Published by Charleston Voice
THE TRAGIC ERA, by Claude Bowers
Pgs 198-205
CARPETBAGGERS, SCALAWAGS AND RADICAL REPUBLICANS
In the autumn of 1866, and through the winter and summer of 1867 strange men from the North were flocking into the black belt of the South, and mingling familiarly with the negroes, day and night. These were the emissaries of the Union League Clubs of Philadelphia and New York that have been unfairly denied their historic status in the consolidation of the negro vote. Organized in the dark days of the war to revive the failing spirit of the people, they had become bitterly partisan clubs with the conclusion of the struggle; and, the Union saved, they had turned with zest to the congenial task of working out the salvation of their party. This, they thought, depended on the domination of the South through the negro vote. Sagacious politicians, and men of material means, obsessed with ideas as extreme as those of Stevens and Sumner, they dispatched agents to turn the negroes against the Southern whites and organize them in secret clubs.
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