Paine's "Reign of Terror" in the Jackson Purchase of Kentucky was well documented in Northern newspaper reports when he was being investigated by the US Army for war crimes. Gen. Paine would turn over captured Confederates to Gregory's Union guerrilla home guards so they could execute them with Gen. Paine and the regular US military washing their hands of it. Gen. Paine and some of his staff, associates, and other local Union sympathizers were engaged in extorting money from the citizens of the area and carrying on contraband trade of agricultural products, especially cotton and tobacco. Gen. Paine had previously carried out much of the same tactics when he had been in charge of US forces around Gallatin, Tennessee.
Greg Miller
Historian of the Jackson Purchase of Kentucky