An impeccably researched,character-driven narrative history recounting the fascinating late-Reconstruction Era mission of General Philip Sheridana Union hero dispatched to the South 10 years after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly freed black menwho were under siege by violent paramilitary groups like the White league intent on erasing their postwar gains. On New Year’s Eve 1874Sheridan made a splash on his arrival in New Orleans. Accompanied by family and friendshe claimed to be on vacation and bound for Cuba. In realityhe was in the Crescent City on behalf of President Ulysses S. Grantwho had asked him to undertake a vital mission: to investigate the activities of violent vigilante groups menacing the rights of former slavesor 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 Leaguemade up mostly of former Confederate soldiers and winked at by Democratic officialscould turn back the clock and consign freedmen to an existence little better than slavery. A few days after Sheridan’s arrival in New OrleansDemocratsapparently assisted by White League operativesseized 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 chamberat the request of the Republican governorSheridan publicly denounced the \