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102-487: As with the term carpetbagger , the word has a long history of use as a slur in Southern partisan debates. The post- Civil War opponents of the scalawags claimed they were disloyal to traditional values and white supremacy . Scalawags were particularly hated by 1860s–1870s Southern Democrats, who called Scalawags traitors to their region , which was long known for its widespread chattel slavery of Black people. Before

204-620: A mutual organization , such as a building society , in order to force it to demutualize , that is, to convert into a joint stock company , seeking personal financial gain by that means. The Republican Party in the South comprised three groups after the Civil War, and white Democratic Southerners referred to two in derogatory terms. Scalawags were white Southerners who supported the Republican party, "carpetbaggers" were recent arrivals in

306-457: A Democrat, stated in 1875: If any two hundred Southern men backed by a Federal administration should go to Indianapolis, turn out the Indiana people, take possession of all the seats of power, honor, and profit, denounce the people at large as assassins and barbarians, introduce corruption in all the branches of the public administration, make government a curse instead of a blessing, league with

408-566: A Republican, but he switched to the Democratic Party at the end of his time as sheriff. Democrats held most of the economic power and cooperating with them could make his future. In 1878, Furbush was elected again to the Arkansas House. His election is notable because he was elected as a black Democrat during a campaign season notorious for white intimidation of black and Republican voters in black-majority eastern Arkansas. He

510-509: A U.S. Senator (1871–1877), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African American senator. Senator Alcorn urged the removal of the political disabilities of white southerners, rejected Radical Republican proposals to enforce social equality by federal legislation, denounced the federal cotton tax as robbery, and defended separate schools for both races in Mississippi. Although a former enslaver, Alcorn characterized slavery as cancer upon

612-472: A black minister from New Haven, Connecticut, served as a delegate to South Carolina's 1868 Constitutional Convention. He made eloquent speeches advocating that the plantations be broken up and distributed among the freedmen. They wanted their own land to farm and believed they had already paid for land by their years of uncompensated labor and the trials of slavery. Henry C. Warmoth was the Republican governor of Louisiana from 1868 to 1874. As governor, Warmoth

714-405: A black-majority population. Following the end of his 1873 legislative term, Furbush was appointed as county sheriff by Republican Governor Elisha Baxter . Furbush twice won re-election as sheriff, serving from 1873 to 1878. During his term, he adopted a policy of "fusion", a post-Reconstruction power-sharing compromise between Populist Democrats and Republicans. Furbush originally was elected as

816-524: A decision by running for governor. The Radicals and most African Americans supported Ames, while Alcorn won the votes of conservative whites and most of the scalawags. Ames won by a vote of 69,870 to 50,490, and Alcorn retired from state politics. Newton Knight has gained increased attention since the 2016 release of the feature film Free State of Jones . The mountain districts of Appalachia were often Republican enclaves. People there enslaved few people, and they had poor transportation, deep poverty, and

918-769: A factor in Southern politics. Eventually, many scalawags joined the Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted as Republicans and formed the "tan" half of the "Black and Tan" Republican party . It was a minority element in the GOP in every Southern state after 1877. Most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the Southern United States were edited by scalawags—only 20 percent were edited by carpetbaggers. White business owners generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage. In Alabama, Wiggins says scalawags dominated

1020-571: A free labor system to the region." Carpetbaggers tended to be well educated and middle class in origin. Some had been lawyers, businessmen, and newspaper editors. The majority (including 52 of the 60 who served in Congress during Reconstruction) were veterans of the Union Army. Leading "black carpetbaggers" believed that the interests of capital and labor were identical and that the freedmen were entitled to little more than an "honest chance in

1122-409: A kind of school for to graduate Rascals. Yes if you will give them a few Dollars they will liern you for an accomplished Rascal. This is in reference to the taxes that are rung from the labouring class of people. Without a speedy reformation I will have to resign my post." Albion W. Tourgée , formerly of Ohio and a friend of President James A. Garfield , moved to North Carolina, where he practiced as

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1224-693: A law that prohibited anyone from voting in the election of delegates to state constitutional conventions or in the subsequent ratification who was prohibited from holding office under Section 3 of the pending Fourteenth Amendment : Those exclusions were less inclusive than the requirements of the Ironclad Oath. The exclusions allowed the Republican coalitions to carry the elections in every southern state except Virginia. The Republican-dominated legislatures wrote and enacted new state constitutions that applied to all state officials and could not be repealed by an ordinary legislature vote. The Republicans applied

