Postbellum attacks were less a new development than they were an extension of wartime reprisal violence. During the war, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation, white southerners had used shocking amounts of force to try to stem the tide of Black people escaping slavery; enslavers had ramped up the slave patrol systems and organized militias to halt Black people’s flight to freedom. They also attacked refugee camps, dragged self-emancipated people back to slavery, or massacred them.14
