The 1866 Gallatin County Race Riot happened a year after the close of the American Civil War in Gallatin County, Kentucky.
According to Kentucky's premier historians, Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter, "A band of five hundred whites in Gallatin County... forced hundreds of blacks to flee across the Ohio River."
The 1866 race riot saw the band of 500 Gallatin County whites in Warsaw "whipping Blacks, stealing their property, and ordering them to leave the area."
Freedmen's Bureau agent J.J. Landrum, powerless to stop the violence, reported, "Some 200 negroes I'm informed crossed the Ohio above this place today others are preparing to leave for fear of... other abuses." In a second letter describing the situation in Warsaw, J.J Landrum concluded that only by using Union soldiers--"bluecoats"—would the outrages end.