1326-614: A lawyer and was appointed a judge. He once opined that "Jesus Christ was a carpetbagger." Tourgée later wrote A Fool's Errand , a largely autobiographical novel about an idealistic carpetbagger persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. A politician in South Carolina who was called a carpetbagger was Daniel Henry Chamberlain , a New Englander who had served as an officer of a predominantly black regiment of

1428-633: A leader of the Exoduster movement. Blacks from the Deep South migrated to homestead in Kansas in order to escape white supremacist violence and the oppression of segregation. The Dunning school of American historians (1900–1950) espoused White supremacy and viewed "carpetbaggers" unfavorably, arguing that they degraded the political and business culture. The revisionist school in the 1930s called them stooges of Northern business interests. After 1960

1530-414: A new college for them, now known as Alcorn State University . Alcorn maneuvered to make his ally Hiram Revels its president. Radical Republicans opposed Alcorn and were angry at his patronage policy. One complained that Alcorn's policy was to see "the old civilization of the South modernized " rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution. Alcorn resigned the governorship to become

1632-736: A standing resentment against the Low Country politicians who dominated the Confederacy and conservative Democrats in Reconstruction and after. Their strongholds in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, western Virginia, and North Carolina, and the Ozark region of northern Arkansas became Republican bastions. These rural folk had a long-standing hostility toward the planter class . They harbored pro-Union sentiments during

1734-475: Is now used in the United States to refer to a parachute candidate , that is, an outsider who runs for public office in an area without having lived there for more than a short time, or without having other significant community ties. According to a 1912 book by Oliver Temple Perry, Tennessee Secretary of State and Radical Republican Andrew J. Fletcher "was one of the first, if not the very first, in

1836-427: Is used by many historians in works by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins (1991), James Alex Baggett (2003), Hyman Rubin (2006), and Frank J. Wetta (2012). The word scalawag has an uncertain origin. Its earliest attestation is from 1848 to mean a disreputable fellow, good-for-nothing, scapegrace, or blackguard. It has been speculated that "perhaps the original use of the word" referred to low-grade farm animals, but this meaning of

1938-686: The Alabama General Assembly (39%). However, fewer scalawags won nominations to federal offices: 15 were nominated or elected to Congress (48%) compared to 11 carpetbaggers and 5 blacks. 48 scalawags were members of the 1867 constitutional convention (49.5% of the Republican membership); seven scalawags were members of the 1875 constitutional convention (58% of the minuscule Republican membership.) In terms of racial issues, Wiggins says: White Republicans as well as Democrats solicited black votes but reluctantly rewarded blacks with nominations for office only when necessary, even then reserving

2040-567: The American Colonization Society , where he continued to work as a photographer. He returned to Ohio after 18 months and moved back to Arkansas by 1870. Furbush was elected to two terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, 1873–74 (from an African-American majority district in the Arkansas Delta, made up of Phillips and Monroe counties.) He served in 1879–80 from the newly established Lee County. In 1873,

2142-554: The Caribbean Spanish Language defined scalawag as "A low worthless fellow; a scapegrace." Scalawag was also a word for low-grade farm animals. In early 1868 a Mississippi editor observed that scalawag "has been used from time immemorial to designate inferior milch cows in the cattle markets of Virginia and Kentucky." That June the Richmond Enquirer concurred; scalawag had heretofore "applied to all of

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2244-606: The Fourteenth Amendment , as demanded by the Republicans in Congress. Alcorn became the leader of the scalawags, who composed about a third of the Republicans in the state, in coalition with carpetbaggers and freedmen. Elected governor by the Republicans in 1869, Alcorn served from 1870 to 1871. As a modernized, Alcorn appointed many like-minded former Whigs, even if they were Democrats. Alcorn strongly supported education, including public schools for blacks only, and

2346-523: The Ku Klux Klan . The " Brooks–Baxter War " was a factional dispute, 1872–74 that culminated in an armed confrontation in 1874 between factions of the Arkansas Republican Party over the disputed 1872 election for governor. The victor in the end was the "Minstrel" faction led by carpetbagger Elisha Baxter over the "Brindle Tail" faction led by Joseph Brooks, which included most of the scalawags. The dispute weakened both factions and

2448-651: The Republican Party . Some 117 Republicans were nominated, elected, or appointed to the most lucrative and powerful state executive positions, judgeships, and federal legislative and judicial offices between 1868 and 1881. They included 76 white Southerners, 35 Northerners, and 6 formerly enslaved people. In state offices during Reconstruction, white southerners were even more predominant: 51 won nominations, compared to 11 carpetbaggers and one black. Twenty-seven scalawags won state executive nominations (75%), 24 won state judicial nominations (89%), and 101 were elected to

