Examine the role of Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, Blacks and the Ku Klux Klan in

the emergence of the New South after the Civil War.

The end of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
were two significant factors that led to the creation of a New South. The
Union’s victory over the Confederacy had far-reaching implications in the
Southern society. The old plantation economy was in shambles, the past
political structures had faded due to secession to the Union, and the
composition of the Southern society itself had changed dramatically. In this
scenario the idea of a “New South” arose. Henry W. Grady, a newspaper editor
in Atlanta, Georgia, coined the phrase the "New South” in 1874. He urged the
South to abandon its longstanding agrarian economy for a modern economy
grounded in factories, mines, and mills. He propagated a post-Reconstruction
southern economy modelled on the North’s embrace of the Industrial
Revolution.
The components of the New South were essentially the remnants of the old
Southern slaveocracy, former slaves, as well as the new kinds of social groups
who emerged after the war. The former-slaves, now freedmen, were
confronted with a new reality and new freedom. Two other social groups were
particularly peculiar to the South during the Civil War period – the
Carpetbaggers and the Scalawags. While the picture of Southern society at this
stage seems to be one of a collapse of old ways, the activities of a white
supremacist terrorist group called the Ku Klux Klan revealed the elements that
still held on to past Southern values.
In the following answer we shall examine the role played by these social groups
in the emergence of a New South in the wake of post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Carpetbaggers
Carpetbaggers were Northerners who shifted to the South as a chance to get
rich quickly by seizing political office now barred from the old order. The term
was a coined by frustrated Southerners referring to the observation that many
of these newcomers carried their belongings in "carpet bags." Together with
Republicans, carpetbaggers were viewed as politically manipulating the former
Confederate states for their own financial and political gains. The Dunning
school scholars viewed carpetbaggers as people who degraded political and
business culture. Along similar lines, revisionists called them minions of
Northern business interests.
Though some carpetbaggers migrated to become rich, many did so to promote
modernization, education, and civil rights for former slaves in the South. As
Foner argues that along with profit driven mindsets, these people had a
reformist spirit to bring about sectional reconciliation and economic
regeneration in the South. Some carpetbaggers had influential roles in the new
Republican state legislatures, much to the dismay of white southerners.
The carpetbaggers hoped to buy land in the Southern states and start factories,
construct railways, lease plantations or partner with planters in the hopes of
making money from cotton. They helped in the diversification of the Southern
economy which until now was solely dependent on agriculture. Most
of the carpetbaggers were well-educated members of the middle class;
they worked as teachers, merchants, journalists or other types of businessmen,
or at the Freedman’s Bureau. Many were former Union soldiers. In addition to
economic motives, a good number of carpetbaggers saw themselves as
reformers and wanted to shape the post-war South in the image of the North,
which they considered to be a more advanced society. Though some
carpetbaggers undoubtedly lived up to their reputation as corrupt
opportunists, many were motivated by a genuine desire for reform and
concern for the civil and political rights of freed blacks.
Scalawags
Like "carpetbagger," the term scalawag has a long history of use as a slur.
Scalawag was a term for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction and
the Republican Party after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, scalawags
formed coalitions with black freedmen and Northern newcomers to take
control of state and local governments. Despite being a minority, these groups
gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of 1867. The
scalawags were considered traitors by many white southerners for supporting
the party that had led the fight against Confederacy and now placed the
defeated South under military rule. They were portrayed by the Democrats as
shameless men of poor character, willing to sell their heritage as white men for
a chance at a political office.
Most scalawags were non-slaveholding white farmers who had been wartime
unionists and believed that the reconstruction governments would help them
recover from wartime economic losses by suspending the collection of debts
and protecting small property holders. Despite being a minority, these groups
gained power by taking advantage of Reconstruction Laws of 1867. These laws
disenfranchised individuals who couldn’t take the Iron-Clad Oath. The coalition
(scalawags, carpetbaggers and freedmen) then took control over every
Confederate state except Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. The scalawags
included southern abolitionists as well as farmer slaveholders who supported
equal rights for freedmen. There were also people whose aim was to be a part
of the ruling Republican Party solely to acquire political power. In terms of
social class, they were less wealthy than the elite planter class.
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan was born out of hatred and fear of the new racial dynamics.
