The following educational document corresponds with Unit Four: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.

Context
After a long and bitter war, white southerners resented the presence of the U.S. military in the region, but they expressed a special antagonism towards the presence of black troops. In a letter to President Andrew Johnson in 1865, the leading South Carolina planter and former Confederate General Wade Hampton complained of the "pouring into our country...of barbarians, your negro troops," and wrote that he considered the deployment of blacks "a direct and premeditated insult to the Southern people." The state's first postwar Governor, Benjamin F. Perry (appointed to his post by Johnson), received dozens of petitions like the one below, from outraged white citizens demanding the removal of black troops. Perry responded positively to this sentiment, beseeching federal military authorities to redeploy blacks away from the interior of the state and toward the coast, and giving his assent to the formation of all-white 'militias' that would guard against black 'depredations.'

Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops

We the undersigned citizens of Georgetown District appeal to your Excellency to use the most prompt and earnest effort with the Federal Authorities to relieve us from the insecurity of life and property consequent upon the garrisoning of this place by colored troops. The effect upon the black population (here largely in the ascendant) is of such a character as to paralyze every effort at industry and to cause those who live isolated on the plantations to tremble for their lives. Lt. Col. Willard the Commandant has been polite and courteous and there have fortunately been but few instances of insolence on the part of the colored soldiers - but the negroes on the plantations universally refuse to work and the Col. while admitting the right of planters to their labour under the contracts approved during the past summer is himself unable to enforce the right. Indeed it is our belief that any effort to do so would lead to open mutiny on the part of his troops. An entire gang from one of the plantations came into town yesterday and on being ordered by the Colonel to disperse go back to their homes and work or they would be put in jail said with one voice that they would go to jail and it resulted in their returning to the plantation declaring that they would not work and encouraged in that determination by every Negro soldier present. On another place the Executor of the Estate...was run off and threatened with death by a mob of 30 or 40 negroes armed with rails sticks etc. On another a delegation waited upon the Overseer commanded and obtained the keys.