2550-531: The Southern states after the American Civil War and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics (including the right of African Americans to vote and hold office) and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of

2652-529: The Ten percent plan , which suggested that this same oath apply to 10% Southern voters as part of Reconstruction. Congress then attempted to apply the oath to 51% of Southern voters in the Wade–Davis Bill of 1864 but was pocket vetoed by President Abraham Lincoln. President Andrew Johnson opposed the oath altogether. Lincoln believed the Ironclad Oath to be an essential part of Reconstruction. In 1864 Congress made

2754-570: The United States Colored Troops . He was appointed South Carolina's attorney general from 1868 to 1872 and elected Republican governor from 1874 to 1877. As a result of the national Compromise of 1877 , Chamberlain lost his office. He was narrowly re-elected in a campaign marked by egregious voter fraud and violence against freedmen by Democratic Red Shirts , who succeeded in suppressing the black vote in some majority-black counties. While serving in South Carolina, Chamberlain

2856-566: The Wade–Davis Bill of 1864, which Lincoln pocket vetoed because it was too harsh. After the assassination of Lincoln in 1865, his successor, Andrew Johnson , opposed the oath altogether. Given the temporary disenfranchisement of the numerous Confederate veterans and local civic leaders, a new Republican biracial coalition came to power in the eleven Southern states during Reconstruction . Southern conservative Democrats were angered to have been disenfranchised. I, A. B. , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have never voluntarily borne arms against

2958-481: The neoabolitionist school emphasized their moral courage. Ironclad oath Near the end of the American Civil War , the Ironclad Oath was an oath promoted by Radical Republicans that required federal employees, lawyers, and federal elected officials to swear upon entry of office that they had never supported the Confederacy. The first such law adopted by Congress was in 1862, which attempted to make

3060-657: The 1868 formula to swear to "future loyalty." US President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the law, but Congress passed it. Voting restrictions on former Confederates varied by state during the rest of the Reconstruction era. Few were disenfranchised in Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Alabama and Arkansas banned only those ineligible from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment. Louisiana banned newspaper editors and religious ministers who had supported secession or anybody who had voted for

3162-538: The American Civil War, most Scalawags had opposed southern states' declared secession from the United States to form the Confederate States of America . The term is commonly used in historical studies as a descriptor of Reconstruction Era, Southern white Republicans, although some historians have discarded the term due to its history of pejorative use. The term is a derogatory epithet, yet it

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3264-558: The North and the South – for varying lengths of time between 1866 and 1877. Two of the most prominent scalawags were General James Longstreet , one of Robert E. Lee's top generals, and Joseph E. Brown , who had been the wartime governor of Georgia. During the 1870s, many scalawags left the Republican Party and joined the conservative-Democrat coalition. Conservative Democrats had replaced all Republican minority governments in

3366-450: The North, moving to the booming city of New Orleans before the 1850s. Few were cotton or sugar planters. Most had been Whigs before the war, but many had been Democrats. Nearly all were Unionists during the War. They had joined a Republican coalition with blacks but gave, at best, weak support to black suffrage, black office holding, or social equality. Wetta says that their "cosmopolitanism broke

3468-466: The North. Since the end of the Reconstruction era, the term has been used to denote people who move into a new area for purely economic or political reasons despite not having ties to that place. The term carpetbagger, used exclusively as a pejorative term, originated from the carpet bag , a form of cheap luggage, made from carpet fabric, which many of the newcomers carried. The term came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders. It

3570-500: The Reconstruction era with the Jim Crow era of segregation and second-class citizenship that persisted into the 20th century. Historian James Alex Baggett 's The Scalawags provides a quantitative study of the population. Carpetbagger In the history of the United States , carpetbagger is a largely historical pejorative used by Southerners to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive Northerners who came to

3672-722: The South (1884). On November 6, 1875, Hiram Revels , a Mississippi Republican and the first African American U.S. Senator, wrote a letter to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and Northerners for manipulating the Black vote for personal benefit, and for keeping alive wartime hatreds: Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it...My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on

3774-511: The South did so to participate in the profitable business of rebuilding railroads and various other forms of infrastructure that had been destroyed during the war. During the time most blacks were enslaved, many were prohibited from being educated and attaining literacy. Southern states had no public school systems, and upper-class white Southerners either sent their children to private schools (including in England) or hired private tutors. After

