During the war, Brownsville's courthouse square became a battleground of repeated raids that struck residents and businesses. On July 25, 1862, Confederate raiders arrested two cotton brokers and four other Brownsville residents, then forced citizens to help cut open cotton bales before burning 300 of them. On August 29, 1863, fifty guerrillas, including ten said to be Federal deserters, entered the square, threatened to burn stores unless merchants opened them, seized boots, dry goods, and clothing, and then offered Confederate money in payment. A month later, another raid under George Allen was denounced in a Memphis newspaper as the work of guerrillas who cared little for the Confederacy and sought only to plunder the weak and helpless across West Tennessee. In March 1864, Union Col. Fielding Hurst led his men into Brownsville and burned three establishments belonging to Union men. Local plantation owner and attorney Edward J. Read protested to Military Governor Andrew Johnson, asking whether such actions were proper for a Federal officer and warning that unless a different policy were pursued, the war would last 30 years. Sarah Madison Taylor, age 19, wrote in her diary after Hurst's March 14, 1864, raid that his command was destroying and stealing everything and that fires burned much of Brownsville, with the property destroyed belonging to Union men.