During Reconstruction, Mabry returned to his home in Jefferson, Texas, where he was the leader of a KKK-style terror organization called the Knights of the Rising Sun.

While on a scouting mission to Springfield, Missouri, Mabry and another Confederate captain were surrounded by a group of 7 Union soldiers and told to surrender.

Fearing execution as a spy, Mabry and the other officer fought off the soldiers with bowie knives and revolvers, killing 7 and wounding others, and managed to escape.

"[4] Mabry's brigade joined General Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry corps and took part in numerous actions across Mississippi, capturing a Union gunboat, the USS Petrel, in April, and fighting at the Battle of Tupelo in July.

Forrest wrote that he "desire[d] to express his entire satisfaction with the manner in which Colonel Mabry has discharged the duties of his position while under his command.

[3] During this period, East Texas was a major center of opposition to Reconstruction, and there were numerous outbreaks of racial violence against the newly emancipated Black population.

[9] Mabry became a leader of the Knights of the Rising Sun, a local white supremacist terror organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan.

[1] Like many other perpetrators of racial violence in the Reconstruction era, Mabry suffered no consequences for his actions, and his 1884 obituary only remembered him as a "distinguished soldier, citizen, and jurist.

Mabry and his wife opened a hotel in Jefferson, Texas, known as the Haywood House, and the historic structure has been preserved and renovated.

[15] In 1879 Mabry moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and died of sepsis on March 21, 1884, after being wounded in the foot by an accidental firearm discharge.

The marker glorified his wartime service, making no mention of his involvement with white supremacist organizations or the post-war lynchings.