examined more than one hundred witnesses. 

The testimony generated almost 4,000 pages of handwritten 

trial transcripts. After weighing the evidence, the commission 

unanimously acquitted Gee of all charges and specifications. In its 

findings, the commission attached no responsibility to Gee “other 

than for weakness in retaining [his] position when unable to carry 

out the dictates of humanity.” The commission instead blamed 

certain unnamed “higher authorities of the Rebel Government” 

for the appalling conditions inside Salisbury Prison. Gee thus 

escaped the fate of the notorious Wirz.

During the Gee trial, a presidential proclamation and a U.S. 

Supreme Court ruling virtually ensured that military commissions 

would no longer try civilians. On 2 April 1866, Johnson declared the 

insurrection over and peace restored throughout the United States 

save Texas, which he excluded because it had not yet completed 

the president’s Reconstruction program. The proclamation further 

stated that martial law, military tribunals, and occupation forces 

were “in time of peace dangerous to public liberty [and] incompatible with the individual rights of the citizen,” leading many 

Southerners to conclude that Reconstruction was over. Much to 

their dismay, they soon learned that Johnson’s proclamation did 

not dissolve the Freedmen’s Bureau and end military occupation 

with the stroke of a pen. Nevertheless, Army officers in the South 

were uncertain as to how the document affected their jurisdiction. 

In answer to an inquiry from the assistant commissioner of the 

Freedmen’s Bureau for Georgia, Secretary of War Stanton notified 

the department commanders in the South that Johnson had authorized him “to inform you that the President’s Proclamation does 

not remove martial law or operate in any way upon the Freedmen’s 

Bureau in the exercise of its legitimate jurisdiction.” 

Stanton added, however, that it was “not expedient” for the 

commanders “to resort to military tribunals in any case where 

justice can be attained through the medium of civil authority.” The 

secretary probably issued the above directive in response to the 

Supreme Court’s preliminary ruling in Ex parte Milligan, which 

prohibited the trial of civilians by military commissions while civil 

courts were open. The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Milligan case 

appeared one day after Johnson’s proclamation and supported his 

statements regarding the jurisdictional limits of military courts 
24 

during peacetime. At Johnson’s behest, Stanton rendered the 

Milligan ruling official Army policy in General Orders 26.

Racial Violence in the South, 1865–1866

The Army’s most daunting task lay in protecting black people 

from white assailants. From May to December 1865, the Army 

in North Carolina recorded 113 crimes committed by whites 

against blacks, with 14 murders and 62 assaults heading the list. 

The bulk of the cases involved individual assailants, but among 

the accused were a Granville County mob that had lynched a 

freedman for rape, and a group of nine men arrested for assault 

and breaking up a meeting of blacks in Chapel Hill. Military 

commissions tended to punish theft-related crimes committed 

by blacks against whites more severely than the violent crimes 

committed by whites against blacks. In one instance, a military 

commission punished a white woman for murdering a former 

slave merely by fining her $1,000. Within three days of the 

sentencing, her neighbors took up a collection and paid the fine. 

General Ruger condemned the military commission’s verdict as 

“a dangerous precedent to establish . . . that a human life can be 

taken almost entirely without provocation . . . without fear of a 

greater punishment than a fine.”

Left largely unchecked, violence against blacks soon escalated. By the end of 1865, groups of armed white men who rode 

in disguise, often calling themselves “Regulators,” began to appear 

across the rural South. They were an outgrowth of the lawlessness 

that had prevailed as the Confederacy collapsed in the spring of 

1865. These roving bands of night riders were forerunners of the 

Ku Klux Klan, and they employed similar terrorist tactics against 

freedpeople, using theft, arson, and murder to accomplish their 

racist agenda. Unlike the Klan, however, banditry was the sole 

occupation of many Regulator gangs; in North Carolina, some 

were either biracial or consisted entirely of blacks, and ex-Confederates numbered among their victims.

The Republican majority in Congress sought to protect blacks 

through legislation despite President Johnson’s firm opposition. In 

April 1866, they passed the Civil Rights bill over a presidential veto 

and then passed a revised Freedmen’s Bureau bill over yet another 

presidential veto two months later. Not content with his veto of the 

Freedmen’s Bureau bill, Johnson attempted to discredit the agency 

by sending two Army officers, Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman and 
25

Col. Joseph S. Fullerton, on an inspection tour to uncover widespread corruption and incompetence within the organization. 

The officers’ scathing report led to the dismissal of several bureau 

personnel, but the smear campaign failed to sway Northern public 

opinion against the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Congress’ next assault on Presidential Reconstruction came 

in June, when it passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which constituted the victorious North’s peace terms to the defeated South. 

The first section of the amendment restated the Civil Rights bill 

in terms that established the supremacy of the federal government in defining and protecting the rights of its citizens. The 

second section allowed the states to continue determining voter 

eligibility but reduced congressional representation in proportion 

to the number of adult males denied the franchise. The amendment thus penalized any Southern state that prohibited freedmen 

from voting. The third section barred from federal or state office 

persons who had supported the rebellion after taking an oath to 

uphold the Constitution. This affected most of the South’s political 

leadership, for nearly every Southerner who had held any civil 

or military office before the war had taken the oath. The fourth 

section renewed the government’s commitment to pay the federal 

debt, repudiated the Confederate debt, and denied compensation 

for the loss of slave property. The fifth section granted Congress 

the power to enforce the amendment.

Congress’ actions only intensified the growing unrest. On 1 

May 1866, white policemen in Memphis, Tennessee, attempted 

to disperse several recently discharged black soldiers accused 

of being drunken and disorderly. Some of the ex-soldiers and 

police exchanged gunfire, resulting in several casualties on 

either side. The disturbance soon escalated into a full-blown 

riot. That evening, an all-white mob consisting of police and 

civilians rampaged through South Memphis, the city’s black 

residential area, indiscriminately shooting black men. On the 

following night, the white mob targeted black women and 

children as well as men, and looted and burned numerous 

homes, schools, and churches.

At the start of the riot, the sheriff had called on Maj. Gen. 

George Stoneman, the department commander, for assistance in 

quelling the disturbance, but Stoneman had refused to comply. 

He stated that the civic authorities had asked him to remove all 

troops from Memphis because the city police could handle any 
26 

emergency that might arise. 

Stoneman further informed the 

sheriff “that the question should 

first be tested whether they 

were capable of taking care of 

themselves, before the United 

States troops should be called.” 

The general had stated that he 

had only 150 soldiers available 

for duty, barely enough men to 

guard the government property 

in his care. He also confessed to 

fears that if he committed the 

white soldiers, they might join 

the mob rather than oppose it. 

Stoneman’s refusal to intervene 

induced the sheriff to organize 

a posse of white citizens—with 

disastrous consequences for the 

residents of South Memphis. 

On 3 May, Stoneman declared martial law and his troops 

soon restored order, having been reinforced by the Nashville 

garrison. By then, forty-six black people were dead and at least 

seventy others were injured. In South Memphis, the mob had 

burned four churches, twelve schools, and over ninety homes. A 

military investigation later estimated that the damages amounted 

to $72,000. On 5 May, Stoneman issued a stern warning to the 

mayor of Memphis: if the people of that city “cannot govern 

themselves as a law-abiding and Christian community, they will 

be governed.”

The Memphis riot prompted General Grant to ensure that 

Army officers in the South had the authority to protect freedpeople from white aggression without a request to do so from 

civil authorities. On 6 July 1866, he issued General Orders 44 

directing soldiers in the South to arrest persons charged with 

crimes against “officers, agents, citizens, and inhabitants of the 

United States” when civilian law enforcement either could not or 

would not do so. Bearing in mind the intent of General Orders 

26, Grant made no provision for military tribunals but instead 

directed that suspects be held “until such time as a proper judicial 

tribunal may be ready and willing to try them.”

General Stoneman

(Library of Congress)
27

Two months after the Memphis riot, a major racial disturbance occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, that convinced the 

Northern public of the necessity for protective legislation. The 

incident stemmed from the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, 

which encouraged freedmen and white Radicals in the Bayou State 

to press for amending the state constitution to allow black suffrage. 

This required the president of the constitutional convention of 

1864 to issue a call for reconvening the original delegates. When 

the presiding officer refused to cooperate, Radical delegates to the 

convention met and elected a president pro tem, who then issued 

a proclamation calling the convention back into session on 30 July 

at the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans. The Radicals enjoyed 

the support of Louisiana Governor James Madison Wells, a former 

political foe who now advocated disfranchising Confederate 

veterans and giving blacks the vote.

Nearly every other state and local official, including 

Lieutenant Governor Albert Voorhies and Attorney General 

Andrew S. Herron, opposed the new convention. The most vociferous opponent was the mayor of New Orleans, John T. Monroe, 

a wartime political prisoner who had refused to take the oath of 

allegiance to the Union. On 

25 July, Monroe informed 

Brig. Gen. Absalom Baird, the 

commander of the Department 

of Louisiana, that he intended 

to arrest the delegates if they 

attempted to meet, because they 

sought to overthrow the lawful 

state government. Baird replied 

that the delegates had a right 

“to meet peaceably and discuss 

freely questions concerning 

their civil government.” He 

noted that his superior, General 

Sheridan, had directed him 

“to protect those who, having 

violated no ordinance of the 

State, are engaged in peaceful 

avocation”—a pointed reference to General Orders 44. 

Baird assured Monroe that 

General Baird

(Library of Congress)
28 

federal troops would be available should the convention become 

disorderly or come under attack and the police prove unable to 

quell the disturbance. 

On the evening of 27 July, the Radicals held a mass rally in 

New Orleans to promote the cause of black suffrage. Alarmed by 

the opposition’s strong showing, Mayor Monroe and Lieutenant 

Governor Voorhies called on Baird, requesting that he allow the 

sheriff or the police to arrest the convention delegates. The general 

reiterated his intention to prevent the arrests unless the president 

ordered him to step aside. Voorhies and Attorney General Herron 

then telegraphed President Johnson, describing the convention 

as an illegal assembly bent on overthrowing the legitimate state 

government. They then asked if he intended to allow General Baird 

to interfere with the civil judiciary. Johnson sent the two officials 

an immediate reply: the Army “will be expected to sustain and 

not to obstruct or interfere with the proceedings of the courts.” 

Baird received no copy of the president’s telegram; when the text 

appeared in the local papers, he found it “ambiguous as to the 

wishes of the [Federal] government in relation to the convention.” 

He therefore wired Secretary of War Stanton for guidance but 

received no reply. Regardless of Stanton’s reasons for not sending 

instructions, the secretary left Baird free to act according to his 

own judgment.

On 29 July, Baird placed a regiment each of black troops and 

white troops on standby, ready to move at a moment’s notice. He 

met again with Voorhies at 1100 on 30 July and assured him that 

the Army’s mission was simply to keep the peace. The lieutenant 

governor conceded that perhaps Baird should station a small 

detachment of soldiers at the Mechanics Institute, but the general 

stated that he planned to hold four companies at the Canal Street 

wharf a few blocks from the convention site, where they would be 

less conspicuous. When Baird returned to his headquarters, he was 

shocked to discover that the convention had begun at 1200—as the 

local newspapers reported—rather than at 1800, as he erroneously 

thought. In short, his troops were not posted where they should 

have been—a blunder that would have fatal consequence for many 

of the convention delegates and their supporters.

