334 Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War
a positive light. Redemption, in their view, returned power
to the hands of those who were fi t to govern, men who just
happened to be white, Democrat, and closely tied to the
former confederacy.
Th e beginning of the Civil Rights movement in the
late 1950s and early 1960s led to a reassessment of Radi-
cal Reconstruction. Post–Civil Rights era historians tend to
view Radical Reconstruction as a predecessor to the 20th-
century Civil Rights movement, a period containing poten-
tial for social change that was unfortunately not realized
because of the virulent racism of the time. Reassessment
of Radical Reconstruction in turn made a reexamination
of the carpetbagger necessary in order to determine who
exactly these Northern migrants to the South were and
what their role was in the attempts to create a new postwar
South. Current historical research on carpetbaggers reveals
that white Northern migrants to the postwar South were
a diverse group, with each man having his own personal
reasons for Southern migration. Th is makes it hard to form
any meaningful generalizations about them as a group.
Northern migrants to the South, however, were no bet-
ter or worse than any other migrant groups of the late 19th
century. If anything, they were far more idealistic than the
average migrant of the age, retaining a commitment to the
ideals of the wartime Republican Party when those ideals
were becoming increasingly unfashionable. Among those
ideals was a commitment to improving the fate of freed
people. In particular, white Northern migrants to the post-
war South were interested in giving freed people fair play:
equal access to the law, a chance to vote, and the ability
to earn their own wages. Few, if any, suggested complete
equality with former slaves, but nonetheless, what these
Northern migrants did suggest was enough to brand them
as radicals in a region devastated by war and stunned by
defeat. Many carpetbaggers saw themselves as missionaries
attempting to convert a resistant and oft en hostile popula-
tion to the Republican Party’s gospel of “free soil, free labor,
and free men.”
Looking back on his experiences in the South in several
novels and works of nonfi ction, the Northern migrant Al-
bion Winegar Tourgée (1838–1905) tried to make sense of
the failure of Reconstruction and the emergence of the solid
South under its redeemer governments. He also tried to de-
fend himself as a carpetbagger, arguing that he was guiltier
of being an idealistic fool than a corrupt profi teer. Although
Tourgée’s writings certainly contain a Northern bias, hisBibliography
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Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1998.
Fitchett, E. Horace. “Th e Traditions of the Free Negro in Charles-
ton, South Carolina.” Th e Journal of Negro History 25, no. 2
(April 1940):139–52.
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1981):289–310.
Jervey, Th eodore D. Robert V. Hayne and His Times. New York:
MacMillan, 1909.
Jervey, Th eodore D. Th e Slave Trade; Slavery and Color. Columbia,
SC: Th e State Company, 1925.
Johnson, Michael P., and James L. Roark. Black Masters: A Free
Family of Color in the Old South. New York: Norton Publish-
ing, 1984.
Koger, Larry. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Masters in South Caro-
lina, 1790–1860. Jeff erson, NC: McFarland, 1985.
Wikramanayake, Maria. A World in Shadow: Th e Free Black in the
Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1973.
Carpetbaggers
“Carpetbagger” was a negative term applied to white North-
erners who moved South aft er the Civil War; the name de-
rives from a reference to an inexpensive type of luggage.
Th ese men have traditionally been viewed as white North-
ern profi teers who arrived in the defeated South with noth-
ing more than an empty carpet bag and the clothes on their
backs, intent on returning to their Northern homes rich
and infl uential. Th e stereotypical image of the carpetbagger
has its origin in the reactions of upper-class Southerners to
Radical Reconstruction (also known as Congressional Re-
construction), but it was through the research of the histo-
rian William A. Dunning in the early 20th century that this
stereotype was legitimated.
Th e Dunning or Columbia school’s interpretation
of Reconstruction viewed the carpetbagger as part of a
misguided Northern attempt to re-create the South in its
own image. Dunning school historians saw Radical Re-
construction as a tragic period in Southern history where
“foreign”-born Northern carpetbaggers, lower-class South-
ern scalawags, and illiterate freedman “hijacked” the gov-
ernment of the defeated Southern states for their own
personal gain. Th us, they viewed the end of Reconstruction
in 1877 and the beginning of the period of “redemption” in