Many also had political experience from before the war, either as members of Congress or as judges or local officials. As the South had been shattered by the effects of the war, with its economy and infrastructure severely damaged, outside help was necessary. [citation needed]. Carpetbaggers moved to southern states for economic, political, and social opportunities; Scalawags were politically motivated. [25] General Milton S. Littlefield was dubbed the "Prince of Carpetbaggers", and bought votes in the legislature "to support grandiose and fraudulent railroad schemes". A carpetbagger was portrayed as a lower-class schemer with little education who could carry everything he owned in a cheap carpet bag.These new arrivals supported the Republicans (the party of Abraham Lincoln) and were said to be corrupt profiteers who took advantage of the financial and political instability in the devastated postwar South. Updates? My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on 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. That legislation divided the South into five military districts and outlined how new state governments based on universal (male) suffragefor both whites and Blackswere to be organized. Lindsay has taught high school and middle school history for the last 17 years. Updated: August 21, 2018 | Original: June 24, 2010, During and immediately after the Civil War, many northerners headed to the southern states, driven by hopes of economic gain, a desire to work on behalf of the newly emancipated enslaved people or a combination of both. "[24], Escott notes that extravagance and corruption increased taxes and the costs of government in a state that had always favored low expenditure. 1872 Harper's Weekly political cartoon of Carl Schurz depicted as a carpetbagger, which reflected Southern attitudes toward Northerners during Reconstruction. To be called a carpetbagger today is to indicate that an individual is not native to a region for which they are running for political office. Furbush died in Indiana in 1902 at a veterans' home. Updated: August 29, 2018 | Original: March 3, 2015. Many carpetbaggers were said to have moved South for their own financial and political gains. Spanish-American War Causes & Results | Who Won the Spanish-American War? ", "The South after Reconstruction | Boundless US History", https://archive.org/details/notablemenoftenn00temp_0/page/126/mode/1up?q=Mason&view=theater, "Business: Your Money Is carpetbagging dead? A carpetbagger was portrayed as a lower-class schemer with little education who could carry everything he owned in a cheap carpet bag. This led many building societies to implement anti-carpetbagging policies, such as not accepting new deposits from customers who lived outside the normal operating area of the society. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. Today, carpetbagger remains in use, as a slur for someone whos an opportunistic outsider, such as a political candidate who runs for office in a place where he has no deep ties or hasnt lived in for a very long time. [41][42][full citation needed] White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage. A Carpetbagger was a slang term for northerners who, after the war was over, moved to the south to take economic advantage of the reconstructing south. He left the state in the 1890s after it disenfranchised black voters. Carpetbaggers generally supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing the South civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, the establishment of public school systems. His political battles with the Southerners and African Americans ripped apart his party. [citation needed], Carpetbaggers also established banks and retail businesses. D. consent of In 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (or the Freedman's Bureau) was created by Congress in an attempt to help reconstruction efforts of the south. Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic. Freed African Americans had no role in politics, and the new southern legislatures even passed black codes restricting their freedom and forcing them into repressive labor situations, a development they strongly resisted. Carpetbagger" was the name given to a person from the North who would move to the South in order to make money following the Civil War. 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. [citation needed], In Australia, "carpetbagger" may refer to unscrupulous dealers and business managers in indigenous Australian art. Of the 142 men who served in the 12th Legislature, some 12 to 29 were from the North. [15], Leading "black carpetbaggers" believed the interests of capital and labor were identical, and that the freedmen were entitled to little more than an "honest chance in the race of life. Working with the Freedman's Bureau, many northerners moved to the south to help reconstruction efforts by building schools. [19][20][21] Mississippi Representative Wiley P. Harris, 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 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. [44], During World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services surreptitiously supplied necessary tools and material to resistance groups in Europe. Taken together, scalawags made up roughly 20 percent of the white electorate and wielded a considerable influence. William Hines Furbush, born a mixed-race slave in Carroll County, Kentucky in 1839 received part of his education in Ohio. Carpetbaggers were not always welcomed by southerners. The term carpetbagger, used exclusively as a pejorative term, originated from the carpet bags (a form of cheap luggage made from carpet fabric) which many of these newcomers carried. Many lived in the northern states of the region, and a number had either served in the Union Army or been imprisoned for Union sympathies. They also wrote that he supported states' rights and laissez-faire in the economy. "Creating 'the Propaganda of History': Southern Editors and the Origins of Carpetbagger and Scalawag". a Scalawags included non-slaveholding, small-time farmers; middle-class professionals and others who had stayed loyal to the Union during the war. This sum, enormous for the time, aroused great concern." However, southerners quickly viewed Carpetbaggers as taking advantage of the struggling south. However, as more northerners moved to the south and were able to buy land and businesses, former wealthy southerners found their social standing in the south quickly changing. 