Soon after his arrival, Baird received word from Voorhies 

that a large crowd of freedmen and whites was converging on the 

Mechanics Institute. The general ordered the four companies en 

route to the wharf to proceed directly to the institute, but they 
29

took a detour that doubled the distance they had to travel. In the 

meantime, the situation at the convention site rapidly deteriorated. About 1300, a procession of more than one hundred blacks 

arrived to lend their support to the convention. A crowd of white 

onlookers—including a sizeable contingent of heavily armed 

New Orleans police—confronted the marchers, and the two sides 

began to exchange taunts and then blows. As the police opened 

fire, the outgunned marchers fled into the convention center 

and barricaded the doors. After the whites had surrounded the 

building, the police broke through the barricades and fired into 

the delegates and their supporters, many of whom attempted 

to escape into the street. The violence continued for more than 

an hour, with the police briefly halting at one point to replenish 

their ammunition. By the time Baird’s four companies reached 

the Canal Street wharf at 1440, the shooting had ceased. The 

soldiers proceeded up Canal Street to the institute, dispersing 

the lingering crowds along their route. The Army reported 38 

killed and 147 wounded; most of the casualties were black. The 

police-led contingent sustained just one fatality.

On the evening of 30 July, Baird declared martial law, posting 

two infantry regiments and one artillery battery in New Orleans. 

When General Sheridan returned to the city on 1 August, he found 

that the troops had restored order but recommended maintaining 

martial law until the Army had fully investigated the riot. Later 

that day, he wired Grant that the New Orleans police had acted 

“in a manner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to 

say that it was murder.” The receipt of additional information on 2 

August led Sheridan to conclude: “It was no riot; it was an absolute 

massacre by the police which was not excelled in murderous 

cruelty by that of Ft. Pillow.”

Sheridan’s allusion to the “Fort Pillow Massacre” was apt. On 

12 April 1864, roughly 2,000 Confederate cavalry under Maj. Gen. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest had captured Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and 

had proceeded to shoot or bayonet most of the federal garrison, 

which consisted of 600 black artillerymen and white Tennessee 

cavalrymen. The racial violence in New Orleans had likewise been 

ruthless and overwhelmingly one-sided, with the police—mostly 

Confederate veterans—giving no quarter to the convention 

supporters, many of whom were former Union soldiers. Likewise, 

just as the rallying cry “Remember Fort Pillow!” had spurred warweary Northern civilians into renewing their support for the Union 
30 

Army, so too did the Memphis and New Orleans riots convince 

Northerners that President Johnson’s Reconstruction policy was 

too lenient. It is ironic—but hardly surprising—that just three 

weeks after the New Orleans riot, Johnson chose to declare the 

insurrection over in Texas and civil authority restored throughout 

the United States.

In September 1866, Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, the commander 

of the Department of the South (then embracing the Carolinas), 

reacted to the growing disorder by issuing General Orders 7 prohibiting ad hoc “organizations of white or colored persons bearing arms” 

from acting as paramilitary units or exercising extralegal authority. 

The order warned that the Army would treat Regulators as guerrillas and summarily punish them upon capture, and it authorized 

post commanders to use civilian posses to apprehend the bandits. 

In eastern North Carolina, General Orders 7 failed to intimidate the 

outlaws. If anything, they became even bolder. Among other crimes, 

one gang burned a cotton gin and thirty bales of cotton belonging to 

a Northern planter, and a second band raided the Greene County jail 

at midnight, kidnapped six black men and one white man charged 

with raping a white woman, and murdered them.

The debate over Reconstruction greatly affected the fall 

midterm elections. In an effort to forge a bipartisan coalition of 

moderates and conservatives, Johnson formed the National Union 

Party to oppose the Republicans in the fall midterm elections. To 

attract Northern voters, he undertook a late-summer campaign 

tour of eastern and midwestern cities. Johnson’s three-week “Swing 

around the Circle” was a fiasco, his speeches often degenerating 

into incoherent diatribes. Although the president’s tirades cost him 

at the polls, they did not determine the outcome of the election. 

Instead, the results indicated Northern voters’ dissatisfaction with 

Presidential Reconstruction and their belief that the Fourteenth 

Amendment offered the best hope for a just and lasting peace in 

the South. In the election of 1866, the Republicans secured better 

than a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress, more than 

enough to override Johnson’s vetoes and supplant the president’s 

Reconstruction program with their own. 

Military Reconstruction

On 2 March 1867, the Republican-controlled Congress 

launched a new chapter in Reconstruction by passing the First 

Reconstruction Act. Imposed over Johnson’s veto, it placed ten 
31

former Confederate states under military rule—the penalty for the 

states’ failure to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and to protect 

blacks and loyal whites from the kind of organized violence perpetrated by the Regulators as well as the Memphis and New Orleans 

police. Tennessee was exempted because it had already ratified the 

amendment and rejoined the Union. The act divided the South 

into five military districts and directed the president to appoint an 

Army general to command each district. Each commander received 

sweeping powers to protect persons and property, to replace 

incompetent or disloyal public officials, and to transfer cases from 

civil courts to military tribunals. The affected state governments 

were merely provisional and subject to Army rule until they could 

establish “loyal, republican governments.” In addition, a rider to 

the Army Appropriation Act of 1867 disbanded the white militias 

in all of the former Confederate states except Tennessee (Map 2).

Opponents of the Reconstruction bill noted that it 

provided no mechanism for ending military rule. On 23 

March, Congress therefore passed the Second Reconstruction 

Act over a presidential veto, specifying the procedure that 

the ten Southern states had to follow to rejoin the Union. 

The act authorized district commanders to call elections in 

each of the states they controlled to establish conventions 

for drafting new state constitutions. The commanders would 

oversee voter enrollment, monitor elections, and convene 

the constitutional conventions. The law granted suffrage to 

males twenty-one or over, excepting those disqualified by the 

Fourteenth Amendment or a felony conviction. All voters had 

to take an oath affirming their qualifications. The law further 

mandated that the new constitutions must guarantee suffrage 

for freedmen. Once the state had ratified the constitution and 

the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress would review its action. 

If approved, that body would seat the state’s U.S. representatives and senators, signifying readmission to the Union. At 

that point, Congress would declare Military Reconstruction 

finished in that state.

His vetoes of the Reconstruction Acts notwithstanding, 

Johnson appointed five Army generals as district commanders: 

General Schofield, the First Military District (Virginia); General 

Sickles, the Second Military District (North Carolina and South 

Carolina); Maj. Gen. John Pope, the Third Military District 

(Georgia, Florida, and Alabama); Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord, the 
G

FIFTH MILIT A R Y DISTRIC T

Texas

Louisiana

FOURT

DI

Mi

A

INDIAN

TERRIT O R Y

C O L O R ADO

TERRIT O R Y

NEBRASK A

TERRIT O R Y

NEW MEXI C O

TERRIT O R Y

KANSAS

IOW A

MISSOU

M

E

X

I

C

O

MILITARY DEPARTMENTS AND DISTRICTS

March 1867–July 1868

FIRST REC ONSTRUC TION A C T

0 100 200 300

Miles

Military Boundary

Former Confederate State

Map 2
A T L A

N I C

O

C

E

A

N

ULF OF MEXI C O

H MILIT A R Y

STRIC T

ssissippi

rk ansas

THIRD MILIT A R Y

DISTRIC T

Alabama

Georgia

Florida

SEC OND MILIT A R Y

DISTRIC T

North Carolina

South Carolina

DEP ARTMENT OF 

THE CUMBERLAND

Tennessee

FIRST MILITA R Y

DISTRIC T

Virginia

Washington, DC

OHIO

KENTUCK Y

WES T

VIRGINIA

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

RI

MARYLAND

N E W JERSEY

DELAWARE

PENNSYL V A NIA

A T L A

N I C

O

C

E

A

N

ULF OF MEXI C O

H MILIT A R Y

STRIC T

ssissippi

rk ansas

THIRD MILIT A R Y

DISTRIC T

Alabama

Georgia

Florida

SEC OND MILIT A R Y

DISTRIC T

North Carolina

South Carolina

DEP ARTMENT OF 

THE CUMBERLAND

Tennessee

FIRST MILITA R Y

DISTRIC T

Virginia

Washington, DC

OHIO

KENTUCK Y

WES T

VIRGINIA

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

RI

MARYLAND

N E W JERSEY

DELAWARE

PENNSYL V A NIA
34 

Fourth Military District (Mississippi and Arkansas); and General 

Sheridan, the Fifth Military District (Louisiana and Texas). Of the 

five generals, Schofield, Sickles, Ord, and Sheridan had considerable experience as occupation commanders in the South—the 

latter two also happened to be Grant protégés—while Pope was 

a relative newcomer. These five men would supervise the law 

enforcement, political process, and administration of justice in 

their respective districts. If the powers that Congress had vested in 

the district commanders were great, the forces granted them were 

woefully inadequate. They had about 20,000 soldiers to police an 

area roughly the size of Western Europe with a total population of 

over 8 million.

The shortage of occupation troops resulted in numerous 

incidents of violence against blacks and white loyalists across 

the South, as the Freedmen’s Bureau’s monthly reports of 

racially motivated murders and assaults amply attested. Even 

so, the presence of Army units in the principal towns and cities 

of the region—combined with the ability of commanders to 

act on their own initiative—helped to keep a lid on large-scale 

disturbances. 

The only major disturbance under military rule occurred 

at Mobile, Alabama, on 14 May 1867. That evening, local 

Republicans gathered at a busy intersection in downtown Mobile 

to hear a speech by Congressman William D. Kelley, a Radical 

Republican from Pennsylvania. The atmosphere was highly 

charged following several incidents that had induced the local 

post commander, Col. Oliver L. Shepherd, to issue an order 

recommending that blacks not ride the city streetcars to avoid 

clashes with ex-Confederates.

Kelley heightened tensions to the breaking point by exhorting 

his black listeners to ignore Shepherd’s advice as an infringement 

on their civil rights. During Kelley’s speech, white hecklers hurled 

abuse at the speaker and called out, “Pull him down!” Kelley 

replied, perhaps unwisely, that the federal soldiers stationed nearby 

were his guarantee of free speech. In the meantime, the police chief 

tried to arrest a heckler, and during the ensuing scuffle, the latter 

fired an “errant” shot at the speaker’s stand, followed by several 

more shots from an unknown source aimed in the same direction. 

Heavily armed blacks in the audience fired their pistols in the air in 

an apparent attempt to intimidate their white antagonists. Chaos 

reigned as the crowd panicked and fled the scene. During the mad 
35

scramble, one white man and one freedman were shot to death, 

and several others were wounded.

Colonel Shepherd was present and immediately summoned 

his troops, who were stationed about a mile and a half from town. 

The soldiers arrived soon afterward, having ridden part of the 

way on horse-drawn streetcars, and they quickly restored order. 

Shepherd kept three eight-man squads on hand to maintain 

order and ensure the safe departure of Congressman Kelley. 

The colonel also reported the disturbance to his superior, Maj. 

Gen. Wager Swayne, commanding the Department of Alabama. 

Swayne directed Shepherd to suspend the civilian police force, 

to keep troops posted in the city to maintain order, and to 

summarily punish agitators. Secretary Stanton responded to the 

Mobile riot by instructing the district commanders to prevent 

disturbances by stationing troops in towns and cities rather than 

on the periphery, where they would be less visible and slower to 

react to crises.

Stanton’s directive prompted General Pope, whose district 

included Alabama, to issue General Orders 25, specifying the 

procedure for holding political rallies. Post commanders were to 

ensure that mayors and police 

chiefs received advance notice of 

rallies, and that they provided a 

sufficient force to prevent disturbances. For rallies outside city 

limits, sheriffs were to assemble 

posses for the same purpose. 

Should the situation require it, 

the post commanders were to 

augment civilian law enforcement with federal troops. Pope 

closed his order with a warning 

to civil officials that, in the event 

of a riot, if they failed to perform 

their full duty—which included 

being present at the rally—“such 

officers will be deposed from 

their offices” and otherwise held 

accountable for any negligence 

or wrongdoing on their part. He 

made an example of the mayor 

General Pope

(National Archives)
36 

and the police chief of Mobile, directing Swayne to remove them 

for their culpability in the 14 May riot. 

In Tennessee, where civil government held sway, a riot 

occurred at Franklin on 6 July 1867, when ex-Confederates 

opened fire on a procession of black Union Army veterans, who 

returned the fire. During the exchange, one man was killed and 

over thirty were wounded. The local authorities took no action, 

but the commander at Nashville sent a detachment to Franklin 

the next day, only to find that peace had already been restored. 

