Percentage of population enslaved 1850
Average farm value, 1850
• What was the most crucial element of the
Republican coalition in the Southern states?
• What happened to that element?
– With Carpetbaggers and freedpeople safely in the
Republican camp, the Southern whites who often
constituted the bulk of the Southern population
served as the critical component of the
Republican coalition
Kolchin:
“Those states that were firmly under Republican Rule tended
to elect carpetbaggers and Negroes to Congress, whereas in
states where the Democratic challenge was great – or where
the Democrats were dominant – most Republican
congressmen were scalawags” (71).
“In short, the Republican party . . . Was a carpetbagger and
Negro party were it was strong and a scalawag party where is
was weak” (72).
“The carpetbaggers were the driving element within the
Reconstruction governments” (75).
• How, then, do we explain the failure of the
Republican coalition?
– The party lost when it could not hold the critical
swing vote of Southern whites
• What did the native whites want, and why were
they disappointed?
– Largely yeomen, they tended to support debt relief,
and measures to support those who had been left
outside the ranks of slaveholders
– The disempowerment of the old planter class so that
they could maintain power (disenfranchisement of
former rebels)
– But they had to contend with civil rights measures
(blacks) and capital projects such as railroads
(carpetbaggers)
• What else might have been at work that could
have sundered the Southern whites from the
party?
• Foner essentially says all this. Look how much
scholarship had to get done before he could
write his chapter on this.