Editing Carpetbagger (section)

==Background==
The Republican Party in the South comprised three groups after the Civil War, and white Democratic Southerners referred to two in derogatory terms. [[Scalawag]]s were white Southerners who supported the Republican party, "carpetbaggers" were recent arrivals in the region from the North, and [[freedmen]] were freed slaves.<ref name="BoyerClark2009">{{cite book |first1=Paul S. |last1=Boyer |first2=Clifford E. |last2=Clark |first3=Sandra |last3=Hawley |first4=Joseph F. |last4=Kett |first5= Andrew |last5=Rieser |title=The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume 2: From 1865, Concise |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eE6pRrQwUMoC&pg=PA362 |date=January 5, 2009 |publisher=Cengage Learning |isbn=978-0-547-22278-3 |pages=362ff}}</ref>

Most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the South were edited by scalawags and 20 percent were edited by carpetbaggers. White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage.<ref>Stephen L. Vaughn, ed., ''Encyclopedia of American Journalism'' (2007) pp 440-41.</ref><ref>Richard H. Abbott, ''For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South'' (2004).</ref>

Historian [[Eric Foner]] argues:
{{blockquote|...most carpetbaggers probably combine the desire for personal gain with a commitment to taking part in an effort "to substitute the civilization of freedom for that of slavery"...Carpetbaggers generally supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing the South – civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, the establishment of public school systems.<ref>Eric Foner, ''[[Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution - 1863-1877|Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877]]'' (1988) p 296</ref>}}

===Reforming impulse===
Beginning in 1862, Northern [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionists]] moved to areas in the South that had fallen under Union control.<ref>Willie Lee Rose, ''Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment'' (1976).</ref> Schoolteachers and religious missionaries went to the South to teach the freedmen; some were sponsored by northern churches. Some were abolitionists who sought to continue the struggle for racial equality; they often became agents of the federal [[Freedmen's Bureau]], which started operations in 1865 to assist the vast numbers of recently emancipated slaves. The bureau established schools in rural areas of the South for the purpose of educating the mostly illiterate Black and [[Poor White]] population. Other Northerners who moved to the South did so to participate in the profitable business of rebuilding railroads and various other forms of infrastructure that had been destroyed during the war.<ref>Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, ''The Scalawag in Alabama Politics. 1865–1881'' (University of Alabama Press. 1991).</ref><ref>Richard Nelson Current, ''Those Terrible Carpetbaggers'' (Oxford University Press. 1988)</ref>

During the time most blacks were enslaved, many were prohibited from being educated and attaining literacy. Southern states had no public school systems, and upper-class white Southerners either sent their children to private schools (including in England) or hired private tutors. After the war, hundreds of Northern white women moved South, many to teach the newly freed African-American children. They joined like-minded Southerners, most of which were employed by the Methodist and Baptist Churches, who spent much of their time teaching and preaching to slave and freedpeople congregations both before and after the Civil War.<ref>Godbey, William Baxter, "Autobiography of Rev. W.B. Godbey, A.M.", God's Revivalist Office. Cincinnati. 1909.</ref><ref>Williams, Heather Andrea, ''Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom,'' University of North Carolina Press,</ref>

===Economic motives===
[[File:Wealth, per capita, in the United States, from 9th US Census (1872).jpg|thumb|right|Map of the United States in 1872, showing the disparity of wealth between the North and South during the Reconstruction Era]]
Carpetbaggers also established banks and retail businesses. Most were former Union soldiers eager to invest their savings and energy in this promising new frontier, and civilians lured south by press reports of "the fabulous sums of money to be made in the South in raising cotton." Foner notes that "joined with the quest for profit, however, was a reforming spirit, a vision of themselves as agents of sectional reconciliation and the South's "economic regeneration." Accustomed to viewing Southerners—black and white—as devoid of economic initiative, the "Puritan work ethic", and self-discipline, they believed that only "Northern capital and energy" could bring "the blessings of a free labor system to the region."<ref>Foner, 1988, pp. 137</ref>

Carpetbaggers tended to be well educated and middle class in origin. Some had been lawyers, businessmen, and newspaper editors. The majority (including 52 of the 60 who served in Congress during Reconstruction) were veterans of the Union Army.<ref>Foner 1988 pp 294–295</ref>

Leading "black carpetbaggers" believed that the interests of capital and labor were identical and that the freedmen were entitled to little more than an "honest chance in the race of life."<ref>Foner 1988 pp 289</ref>

Many Northern and Southern Republicans shared a modernizing vision of upgrading the Southern economy and society, one that would replace the inefficient [[Plantations in the American South|Southern plantation]] regime with railroads, factories, and more efficient farming. They actively promoted public schooling and created numerous colleges and universities. The Northerners were especially successful in taking control of Southern railroads, aided by state legislatures. In 1870, Northerners controlled 21% of the South's railroads (by mileage); 19% of the directors were from the North. By 1890, they controlled 88% of the mileage; 47% of the directors were from the North.<ref>Klein 1968 p. 269</ref>