Had the incident occurred in one of the military districts, the 

mayor and the police chief probably would have been dismissed 

for failing to intervene.

As commander of the Fifth Military District, Sheridan 

labored under no such disadvantage, and he made free use of 

the removal power. On assuming command of the district, the 

general had announced his intention to avoid the wholesale 

removal of civil officials unless the authorities failed “to carry out 

the provisions of the law or impeded reorganization.” But he soon 

decided that a number of officials had to go. Displeased with the 

civil authorities’ handling of the New Orleans riot the previous 

summer and their failure to bring the perpetrators to justice, 

Sheridan dismissed Mayor Monroe, State Attorney General 

Herron, and Judge Edmund Abell from office and replaced them 

with Republicans whom he believed would faithfully execute 

their duties. He also removed an aide to the New Orleans police 

chief for intimidating black voters and annulled a law designed 

to prevent former federal soldiers from serving on the New 

Orleans police force, stipulating that in the future one-half of the 

policemen be Union Army veterans.

In the meantime, Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, commanding the 

Department of Texas, informed Sheridan that he deemed it necessary to remove “the chief civil officers of this state” on the grounds 

of disloyalty, starting with Governor James W. Throckmorton. 

Griffin complained that he had repeatedly notified the governor 

of “outrages and murder on loyal men,” but had yet “to ascertain a 

single instance in which the offender has been punished.” Sheridan 

forwarded Griffin’s letter to Grant along with the comment that he 

not only concurred with Griffin but also believed that he would 

have to depose Governor Wells of Louisiana, because he was 

“impeding me as much as he can.” Grant cautioned his impetuous 

subordinate against removing the governors due to the question-
37

able legality of the removal power. Soon afterward, Grant reconsidered and decided that district commanders could remove civil 

authorities but should do so sparingly. On 3 June 1867, Sheridan 

deposed Governor Wells due to his ongoing recalcitrance. But the 

general chose to leave Throckmorton in office for the time being, 

mindful that the president’s hostility to Military Reconstruction 

could result in his own ouster. 

In the Second Military District, General Sickles also removed 

a number of civil officials—including the mayor and nearly every 

other officeholder at Fayetteville, North Carolina, for obstruction 

of justice in a controversial murder case. The resulting trial led to 

the conviction of three white men for the murder of a freedman 

indicted for attempting to rape a young white woman. Despite 

abundant eyewitness testimony to the contrary, the verdict of 

the coroner’s inquest was that the victim had been killed “by the 

hands of some person unknown to the Jury.” The civil authorities of Fayetteville made no further investigation of the murder, 

prompting Army officers and Freedmen’s Bureau officials to bring 

the case before a military commission. After a lengthy trial, the 

commission found three of the defendants guilty and sentenced 

them to hang, but they were freed by a presidential pardon. 

General Griffin

(Library of Congress)

General Sickles

(Library of Congress)
38 

Sickles also issued a series of orders that indicated a willingness 

to intervene in matters unrelated to Military Reconstruction. General 

Orders 3 established a quarantine of all ports in the Carolinas, while 

General Orders 25 prohibited the manufacture—but not the sale or 

consumption—of grain alcohol within the Second Military District. 

He based both orders on sound reasons: the former to prevent the 

spread of infectious diseases, and the latter to lessen the hardship 

resulting from a poor grain harvest the previous year. For all of 

Sickles’ good intentions, the two orders met with a hostile reception—especially the ban on alcohol production, which proved both 

difficult and dangerous to enforce in some areas. Claiming that it 

was “altogether unsafe to attempt breaking up” illegal stills in his 

district, the collector for the Bureau of Internal Revenue in western 

North Carolina requested—and promptly received—a detachment 

of the 5th U.S. Cavalry to assist him.

Two more of Sickles’ orders provoked bitter controversy and 

divided Carolinians along both class and racial lines. In General 

Orders 10, Sickles introduced several far-reaching economic and 

legal changes that ranged from debt relief to gun control. The order 

also abolished the death penalty for burglary and larceny and 

prohibited “the punishment of crimes and offences by whipping, 

maiming, branding, stocks, pillory, or other corporal punishment.” 

General Orders 32 was no less sweeping. The order removed all 

property qualifications for public office and made all taxpayers 

eligible for jury duty if they were not disfranchised under the 

Reconstruction Acts. Perhaps the most controversial regulation of 

all prohibited racial and class discrimination on public transportation, rendering violators liable to civil lawsuits and trial by military 

commissions.

To underscore the supremacy of his edicts, Sickles declared 

in the final paragraph of General Orders 10 that any civil law 

in force in his district “inconsistent with the provisions of this 

General Order, is hereby suspended and declared inoperative.” 

Many Carolinians shared the viewpoint of former North Carolina 

state legislator John M. Perry regarding Sickles’ assumption of 

legislative authority. “All our laws are only laws as far as Gen. 

Sickles chooses,” Perry lamented, “and I confess that I don’t care 

to participate in legislation that may be annulled at the caprice of 

the military.” 

In response to the actions of Pope, Sheridan, and Sickles, 

President Johnson directed U.S. Attorney General Henry Stanbery 
39

to draft an opinion defining the powers of the district commanders 

in the South under the First Reconstruction Act. Stanbery issued 

his opinion on 12 June 1867. He argued that the act merely granted 

district commanders the power to maintain law and order and 

punish criminals by means of civil courts or military tribunals. 

But he contended that the actions of some of the commanders 

indicated that they believed the act endowed them with unlimited authority. “The military commander is made a conservator 

of the peace, not a legislator,” the attorney general wrote. “He has 

no authority to enact or declare a new code of laws for the people 

within his district under any idea that he can make a better code 

than the people have made for themselves.”

Both Stanton and Grant regarded Stanbery’s opinion as just 

that—a mere opinion lacking the force of law. Sickles nevertheless 

believed that the attorney general’s ruling rendered his position 

untenable, for it challenged his authority to remove recalcitrant 

public officials. “The military force under my command is insufficient to meet the essential requirements of the Reconstructing 

Acts,” Sickles maintained, “unless by the exercise of control over 

all civil functionaries I can have their prompt and certain cooperation.” On 19 June, Sickles asked to be relieved of command, and 

he demanded a court of inquiry to answer the accusations made 

against him in Stanbery’s opinion. For reasons known to him 

alone, Johnson passed up the opportunity to replace Sickles with 

a more acceptable general. Instead, he directed the Army adjutant 

general to reject Sickles’ resignation and to deny his request for a 

court of inquiry.

In another opinion on the Reconstruction Acts issued in 

May 1867, Stanbery focused on voter registration. He limited 

disfranchisement to a relative few former Confederate high officials and ruled that registration boards could not challenge voters’ 

qualifications. The opinion appeared after Generals Ord, Pope, 

and Sheridan had already issued orders denying the franchise to 

persons the attorney general deemed qualified to vote. In a public 

letter to Republican Senator Lyman Trumbull, the chairman of the 

Senate Judiciary Committee, Sickles explained the dilemma that 

he and other district commanders faced: “If I proceed now and 

disregard the instructions of the President,” he wrote, “my action 

would be regarded as insubordination. If I follow [his] instructions, many would probably be registered [who are] not eligible 

according to the true interpretation of the acts of Congress.” 
40 

Sickles proposed a simple solution: “declare Universal Suffrage 

and Universal Amnesty. . . . Now, more than ever,” he argued, “men 

of ability & experience in public business are needed for the State 

government[s] in the South.” Although Southerners applauded 

Sickles’ proposal, Trumbull and the vast majority of his Republican 

colleagues in Congress chose to ignore it. The general therefore 

delayed voter registration in his district pending congressional 

response to Stanbery’s opinions.

Sickles did not have long to wait. On 19 July 1867, Congress 

passed the Third Reconstruction Act over Johnson’s veto. The 

legislation overruled Stanbery’s narrow interpretation of the 

first two Reconstruction Acts by specifying what the previous 

acts had merely implied. The Third Reconstruction Act declared 

the Southern state governments established during Presidential 

Reconstruction illegal, yet it retained them on a provisional basis 

under the supervision of Congress and the district commanders. 

As agents of congressional authority, the district commanders 

could remove civil officials and appoint replacements. The act 

listed a broad range of former officeholders who were ineligible to 

vote or serve in public office, and it authorized registrars to reject 

anyone suspected of perjuring himself under the oath specified 

in the Second Reconstruction Act. To forestall future legalistic 

assaults, the act declared that neither the district commanders 

nor the registration boards were bound “by any opinion of any 

civil officer of the United States.” Sickles and his fellow district 

commanders could thus conduct voter registration without fear of 

presidential interference.

In their haste to emasculate Stanbery’s legal opinions, the 

authors of the Third Reconstruction Act neglected to insert a 

clause that made the president’s appointment and removal of 

district commanders contingent on Senate approval. Keenly aware 

of the omission, Johnson sought to weaken the impact of the Third 

Reconstruction Act by suspending Stanton, the chief architect 

of the act—which he did on 12 August 1867—and by removing 

the district commanders most likely to exploit it. In July, Johnson 

sent Brig. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau to New Orleans as his special 

representative—in effect serving notice that Sheridan was under 

presidential scrutiny. 

Despite Rousseau’s menacing presence, Sheridan continued 

to exercise his authority as he saw fit. On 30 July, he removed 

Governor Throckmorton of Texas and replaced him with 
41

Elisha M. Pease, the Unionist 

gubernatorial candidate that 

“Throcky”—so dubbed by his 

Republican opponents—had 

routed at the polls a few months 

earlier. Nor did Sheridan stop 

there. In just over a week, he 

removed twenty-two New 

Orleans city councilmen and 

the city treasurer, installed a 

former Union Army officer as 

police chief, and dismissed the 

mayors and other civic officials 

of Lake Charles and Shreveport. 

Fearing that Sheridan intended 

to depose every public official 

under his authority, on 17 

August, Johnson relieved the 

general as commander of the 

Fifth Military District over the strenuous objections of General 

Grant, now the acting secretary of war as well as general in chief.

Sickles’ dismissal followed on 26 August, the result of his 

decision to uphold a subordinate’s directive prohibiting a deputy 

U.S. marshal from enforcing a federal court order that conflicted 

with Sickles’ debt relief regulation. President Johnson replaced him 

with Brig. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, who had run afoul of Sheridan 

while commanding the Department of Louisiana. This fact alone 

may have impressed Johnson that Canby was the right man for the 

job. But Canby soon disappointed both the president and North 

Carolina Governor Jonathan Worth, who branded the general “an 

extreme Radical” for refusing to revoke several of Sickles’ more 

objectionable orders. 

Likewise, the situation in the Fifth Military District remained 

largely unchanged following Sheridan’s departure. His replacement, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, appeared to be in 

no hurry to assume command there, no doubt due to a recent 

outbreak of yellow fever. That left General Griffin in charge temporarily, and he wholeheartedly supported Sheridan’s Reconstruction 

policy. But Griffin succumbed to yellow fever on 15 September, 

and his sudden death left Col. Joseph A. Mower in command. It 

soon became apparent that “Fighting Joe” Mower and Sheridan 

General Canby (Library of Congress)
42 

were alike not only in temperament but also in their activist 

approach to Reconstruction. 

During the vote for the 

constitutional convention in 

late September, Mower sent 

troop detachments to several 

Louisiana parishes to preserve 

order at the polls and prevent 

voter intimidation. He also 

removed a host of Democratic 

civil officials including the 

lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, and the state 

treasurer on the vague charge 

that they were “impediments 

to Reconstruction.” The acting 

district commander’s actions 

prompted Louisiana governor 

Benjamin F. Flanders to appeal 

to Grant, who then ordered Mower to suspend all removals 

pending General Hancock’s arrival. Mower duly complied with the 

general in chief ’s order. 

