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Updated: June 1, 2025
And next, resist alike either schemes for purely military governments, or schemes for territorial civil governments, with offices to be filled up, according to the old custom, by "carpet-baggers" from the United States, on an allotment of increased patronage, fairly divided among the "bosses" of the different States.
They were solemnly told that their old masters were making arrangements to reënslave them, and all sorts of incendiary suggestions were made to them. It was by means of this secret society that the negroes were made to believe that they would be entitled to forty acres and a mule for voting for the candidates of the carpet-baggers.
"I have been in them, Guv'nor," he said. "The atmosphere is heavy with carpet-baggers who all have a reason for being paid for something by the Government. There's one of them now that little Hoosier hanging about the doorway. He's from North Carolina, and wants pay for a herd of cattle."
Thither we followed the crowd, listening for awhile to the blatant Southern orators roaring about the future greatness of the 'Mother of Presidents, deploring the reign of carpet-baggers and calling for a white man's government amidst the shouts of the great unwashed; while the sons of Ham looked silently and sullenly on.
The radical or Republican group included the negroes, a few southern whites, commonly called "scalawags," and various northerners known as "carpet-baggers." These last were in some cases mere adventurers and in others men of ability who were attracted to the South for one reason or another, and took a prominent part in political affairs. The old-time whites held both kinds in equal detestation.
Let us lay at least this token upon the grave of the carpet-baggers. The evil they did lives after them, and the statute of limitations does not seem to run against it. It is but just that we should not forget the good.
This measure was dictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower motives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the "reconstructed" States, and there ensued a period of humiliation to the South which made men look back with longing even to the sharper agonies of the war.
They could not rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings.
Many of the good lawyers were killed in the war, and most of the remainder were disqualified; while I had the advantage of being alive, and of never having been in arms against the government. People had to have lawyers, and they gave me their business in preference to the carpet-baggers. Fortune, you know, favors the available man."
But there was no complete pacification of the South until the carpet-bag governments were refused the support of the Federal troops by President Hayes, on his accession to power in 1876. Then the carpet-bag régime disappeared like a house of cards. The chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government passed at once into the hands of the native whites.
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