Sheridan’s Secret Mission

An impeccably researched, character-driven narrative history recounting the fascinating late-Reconstruction Era mission of General Philip Sheridan, a Union hero dispatched to the South 10 years after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly freed black men, who were under siege by violent paramilitary groups like the White league intent on erasing their postwar gains.

On New Year’s Eve 1874, Sheridan made a splash on his arrival in New Orleans. Accompanied by family and friends, he claimed to be on vacation and bound for Cuba. In reality, he was in the Crescent City on behalf of President Ulysses S. Grant, who had asked him to undertake a vital mission: to investigate the activities of violent vigilante groups menacing the rights of former slaves, or freedmen.

Grant had been alarmed as Southern white paramilitaries staged a flurry of attacks against freedmen in recent months to neutralize their political clout. The citizenship and voting rights of former slaves were among the most consequential fruits of the Union's Civil War victory. Republicans were now reckoning with the possibility that outlaw gangs like the White League, made up mostly of former Confederate soldiers and winked at by Democratic officials, could turn back the clock and consign freedmen to an existence little better than slavery. A few days after Sheridan's arrival in New Orleans, Democrats, apparently assisted by White League operatives, seized control of the state House of Representatives through trickery and violence. After federal soldiers stationed nearby ushered several Democratic claimants to office out of the House chamber, at the request of the Republican governor, Sheridan publicly denounced the “spirit of defiance to all lawful authority” in Louisiana and threatened to round up White League leaders to face trial before military tribunals. Many Northern newspapers condemned Sheridan's actions and those of the federal troops; some called for Grant's impeachment.

This dramatic clash lies at the heart of Robert Cwiklik’s revelatory new history, which spans a series of tragic episodes of racial terror in the post-Civil War South that contributed to the overthrow of Reconstruction Era protections for black rights. Deeply researched and replete with startling details, the book sheds an essential light on the history of racial oppression in America and resonates powerfully with our contemporary ""post-racial"" condition.