West Point graduate Charles Griffin had risen from captain to major general during the Civil War and in 1865 had taken up the office of assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau in Texas under General Philip Sheridan. His strict efforts to exclude former Confederates from political and judicial offices had stoked controversy but when Sheridan left command of the Fifth District, Griffin was named as his replacement. Before he could travel to New Orleans to take up that post, he fell ill in the Yellow Fever epidemic ravaging Texas and died in Galveston. He was forty-one years old. (By John Osborne)