We have with us today, Robert Swicklick. He is the former editor at the Wall Street Journal. He is a prolific author, including the book, popular book called House Rules, he has a new book out called

Sheridan's Secret Mission, How the South won the war after the Civil War.

That is our topic today. Welcome, Mr. Swicklick.

Thank you.

Phil Sheridan, what in the heck is he doing in New Orleans in 1874?

That's a great... On New Year's Eve, we get... That's how we begin.

He is there to pretend that he's on vacation to what he referred to when interviewed by a reporter,

the Land of Flowers, which I don't know if I specified in the book.

He meant Florida.

He was telling them he was on his way to Florida with his family.

Of course, that was a lie.

And he was actually there because he was a very close associate of Ulysses S. Grant, president at the time,

and one of the, I guess, a few remaining people in positions of authority that Grant really trusted.

And Grant was very concerned with the plight of

formerly enslaved African Americans in the South at that moment. We're talking

December 1874. There had been a number of episodes in recent in the

preceding months of violence against, I guess the term used for the

former slaves at that moment was Friedman. And they were awarded the right to vote in the years

immediately following the Civil War, and

almost immediately there was violent white resistance to that, the exercise of the franchise

on their part.

And it waxed and waned a bit, but at this moment it was heating up quite a bit, the sort of violent

...