2/8: Sheridan’s Secret Mission: How the South Won the War After the Civil War by Robert Cwiklik (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Sheridans-Secret-Mission-South-After/dp/0062950649/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
In late 1874, nearly ten years after the Civil War, former slaves, or freedmen, found themselves under siege in the South by violent paramilitary groups like the White League, intent on erasing their newly won voting rights and other postwar gains and consigning them to a condition little better than slavery. President Ulysses S. Grant, vowing to enforce, “with rigor,” laws protecting the rights of former slaves, asked General Philip H. Sheridan to visit New Orleans and other Southern trouble spots to investigate the freedmen’s plight, all while pretending to be on vacation. Sheridan’s Secret Mission recounts the feisty Union war hero’s Southern sojourn amid tragic episodes of racial terror that ultimately fueled the overthrow of Reconstruction-era protections for black rights.
Sheridan made a splash on his arrival in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve, accompanied by family and friends and proclaiming they were sightseers bound for Cuba. But a few days later, through trickery and force, Democrats seized control of the nearby state House of Representatives, apparently assisted by White League operatives, although the state’s majority black electorate had arguably put Republicans, the party of Lincoln and the freeing of the slaves, in control of the legislature.
Federal soldiers stationed nearby ushered several Democrats out of the House chamber, and Sheridan publicly denounced the “spirit of defiance to all lawful authority” in Louisiana. He threatened to round up White League leaders to face trial before military tribunals. In years past, Northerners might have rallied to support the Union hero. But the public was weary of war issues. Many Northern newspapers condemned Sheridan’s actions and deplored the appearance of federal bayonets in a sovereign state legislature. Some called for Grant’s impeachment.
The controversial clash in the Louisiana legislature lies at the heart of this revelatory new narrative history. Sheridan’s Secret Mission illuminates the bitter career of racial oppression in the United States and resonates powerfully with our contemporary “post-racial” condition.
1872 NEW ORLEANS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batcher with Bob Swicklic. His new book is Sheridan's secret mission, how the South won the war after the Civil War. |
| 0:06.5 | Phil Sheridan was one of the supreme commanders of the Civil War, cavalry officer, very brave, hot-headed, spectacular in the saddle, and that is the |
| 0:18.6 | nature of where we're headed. |
| 0:20.4 | The predicate for Sheridan's entry into this, well he is the commander of the Gulf at one point |
| 0:25.2 | then he's the commander of Louisiana and all of this part of the |
| 0:30.7 | liberated Confederacy, but his headquarters are in Chicago. |
| 0:35.0 | What happens in July of 1866 follows on what Bob has been talking about, |
| 0:40.0 | how upsetting it was to the defeated Confederates that the African American |
| 0:46.9 | males who are no longer slaves and can no longer be enslaved are going to have a vote same as anyone else in the Confederacy. |
| 0:56.5 | We come to July 30, 1866 in New Orleans and guns are out and open fire. What is the what is the contest Bob why do why do the |
| 1:07.4 | townspeople open fire on the militia that's chiefly a black militia? Well what happens is they haven't |
| 1:19.1 | at that moment the vote for black people in the South hadn't occurred yet and this is but this is |
| 1:26.8 | one of the principal battles along the road to that outcome. |
| 1:45.0 | As we discussed, Lincoln approached the idea and he was soon swept from the stage and Andrew Johnson became president. |
| 1:50.2 | And Andrew Johnson, and just as the war was ending and southerners, southern troops started to go home. |
| 1:54.8 | Andrew Johnson was in the White House. |
| 1:57.6 | And he was not of the opinion that black people should have the vote. |
| 2:03.8 | And in fact, he shared, he was a southerner and he's from Tennessee and he shared |
| 2:10.7 | many of the prejudice, the strong prejudices of white southerners at that point. |
| 2:17.8 | And not only that, but he wanted to, he thought that his political future was was dependent on more getting more of the |
| 2:26.2 | conservative vote in the nation so he was opposed to black suffrage and there was very little idea in the South at that moment of initially |
| 2:39.6 | in 1865 of awarding voting rights to black people. |
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