3876-431: The South in raising cotton." Foner notes that "joined with the quest for profit, however, was a reforming spirit, a vision of themselves as agents of sectional reconciliation and the South's "economic regeneration." Accustomed to viewing Southerners—black and white—as devoid of economic initiative, the "Puritan work ethic", and self-discipline, they believed that only "Northern capital and energy" could bring "the blessings of

3978-484: The South to teach the freedmen; some were sponsored by northern churches. Some were abolitionists who sought to continue the struggle for racial equality; they often became agents of the federal Freedmen's Bureau , which started operations in 1865 to assist the vast numbers of recently emancipated slaves. The bureau established schools in rural areas of the South for the purpose of educating the mostly illiterate Black and Poor White population. Other Northerners who moved to

4080-593: The South to vote. The local registrar had to swear that he had never held office under the Confederacy nor given aid or comfort to it. They also had to take the ironclad oath. In 1867, the US Supreme Court held that the federal ironclad oath for attorneys and the similar Missouri state oath for ministers, teachers, and other professionals were unconstitutional because they violated the constitutional prohibitions against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws . In March 1867, Radicals in Congress passed

4182-507: The South's railroads (by mileage); 19% of the directors were from the North. By 1890, they controlled 88% of the mileage; 47% of the directors were from the North. Union General Adelbert Ames , a native of Maine, was appointed military governor and later was elected as Republican governor of Mississippi during the Reconstruction era . Ames tried unsuccessfully to ensure equal rights for black Mississippians. His political battles with

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4284-631: The Southern United States by 1877, after the disputed presidential election of 1876 , in which the remaining Reconstruction governments had certified the Republican electors despite the Democratic candidate having carried the states. Historian John Hope Franklin assesses the motives of Southern Unionists. He noted that as more Southerners were allowed to vote and participate: A curious assortment of native Southerners thus became eligible to participate in Radical Reconstruction . And

4386-536: The Southerners and African Americans ripped apart his party. The "Black and Tan" (biracial) constitutional convention in Mississippi in 1868 included 30 white Southerners, 17 Southern freedmen and 24 non-southerners, nearly all of whom were veterans of the Union Army. They included four men who had lived in the South before the war, two of whom had served in the Confederate States Army . Among

4488-609: The State to denounce the hordes of greedy office-seekers who came from the North in the rear of the army in the closing days of the [U.S. Civil] War", in the June 1867 stump speech that he delivered across Tennessee in support of the re-election of the disabled Tennessee Governor William G. Brownlow : No one more gladly welcomes the Northern man who comes in all sincerity to make a home here, and to become one of our people, than I, but for

4590-501: The U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1883 to 1885. He died in Vicksburg, Mississippi 16 days after he left Congress. The next Republican congressman from the state was not elected until 80 years later in 1964: Prentiss Walker of Mize, Mississippi, who served a single term from 1965 to 1967. Corruption was a charge made by Democrats in North Carolina against the Republicans, notes the historian Paul Escott, "because its truth

4692-473: The United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power or constitution within

4794-490: The United States, hostile or inimical thereto. And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge

4896-516: The adventurer and the office-seeker who comes among us with one dirty shirt and a pair of dirty socks, in an old rusty carpet bag, and before his washing is done becomes a candidate for office, I have no welcome. That was the origin of the term "carpet bag", and out of it grew the well known term "carpet-bag government". In the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century, carpetbagger developed another meaning, referring to people who joined

4998-506: The backcountry suffered. Escott claimed "Some money went to very worthy causes—the 1869 legislature, for example, passed a school law that began the rebuilding and expansion of the state's public schools. But far too much was wrongly or unwisely spent" to aid the Republican Party leadership. A Republican county commissioner in Alamance eloquently denounced the situation: "Men are placed in power who instead of carrying out their duties...form

5100-526: The bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them. Elza Jeffords , a lawyer from Portsmouth, Ohio who fought with the Army of the Tennessee , remained in Mississippi after the conclusion of the Civil War. He was the last Republican to represent that state in

5202-462: The body of the Nation and expressed the gratification that he and many other Southerners felt over its destruction. Alcorn led a furious political battle with Senator Adelbert Ames , the carpetbagger who led the other faction of the Republican Party in Mississippi. The fight ripped apart the party, with most blacks supporting Ames and many—including Revels- supporting Alcorn. In 1873, they both sought