Hancock assumed command of the Fifth Military District on 

29 November 1867. On the same day, he issued General Orders 40, 

announcing that “the military power should cease to lead and the civil 

administration resume its natural and rightful dominion.” This simple 

declaration indicated that Hancock, a Democrat firmly opposed to 

Military Reconstruction, intended to bring his district more in line 

with President Johnson’s plan of Reconstruction. Not surprisingly, 

the order made Hancock extremely popular with most of the white 

citizens of Louisiana and Texas. His subsequent actions only increased 

his popularity. He proceeded to revoke a Sheridan order that allowed 

blacks to qualify as jurors if they were registered voters, asserting that 

such matters should be left to the state legislature. Hancock nullified 

another Sheridan directive on voter eligibility intended to prevent as 

many ex-Confederates as possible from voting in order to strengthen 

the Republican Party. Longstanding fears of black insurrections at 

Christmastime spurred whites to appeal to Hancock for protection, 

and he in turn requested that Grant send at least a regiment of white 

soldiers to keep the peace. “Black troops,” Hancock maintained, “are 

Colonel Mower, pictured as a 

major general

(Library of Congress)
43

unsuited for the performance of 

this peculiar service.” Much to 

Hancock’s chagrin, Grant sent 

him just three companies of white 

soldiers from the Third Military 

District. 

Hancock also sought to 

minimize Colonel Mower’s 

influence. He requested that 

Col. Robert C. Buchanan, the 

commander of the 1st U.S. 

Infantry, replace Mower as the 

commanding officer in Louisiana 

and the state superintendent of 

the Freedmen’s Bureau. Grant 

authorized Hancock’s request, and 

Buchanan assumed command at 

New Orleans on 2 January 1868. 

Mower nevertheless remained in 

Louisiana as commander of the 

39th U.S. Infantry, a regiment of black soldiers. Hancock also had an 

opportunity to appoint a new governor of Louisiana after the incumbent, Governor Flanders, resigned when it became apparent that he 

and the new district commander could not get along. The general 

chose Joshua Baker to replace Flanders. Baker was a conservative 

Unionist and a supporter of Johnson’s mild Reconstruction program.

Hancock clashed with Grant over the removal of two white 

and seven black New Orleans city councilmen—all Sheridan 

appointees—for violating the Second Reconstruction Act. After 

initially permitting the ouster, Grant reconsidered and ordered 

Hancock to reinstate the deposed councilmen. Hancock complied 

but requested that he be transferred from the Fifth Military 

District after Grant refused to reverse his decision. The general 

in chief—who incidentally continued as acting secretary of war—

was only too happy to oblige him. Before departing New Orleans 

on 16 March 1868, Hancock directed Col. Joseph J. Reynolds, 

commanding the Department of Texas, to replace him until the 

president could appoint a permanent successor.

Nevertheless, Hancock had been less than pleased with 

Reynolds’ handling of affairs in the Lone Star State. Between 

Griffin’s death and Hancock’s arrival, Reynolds had removed 

General Hancock

(Library of Congress)
44 

400 Democrats from office and replaced them with Republicans. 

Bombarded with complaints from angry Texas conservatives, 

Hancock had ordered Reynolds to explain his actions and make 

no more removals. Reynolds had justified his course by citing 

Sheridan’s injunction of 27 August 1867 to Griffin to remove all 

disloyal men from office. However, before Reynolds could undertake a similar purge of Democratic officeholders in Louisiana, 

orders from Washington arrived placing Buchanan in temporary 

command of the Fifth Military District. Contrary to Hancock’s 

belief, Buchanan was senior to Reynolds.

The 57-year-old Buchanan proved to be an effective 

commander at a crucial time in the Bayou State’s history. In April 

1868, the colonel held an election for numerous local, state, and 

national offices, and to decide the fate of the new Louisiana state 

constitution. To preserve order, Buchanan kept troop detachments 

near the polls, including the three companies on loan from the 

Third Military District. The voters elected a fiery young Radical, 

Henry Clay Warmoth, governor and gave him a Republican 

majority in both houses of the state legislature; they also ratified 

the new constitution. While there was a large turnout of black 

voters, there were few disturbances. Several days after the election, 

Buchanan directed the troops from the Third Military District to 

return to their permanent posts.

By the end of 1867, Johnson had decided to remove Pope 

from command of the Third Military District. The president had 

been contemplating such a move for some time. The tipping point 

came when Pope authorized the Georgia constitutional convention’s 

requisition of $40,000 on the state treasury to cover its expenses, 

but State Treasurer John Jones refused to issue payment without 

Governor Charles J. Jenkins’ endorsement, which Jenkins withheld 

on the grounds that the convention itself was illegal. In April, Pope 

had nearly removed Jenkins over his public opposition to the 

Reconstruction Acts, but the governor had pleaded ignorance and 

promised to be more cooperative in the future. Once again, Jenkins 

had taken an obstructionist stance, but Pope hesitated to act for fear 

that deposing the governor might well result in his own dismissal. On 

26 December 1867, Pope appealed to General Grant for guidance, 

warning that “without the means to pay its daily expenses, there 

is every probability that the Convention must dissolve.” But the 

time for advice had passed. On 28 December, the War Department 

removed Pope from command of the Third Military District.
45

As had happened in the removal of Sheridan and Sickles, 

President Johnson replaced Pope, only to be disappointed by his 

successor, General Meade. The conservative Meade must have 

struck Johnson as a safe choice, but the new district commander 

soon displayed a willingness to topple high-ranking officials that left 

the president “mortified and chagrined.” On 8 January 1868, Meade 

issued General Orders 12 removing Jenkins, Jones, and the Georgia 

state comptroller from office for obstructing the Reconstruction 

Acts. In doing so, Meade had Grant’s full support—something that 

Pope had seldom enjoyed. To ensure cooperation, Meade replaced 

the civil officials with Army officers, appointing Colonel Ruger as 

governor and Lt. Charles F. Rockwell as state treasurer.

The same order that relieved Pope also reassigned General 

Ord, who wished to be transferred from command of the 

Fourth Military District. Ord 

freely admitted that he was 

not in sympathy with the 

Reconstruction Acts—especially the provision that granted 

voting rights to blacks—and 

sought a command which did 

not require having to enforce 

them. Writing from his headquarters at Holly Springs, 

Mississippi, Ord asked General 

Grant: “Would it not be well . . . 

to have an Officer here who . . . 

believed in the Policy[?]” Grant 

took the hint and secured a 

transfer for his longtime friend, 

appointing him commander of 

the Department of California. 

The previous commander of 

that department, Brig. Gen. 

Irvin McDowell, exchanged 

places with Ord. 

The President Impeached

While Louisiana and several other Southern states held 

their constitutional conventions in early 1868, Republicans in 

the House of Representatives sought to end President Johnson’s 

General Ord

(Library of Congress)
46 

efforts to obstruct Military 

Reconstruction by impeaching 

him. They based their case 

on the president’s violation 

of the Tenure of Office Act in 

removing Secretary of War 

Stanton from his cabinet. Passed 

over Johnson’s veto in 1867, 

the act prohibited the president from removing appointed 

officials without congressional 

approval. The impeachment 

trial before the Senate began 

in March 1868. Meanwhile, 

the Republicans’ anxiety over 

Johnson began to fade as one 

Southern state after another 

ratified a new constitution and 

elected a Republican government. Other factors further 

reduced the likelihood of the president’s ouster, including the assurance of Johnson’s chief counsel that his client, if acquitted, would 

cease to impede Military Reconstruction. The Senate decided the 

president’s fate in May 1868, the conviction vote falling one short 

of the necessary two-thirds majority. Though acquitted, Johnson 

did not receive the Democratic presidential nomination that July. 

His acquittal likewise spoiled the Radical Republicans’ prospects, 

all but ensuring that General Grant, a moderate Republican and 

the most popular man in the North, would be nominated.

Seven Southern States Rejoin the Union

In June and July 1868, the state legislatures of Alabama, 

Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South 

Carolina ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and submitted their 

new constitutions to Congress. In the meantime, General Canby, 

the commander of the Second Military District, discovered that 

many recently elected state officials in his district could not take 

office until Congress restored their qualifications. In a letter to 

Grant, Canby explained that in North Carolina, the governor, lieutenant governor, and numerous legislators were disqualified under 

the Fourteenth Amendment, and still more incoming officials 

General Grant

(Library of Congress)
47

could not take the Ironclad Oath. Grant sent Canby’s letter to the 

secretary of war, who then passed it on to Congress. On 25 June 

1868, congressional Republicans restored the qualifications of 700 

Republican officials in North Carolina, including Governor-elect 

Holden, who had been the Tar Heel State’s provisional governor in 

1865. Holden was inaugurated on 4 July; his predecessor, Governor 

Worth, vacated the office under protest. Congress, meanwhile, 

approved the constitutions and seated the senators and representatives of the seven Southern states, thereby readmitting them to 

the Union.

With the return to full statehood, the district commanders 

remitted their powers under the Reconstruction Acts to the civil 

authorities within their commands. They could no longer arrest 

civilians, try cases by military commission in lieu of civil courts, 

appoint and remove officials, or intervene (at least in theory) in 

disturbances without a request for aid from the civil authorities. 

Within a month of readmission, the War Department realigned the 

geographic commands in the South. The “unreconstructed” states 

of Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were designated the First, Fourth, 

and Fifth Military Districts, respectively, in which commanders 

retained their broad powers under the Reconstruction Acts. In 

June, Col. George Stoneman succeeded General Schofield—who 

became secretary of war—as commander of the First Military 

District, Col. Alvan C. Gillem replaced General McDowell as 

commander of the Fourth Military District, and Colonel Reynolds 

assumed command of the Fifth Military District. The Carolinas, 

Georgia, Florida, and Alabama combined to form the Department 

of the South under General Meade, and Arkansas and Louisiana 

joined to become the Department of Louisiana under Colonel 

Buchanan. Readmitted in 1866, Tennessee remained in the 

Department of the Cumberland under General Thomas (Map 3).

The Reign of Terror Begins

As the seven states rejoined the Union, the Army in the South 

had to contend with a strange new adversary that may have lacked 

the strength of the Confederate Army but would soon prove surprisingly formidable due to its elusiveness. The rise of Republicanism in 

the Southern states led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and 

other secret paramilitary organizations dedicated to preserving 

white supremacy and restoring the Democrats to their former 

political dominance. Formed in 1866 as a social club in Pulaski, 
G

FIFTH MILIT A R Y DISTRIC T

Texas

DEP ARTMENT

OF L O U SIAN

Ark ansas

Louisiana

INDIAN

TERRIT O R Y

C O L O R ADO

TERRIT O R Y

NEW MEXI C O

TERRIT O R Y

NEBRASK A

TERRIT O R Y

KANSAS

IOW A

MISSOU

M

E

X

I

C

O

MILITARY DEPARTMENTS AND DISTRICTS

July 1868–December 1869

FIRST REC ONSTRUC TION A C T

0 100 200 300

Miles

Military Boundary

Former Confederate State

Map 3
A T L A

N I C

O

C

E

A

N

ULF OF MEXI C O

FOURTH

MILIT A R Y

DISTRIC T

Mississippi

DEP ARTMENT OF THE SOUTH

North Carolina

South Carolina

Alabama

Georgia

Florida

T

A

DEP ARTMENT OF 

THE CUMBERLAND

Tennessee

FIRST MILITA R Y

DISTRIC T

Virginia

Washington, DC

OHIO

KENTUCK Y

WES T

VIRGINIA

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

R I

MARYLAND

N E W

JERSEY

DELAWARE

PENNSYL V A NIA
50 

Tennessee, the Klan mobilized statewide a year later under the 

leadership of its reputed “Grand Dragon,” Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

A former Confederate general and a brilliant cavalry commander, 

Forrest had earned widespread notoriety for his involvement in the 

Fort Pillow Massacre. Forrest later claimed that the early Klan was 

defensive in nature, but the organization turned aggressive during 

the first four months of 1868, as it expanded beyond the borders 

of the Volunteer State into every Southern state from Virginia to 

Texas. This phenomenal growth occurred largely through Forrest’s 

proselytizing efforts. His position as a railroad executive and parttime life insurance salesman who traveled the South—coupled with 

his peerless reputation and extensive contacts—made him an ideal 

spokesman for the Klan.

