Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow: 1864 - 1896 by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2000-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV: THE TIDE TURNS

AT FIRST, IT appeared that the Republicans would be able to reconstruct the Southern governments as they wished to. Under the first Reconstruction Act, the South was divided into five districts, each with a Union general in charge, supported by 20,000 Federal troops and black militiamen. The South was now really being run by military governments empowered to bring equality to blacks. These military governments made sure that African-Americans could vote, and, of course, they would vote for Republican candidates. In addition, a considerable number of people had come down from the North after the Civil War. Southerners scornfully called these Northerners "carpetbaggers," after the sort of small, cheap luggage they were supposed to have brought with them. Some of the carpetbaggers came to take advantage of the chaos in the South to enrich themselves; others came to make legitimate investments in factories and farms that might be of benefit to Southerners. But large numbers came with sincere concern for the welfare of the freedmen and hoped to help improve their lot.

Finally, Republican candidates in the Southern states got votes from a surprisingly large number of Southern whites. Many had never really liked secession and the Confederate government. These "scalawags," as they were called by other Southerners, were mainly poor farmers who felt that they had always been ground down by the wealthy planters. During the Civil War many of them believed that they were being asked to fight and die to preserve the power of the aristocrats. A lot of them had fled into the woods in order to avoid being taken into the Confederate army; others stayed quiet, but did as little as possible to aid the South in the war. Now, some scalawags were ready to form alliances with blacks as a way to take power away from the old plantation aristocrats.

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