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5304-405: The civilization of freedom for that of slavery"...Carpetbaggers generally supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing the South – civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, the establishment of public school systems. Beginning in 1862, Northern abolitionists moved to areas in the South that had fallen under Union control. Schoolteachers and religious missionaries went to

5406-637: The claims of the Democrats. Agreeing with the Dunning School, Franklin said that the scalawags "must take at least part of the blame" for graft and corruption. The Democrats alleged the scalawags to be financially and politically corrupt and willing to support bad government because they profited personally. One Alabama historian claimed: "On economic matters scalawags and Democrats eagerly sought aid for economic development of projects in which they had an economic stake, and they exhibited few scruples in

5508-609: The commissioners, county judges and sheriffs. George Thompson Ruby , an African American from New York City, who grew up in Portland, Maine, worked as a teacher in New Orleans from 1864 until 1866 when he migrated to Texas. There he was assigned to Galveston, Texas as an agent and teacher for the Freedmen's Bureau . Active in the Republican Party and elected as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1868–1869, Ruby

5610-471: The defensive, verbally and physically." In South Carolina, there were about 100,000 scalawags or about 15% of the white population. During its heyday, the Republican coalition attracted some wealthier white southerners, especially moderates favoring cooperation between open-minded Democrats and responsible Republicans. Rubin shows that the collapse of the Republican coalition came from disturbing trends of corruption and factionalism that increasingly characterized

5712-656: The duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God. The oath was a critical factor in removing many ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction era of the late 1860s. To take the Ironclad Oath, a person had to swear he had never borne arms against the Union or supported the Confederacy: that is, he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States", had "voluntarily" given "no aid, countenance, counsel or encouragement" to persons in rebellion; and had exercised or attempted to exercise

5814-549: The electorate, and "many potential opponents had been disfranchised, while others have simply refused to participate in what they regarded as a rigged election." Perman argues that while the Radicals had controlled the state constitutional conventions, they increasingly lost power inside the Republican Party to conservative forces, which repudiated disfranchisement and proscription. Voters in Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi voted down

5916-664: The entire Republican Party, enabling the sweeping Democratic victory in the 1874 state elections. William Hines Furbush , born a mixed-race slave in Carroll County, Kentucky in 1839 received part of his education in Ohio. He migrated to Helena, Arkansas in 1862. After returning to Ohio in February 1865, he joined the Forty-second Colored Infantry. After the war, Furbush migrated to Liberia through

6018-434: The formerly enslaved, the Freedmen . In the Southern United States, Black Freedmen and White Southerners with Republican sympathies joined forces with Northerners who had moved south – called "Carpetbaggers" by their southern opponents – to implement the policies of the Republican party. Despite being a minority, scalawags gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of 1867, which disenfranchised

6120-584: The founders of the Republican party in Mississippi. They were prominent in the politics of the state until 1875, but nearly all left Mississippi in 1875 to 1876 under pressure from the Red Shirts and White Liners . These white paramilitary organizations , described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party", worked openly to violently overthrow Republican rule, using intimidation and assassination to turn Republicans out of office and suppress freedmen's voting. Mississippi Representative Wiley P. Harris ,

6222-540: The functions of no office under the Confederacy. A farmer who sold grain to the Confederate Army would be covered. The oath was detested by ex-Confederates, some of whom called it "The Damnesty Oath." Congress devised the oath in July 1862 for all federal employees, lawyers, and federal elected officials. Congress, in turn, made it voluntary for the incoming 38th United States Congress . In 1863, Lincoln proposed

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6324-484: The legislature's "depraved villains, who take bribes every day"; one local Republican officeholder complained, "I deeply regret the course of some of our friends in the Legislature as well as out of it in regard to financial matters, it is very embarrassing indeed." Escott notes that extravagance and corruption increased taxes and the costs of government in a state that had always favored low expenditure. The context

6426-591: The local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The word is closely associated with scalawag , a similarly pejorative word used to describe native white Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction. White Southerners commonly denounced carpetbaggers collectively during

6528-439: The main responsibility for the issue of $ 28 million in state bonds for railroads and the accompanying corruption. This sum, enormous for the time, aroused great concern." Foner says Littlefield disbursed $ 200,000 (bribes) to win support in the legislature for state money for his railroads, and Democrats as well as Republicans were guilty of taking the bribes and making the decisions on the railroad. North Carolina Democrats condemned

