Using the authority of the Military Reconstruction Act almost as soon as he had been appointed, Major-General Philip Sheridan, the military governor of the Fifth Military District, had acted swiftly to remove from office Louisiana officials who he felt were obstructing reconstruction. On this day, Sheridan included sitting Louisiana governor J. Madison Wells in that number, eventually replacing him with Benjamin Flanders, a Dartmouth graduate, former Louisiana congressman, and Radical Republican. Wells refused Sheridan's order for days, locking himself in his office, but was removed on threat of violence on June 7, 1867. (By John Osborne)
Joseph G. Dawson III, Army Generals and Reconstruction: Louisiana 1862-1877 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 53-54.
