Scalawags 1. Who were the Scalawags? · Scalawags is the name given to native or local whites who supported the Rep party. The origins of the word is uncertain but the term came from Scalway, a district in Sheton Island, where small cattle lived. Used in US before the Civil war to mean scrawny or undersized cattle. It was also a synonmy for good for nothing. Southern conservative whites found the scalawags uniquely hateful. Blacks were considerable more understand then the faults of a scalawags who was considered a traitor to the south and his own white race. · They were primarily thought to be poor whites who had opposed the southern aristocracy and the confederacy and who now sought personal and class gains through the republican party. "The mean and lousy filty kind that are not fit for butlers or dogs." · Numbering in the 10s of thousands, they blurred the stark contrast in black/white racial division in southern politics. Thus, they provided an indigenous power base and respectabilty to the republican party that was recognized as crucial to its permanance in the south. "A party sustained by only black votes will not grow old." It is impossible to maintain the republican party in the south without a division of the white votes: it could not maintain unless it got the votes of some whites. But conservative whites called them "white negroes." · For a time Scalawags dominated the state governments of 5 southern states: Ala, Ge, Tenn, Tx, NC. They also played a major role in Miss. · Ex of two Scalawags who closely fit the conservativestereotype: Franklin Moses Jr, despite his pledge of honest administration was to provide SC with its worst governortorial administration of the reconstruction era. When he was speaker... ... middle of paper ... ...onstitution through the 13 (abolished slavery), 14 (minumun guaratntees as a precondition to their readmission back into the Union), and 15th amendmentm (black suffrage). These amendments could have been passed any other time and in the second reconstruction (brown versus the board of …). Taylot, "What if anything reconstrution accomplised in Louisiana? The state did get a better constution but a subseqent changes made the law a joke." Reconstrution in Lousianan brought temporary change. But it gave to another generation the opportunity to accomplish what their ancestors had failed to do during reconstrution. " 7. Famous Scalawags: · Franklin Moses (SC) · Christopher Columbus Bowen (SC) · Joshua Hill (Ga) · John Pool (NC) · Charles Hays (Ala) · James Lusk Alcorn (Miss) · Andrew Jackson Hamilton (Tx) · Elisha Pease (Tx) · Edmund Jackson Davis (Tx)
Inadvertently Anderson gives us an even bigger lesson about politics in Georgia and the South in general. The Democratic Party was typically seen as the party of the downtrodden for poor farmers and other people who were economically depressed. The poor certainly saw them as their political savior. However, the party support only extended to white Georgians and particularly to white males without having their best interests at heart, only their best interests as perceived and allowed by the political elite. Some of the issues that made Talmadge disenfranchised with the Democratic Party under Roosevelt like setting wage levels, dependence on the federal government, fighting outside interference in "his" state, and especially desegregation subsequently forced many southern Democrats out of the party later. When the Democratic Party found itself without the paternalistic southern white male and the downtrodden white males' allegiance, it was forced to search for support from what they perceived to be the next group of downtrodden voters instead of redefining their issues.
The Democrats traced their roots back to Thomas Jefferson and called themselves the “party of the fathers”. This group consisted mostly of Catholics and Jews (508). After the end of reconstruction, most white voters in the former confederate states remained loyal to the Democrats. This created
2- Carl Schurz wrote reports called Reports on the Condition of the South, in 1865 in which he investigated the sentiments of leaders and ordinary people, whites and blacks, from the defeated South. He describes that was not safe to wear the federal uniform on the streets and soldiers of the Union were considered intruders, Republicans were considered enemies. But, even worse was the situation of freedmen in which were expected to behave as slaves for white Southerners. Schurz heard the same phrase, “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion,” (Schurz) from so many different people that he concluded that this sentiment was rooted among the southern people. He related this case of a former slaveholder that suggested blacks were unfitted for freedom, “I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a whipping.”
...eadership of the democrats, believed in popular sovereignty ie the population of a state choosing for itself on the matter of slavery. The other member also aiming to rule the democrats was Breckinbridge, who believed in slavery being permitted in all states. The democrat party split into the northern and southern democrats. Because of the split Lincoln was able to win the election, upon which the southern states succeeded from the union.
... The cause was forfeited not by Republicans, who welcomed the African-American votes, but to the elite North who had concluded that the formal end of slavery was all the freed man needed and their unpreparedness for the ex-slaves to participate in the Southern commonwealth was evident. Racism, severe economic depression, an exhausted North and troubled South, and a campaign of organized violence toward the freed man, overturned Reconstruction. The North withdrew the last of the federal troops with the passing of The Compromise of 1877. The freed slaves continued to practice few voting rights until 1890, but they were soon stripped of all political, social and economic powers. Not until the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the freedoms that were fought for by our Republican forefathers nearly 100 years before, finally seen through to fruition.
