I was listening today to Louis L’Amour’s novella Keep Travelin’, Rider (fun story), and one of the major plot points is the bad guys exploiting corrupt “carpet-bagger” courts in Texas to steal land from honest ranchers.
Now, I understand that at least part of the bad reputation of carpet-bagger courts during Reconstruction stems from Southerners who were just angry that the courts didn’t let them get away with robbing or killing free black people just as they pleased any more. Certainly that’s the attitude of some writers who glorified murderers like John Wesley Hardin.
On the other hand, I also believe that Reconstruction courts, and Reconstruction government in general, were completely unanswerable to the people that they governed: officials were appointed either directly from Washington or by the military authorities. It hardly seems unreasonable to suppose that judges and other officials who had no accountability to the people might have preyed upon those people (black or white), just as the popular Southern version has it.
Lastly, I understand that 19th-century American courts and government, both North and South, were notoriously corrupt anyway. Which makes me wonder if the corruption of Reconstruction courts was real enough, but perhaps had little to do with Reconstruction itself and more to do with the generally corrupt atmosphere of the 19th century.
So were the “carpet-bagger” courts more corrupt, less corrupt, or about the same as the courts before and after Reconstruction?
Loewen’s Lies my Teachers Told Me says that “Carpet Baggers” was a term of opprobrium used by Southern apologists for wgite who came from elsewhere, ostensibly to grab power at the expense of the locals, and to promote “negro rule” The name implies that they carried all they owned in a carpet bag, and were essentially con men out to get what they could. Its further implied that the blacks they helped into power were also corrupt and/or ignorant, and that orgqanizations like the KKK were needed to sweep away the plague.
Loewen cites books and articles rebutting this – you’ll have to see a copy of his book for them. I haven’t read the cites myself, but his claim is that the slander of carpetbaggers is pure propaganda.
Larry Gonick makes the same claim in his Cartoon History of the United States (complete with cites), but I can’t find my copy of either book right now.
The Wikipedia article on Carpetbaggers refers to both idealists and those less than ideal:
Loewen is next to worthless as a historian. As I have documented in other threads, his books are slanted and misleading, and his footnotes often don’t hold up to scrutiny. He may or may not be right about carpet baggers, but I wouldn’t trust his say-so on the matter.
Well,doubtless they were corrupt, given the times. But I have seen nothing to prove they were any more corrupt than the Good Ol’ Boys courts that preceded and came after them.
Speaking on Texas history, yes the reconstruction era courts were incredibly corrupt. There are recorded incidents of how opportunist the men in power were. They were even smart enough to protect the men who used physical violence to keep them in power such as throwing out cases where Texas State Police had illegally killed civilians. Even the cases where drunken policemen would just blindly open fire in the streets were thrown out of court. And so they took care of themselves and each other with the judges and lawyers getting land for themselves and politicians and everyone compensating everyone up until mass riots and damn-near revolutionary march(and I mean a mob of armed men killing any State Police in their way) onto the governor’s mansion ended it all. The reconstruction era is actually why the modern Texas political and justice system is so different from all the other States: extreme reaction to extreme times.
could you please elaborate on the differences between Texas and everybody else in terms of politics and law enforcement or else suggest articles on this topic?
Well, I know we have an elected judiciary which I don’t believe is common in other states. Texas history was a long time ago for me, but I don’t remember the incident that Snite refers to.
Be aware that Republicans governed Texas during Reconstruction for only a single four-year term, from 1870 to 1874. So any land-grabbin’ had to be done in a hurry.
No, that’s not how it worked. Federal army officers governed (or supervised state officials) in the South only between the end of the Civil War and the handover to civilian authorities between 1868 and 1870. White Southerners didn’t like having the army around, but it wasn’t corrupt.
Between 1867 and 1870, the army supervised elections to constitutional conventions and legislatures, with biracial suffrage, and then turned power over to the elected authorities. Since black people weren’t thrilled (understandably) about voting for former Confederates, a fair number of white outsiders, as well as African Americans themselves, won office. These are the governments white Southerners accused of being “corrupt carpet-baggers”.
In many cases, but not all, the new governments were in fact corrupt. They were desperately short of money and faced paramilitary white resistance movements (the KKK). Loyalties were fluid, and in many cases offices and favors were for sale.
On the other hand, as you say, Northern governments during the Gilded Age weren’t exactly Simon-pure, nor were Southern governments after the “redeemers” (white Democrats) returned to power. Lacking an index to quantify corruption, I can’t say who was worse.
One note about the Texas State Police; it only existed from 1870 to 1873 (Reconstruction ended in 1877).
Thanks for setting me straight about the civilian government in Texas. According to one source, Texas’s population was only about 30% black, so I assume the Republican victory 1870-74 was due in some degree to the disenfranchisement of Confederate war veterans? Or was there just a very large white Republican population in Texas?
From the bibliography of my main source of information Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by T. R. Fehrenbach:
Reconstruciton in Texas by Charles William Ramsdell, Texas Under Carpetbaggers by W.C. Nunn(noted as “less scholarly” by the author), Texas as seen in 1870 by D. Richardson, Making of the Constitution of 1876 by Seth Shepard McKay, Types of Successful Men in Texas by L. E. Daniell, They Sat in High Places: The Presidents and Governors of Texas by James T. DeShields.
Danimal: It was mostly achieved by voter fraud. In many counties the ballots either never opened, were closed early, or like in one definitely recorded incident the official simply took the ballot box and rode off with it if he saw too many Democrats in line. And in the incident recorded for posterity he literally did ride off with the(only one) ballot box tucked under his arm.
