Sherman's Atlanta campaign, and reinforced General Nathaniel Banks at the Red Cedar retreat. He was later commissioned as judge of the Department of the Gulf Provost Court. In early 1865, Warmoth resigned from the military to resume a legal practice. Political career Warmoth went to New Orleans, which was still occupied by Union Army troops. He specialized in the kind of law practice for which his military experience had qualified him: cotton claims and courts-martial decisions. At the same time, he became an active Republican, gaining support among freedmen. In November 1865, Warmoth ran for territorial delegate as a Republican in an unauthorized election, in which black Louisianians cast over 19,000 votes, nearly as many as were won among whites by the victorious Democratic candidate for governor. Louisiana restricted the suffrage to white males, so the blacks' votes were not counted. Republicans hoped to show that full suffrage could result in competitive elections. By electing a territorial delegate, they were making the statement that no legal state of Louisiana existed while it was occupied by the Union Army, and Congress should remand it to the status of a territory. Congress did not do so. Because of continuing violence in the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 and the New Orleans Massacre of 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act to create five military districts to oversee changes in the former Confederate states. It also passed the Fourteenth Amendment to extend full citizenship to freedmen. Louisiana and Texas were put under the Fifth Military District, and the US Army was assigned to oversee the process by which a new constitutional convention could be called, with delegates to be voted for by both blacks and whites alike. When the convention had finished its work, a ratification election was called and the Republican Party chose a state ticket. Warmoth was selected as the nominee for governor over Major Francis E. Dumas. He faced a Democrat and Louisiana Supreme Court Justice James G. Taliaferro, a planter and wartime Unionist backed by the True Radical faction, which was composed mostly of black Republicans. Taliaferro found some support from Democrats. Governor Warmoth carried the state by some 26,000 votes, and the Reconstruction constitution was ratified. Warmoth was sworn into office on July 13, 1868. Elected at 26, he was one of the youngest governors in United States history. (Stevens T. Mason, the first governor of Michigan,