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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 20. Underlying Factors - 6. Memories of Reconstruction
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Chapter 20, Underlying Factors 447
rationalize the national compromise of the 1870’s and the condoning, since
then, of the South’s open break with the spirit of the Constitution. Playing
up the venality, extravagance, and incompetence of the Reconstruction
governments and touching lightly the pride and prejudices of the revolt-
ing South is, in addition, a means of reconciling the two regions. It has
thus a ^^patriotic function” in healing the wounds of the Civil War. For
all these reasons, it is to be expected that the horrors have been consider-
ably exaggerated. The writing of the history of this epoch has, until
recently, responded in a considerable degree to this popular demand of
the American whites for rationalization and national comfort.*®
The dominant history of the period is incompatible with a number of
facts that force themselves to our attention. The “carpetbaggers” were not
simply Northerners who came down to prey on the devastated South. The
great majority of them were either agents sent out by the federal govern-
ment, to try to help the South to its feet under the principles of the
Constitution and its Amendments, or they were New England Abolitionists,
often spinsters, who saw their mission in the education of the Negroes.®
The federal government did not send its agents to the South until 1867,
after the South had demonstrated for over two years—^by such devices as
the Black Codes—that it was determined to retain slavery in fact if not in
name. It is true that these carpetbaggers did some stupid things, that their
plans were unformulated and inconsistent and that the federal government
failed to give them adequate backing. The “scalawags” were mainly poor
and ignorant native Southerners who saw a chance—in the South’s defeat
—to effect something of a revolution against the relatively few wealthy
aristocrats. But many of them had honestly and consistently wanted the
abolition of slavery, and not a few of them were the Southern inheritors of
the great Jeffersonian and, especially, Jacksonian traditions. Some of them
had been prominent Whigs before the Civil War.*^ Some of them had
consistently favored the Union cause throughout the Civil War when it
was extremely unpopular to do so. The masses of Negroes were, of course,
uneducated, and a number of them were resentful of their former masters.
But they never engaged in organized violence against the whites. They
were led by the educated carpetbaggers and by the free Southern and
Northern Negroes who had quite often attained a high level of education.
Actually, there were only 22 Negro members of Congress’* from 1870 to
1901 5
10 of these had gone to college. The Northern Republicans also
came in for their share of vilification. For example, few names in Amer-
* Some of the carpetbaggers were businessmen, but these were not always interested in
politics.
“’Twenty of these were in the House of Representatives! the other two were In the
Senate (at different times). (Samuel Denny Smith, TAe Negro in Congress tSjo^tgoi
[1940], pp. 4-7*)
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