But neither Forrest nor anyone else, for that matter, exercised 

overarching control. The Klan consisted of numerous independent 

cells called “klans” or “dens,” organized at local and county levels. 

Even the name “Ku Klux Klan” merely served as a convenient 

generic designation. In North Carolina, members referred to the 

Klan as the Constitutional Union Guard in the east, the White 

Brotherhood in the central Piedmont, and the Invisible Empire 

in the west. Similar organizations coexisted with the Klan, such 

as the Knights of the White Camellia and Seymour Knights in 

Louisiana, the Knights of the Rising Sun in Texas, the Knights of 

the Black Cross in Mississippi, and the Young Men’s Democratic 

Clubs in Florida.

The Klan made its first appearance in North Carolina 

during the campaign preceding the election in April 1868. The 

emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist 

organizations prompted General Canby to issue General Orders 

61, warning that conspiracies to obstruct the execution of federal 

law or to prevent voting would be severely punished. Canby 

further announced that he would order a new election for any 

precinct in which he found evidence of fraud or interference. Tar 

Heel Klansmen, meanwhile, limited their actions to parading at 

night in fantastic costumes and posting crude signs containing 

skull and crossbones imagery and ominous messages such as, 

“The hour is arrived—the graves are opened, and Hell yawns.” 

The apparent intent of these actions was to frighten superstitious 

blacks into not voting. 

Judging from the election returns, the night riders failed 

miserably. Voter turnout was 84 percent, the new constitution was 
51

ratified by a comfortable margin, and the Republicans captured all 

the state offices and gained a substantial majority in both houses 

of the General Assembly. Nevertheless, in Camden County—a 

Republican stronghold due to its large black population—a 

freedman named Albert Rogerson was murdered about a week 

before the election. The local Freedmen’s Bureau agent maintained 

that the killers sought “to terrify the Col[ore]d people, and thus 

prevent them from voting.” One freedman stated that Rogerson’s 

murder and threatening Klan posters had induced many blacks to 

keep away from the polls.

The most notorious Klan-related incident during the spring 

of 1868 occurred in Columbus, Georgia. On 31 March, a band of 

disguised men assassinated George W. Ashburn, a leading “scalawag” 

or native white Republican. The coroner’s jury found that Ashburn 

had been killed by persons unknown, and the case would have ended 

there had General Meade not intervened. He assigned Capt. William 

Mills to investigate the murder, and when told that the mayor, board 

of aldermen, and other officials were uncooperative, immediately 

replaced them. The Army arrested thirteen men, including three 

blacks, in connection with the Ashburn murder, and Meade directed 

that the defendants stand trial in 

Atlanta by military commission. 

The political stakes were such that 

the prosecution included former 

Confederate governor of Georgia 

and future state supreme court 

chief justice Joseph E. Brown, 

while the ex-vice president of 

the Confederacy, Alexander H. 

Stephens, headed the defense 

team.

The trial began on 29 June 

and ended inconclusively just 

one month later. On 21 July, the 

state legislature approved the 

Fourteenth Amendment, ending 

military rule in Georgia. Three 

days later, Meade suspended 

the trial, and he turned over the 

court records to the civil authorities. The defendants posted bond 

General Meade

(National Archives)
52 

and returned in triumph to Columbus. While no one was ever 

convicted of Ashburn’s murder, the Klan made no further appearances in Columbus. 

 In addition to the Klan, Meade had to deal with a riot that 

occurred near Camilla, Georgia, stemming from the conflict 

between black political organizations such as the Union League 

and the “white man’s government” clubs formed to oppose 

them. In an effort to defuse the tension, on 14 September 1868, 

Republican Governor Rufus B. Bullock of Georgia issued a ban 

on either side assembling under arms. Ignoring the governor’s 

proclamation, Republican leaders in southwestern Georgia 

summoned area blacks to a political rally in Camilla on 19 

September. On the nineteenth, about 300 freedmen, some of 

them armed, gathered near Camilla. When the sheriff ordered 

the group to disperse in accordance with the governor’s prohibition on armed assemblies, the spokesman replied that they 

intended to conduct a peaceful meeting. Determined to stop 

the marchers, the sheriff returned to Camilla and formed a large 

posse. They confronted the freedmen on the outskirts of town; 

a drunken member of the posse ordered the marchers’ band to 

stop playing and opened fire on the musicians. The two sides 

then traded shots until the outnumbered and outgunned blacks 

fled into the woods. For the rest of the day, the posse hunted 

down freedmen and shot them in cold blood. By nightfall, nine 

blacks lay dead and another thirty-five were wounded.

Meade directed Captain Mills to investigate the Camilla 

riot. On 23 September, Mills reported that the sheriff bore much 

of the responsibility for the bloodshed, having failed to control 

the drunken man and allowing the posse to believe that the 

blacks intended to attack them. The captain also indicated that 

the mayor had made no effort to investigate the incident and 

appeared content to let the perpetrators escape punishment. 

Meade, however, noted that the blacks’ insistence on exercising 

their right to assemble at Camilla in defiance of Bullock’s ban 

had given the sheriff and his posse sufficient justification to fire 

on them. He therefore decided to take no action, deeming it a 

matter for the civil authorities to handle. Following the restoration of civil government in his five-state department, Meade had 

steadfastly refused to intervene in disturbances unless civilian 

law enforcement proved unable to restore order. The general 

turned over the report of the Camilla incident to Governor 
53

Bullock, and Bullock recommended that the legislature request 

the federal government to send troops there. After paying a visit 

to the town, a special committee of the legislature determined 

that no troops were required there.

The “Camilla Massacre” nevertheless convinced Meade 

to modify his troop deployments. Instead of concentrating his 

forces in the larger towns and cities, he stationed numerous small 

detachments throughout his department to deter lawlessness 

and violence. The upcoming presidential election provided him 

with the legal justification for doing so. Meade cited an 1865 act 

of Congress that granted Army officers discretion to use federal 

troops “to preserve the peace at the polls.” In North Carolina, 

where the Klan had begun to raid black communities in several 

eastern and central counties, the soldiers’ presence resulted in a 

quiet Election Day on 3 November. As a result, the Republican 

Party enjoyed another triumph at the polls. In the presidential 

race, General Grant carried the state with 96,939 votes compared 

with Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour’s total of 84,560, and 

Republicans won six of the state’s seven congressional seats. “The 

Ku Klux—who is afraid of them now?” Holden gloated at a victory 

celebration in Raleigh. “The truth is, we were never afraid of them 

in North Carolina.” The governor would soon regret those words.

Throughout the South, the Ku Klux Klan’s influence depended 

on local circumstances. In Virginia, Klan activity was scattered 

and of brief duration because the Republican Party never gained 

control of the Old Dominion. As a result, Democrats there did not 

feel sufficiently threatened to terrorize their political opponents. 

In Tennessee, the Klan attempted to topple Governor Brownlow, 

but he proved to be a formidable foe. To combat the night riders, 

Brownlow requested additional federal soldiers, and General 

Thomas obtained seven companies of the 29th U.S. Infantry from 

the Department of Washington. Deeming the federal reinforcement insufficient, the governor called up the 1,600-man state 

guard. By early 1869, the Tennessee-based Klan had largely ceased 

its depredations. Forrest later claimed that he disbanded the 

night riders in the Volunteer State at this time, perhaps owing as 

much to the Democratic leaders’ alarm at the Klan’s atrocities as 

to Brownlow’s show of force. In Arkansas and Texas, meanwhile, 

the Klan had all but vanished, whereas the night riders in Georgia 

continued to use terror, intimidation, and violence to restore that 

state to the Democratic column. 
54 

Nowhere was the situation confronting Southern Republicans during the latter half of 1868 more desperate than in 

Louisiana. Just ten days after his election, Governor Warmoth 

had received a crudely worded warning from the “Bloody 

Knights Klu Klux Klan” that read: “Villain Beware Your doom 

is sealed Death now awaites you.” Since then, the Knights of the 

White Camellia and other secret organizations had embarked 

on a campaign of terror across the state. Emulating antebellum 

slave patrols, armed gangs of whites rode through black districts 

day and night. One such band assassinated William Meadows, a 

black delegate to the state constitutional convention, and a group 

of disguised men entered a hotel in the town of Franklin and 

killed the Republican sheriff and judge of St. Mary Parish. On 1 

August, Warmoth sent an appeal to President Johnson for more 

troops, in which he stated that 150 persons had been murdered in 

Louisiana since mid-June. (A subsequent investigation revealed 

that the governor had underestimated the death toll by one-half.) 

Johnson referred Warmoth’s letter to the War Department “for 

consideration and suggestion.” In other words, he would send no 

reinforcements for the present.

On 15 September, Colonel Buchanan relinquished command 

of the Department of Louisiana. To his credit, the Bayou State 

had held an election, sworn in 

a governor, convened the legislature, and rejoined the Union 

during his tenure. Buchanan’s 

replacement, General Rousseau, 

happened to arrive as the presidential campaign was heating 

up. A Kentucky Democrat and 

a friend of President Johnson, 

Rousseau was no supporter of 

Radical Reconstruction. Barely 

a week after he had assumed 

command, a riot erupted, 

when two rival political processions clashed on Canal Street 

in downtown New Orleans. 

Three blacks were killed and 

an unknown number on both 

sides were wounded. Federal 

General Rousseau

(Library of Congress)
55

soldiers and city police responded quickly and thus prevented the 

riot from spreading. On 26 September, Rousseau sent a pessimistic 

report to President Johnson. “The condition of affairs here . . . 

could not be much worse,” he wrote. Although Rousseau promised 

to do all he could to keep the peace, he likened the local populace 

to “a volcano ready for an explosion at any moment.” 

The “volcano” erupted in St. Landry Parish a few days later. 

On 28 September, three members of the Seymour Knights severely 

beat Emerson Bentley, a freedmen’s school teacher and Radical 

newspaper editor. The incident infuriated local blacks, who began 

to assemble under arms to demand that Bentley’s assailants be 

punished. Alarmed by what they deemed a freedmen’s uprising, 

the white Democrats swiftly mobilized and seized the town of 

Opelousas. They next confronted the blacks and demanded that 

the latter surrender their arms. The two sides opened fire, and 

during the exchange, four blacks were killed and three whites 

were wounded. The sheriff arrested and jailed several freedmen 

for disturbing the peace. One night later, white vigilantes removed 

the prisoners from jail and shot them. For the next two weeks, 

gangs of armed whites patrolled the countryside, and according to 

the New Orleans Times, more than one hundred freedpeople were 

killed during that period. Rousseau sent a staff officer to investigate the incident but took no further action.

In the meantime, the violence spread into the neighboring 

parishes, inducing Rousseau to send a company of federal troops 

to St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans. He also requested 

additional troops and received six companies of infantry from 

Mississippi. In response to an appeal from Governor Warmoth, 

Rousseau posted most of the reinforcements in and around 

New Orleans during the 3 November election, and he issued a 

proclamation on 28 October prohibiting political processions 

and unauthorized bands of armed men. After conferring with 

Rousseau, Warmoth decided to reassure anxious whites by 

advising blacks not to vote. While the general later maintained 

that the idea was entirely Warmoth’s, he defended the measure 

as necessary and apparently had no qualms about denying 

freedmen their voting rights.

