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Charles Griffin was a career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater.
After the war, he commanded the Department of Texas during Reconstruction. He proved to be an ardent supporter of the Congressional policies of the Radical Republicans and of freedmen's rights, and controversially disqualified a number of antebellum state officeholders in Texas, replacing them with loyal Unionists.Photo credit: Mathew Brady or Levin Corbin Handy