6630-691: The majority of Southern white voters as they could not take the Ironclad oath , which required they had never served in Confederate armed forces or held any political office under the state or Confederate governments. Historian Harold Hyman says that in 1866 Congressmen "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which Southern Unionists and Negroes protected themselves." The coalition controlled every former Confederate state except Virginia, as well as Kentucky and Missouri – which were claimed by both

6732-529: The mean, lean, mangy, hidebound skiny [sic], worthless cattle in every particular drove." Only in recent months, the Richmond paper remarked, had the term taken on political meaning. During the 1868–69 session of Judge "Greasy" Sam Watts' court in Haywood County, North Carolina , William Closs testified that a scalawag was "a Native born Southern white man who says he is no better than a negro and tells

6834-599: The methods used to push beneficial financial legislation through the Alabama legislature. The quality of the book keeping habits of both Republicans and Democrats was equally notorious." However, historian Eric Foner argues there is not sufficient evidence that scalawags were any more or less corrupt than politicians of any era, including Redeemers . White Southern Republicans included formerly closeted Southern abolitionists as well as former enslavers who supported equal rights for freedmen. (The most famous of this latter group

6936-481: The mold of southern provincialism" typical of their southern-democratic opponents. That is, scalawags had "a broader worldview." The most prominent scalawag of all was James L. Alcorn of Mississippi. Alcorn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865, but like all Southerners, he was not allowed to sit while the Republican Congress pondered Reconstruction. Alcorn supported suffrage for freedmen and endorsed

7038-409: The more choice positions for whites. The results were predictable: these half-a-loaf gestures satisfied neither black nor white Republicans. The fatal weakness of the Republican party in Alabama, as elsewhere in the South, was its inability to create a biracial political party. And while in power even briefly, they failed to protect their members from Democratic terror. Alabama Republicans were forever on

7140-708: The more prominent were Gen. Beroth B. Eggleston , a native of New York; Col. A.T. Morgan, of the Second Wisconsin Volunteers; Gen. W.S. Barry, former commander of a Colored regiment raised in Kentucky; an Illinois general and lawyer who graduated from Knox College; Maj. W.H. Gibbs, of the Fifteenth Illinois infantry; Judge W. B. Cunningham, of Pennsylvania; and Cap. E.J. Castello, of the Seventh Missouri infantry. They were among

7242-480: The most ignorant class of society to make war on the enlightened, intelligent, and virtuous, what kind of social relations would such a state of things beget. Albert T. Morgan , the Republican sheriff of Yazoo, Mississippi, received a brief flurry of national attention when insurgent white Democrats took over the county government and forced him to flee. He later wrote Yazoo; Or, on the Picket Line of Freedom in

7344-469: The new constitutions even though many opponents were disfranchised. The result was that by 1870, in every state except Arkansas, the Republicans had dropped restrictions against ex-Confederates and supporters, such as the Ironclad Oath. In Arkansas, the Republicans split, which led to an armed conflict called the Brooks–Baxter War . In 1871, Congress modified the oath to permit all former rebels to use

7446-485: The number increased as the President granted individual pardons or issued new proclamations of amnesty ... Their primary interest was in supporting a party that would build the South on a broader base than the plantation aristocracy of Antebellum days. They found it expedient to do business with Negroes and so-called carpetbaggers, but often they returned to the Democratic party as it gained sufficient strength to be

7548-421: The oath a requirement for the incoming members of the 38th United States Congress to take the oath. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proposed the Ten percent plan , which suggested that a state in rebellion could be reintegrated if a similar oath, with an additional pledge to abide by the nationwide abolition of slavery, was taken by 10% of its voters. Congress then attempted to raise this to 51% of voters in

7650-428: The oath in the South to keep political opponents from holding office or (in some states) from even voting. Hyman says, "most Southerners, even good Republican supporters, were disfranchised by the ironclad oath's blanket provisions rather than by the Fourteenth Amendment's highly selective disabilities." Perman emphasizes that the Republican ascendancy in the South was "extremely precarious" because Congress had defined

7752-435: The oath mandatory, but overlooked perjury when it came to seating southern Republicans. The historian Harold Hyman says that in 1866, northern Representatives "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which Southern Unionists and Negroes protected themselves." The first Supplemental Reconstruction Act (March 23, 1867) required an oath of past loyalty for any man in

7854-481: The party's governance. These failings disappointed Northern allies who abandoned the state Republicans in 1876 as the Democrats under Wade Hampton reasserted control. They used the threat of violence to cause many Republicans to stay quiet or switch to the Democrats. Wetta shows that New Orleans was a major Scalawag center. Their leaders were well-educated lawyers, physicians, teachers, ministers, business owners, and civil servants. Many had Northern ties or were born in