Because of the presence of federal soldiers and the scarcity 

of blacks at the polls, Election Day passed peacefully in New 

Orleans and the surrounding parishes. For the next two years, 

relative calm and good order would prevail in the Crescent 
56 

City. But this tranquility came at the expense of black rights, 

and it reinforced what the New Orleans riot of 1866 had 

already confirmed: white vigilante and paramilitary groups 

could intimidate Republican voters—above all, blacks—and 

the Army either could not or would not intervene. The night 

riders’ terror campaign enabled Seymour to carry the Bayou 

State with 80,225 votes to Grant’s 33,225. In contrast, Warmoth 

had received more than 69,000 votes in the April 1868 gubernatorial election. Despite the drubbing in Louisiana, Grant 

won the election by a comfortable margin, receiving 3,013,421 

popular votes and 214 electoral votes to Seymour’s 2,706,829 

popular votes and 80 electoral votes. Grant succeeded President 

Johnson on 4 March 1869.

The Army Takes on the Klan

If the Democratic electoral 

triumph in Louisiana ushered in 

a period of comparative peace 

and stability, no such moratorium followed in Georgia, the 

only other Southern state that 

went to Seymour. In May 1869, 

Republican Senator Henry 

Wilson of Massachusetts sent an 

urgent letter to President Grant 

requesting military intervention to prevent further “political 

murders” in Georgia, “the worst 

of all the States, for the security 

of the friends of the country.” 

Grant referred Wilson’s appeal 

to General Sherman, the new 

general in chief of the U.S. Army, 

who then passed it on to Brig. 

Gen. Alfred H. Terry, Meade’s 

successor as commander of 

the Department of the South. After a two-month investigation that 

included confidential interviews with numerous eyewitnesses, on 14 

August 1869, Terry reported to Secretary of War John A. Rawlins: 

“There can be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary 

movements known as the ‘Ku Klux Klans,’ who, shielded by their 

General Terry

(Library of Congress)
57

disguise[s], by the secrecy of their movements, and by the terror they 

inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity.” 

Eager to combat the Klan, Terry proposed that Congress 

withdraw its recommendation of June 1868 that Georgia be readmitted to the Union and then resume Military Reconstruction in 

that state. Terry argued that Georgia had violated several conditions for readmission by seating ineligible former Confederates 

in the state legislature and by expelling legally elected black representatives (such as Henry M. Turner, a former USCT chaplain) 

from the same body. He further justified military intervention 

on the grounds that the Klan’s crimes extended beyond violations of state law to include violent obstruction of the Fourteenth 

Amendment.

On 22 December 1869, Congress imposed tough new requirements for Georgia’s readmission, but it stopped short of restoring 

military rule. First, all legislative delegates who failed to affirm 

their eligibility would be removed, and second, the legislature had 

to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the 

right to vote on the basis “of race, color, or previous condition of 

servitude.” In January 1870, President Grant went one step further 

than Congress had in order to ensure the success of Georgia’s 

“second Reconstruction.” He made the state a military district 

and put Terry in command with the same powers as those given 

district commanders under the Reconstruction Acts.

Terry wasted no time in making use of his increased 

authority—and some of his actions smacked of illegality. Shortly 

after assuming command, he removed nineteen members of the 

Georgia legislature on the grounds of ineligibility. Although the 

Senate Judiciary Committee later ruled that Terry lacked the 

authority to make the removals, it recommended that Congress 

take no action in the matter because all of the expelled delegates 

were indeed ineligible. During Terry’s tenure, conditions improved 

markedly across the state, though the Klan still rode from time 

to time. At the request of the civil authorities, Terry sent troop 

detachments to various locations across the state. But he avoided 

becoming entangled in the details of Reconstruction, refusing at 

one point to compel the civil courts to select blacks for jury duty in 

accordance with state law. On 15 July 1870, Georgia was readmitted 

to the Union, joining Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, which had 

rejoined in early 1870. The Union thus stood fully restored in fact 

if not in spirit.
58 

While Terry battled night riders in Georgia, the situation in 

North Carolina was becoming critical, for the Klan had virtually 

seized control of two Piedmont counties. Shortly after midnight 

on 26 February 1870, a force of over one hundred Klansmen 

lynched Wyatt Outlaw, a black Union Army veteran and Union 

League leader, in the town of Graham, the Alamance county seat. 

Three months later, the Klan struck again at Yanceyville about 

thirty miles north of Graham. On 21 May, a group of Klansmen 

lured John W. Stephens, a white Republican state senator, into the 

basement of the Caswell County courthouse and stabbed him to 

death. Governor Holden declared the two counties in a state of 

insurrection, called up the state militia, and appealed to President 

Grant for federal troops to restore order and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Unlike his predecessor President Johnson, Grant was more 

than willing to lend his support. In addition to providing federal 

soldiers, he offered to arm, clothe, and equip the state troops. This 

was more than a symbolic gesture, for the Army’s presence in the 

South was reduced by more than one-third after a budget-minded 

Congress had passed an Army manpower reduction act on 3 

March 1869. The number of troops on Southern occupation duty 

thus fell from 17,657 in October 1868 to 11,237 exactly one year 

later. That was not the worst of it, however, for most of the cavalry 

was posted on the western frontier, leaving infantry and artillery 

units to pursue the night riders on foot. The lack of mounted 

troops in the South enabled the Klan to strike with impunity and 

then vanish without a trace. 

Holden formed two regiments of state troops. One regiment 

consisted of white soldiers from the wartime Unionist stronghold of 

western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Their commander 

was Col. George W. Kirk, a Tennessee native and onetime Union 

officer. The other regiment was composed of black troops under 

Col. William J. Clarke, a former Confederate officer. As Kirk’s militia 

occupied Graham and Yanceyville and began arresting suspected 

Klansmen, Grant ordered Secretary of War William W. Belknap 

to send six companies of federal troops to North Carolina. At the 

president’s behest, General Meade, the commander of the Military 

Division of the Atlantic, established the temporary District of North 

Carolina on 27 July 1870, and he placed Col. Henry J. Hunt in 

command. Hunt’s force consisted of ten companies of infantry and 

artillery totaling roughly 700 soldiers, twice the number of troops 
59

in the state during the previous 

year. They were stationed at 

Raleigh, Graham, Yanceyville, 

and several other towns in 

central North Carolina. As a 

result, Klan outrages abruptly 

ceased in the Piedmont, 

ensuring a peaceful Election 

Day on 4 August. 

But the night riders’ baleful 

influence was all too apparent in 

the statewide election returns, 

which indicated a resounding 

triumph for the Conservative 

Party. Due to a 13,000-vote 

drop-off in the Republican tally 

from the presidential election 

of 1868, the Conservatives 

managed to elect their candidate 

for attorney general with just a 

3,000-vote increase. The Conservatives also gained six of the state’s 

seven congressional seats and almost a two-to-one majority in the 

state legislature. Of the fifteen counties added to the Conservative 

column, ten had experienced considerable Klan activity.

On 31 May 1870, Congress had passed the Enforcement 

Act to provide Grant with the means to suppress the Klan. 

The act upheld the Fifteenth Amendment and made it a felony 

for two or more persons “to band or conspire together, or go 

in disguise upon the public highway or upon the premises 

of another” with criminal intent. Kirk’s militia used the act 

to arrest and jail over one hundred suspected Klansmen. To 

Holden’s mortification, the accused were released when it 

came to light that the arresting officers had denied them bail 

and had formally charged only some of them. A federal judge 

issued writs of habeas corpus for all the prisoners, which Kirk 

ignored on the grounds that the accused were to be tried by a 

military tribunal. Unwilling to challenge the federal judiciary, 

Holden directed that the colonel turn over the prisoners to 

the district court. Although the guilty went unpunished, the 

militia and the Army had ended the Klan’s reign of terror in 

the insurrectionary counties. In September 1870, the governor 

Colonel Hunt

(Library of Congress)
60 

disbanded the militia, and Meade discontinued the District of 

North Carolina.

The following December, Holden himself became the target 

of an attack launched from within the Conservative-dominated 

state legislature. The sponsor of the impeachment resolution was 

Frederick N. Strudwick, a local Klan leader and freshman representative from Orange County. Among other things, the eight 

articles of impeachment accused Holden of using the militia to 

oppress the people on the pretext of quelling a nonexistent insurrection and of suspending the writ of habeas corpus in violation 

of the state constitution. After a three-month trial, the legislature 

voted to convict Holden and expel him from office. He thus earned 

the dubious distinction of being the first state governor ousted by 

impeachment. A victim of political assassination, Holden was 

both the last and the highest-ranking casualty of the so-called 

Kirk–Holden War against the Klan. 

During the impeachment proceedings against Holden, 

Congress undertook an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan in 

North Carolina. On 16 December 1870, the U.S. Senate passed a 

resolution requesting that Grant submit all the information in his 

possession regarding the Klan. On New Year’s Day 1871, Holden 

sent Grant a sheaf of papers that included official state acts and 

proclamations, outrage casualty lists, trial transcripts, victims’ 

affidavits, and Klansmen’s confessions. Grant sent the documents to Congress along with a stack of Army reports and official 

correspondence.

On 19 January, the Senate appointed a select committee 

to conduct the investigation. The seven-member committee—

consisting of five Republicans and two Democrats—decided 

to focus on the two insurrectionary counties, Alamance and 

Caswell. Fifty-two witnesses testified, including Conservatives 

and Republicans, blacks and whites, civil officials and Army 

officers, Klansmen and Klan victims. On 10 March, the committee 

released its findings. The majority report found that the many 

organizations known collectively as the Ku Klux Klan were 

indeed political in nature and employed intimidation, whipping, 

and murder to benefit the Conservative Party. The report further 

stated that the organizations routinely ordered members to break 

the law and then shielded them from criminal prosecution. Thus 

far, the report noted, not one Klansman in North Carolina had 

been convicted of a crime.
61

Enforcing the Ku Klux Act

The select committee’s report spurred congressional 

Republicans into passing the Third Enforcement Act on 20 April 

1871. (Congress approved the Second Enforcement Act two 

months earlier, in order to curb Democratic election fraud in 

Northern cities.) The law answered Grant’s request for legislation 

to “secure life[,] liberty[,] and property” in the South. Aptly dubbed 

“the Ku Klux Act,” the measure targeted secret organizations that 

used violence and intimidation to deprive citizens of their rights 

under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Whenever a 

Klan conspiracy proved too powerful for the civil authorities to 

suppress, the Ku Klux Act authorized the president to declare the 

affected area in a state of rebellion against the United States. After 

issuing a proclamation commanding the insurgents to disperse, the 

president could then declare martial law, call in the U.S. military 

and/or the state militia, and suspend the writ of habeas corpus. To 

silence critics eager to accuse him of establishing a military dictatorship, Grant suggested that his extraordinary powers be given an 

expiration date; the bill’s authors duly inserted a clause stipulating 

that those powers would cease at the end of the next regular session 

of Congress. U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman thought the 

Ku Klux Act at last put the federal government’s efforts to suppress 

the Klan on the right footing. “Really these combinations amount 

to war,” Akerman wrote, “and [they] cannot be effectually crushed 

on any other theory.”

Grant wasted no time in putting the Ku Klux Act to work. 

On 3 May 1871, he issued the mandatory proclamation ordering 

“combinations of lawless and disaffected persons in the late theater 

of insurrection and military conflict” to cease their criminal actions 

and disperse. Because he lacked the forces to mount a large-scale 

campaign across the South, Grant decided to make an example 

of the Klan in one of its bastions, hoping that a successful application of the Ku Klux Act there would hasten the demise of the 

night riders elsewhere. The president adopted this strategy at the 

suggestion of General Terry, still commanding the Department of 

the South, who advised that the northwestern counties of South 

Carolina be the focus of the operation. Two major disturbances 

had recently occurred in that region. In October 1870, thirteen 

men had been killed and several hundred wounded in a riot at 

Laurens, and in January 1871, night riders had lynched eight black 

militiamen at Unionville.
62 

Maj. Lewis Merrill, the 

commander of the Army post 

at Yorkville, South Carolina, 

made a thorough investigation 

of the “Invisible Circle”—as 

the Klan was known in South 

Carolina—and in June 1871, he 

presented his findings to Terry. 