...ding the Jacksonian Democrats. Even government authorized establishments lent a hand in the continuation of slavery, such as the Post Office. It honored a request from the South Carolina legislature in 1835 to prevent the transmission of anti-slavery propaganda into the state. The Jacksonian Democrats, in attempts to guard the Constitution, had missed some points, such as "all men are created equal."
As a central figure in the Republican Party and passionate advocate for anti-slavery, William Henry Seward characterized the conflict between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans as inevitable. Each political party had two radically different ideologies regarding the expansion of slavery into western territories. The Southern Democrats believed that slavery should exist in all western states while the Northern Republicans strongly disagreed. Similar to the ideologies of the Republicans, Seward believed that slavery was unjust and humans were granted the r...
Amid the post Civil War chaos, various political groups were scrambling to further their agendas. First, Southern Democrats, a party comprised of leaders of the confederacy and other wealthy Southern whites, sought to end what they perceived as Northern domination of the South. They also sought to institute Black Codes, by limiting the rights of Blacks to move, vote, travel, and change jobs,3 which like slavery, would provide an adequate and cheap labor supply for plantations. Second, Moderate Republicans wanted to pursue a policy of reconciliation between North and South, but at the same time ensure slavery was abolished.
It guaranteed freedmen the right to vote under new state constitutions, and required the Southern states to ratify the 14th amendment. With the inclusion of African-American votes in southern elections, and with the help of Northerners known as "Carpet Baggers" and other white Southerners known as "Scalawags," the Republican Party gained almost complete control over the American South.
The Conservatives lead by President Johnson, believed in a rapid readmission, into the Union, for the defeated Southern states. Johnson's stipulations were solely that the states ratify the 13th Amendment, and repudiate Confederate war debt (thus making it null and void). A second more controversial measure to the democrat's plan for rapid reconstruction was the issuing of pardons to former Confederate officials, landowners, and generals. As a direct result of these pardons, former plantation owners' land was returned. The goal of the Conservatives during Reconstruction was obviously to return the South to the social, political, and economic structure of the antebellum period.
McPhee, Isaac M. "Carpetbaggers and Reconstruction: American Opportunism in the Post-Civil War Years." 08 February 2008. Suite101.com. 10 January 2010 .
The North’s negligence also contributed to the end of Reconstruction. The North had failed to notice the many racially motivated atrocities that occurred in the South durin...
In 1877 African Americans no longer held important political power in the South by means of the Republican Party. However in the late 1890s the Populist Party, an agriculture movement filled with farmers who wanted to raise farm prices, strived to united the common economic interest of African American and poor white farmers. The Populist Party, realizing that white voters would most likely be split between the Populist and Democratic Parties, tried to gain support of the African Americans. The Populist Party attempted to stop the decreasing number of African Americans ballots to sustain their political power. The reason why the number of black voters were decreasing was because white supremacists often included poll taxes to prevent poor
Both sides desired a republican form of government. Each wanted a political system that would “protect the equality and liberty of the individuals from aristocratic privilege and…tyrannical power.” (404) However, the north and south differed greatly in “their perceptions of what most threatened its survival.” (404) The secession by the south was an attempt to reestablish republicanism, as they no longer found a voice in the national stage. Prior to the 1850s, this conflict had been channeled through the national political system. The collapse of the two-party system gave way to “political reorganization and realignment,” wrote Holt. The voters of the Democrats shifted their influence toward state and local elections, where they felt their concerns would be addressed. This was not exclusively an economically determined factor. It displayed the exercise of agency by individual states. Holt pointed out, “[T]he emergence of a new two-party framework in the South varied from state to state according to the conditions in them.” (406) The “Deep South” was repulsed by the “old political process,” most Southerners trusted their state to be the safeguards of republicanism. (404) They saw the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, a member of the “the anti-Southern Republican party,” as something the old system could not
The fifteenth amendment was proposed to congress on February 26, 1869 and was ratified a year later. After the Civil war, the confederate states were forced to ratify the reconstruction amendments in order to be reinstated into the union.3 Charles Sumner, an advocate for equal rights, refused to vote as he believed that the amendment did not take necessary steps to prevent the development of various state laws that could disenfranchise black voters.4 Sumner was correct, by the 1890s many states had adopted legislature designed to keep blacks from voting. The Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests may be the most emblematic legislation of the period. These laws were passed in order to ke...