Formed in Tennessee in 1866 by six Confederate war veterans, it was one of
several secret societies that used intimidation and force, to advance white
supremacy and bring an end to Republican rule. Massacres, lynching, rape,
pillaging and terror were common. It was not only ex-Confederate soldiers and
poor whites even ministers, merchants, military officers etc. joined the KKK.
They called themselves a social organization and was viewed as a heroic group
liberating the whites and fighting black supremacy and Northern interference.
However, they were a terrorist group serving all those who wanted to preserve
white supremacy. The KKK spread throughout the Confederate states. They
were angered that former slave now held political power, and blamed
Northerners and the Federal government for the collapse of Southern society.
The KKK formed a tacit alliance with the Democratic Party in the South and
played a key role in bringing about “Redemption. They intimidated many
African-Americans during election time, coercing them to not vote, which
helped conservative “redemption” party of the Democrats to gain control by
1871. Black institutions like churches and schools were burned down, teachers
attacked and freed people who resisted were beaten and killed. White
Republicans and war time Unionists were also targeted by the KKK. They
carried out violent atrocities against those who supported Reconstruction.
Although the KKK was officially disbanded in 1869, Congress acted against its
activities in a series of laws known collectively as the Enforcement Acts (1870-
71). The legislation, which was intended to “enforce” the 14th and 15th
Amendments and make it a crime for anyone to interfere with a citizen's right
to vote. The Enforcement Acts included the Ku Klux Klan Act, which outlawed
conspiring, wearing disguises, and intimidating officials for the purpose of
undermining the Constitution. President Ulysses Grant used the law to suspend
the writ of habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina, and he successfully
prosecuted the KKK in that state. In the long run, however, federal officials
found it as difficult to root out the Klan and other white supremacist groups as
it was to make it possible for blacks to exercise their right to vote.
Blacks/Former Slaves
Under Andrew Johnson, the white Southerners tried to hold on all they could
of the old order. They passed “Black Codes” that narrowly defined the
possibilities of life for the former slaves. Former Confederates violently
attacked black people in New Orleans, Memphis, and in the countryside across
the region. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized those who challenged white supremacy
in any way. White Southerners resisted the Freedmen’s Bureau, which aided
impoverished whites and blacks with surplus United States Army material, used
special courts to adjudicate conflicts between freed people and their former
masters, and tried to prevent violence against African Americans.
Many freed blacks, previously forbidden to learn to read or write, wanted their
children to receive the education that they themselves had been denied. The
Congress-created Freedmen’s Bureau, assisted by former abolitionist
organizations in the North, succeeded in establishing schools for thousands of
blacks during the late 1860s. In addition, many former slaves established their
own churches. White southern clergymen had often defended slavery in their
sermons in the period before the Civil War. As a result, blacks distrusted their
white congregations, so they created their own as soon as they had the
opportunity.
Reconstruction brought important social changes to former slaves. Families
that had been separated before and during the Civil War were reunited, and
slave marriages were formalized through legally recognized ceremonies.
Families also took advantage of the schools established by the Freedmen's
Bureau and the expansion of public education, albeit segregated, under the
Reconstruction legislatures.
Economically, African-Americans were disadvantaged. As former slaves,
most of them had skills best suited to the plantation. Despite efforts
by white landowners to force blacks back into wage labour on large
plantations, emancipation enabled southern blacks to rent their own
plots of land, farm them, and provide for their families. A system of
sharecropping emerged in which many former plantation owners divided their
lands and rented out each plot, or share, to a black family.
By the early 1870’s sharecropping became the dominant way for the poor to
earn a living. Wealthy whites allowed poor whites and blacks to work land
in exchange for a share of the harvest. Some poor, landless whites
also became sharecroppers, farming lands owned by wealthy planter elites. By
1880, most of, many of farmers in the South were sharecroppers.
The economic prospects for blacks under the sharecropping system were
usually poor. Many former slaves ended up sharecropping on land owned by
their former masters, and the system kept blacks tied to their shares or their
rented plots of land and thereby indebted to white landowners. Most black
farmers could purchase items only on credit at local shops, which were almost
always owned by their landlords, and thus went deeper into debt.
Conclusion
Hence, the picture of the Old South was replaced by a new society that was
built on the principles of the Reconstruction. While new groups emerged as
dominant players, elements of the older society still tried to hold on to their
past glory. However, post-Civil War, the South could no longer adhere to this
image, and became integrated into the larger United States of America.