In the upcountry counties of 

the Palmetto State, Merrill 

reported, roughly three-fourths 

of the white men were members 

of the Klan. Yorkville alone had 

about 120 Klansmen, and the 

order there included several law 

enforcement officials as well 

as a judge. Informants at area 

telegraph offices and railroad 

stations kept the Klan posted 

on federal troop movements, 

and the local judiciary would not convict the few night riders 

actually indicted for crimes. 

Impressed by Merrill’s report, President Grant sent Attorney 

General Akerman to confer with the major and to examine 

the situation firsthand. Akerman traveled to Yorkville in midSeptember and reviewed the evidence that Merrill had collected. 

Convinced that Merrill had indeed uncovered a widespread 

conspiracy, Akerman advised the president to suspend the writ 

of habeas corpus in South Carolina. Grant agreed and issued the 

requisite preliminary proclamation on 12 October. Specifying nine 

northwestern counties, the proclamation commanded all those 

involved in “unlawful combinations and conspiracies” to disperse 

within five days and surrender their weapons and disguises. On 17 

October, a second proclamation appeared, suspending the writ of 

habeas corpus for persons in the insurrectionary counties arrested 

under the Ku Klux Act.

The arrests began on 19 October, after the arrival of 600 reinforcements, raising the number of federal troops in South Carolina 

to over 1,000. Most of the soldiers belonged to the 7th U.S. Cavalry 

or the 18th U.S. Infantry. General Terry instructed Merrill to 

divide his force into detachments of one or two companies each 

Major Merrill, pictured as a colonel

(Library of Congress)
63

and station them at Yorkville and four other upcountry towns. 

To meet a requirement of the Ku Klux Act, Terry placed the U.S. 

marshal for South Carolina in nominal charge of the operation but 

left Merrill, an experienced guerrilla fighter, in command of the 

troops in the field. Under Merrill’s capable direction, the soldiers 

arrested about 600 suspects during the first month. By early 1872, 

however, only fifty-four had been convicted and sentenced in 

district court. The federal judiciary simply lacked the means to 

dispense swift justice to so many defendants. “The machinery for 

the execution of these [laws] . . . is wholly inadequate to the task,” 

Major Merrill lamented. “The United States courts are choked with 

a quantity of business which amounts practically to a denial of a 

hearing of four-fifths of the cases.” And yet there were few Klan 

chieftains among the prisoners, for most had fled the Palmetto 

State at the first sign of trouble.

By dispersing the leaders and arresting hundreds of the rank 

and file, the Army and the federal courts disrupted the Klan’s 

insurrection in northwestern South Carolina but did not end it. 

Continuing reports of Klan outrages indicated that the upcountry 

night riders were still on the rampage in 1872. In western North 

Carolina, the federal military and judiciary enjoyed greater success 

in suppressing the Klan and in bringing the ringleaders to justice. 

By early 1872, the Ku Klux Klan had virtually ceased to exist in 

the Tar Heel State, but the organization had served its purpose. 

Thanks in large part to the Klan’s three-year reign of terror, a 

Republican governor, Holden, had been ousted from office and his 

successor, Tod R. Caldwell, had been stripped of any real power, 

while the state legislature was once more solidly Conservative—or 

Democratic—and would remain so for many years to come. To 

ensure that no Klansmen would stand trial, the Democrats passed 

the Amnesty Act in 1873 absolving night riders of all crimes 

committed while in disguise.

From Reconstruction to Redemption

During the presidential election year of 1872, the Republican 

Party split into two new factions, supplanting the moderate and 

Radical wings that had held sway since the Civil War. The Stalwarts 

supported the incumbent Grant, still the most popular man in the 

North. The Liberal Republicans, a diverse group that included 

former Radicals and ex-Democrats alike, united in condemning 

the corruption associated with the Grant administration and 
64 

opposing its Reconstruction policy. The Liberals espoused local 

self-government—what Democratic politicians in the South 

liked to call “home rule”—amnesty for ex-Confederates, and civil 

service reform. They nominated as their presidential candidate the 

noted newspaper editor Horace Greeley—a onetime Radical who 

now sought to conciliate the Southern Democrats. Even with the 

endorsement of the Democratic Party, Greeley was no match for 

Grant, who won by a greater margin than he had enjoyed in the 

previous election.

The factionalism that beset the national Republican Party 

led to disputed elections and rival governments in Louisiana and 

Arkansas. In the Bayou State’s 1872 gubernatorial election, both the 

Stalwart candidate, William P. Kellogg, and his Fusionist (LiberalDemocratic) opponent, John McEnery, claimed victory. Although 

President Grant recognized Kellogg as the winner, he refused to 

sanction the use of force against McEnery. On 6 January 1873, the 

rival state legislatures convened at New Orleans—Kellogg’s in the 

statehouse and McEnery’s in a nearby hall. To prevent a repetition 

of the 1866 street battle, Brig. Gen. William H. Emory—the federal 

commander in Louisiana—posted over 400 troops in the city, nearly 

his entire force, and the day passed without incident. One week 

later, the two governors were 

inaugurated in separate ceremonies, and Emory deployed just 

one company at the state house. 

Once again, no disturbances 

occurred in the Crescent City. 

The situation in New 

Orleans took a sudden violent 

turn in late February, when 

McEnery formed his own militia 

and placed it under Fred N. 

Ogden, a former Confederate 

officer. On 5 March, Ogden led 

an assault on the state arsenal, 

which was defended by both city 

police and state militia under 

James Longstreet, an ex-Confederate general-turned-Republican 

official. During the attack, 

Ogden’s force suffered several 

General Emory

(Library of Congress)
65

casualties, including one fatality. Acting under orders “to preserve 

the peace,” Emory sent in three companies of the 19th U.S. Infantry 

to intervene. Under a flag of truce, the federal officer in command 

ordered Ogden’s militia to disperse, and they reluctantly complied.

If the Republican government in New Orleans appeared 

secure, the situation in Grant Parish proved to be a different matter. 

On Easter Sunday, 13 April 1873, the political conflict erupted into 

a battle at Colfax, the parish seat, between a paramilitary force 

numbering several hundred white Democrats and a somewhat 

smaller contingent of black Republican militia. The militia held 

the courthouse at Colfax, and the vigilantes were determined to 

take it from them. Shortly after the militia commander rejected the 

paramilitaries’ surrender demand, the latter launched an assault 

on the blacks, who were stationed behind earthworks that ringed 

the courthouse. After more than an hour of continuous fighting, 

the vigilantes succeeded in driving the militia into the courthouse 

or the surrounding fields.

What followed can only be described as a massacre. During 

the pursuit, the paramilitaries—many of them armed with 

Winchester repeating rifles and mounted on horseback—shot 

down most of the fugitives and captured about forty others. 

That evening, the white guards executed their black prisoners 

by shooting them in the back of the head. A few of the victims 

survived and later testified against their captors. The exact 

number of militia casualties is unknown, but at least sixty were 

killed and another twenty-five wounded in what is reputedly the 

deadliest incident to have occurred during Reconstruction. In 

addition, three vigilantes died of their wounds, two apparently 

the result of friendly fire.

The Colfax Massacre was only the beginning. In the months 

to come, Fusionist leaders across the state would attempt to oust 

Republican officeholders by force or intimidation. As for Grant 

Parish, though it had been a Republican enclave during the 

elections of 1870 and 1872, it became a Democratic stronghold 

following the massacre and remained so for almost a century.

Lacking a firm directive from Washington, General Emory 

had decided not to intervene in the Colfax dispute, deeming 

it a local affair. A few days after the massacre, he sent a troop 

detachment to Colfax to arrest suspects, and the soldiers apprehended ninety men, only nine of whom stood trial in 1874 for 

violating the Ku Klux Act. The trials resulted in no convictions. 
66 

A few years later, the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States 

v. Cruikshank (1876) that the Ku Klux Act and the Fourteenth 

Amendment applied only to state governments, not private individuals, ensured that no one else would be tried in connection 

with the Colfax Massacre.

A similar standoff occurred in Arkansas following the 1872 

gubernatorial contest. After Stalwart candidate Elisha Baxter 

narrowly defeated his Liberal-Democratic opponent, Joseph 

Brooks, the latter disputed the election results. By 1874, the 

Republicans had abandoned Baxter because he refused to back 

a pet project of theirs—state aid for railroads—and they instead 

threw their support to Brooks. The result was the so-called BrooksBaxter War, in which each of the rival claimants led his own militia. 

On 15 April 1874, Brooks, backed by the local sheriff and a force 

of armed supporters, evicted Baxter from the Arkansas state house 

at Little Rock and took possession. By the next day, Baxter had 

assembled a force of several hundred men and prepared to retake 

the state house by force.

In the meantime, the War Department instructed Capt. 

Thomas E. Rose, the Army post commander at Little Rock, “to 

take no part in the political controversy in . . . Arkansas unless it 

should be necessary to prevent bloodshed or collision of armed 

bodies.” General Emory, whose command included Arkansas, 

ordered Rose to place his entire force—two companies of the 

16th U.S. Infantry—on standby but cautioned him to maintain a 

stance of “strict non-interference” pending further orders. On 17 

April, Rose stationed his troops between the contending forces, 

thus denying Baxter’s numerically superior militia the opportunity to recapture the state house. Tensions mounted over the next 

few days, culminating in a heated confrontation between Rose 

and one of Baxter’s supporters on the twenty-first. This led to a 

brief exchange of gunfire that resulted in several casualties. Rose 

thereupon ordered his men to clear the streets, and they soon 

dispersed the crowd. The next morning, Rose directed his men 

to build a barricade between the Baxter and Brooks camps to 

prevent further bloodshed.

Over the next few weeks, as President Grant and U.S. Attorney 

General George H. Williams met with representatives of the rival 

governors, numerous clashes between the forces of Baxter and 

Brooks erupted across Arkansas, resulting in about 200 killed on 

both sides. On 15 May, Williams issued his opinion that Baxter was 
67

the legal governor, followed by a presidential proclamation stating 

that, as the legitimate state government had requested federal aid 

in suppressing insurrectionary forces, Grant would provide the 

needed assistance, and he ordered all opponents of that government to disperse at once. Brooks and his supporters immediately 

vacated the state house, and Baxter returned in triumph on 19 

May. In restoring Baxter to the governor’s office, Grant not only 

ended the Brooks-Baxter War, but he also effectively terminated 

Reconstruction in Arkansas. 

Success emboldened white vigilantes across the South. They 

abandoned the clandestine tactics of the night riders and formed 

ad hoc militia units, or rifle clubs, that paraded in broad daylight 

to intimidate blacks and white Republicans. Dubbed the “White 

League” in Louisiana, the “White Line” in Mississippi, and the “Red 

Shirts” in South Carolina, these sworn enemies of Reconstruction 

had no qualms about using violence to depose Republican officials 

and return Democrats to political power.

In December 1874, White Liners seized control of Vicksburg, 

Mississippi, prompting Republican Governor Adelbert Ames 

to appeal to President Grant for assistance. Grant immediately 

complied, issuing a proclamation ordering the insurgents to 

disperse and sending federal troops there to restore order. He also 

directed his old protégé, General Sheridan, to “visit” the Department 

of the Gulf, which included Louisiana and Mississippi, and to 

assume command if necessary. The situation that greeted Sheridan 

on his arrival at New Orleans was tumultuous, to say the least. 

In September, Republican Governor William P. Kellogg had been 

toppled from power after a large force of White Leaguers defeated 

city police and state militia under Longstreet in what proved to 

be the bloodiest of New Orleans’ many street battles. A few days 

later, General Emory sent in federal troops to restore order and put 

Kellogg back in the governor’s office. After that, more than 1,000 

U.S. soldiers had occupied the Bayou State, including four troops 

of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Major Merrill. Despite the influx of 

bluecoats, the White Leaguers were more brazen than ever, Emory 

reported. In one parish they had even jailed an Army lieutenant 

and a U.S. marshal because the two men had arrested several of 

their members. Although Emory remained in nominal command, 

he did so under Sheridan’s direction.