7956-474: The post-war years, fearing they would loot and plunder the defeated South and be allied politically with the Radical Republicans . Sixty men from the North, including educated free blacks and slaves who had escaped to the North and returned South after the war, were elected from the South as Republicans to Congress. The majority of Republican governors in the South during Reconstruction were from

8058-498: The race of life." Many Northern and Southern Republicans shared a modernizing vision of upgrading the Southern economy and society, one that would replace the inefficient Southern plantation regime with railroads, factories, and more efficient farming. They actively promoted public schooling and created numerous colleges and universities. The Northerners were especially successful in taking control of Southern railroads, aided by state legislatures. In 1870, Northerners controlled 21% of

8160-452: The region from the North, and freedmen were freed slaves. Most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the South were edited by scalawags and 20 percent were edited by carpetbaggers. White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage. Historian Eric Foner argues: ...most carpetbaggers probably combine the desire for personal gain with a commitment to taking part in an effort "to substitute

8262-873: The rising tide of equality. Chamberlain was said to justify white supremacy by arguing that, in evolutionary terms, the Negro obviously belonged to an inferior social order. Charles Woodward Stearns , also from Massachusetts, wrote an account of his experience in South Carolina: The Black Man of the South, and the Rebels: Or, the Characteristics of the Former and the Recent Outrages of the Latter (1873). Francis Lewis Cardozo ,

8364-412: The secession ordinance. Still, it allowed them to vote if they took an oath for Radical Reconstruction, a much more lenient avowal than that required by the Ironclad Oath. In states with disenfranchisement, the maximum was 10–20% of otherwise-eligible white voters; most states had much smaller proportions disenfranchised. In the South, the most support for the Ironclad Oath came from white Republicans from

8466-421: The state government from 1867 to January 1874. Only one state official and one justice of the state supreme court were Northerners. About 13% to 21% of district court judges were Northerners, along with about 10% of the delegates who wrote the Reconstruction constitution of 1869. Of the 142 men who served in the 12th Legislature, some 12 to 29 were from the North. At the county level, Northerners made up about 10% of

8568-576: The state passed a civil rights law. Furbush and three other black leaders, including the bill's primary sponsor, state senator Richard A. Dawson , sued a barkeeper in Little Rock, Arkansas for refusing to serve their group. The suit resulted in the only successful Reconstruction prosecution under the state's civil rights law. In the legislature, Furbush worked to create Lee County, Arkansasfrom portions of Phillips County, Crittenden County, Monroe County, and St. Francis County in eastern Arkansas, which had

8670-505: The term to refer to the group of historical actors with no pejorative meaning intended. After the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson undertook policies designed to bring the Southern United States back to normal as soon as possible, while the Radical Republicans used Congress to block President Johnson's policies, which favored ex-Confederates. The Radical Republicans imposed harsh terms and asserted new rights for

8772-580: The ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people...The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive

8874-437: The truth when he says it". Some accounts record his testimony as "a native Southern white man, who says that a negro is as good as he is, and tells the truth when he says so". By October 1868, a Mississippi newspaper defined the expression scathingly in terms of Redemption politics . The term continued to be used as a pejorative by conservative pro-segregationist southerners well into the 20th century. But historians commonly use

8976-657: The war, hundreds of Northern white women moved South, many to teach the newly freed African-American children. They joined like-minded Southerners, most of which were employed by the Methodist and Baptist Churches, who spent much of their time teaching and preaching to slave and freedpeople congregations both before and after the Civil War. Carpetbaggers also established banks and retail businesses. Most were former Union soldiers eager to invest their savings and energy in this promising new frontier, and civilians lured south by press reports of "the fabulous sums of money to be made in

9078-717: The war. Andrew Johnson was their representative leader. They welcomed Reconstruction and much of what the Radical Republicans in Congress advocated. The term 'scally' is also used in the United Kingdom to refer to elements of the working class and petty criminality, in a similar vein to the more contemporary chav . In the Philippines, the term 'scalawag' is used to mean rogue police or military officers. Scalawags were denounced as corrupt by Redeemers . The Dunning School of historians sympathized with