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. C. separation of powers For them the South was a kind of new frontier and a land of opportunity. "[3], In the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century, carpetbagger developed another meaning: in British English it refers to people who join a mutual organization, such as a building society, in order to force it to demutualize, that is, to convert into a joint stock company. 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 was sharply reduced. ", "Pennsylvania Voters Rejected the Carpetbagger Dr. Oz", Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 18631877, Wintory, Blake. Whats the difference between a carpetbagger and a scalawag. He was a major speculator in a distressed financial paper. Sometimes carpetbaggers even took political office in southern states, because many former Confederates were prohibited from holding political office. [27], 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 the United States Colored Troops. Contemporarily speaking, the term carpetbagger refers to roving financial opportunists, often of modest means, who spot investment opportunities and aim to benefit from a set of circumstances to which they are not ordinarily entitled. Escott concludes that some Democrats were involved, but Republicans "bore the main responsibility for the issue of $28 million in state bonds for railroads and the accompanying corruption. After 1960 the neoabolitionist school emphasized their moral courage.[39]. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. Background Paper for an Address on "Succession and Continuance of Mutuals", "New king's decree favours 'democratic' way", "Radical Routes plans to free housing co-ops from the mortgage trap", "Carpet-baggers 'exploiting' Indigenous artists", "White ignorance about indigenous issues fails everyone", "Four Corners ABC Interview - John Ioannou", "Keep out flood carpetbaggers, says reconstruction inspectorate John Fahey", "West Virginia Newcomer Battles Carpetbagger Label", "Perspective | In the Pa. Senate race, will it matter that Dr. Oz is a carpetbagger? 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. Beginning in 1867, they formed a coalition with carpetbaggers (one-sixth of the electorate) and scalawags (one-fifth) to gain control of southern state legislatures for the Republican Party. fault The majority of the scalawags were non-slaveholding small farmers as well as merchants, artisans and other professionals who had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. But in the South after the Civil War, Republicans often won political office, especially where the formerly enslaved people were allowed to vote. b All rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. To call someone a Carpetbagger today, is to note that they are not native to the region and are an outsider. [46][47][48][49], The term was also used by John Fahey, a former Premier of New South Wales and federal Liberal finance minister, in the context of shoddy "tradespeople" who travelled to Queensland to take advantage of victims following the 20102011 Queensland floods. According to Oliver Temple Perry in his 1912 book, "Notable men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875, Their Times and Their Contemporaries", Tennessee Secretary of State and Radical Republican Andrew J. Fletcher "was one of the first, if not the very first, in 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" within his June 1867 stump speech that he delivered across Tennessee for 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 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. White southern Republicans, known to their enemies as scalawags, made up the biggest group of delegates to the Radical Reconstruction-era legislatures. The oppositive of a carpetbagger would be called a native. 1909. The term was used to describe a White southerner who worked with members of the Republican Party and supported Reconstruction policies. 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. Godbey, William Baxter, "Autobiography of Rev. "Southern Railroad Leaders, 18651893: Identities and Ideologies". The suit resulted in the only successful Reconstruction prosecution under the state's civil rights law. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. He also noted that most carpetbaggers were "former soldiers from middle-class backgrounds who went South seeking a livelihood, not political office. Blacks from the Deep South migrated to homestead in Kansas in order to escape white supremacist violence and the oppression of segregation. The term carpetbagger was a nickname for Answer: Northerners who came to the South and supported African American equality. [12][13], Initiatives such as the Southern Homestead Act, Sherman's field orders, and Reconstruction-era legislation by Radical Republicans aimed to strip the land, assets, and voting rights of Southerners believed, without evidence, to have supported the Confederates during the war. | Sharecropping History & Significance, Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 | Summary, Significance, & History, SAT Subject Test US History: Practice and Study Guide, American History Since 1865: Tutoring Solution, SAT Subject Test World History: Practice and Study Guide, High School World History: Homework Help Resource, High School World History: Tutoring Solution, Middle School US History: Help and Review, Middle School US History: Homework Help Resource, Middle School US History: Tutoring Solution, Create an account to start this course today.

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