On 4 January 1875, Sheridan faced his first test since returning 

to New Orleans. The legislature opened that day, so he instructed 
68 

Emory to send a large force into the city to keep the peace. Col. 

Régis de Trobriand commanded the company of the 13th U.S. 

Infantry posted in front of the state house. In response to a request 

from Governor Kellogg conveyed via Sheridan and Emory, 

Trobriand entered the chamber at the head of his troops, removed 

five Democratic representatives who lacked proper credentials, 

and departed. The rest of the Democrats stormed out of the hall in 

protest, leaving the Republicans free to make their own choices for 

the vacant seats and to elect a speaker from their ranks. 

The Louisiana state house 

intervention marked Sheridan’s 

final triumph on behalf of 

Reconstruction. Flushed with 

success, he assumed command 

of the Department of the 

Gulf. He also advised Grant 

to declare the White League 

ringleaders banditti and asked 

that Congress authorize their 

arrest and trial by military 

commission. But what Sheridan 

requested was far more than the 

Northern people were willing to 

support in 1875, and Grant was 

painfully aware of this. The days 

when martial law and military 

government in the South were 

deemed acceptable had passed. 

Although the Senate approved 

the Army’s intervention in New Orleans and recognized Kellogg 

as the “lawful governor,” it left Sheridan without the legal means 

to suppress the White League’s insurrection against the legitimate 

Republican government. In February 1876, Kellogg was impeached 

but reached a compromise with the Democrats by conceding all the 

disputed senate seats to them if they abandoned the impeachment 

effort. But this did not change the fact that the Kellogg regime was 

powerless to act without the presence of federal troops.

In Mississippi, White Liners seized power in Yazoo City on 1 

September 1875, following a meeting of black Republicans which 

ended in a gun battle with Democrats, resulting in one man killed 

and several others wounded. The local White Liners chose to use 

Colonel Trobriand, pictured as a brigadier general

(Library of Congress)
69

the disturbance as the pretext for an armed takeover of Yazoo City. 

Three days later, black Republicans held a barbecue outside Clinton, 

Mississippi, which attracted a large number of heavily armed white 

men. During a political speech, white onlookers began to heckle the 

black speaker, and then gunfire erupted. Several men were killed or 

wounded, and the audience soon scattered—the whites to summon 

reinforcements waiting nearby while the blacks tried to melt into 

the landscape.

Starting on the morning after the barbecue, squads of White 

Liners went on a murderous rampage in the countryside around 

Clinton, killing between thirty and fifty blacks and prompting an 

exodus of hundreds more to Jackson, the site of the nearest Army 

post. Word soon reached Governor Ames of the disturbances at 

Yazoo City and Clinton. On 8 September, he appealed to President 

Grant for federal assistance. Uncertain as to the course he should 

take, Grant was slow to respond, at one point complaining that 

“the annual autumnal outbreaks and calls for troops are getting to 

be nauseating to the American people.” But as a necessary prelude 

to sending in federal troops, Grant went so far as to draft a proclamation, which he left—undated and unsigned—in the hands 

of his recently appointed attorney general, Edwards Pierrepont, 

along with instructions to send a reply to Ames. No friend of 

Reconstruction, Pierrepont informed the governor that he must 

“take all lawful means and all needed measures to preserve the 

peace by the forces in your own State.” Pierrepont’s missive left 

Ames no choice but to form a militia composed of blacks if he 

hoped to suppress the White Liners.

The terrorist campaign against black Republicans was only 

part of the so-called Mississippi Plan hatched by James Z. George, 

the head of the state Democratic Party, and L. Q. C. Lamar, the first 

Democratic congressman from Mississippi since the war. Their plan 

consisted of toppling the Magnolia State’s Republican government 

by using conventional, nonviolent means as well as the White Line’s 

terrorist tactics. In the days leading up to and including Election Day, 

2 November 1875, Mississippi Democrats employed a combination 

of violence, intimidation, bribery, and fraud to secure favorable 

results at the polls. A few months later, the heavily Democratic state 

legislature voted to impeach Ames and several other Republican 

officials. As a native New Englander, a former Union general, and 

the son-in-law of the notorious Radical politician Benjamin F. 

Butler, the governor could count on the support of blacks but few 
70 

other Mississippians. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Ames 

resigned the governorship on 28 March 1876, after the legislature 

agreed to drop the impeachment charges if he voluntarily stepped 

down. Mississippi now rested firmly in the hands of the Democrats.

In South Carolina, the “Hamburg Massacre” ranked as the 

most notorious of the periodic clashes between black militia and 

white rifle clubs, or “Red Shirts.” The disturbance stemmed from a 

legal dispute between two white men and a local militia company 

from the predominantly black town of Hamburg. The white 

complainants’ lawyer was Matthew C. Butler, a former Confederate 

general and the leader of the area Red Shirts. On 8 July 1876, several 

hundred Red Shirts gathered in the town center with Butler at their 

head, demanding that the militia members surrender their weapons 

to him. The militia refused and withdrew into a large brick warehouse. The Red Shirts opened fire, but seeing that their bullets had 

little effect, they obtained a small cannon and blew a hole in one wall 

of the building. As the Red Shirts stormed the warehouse, some of 

the militia fled, but most of them remained inside and surrendered. 

Seeing that one of their comrades was dead, the Red Shirts executed 

six blacks in reprisal. They next ordered the rest of the militia to 

break for the woods and opened fire on them.

A subsequent investigation of the Hamburg Massacre resulted 

in numerous indictments, but no one stood trial for the murders. 

Soon afterward, Republican Governor Daniel H. Chamberlain 

appealed to President Grant for assistance in suppressing the Red 

Shirts. Though Grant pledged to provide “every aid for which I 

can find law or constitutional power,” the president once more 

expressed his frustration with Southern Republicans. A “government that cannot give protection to the life, property, and all the 

guaranteed civil rights in this country,” he lectured Chamberlain, 

“is insofar a failure.”

By October 1876, the Democrats in South Carolina had 

organized 13,000 men into sixty-eight rifle clubs to intimidate the 

black militia and support the gubernatorial candidacy of Wade 

Hampton, a former Confederate general and the leading Democrat 

in the Palmetto State. Alarmed by the Red Shirts’ show of strength, 

Chamberlain renewed his appeals to Grant for federal aid, and 

this time, the president did not disappoint him. On 17 October, 

he issued a proclamation branding the rifle clubs as “combinations 

too powerful to be controlled by the ordinary course of justice,” 

and ordered them to disband within three days. Grant also sent 
71

reinforcements to augment the 683 federal troops already in South 

Carolina. Hampton shrewdly advised fellow Democrats to welcome 

the U.S. soldiers as “the best friends we have in the North. Treat 

them kindly.” When the bluecoats arrived at Columbia, the state 

capital, on 4 November, a crowd of whites was waiting at the railway 

station to welcome them. At first the soldiers appeared surprised by 

the unexpected cheers, but as the acclamation continued, surprise 

turned to embarrassment.

Hampton’s confidence in the face of what was the last federal 

troop intervention in the Palmetto State proved well-founded. In 

the election of 1876, disputed vote totals in South Carolina, Florida, 

and Louisiana—the last three Republican bastions in the South—

left rival claimants in both the presidential and gubernatorial races. 

To punch his ticket to the White House, Republican candidate 

Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to recognize the Democratic governments in the three contested states in exchange for their electoral 

votes, giving him a one-vote majority. Contrary to legend, President 

Hayes did not remove all federal soldiers from the South at once, 

but he did refuse to use them to prop up faltering Republican 

regimes. This political bargain became known as the Compromise 

of 1876, and it marked the end of Reconstruction in the South. The 

eleven former Confederate states were thus “redeemed”—redemption constituting the restoration of white Southern Democrats to 

political dominance. As a result, blacks in the South would have to 

wait nearly a century before they could exercise their full civil and 

political rights.

Analysis

The Reconstruction era was a unique period in American 

history. For a dozen years, the Southern states remained under 

military occupation, and for a portion of that time, they were 

ruled by military government. In addition, the U.S. Army assumed 

peacekeeping and law enforcement roles in the postwar South that 

would otherwise have been the responsibility of state and local 

civil authorities. Among its many duties as the main instrument 

of the federal government’s Reconstruction policy, the Army 

guarded polling places, patrolled city streets and country roads, 

and provided posses for U.S. marshals and local sheriffs making 

arrests. The last function in particular raised the ire of congressional Democrats and led to the passage of the Posse Comitatus 
72 

Act in June 1878, prohibiting any authority other than the president from summoning federal troops to enforce the law. In effect, 

military commanders could no longer act on their own responsibility but had to await orders from Washington.

Army officers were, by and large, conservative men and therefore 

reluctant agents of civil, social, and political change in the postwar 

South. Most of them would have agreed with General Sherman that 

“no matter what change we may desire in the feelings and thoughts 

of the people [in the] South, we cannot accomplish it by force.” The 

failure of Reconstruction reinforced the officers’ perception of the 

pitfalls of using military force to impose fundamental change—no 

matter how noble the intent—on a hostile populace. 

While their years of occupation duty in the South had taught 

Army officers some valuable lessons, they neglected to formulate a 

doctrine from the experience, no doubt in the belief that it was an 

anomalous situation unlikely to occur again. Some officers proved 

adept at negotiating the political minefield of Reconstruction duty, 

but they found it an unpleasant experience that confirmed their 

traditional aversion to politics. Recalling his transfer to the western 

frontier after several years as a Freedmen’s Bureau director in North 

Carolina, then-Col. Nelson A. Miles had found it “a pleasure to be 

relieved of the anxieties and responsibilities of civil affairs, to hear 

nothing of the controversies incident to race prejudice, and to be 

once more engaged in strictly military duties.” Most officers shared 

Miles’ desire to forget the ordeal of Reconstruction along with the 

lessons they had learned from it.

Although the circumstances changed over time, the Army’s 

peacekeeping role remained more or less constant throughout 

Reconstruction. Almost from the start, the Army in the South lacked 

the force to fill that role adequately. By the 1870s, peacekeeping 

invariably meant protecting blacks and white Republicans from the 

night riders and the rifle clubs. While the results were uneven at 

best, the Army was all that stood between the freedpeople and the 

Democratic terrorist organizations. The withdrawal of federal troops 

in 1877 thus ensured the triumph of white supremacy in the South. 

Nevertheless, the use of the U.S. Army to enforce the Reconstruction 

Acts had established a precedent that would resonate eight decades 

later, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower would deploy units 

of the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the federally mandated 

desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. 
73

The Author

Mark L. Bradley is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of 

Military History in Washington, D.C. He received his bachelor’s 

degree in history from North Carolina State University, and his 

master’s and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill. His publications include Last Stand in the 

Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville, This Astounding Close: The Road 

to Bennett Place, and Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians 

in Reconstruction North Carolina. He is currently writing the Army’s 

official history of logistical support in the Vietnam War.

75

Further Readings

Ash, Stephen V. A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook 

the Nation One Year After the Civil War. New York: Hill and 

Wang, 2013. 

Bradley, Mark L. Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in 

Reconstruction North Carolina. Lexington: University Press of 

Kentucky, 2009.

Coakley, Robert W. The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic 

Disorders, 1789–1878. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, 1988.

Dawson, Joseph G., III. Army Generals and Reconstruction: Louisiana, 

1862–1877. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. 

Dobak, William A. Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 

1862–1867. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History, 2011.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. New 

York: HarperCollins,1988.

Hogue, James K. Uncivil War: Five New Orleans Street Battles 

and the Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: 

Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

Lemann, Nicholas. Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. 

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 

Richter, William L. The Army in Texas During Reconstruction. 

College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987.

Sefton, James E. The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865–

1877. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

Zuczek, Richard. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South 

Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

For more information on the U.S. Army in the Civil War, please 

read other titles in the U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War 

series published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History 

(www.history.army.mil).
PIN : 104654–000

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