This month the Ku Klux Klan begins taking shape in the Pulaski, Tennessee law office of Thomas M. Jones. The six men who establish the KKK maintain long-held beliefs, as do most white Southerners, in white supremacy and black servitude. Union efforts to bring equality to freedmen further fuel their anger. From this mix of…
Six months following the war, guerrilla activity and murders of freedmen are common in the South. Less common in the sight of white southerners, and much resented, are “colored troops.” Today a U.S. Colored Troops officer, Lieutenant J. M. Warren of Company D, 42nd Colored Troops, stationed in Decatur, Alabama, is ordered to take a…
This month reality begins setting in among the freedmen of the Sea Islands along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. The land they were promised, the land upon which they are now trying to make a living and support their families, is imperiled. In January Union General William T. Sherman signed an order turning…