On this day 146 years ago, according to the Pulaski ‘Citizen,’ a company of Union soldiers under the command of General Don Carlos Buell arrived in Lawrenceburg.

Although the article doesn’t specify why the company was dispatched to Lawrenceburg, it is possible that they were sent in preparation for the presidential election in November. Buell was in command of the Federal troops stationed in Maury and surrounding counties during Reconstruction. The already-tense election season (which would determine if Andrew Johnson or Union General Ulysses S. Grant would become president) was made more volatile by the activities of vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan. One of the Klan’s favorite means of suppressing the rights of former slaves was intimidating them away from the polls during elections.

The deployment of Federal troops to Lawrenceburg may have been a means to ensure that vigilantes didn’t attempt to bully freed blacks away from the polls. However, as many contemporaries argued, a company of Federal soldiers guarding the polls also served as a means of intimidating former Confederate voters from voting against Grant.

An article from a Clarksville paper said that a company of Buell’s Federal soldiers “was stationed in about 40 feet from the polls with fixed bayonets” during the presidential election in Columbia. It also noted that, while Grant and other Republicans won large majorities in Columbia, there were also “42 more votes polled than were registered” in Columbia.