roughly two weeks after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, hundreds of armed whites led by former Confederate Gen. Matthew C. Butler attacked the largely African American town of Hamburg, South Carolina. The precipitating cause was a quarrel between two local white farmers and the black militia of Hamburg. When the militia refused Butler’s demand to disarm, the white mob, armed with a cannon, murdered the sheriff and besieged the armory. They hunted down the militia and summarily executed five freedmen in the “Dead Ring” near the town’s railroad trestle.
