“Black Republican” Reconstruction: Scalawags and Carpetbaggers 415deserved to be treated decently and given a chance to
get ahead in the world.
Many northern blacks became carpetbaggers: for-
mer Union soldiers, missionaries from northern black
churches, and also teachers, lawyers, and other mem-
bers of the small northern black professional class.
Many of these became officeholders, but like south-
ern black politicians their influence was limited.
That blacks should fail to dominate southern
governments is certainly understandable. They lacked
experience in politics and were mostly poor and uned-
ucated. They were nearly everywhere a minority.
Those blacks who held office during Reconstruction
tended to be better educated and more prosperous
than most southern blacks. A disproportionate num-
ber had been free before the war. Of those freed by
the Thirteenth Amendment, a large percentage had
been house servants or artisans, not field hands.
Mulatto politicians were also disproportionately
numerous and (as a group) more conservative and
economically better off than other black leaders.
In South Carolina and elsewhere, blacks proved
in the main able and conscientious public servants:
able because the best tended to rise to the top in
such a fluid situation, and conscientious because
most of those who achieved importance sought
eagerly to demonstrate the capacity of their race for
self-government. Even at the local level, where the
quality of officials was usually poor, there was little
difference in the degree of competence displayed by
white and black officeholders. In power, the blacks
were not vindictive; by and large they did not seek to
restrict the rights of ex-Confederates.
Not all black legislators and administrators were
paragons of virtue. In South Carolina, despite their
control of the legislature, they broke up into factions
repeatedly and failed to press for laws that would
improve the lot of poor black farm workers. In The
Prostrate South (1874), James S. Pike, a northern
newspaperman, wrote, “The rule of South Carolina
should not be dignified with the name of govern-
ment. It is the installation of a huge system of brig-
andage.” Like many northern commentators, Pike
exaggerated the immorality and incompetence of
the blacks, but waste and corruption were common
during Reconstruction governments. Half the budget
of Louisiana in some years went for salaries and
“mileage” for representatives and their staffs. One
Arkansas black took $9,000 from the state for repair-
ing a bridge that had cost only $500 to build. A South
Carolina legislator was voted an additional $1,000 in
salary after he lost that sum betting on a horse race.
However, the corruption must be seen in perspec-
tive. The big thieves were nearly always white; blacks
got mostly crumbs. Furthermore, graft and callous dis-
regard of the public interest characterized government
in every section and at every level during the decade
after Appomattox. Big-city bosses in the North embez-
zled sums that dwarfed the most brazen southern
frauds. The New York City Tweed Ring probably made
off with more money than all the southern thieves,
black and white, combined. While the evidence does
not justify the southern corruption, it suggests that
the unique features of Reconstruction politics—black
suffrage, military supervision, and carpetbagger and
scalawag influence—do not explain it.
In fact, the Radical southern governments accom-
plished a great deal. They spent money freely but not
entirely wastefully. Tax rates zoomed, but the money
financed the repair and expansion of the South’s dilap-
idated railroad network, rebuilt crumbling levees, and
expanded social services. Before the Civil War, south-
ern planters possessed a disproportionate share of
political as well as economic power, and they spent rel-
atively little public money on education and public
services of all kinds.
During Reconstruction an enormous gap had
to be filled, and it took money to fill it. The
Freedmen’s Bureau made a major contribution.
Northern religious and philanthropic organizations
also did important work. Eventually, however, the
state governments established and supported hospi-
tals, asylums, and systems of free public education
that, while segregated, greatly benefited everyone,
whites as well as blacks. Much state money was also
spent on economic development: land reclamation,
repairing and expanding the war-ravaged railroads,
maintaining levees.
The former slaves grasped eagerly at the oppor-
tunities to learn. Schools and other institutions
were supported chiefly by property taxes, and these,
of course, hit well-to-do planters hard. Hence much
of the complaining about the “extravagance” of
Reconstruction governments concealed traditional
selfish objections to paying for public projects.
Eventually the benefits of expanded government
services to the entire population became clear, and
when white supremacy was reestablished, most of
the new services remained in force, and the corrup-
tion and inefficiency inherited from the carpet-
bagger governments continued.The Schools that the Civil War & Reconstruction
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