The Louisiana Scalawags: Politics, Race, and Terrorism During the Civil War and Reconstruction
Frank J. Wetta, LSU Press
Louisiana politics was never more corrupt than during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In his profile of the era, Frank Wetta explains the part played by scalawags, “Southern white Republicans in positions of influence and leadership, or those native white men identified as voting the Republican ticket.” These were distinct from carpetbaggers, Northerners who arrived after the war. Joined by newly freed African Americans, these groups formed an impediment to reinstating the role the plantation elite played in state politics.
Wetta’s investigation centers on the New Orleans riot of July 30, 1866. Spurred by an attempt to rewrite the state constitution, “the riot turned congressional and northern public opinion against the conservative, lenient Reconstruction program of President Johnson, gave weight to demands for harsher policies toward the defeated South, and contributed to the first impeachment of an American president,” he writes.
The Louisiana Scalawags would read better if it were not shot through with the style and language of the dissertation from whence it came. But studies like this one will help to reconstruct Reconstruction on a more scholarly footing, shining new light on America’s first experience with military occupation and nation building.
Originally published in the August 2013 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
