Carpetbaggers & Scalawags - American Civil War In general, the term “carpetbagger” refers to a traveler who arrives in a new region with only a satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who attempts to profit from or gain control over his new surroundings, often against the will or consent of the original inhabitants. After 1865, a number of northerners moved to the South to purchase land, lease plantations or partner with down-and-out planters in the hopes of making money from cotton. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. In reality, most Reconstruction-era carpetbaggers were well-educated members of the middle class; they worked as teachers, merchants, journalists or other types of businessmen, or at the Freedman’s Bureau, an organization created by Congress to provide aid for newly liberated black Americans.
Scalawags and Carpetbaggers A temporary political vacuum existed in the postwar South. Confederate military and political leaders were temporarily prohibited from participating in the political process. Republican governments filled the void and were able to retain control by depending upon the votes of the newly enfranchised blacks. Blacks were vital to the process, but that did not mean that they ran affairs. Scalawags — a derogatory term (originally describing worthless livestock) applied to native white Southerners who supported the federal reconstruction plan and cooperated with the blacks in order to achieve their ends. In 1867, white Southerners generally stayed away from the elections to their constitutional conventions, preferring military rule to letting blacks vote in a democratic election. Carpetbaggers used their influence during the writing of new state constitutions to incorporate some progressive concepts from their places of origin.
About Sharecropping About Sharecropping SharecroppingTrudier Harris A practice that emerged following the emancipation of African-American slaves, sharecropping came to define the method of land lease that would eventually become a new form of slavery. Without land of their own, many blacks were drawn into schemes where they worked a portion of the land owned by whites for a share of the profit from the crops. They would get all the seeds, food, and equipment they needed from the company store, which allowed them to run a tab throughout the year and to settle up once the crops, usually cotton, were gathered. When accounting time came, the black farmer was always a few dollars short of what he owed the landowner, so he invariably began the new year with a deficit. As a theme in literature, sharecropping stretches from the late nineteenth century into the contemporary era. Sharecropping as an impetus to migrate north occurs in some of the works of Richard Wright and John O. Share Croppers UnionRobin D.
American Experience | Reconstruction: The Second Civil War | Black Legislators The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." President Andrew Johnson's veto of the bill was overturned by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, and the bill became law. Johnson's attitude contributed the growth of the Radical Republican movement, which favored increased intervention in the South and more aid to former slaves, and ultimately to Johnson's impeachment. 1866 Civil Rights Act 14 Stat. 27-30, April 9, 1866 A.D.
TENANT FARMING AND SHARECROPPING When the Civil War ended, the big question concerned the state of the freed slaves of the South. Recovery of the southern economy depended on getting the freedmen back into the cotton fields. During the period of Reconstruction the Radical Republicans in Congress tried to convert the freedmen into small free-holding farmers, but the former slaves were simply not ready to manage their own farms. What emerged out of necessity was southern farm tenancy, a system of near slavery without legal sanctions. Instead of working in gangs as they had on antebellum plantations, the freedmen became tenants. In the decades after Reconstruction tenancy and sharecropping became the way of life in the Cotton Belt. As farm tenancy grew, a tenancy ladder evolved. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of farmers fell down the tenancy ladder rather than moving up it. Sharecropping and tenancy remained accepted as a normal part of southern life until the Great Depression. BIBLIOGRAPHY: David E. David E.
<i>The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era</i> Find using OpenURL The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era (review) In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: This study of the liberal republican movement provides a sympathetic treatment of a small group of Republicans who were the founders of a challenge to the Republican party and the Ulysses S. Grant administration during the election of 1872. The author specifically identifies twenty-three individuals he regards as core members of this group. This group only reluctantly supported many of the Union government war policies, which expanded and centralized federal power and threatened their long-standing faith in limited government and "classical republicanism" (210). The liberal republican movement, according to this study, originated in Missouri and soon recruited prominent Republicans in the East who shared similar values. Copyright © 2008 The Kent State University Press Project MUSE® - View Citation Howard W. Allen, H. Howard W.
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the most infamous - and oldest - of American hate groups. Although black Americans have typically been the Klan's primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics. Over the years since it was formed in December 1865, the Klan has typically seen itself as a Christian organization, although in modern times Klan groups are motivated by a variety of theological and political ideologies. Started during Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War, the Klan quickly mobilized as a vigilante group to intimidate Southern blacks - and any whites who would help them - and to prevent them from enjoying basic civil rights. After a short but violent period, the "first era" Klan disbanded after Jim Crow laws secured the domination of Southern whites. Klan glossary AKIA: A password meaning "A Klansman I Am", often seen on decals and bumper stickers. Alien: A person who does not belong to the Klan.
Reconstruction - American Civil War At the outset of the Civil War, to the dismay of the more radical abolitionists in the North, President Abraham Lincoln did not make abolition of slavery a goal of the Union war effort. To do so, he feared, would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners. By the summer of 1862, however, the slaves themselves had pushed the issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln’s troops marched through the South. Their actions debunked one of the strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the “peculiar institution”–that many slaves were truly content in bondage–and convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and military necessity. In response to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3 million slaves in the Confederate states by January 1, 1863, blacks enlisted in the Union Army in large numbers, reaching some 180,000 by war’s end.