User:Linda Bryan/sandbox

Civil War
As the Civil War was becoming more and more likely, Rousseau decided in favor of maintaining state government in Kentucky and helped keep it from seceding from the Union. He resigned from his seat in the senate in June 1861 and applied for a commission to raise volunteers. Against the opposition of many prominent figures in Kentucky, he succeeded in raising two regiments composed entirely of Kentuckians at Camp Joe Holt, across the Ohio River from Louisville in Jeffersonville, Indiana. They were known as the Louisville Legion. With the help of a battalion of the Louisville Home Guard, the regiments saved Louisville from being captured by Confederate troops. He was appointed colonel of the 5th Kentucky Volunteer Regiment in September 1861 and was later promoted to brigadier general of Volunteers attached to the army of General Ormsby M. Mitchel. Later, Rousseau was once again promoted to major general of Volunteers. He served valiantly at the Battles of Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, during the Tullahoma Campaign and movements around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Although from November 1863 until his resignation in November 1865, Rousseau had command of Nashville, Tennessee, he had also, on Sherman's orders, carried out a very successful raid on the Montgomery and West Point Railroad in July 1864.

Rousseau was a major subject of an 1864 Senate investigation into the treatment of "colored refugees" (freedmen) including those in Nashville's "contraband" camp, which was found to have been a "decidedly bad" place. The report, submitted to the Senate Feb. 25, 1865 by Sec. of War Edward M. Stanton, details a number of officers who displayed intransigent unwillingness to grant the African Americans dignity, compassion, or even the food and wage allocations for their subsistence. They resisted the spirit of the orders to bring blacks into the military, did not pay the refugees the stipulated wages for work done to create and maintain the camp, thwarted the fostering of black patriotism, and allowed slaveholders to claim refugees for return to their place of origin, where they were likely whipped and re-enslaved or murdered. The camp had been created in response to an order by Gen. L. Thomas Feb. 4, 1864 and the inquiry was ordered by the Senate in the summer of 1864. Temporary shelters--old, retired tents--had never been replaced by better housing and there was no shade. Thomas Hood and S.W. Bostwick were the special investigators who wrote the final report. Accounting records were unhelpful to the investigation and embezzlement is implied in the wording of the final report. The report also implies that the investigators' attempt to investigate the camp in the summer of 1864 was thwarted by Rousseau.

"In conclusion, on this subject, we feel warranted in saying, the entire course pursued by General Rousseau as commander of the district of Nashville has done great injustice to the policy of the government in regard to colored refugees; great injustice to colored refugees themselves, and certainly great in justice to himself as an officer of merit, in certain departments of the military service; that not only has his individual official action been absolutely bad or seriously questionable in regard to colored refugees, but his example, we believe, is exercising a bad influence over subordinate military officers, of like pro- slavery tendencies, who are scattered all over Kentucky and Tennessee, and clothed with more or less military authority, to whom colored refugees must apply for protection and safe conduct to the camps provided for them. That this protection was not afforded them was very satisfactorily shown to us; and when the conduct of these subordinate officers was inquired into, the purpose and effect of the inquiry (as shown by the letter of Colonel Massey, of August 14, hereinbefore copied) was defeated by the action of General Rousseau. We, therefore, but express the clear convictions of our own minds when we say, that while General Rousseau may be a very brave and valuable officer in the field, he is wholly unfit for his present command, or for any command where the care and safety of colored refugees can, by possibility, become the subject of his official action." [italics not original to the document]. The report goes on to explain why this scandal has implications for the national policy regarding the blacks; although the military is the most efficient agency to work with refugee blacks, it is important to prevent unsuitable military personnel from having policy and administrative powers. The report urges that a "bureau" be created with a cooperative military and civilian leadership.