9180-584: The word was not attested until 1854. The term was later adopted by their opponents to refer to Southern whites who formed a Republican coalition with black freedmen and Northern newcomers (called carpetbaggers ) to take control of their state and local governments. Among the earliest uses of this new meaning were references in Alabama and Georgia newspapers in the summer of 1867, first referring to all Southern Republicans, then later restricting it to only white ones. Historian Ted Tunnel writes: Reference works such as Joseph Emerson Worcester 's 1860 Dictionary of

9282-575: The years when the White League , a white Democratic terrorist organization, conducted an open campaign of violence and intimidation against Republicans, including freedmen, with the goals of regaining Democratic power and white supremacy. They pushed Republicans from political positions, were responsible for the Coushatta Massacre , disrupted Republican organizing, and preceded elections with such intimidation and violence that black voting

9384-505: Was Samuel F. Phillips , who later argued against segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson .) Included, too, were people who wanted to be part of the ruling Republican Party simply because it provided more opportunities for successful political careers. Many historians have described scalawags in terms of social class, showing that, on average, they were less wealthy or prestigious than the elite planter class. As Thomas Alexander (1961) showed, there

9486-401: Was a prominent Republican U.S. Senator. His 1872 reelection campaign in Alabama opened him to allegations of "political betrayal of colleagues; manipulation of Federal patronage; embezzlement of public funds; purchase of votes; and intimidation of voters by the presence of Federal troops." He was a major speculator in a distressed financial paper. Tunis Campbell , a black New York businessman,

9588-484: Was a strong supporter of Negro rights. Some historians of the early 1800s, who belonged to the Dunning School that believed that the Reconstruction era was fatally flawed, claimed that Chamberlain later was influenced by Social Darwinism to become a white supremacist. They also wrote that he supported states' rights and laissez-faire in the economy. They portrayed "liberty" in 1896 as the right to rise above

9690-421: Was apparent." The historians Eric Foner and W.E.B. Du Bois have noted that Democrats as well as Republicans received bribes and participated in decisions about the railroads. General Milton S. Littlefield was dubbed the "Prince of Carpetbaggers", and bought votes in the legislature "to support grandiose and fraudulent railroad schemes". Escott concludes that some Democrats were involved, but Republicans "bore

9792-637: Was hired in 1863 by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to help former slaves in Port Royal, South Carolina. When the Civil War ended, Campbell was assigned to the Sea Islands of Georgia, where he engaged in an apparently successful land reform program for the benefit of the freedmen. He eventually became vice-chair of the Georgia Republican Party, a state senator and the head of an African-American militia which he hoped to use against

9894-472: Was later elected as a Texas state senator and had wide influence. He supported construction of railroads to support Galveston business. He was instrumental in organizing African-American dockworkers into the Labor Union of Colored Men, to gain them jobs at the docks after 1870. When Democrats regained control of the state government in 1874, Ruby returned to New Orleans, working in journalism. He also became

9996-459: Was persistent Whiggery (support for the principles of the defunct Whig Party ) in the Southern United States after 1865. Many ex-Whigs became Republicans who advocated modernization through education and infrastructure—significantly better roads and railroads. Many also joined the Redeemers in their successful attempt to replace the brief period of civil rights promised to African Americans during

10098-399: Was plagued by accusations of corruption, which continued to be a matter of controversy long after his death. He was accused of using his position as governor to trade in state bonds for his personal benefit. In addition, the newspaper company which he owned received a contract from the state government. Warmoth supported the franchise for freedmen. Warmoth struggled to lead the state during

10200-543: Was sharply reduced. Warmoth stayed in Louisiana after Reconstruction, as white Democrats regained political control of the state. He died in 1931 at age 89. George Luke Smith , a New Hampshire native, served briefly in the U.S. House from Louisiana's 4th congressional district but was unseated in 1874 by the Democrat William M. Levy . He then left Shreveport for Hot Springs, Arkansas. George E. Spencer

10302-461: Was that a planter elite kept taxes low because it benefited them. They used their money toward private ends rather than public investment. None of the states had established public school systems before the Reconstruction state legislatures created them, and they had systematically underinvested in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. Planters whose properties occupied prime riverfront locations relied on river transportation, but smaller farmers in

10404-611: Was the first-known black Democrat elected to the Arkansas General Assembly. In March 1879, Furbush left Arkansas for Colorado. He returned to Arkansas in 1888, setting up practice as a lawyer. In 1889, he co-founded the African American newspaper National Democrat. He left the state in the 1890s after it disenfranchised black voters. Furbush died in Indiana in 1902 at a veterans' home. Carpetbaggers were least numerous in Texas. Republicans controlled

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