July 16, 1865---"Forty Rounds" of Reconstruction

JULY 16, 1865:                   

Orders are issued to muster out every man and to dissolve The Army of The Tennessee.

 

Despite the dissolution of the great wartime Armies, the fact is that even as the mustering out progressed, new, smaller Armies were being created by the military bureaucracy. Many of the Civil War’s United States Colored Troops were sent to the frontier to fight Indians --- they became the Buffalo Soldiers of legend.

Other troops were sent South. Even as Johnson’s “Restoration” progressed, the President refused to fully trust the Confederates he had allowed to return to power. Hundreds of Southern towns and cities were garrisoned and Martial Law remained in effect even in States supposedly “reconstructed.” This allowed the army to deal summarily with troublemakers and permitted the enforcement of Reconstruction edicts and Freedmen’s Bureau legislation without the interference of the State Courts.

In many areas, the Federal Army found itself fighting insurgents and underground groups such as the Ku Klux Klan for many years and with such consistency that some scholars argue that the Civil War had not ended but merely become the insurgent rebellion that Lincoln and Lee both feared. Indeed, as late as 1871, the Congress was still debating when to declare the Civil War at an end.

Graphical and documentary information on the “Second Civil War” can be found here.