Editing Carpetbagger (section)

===North Carolina===
Corruption was a charge made by Democrats in North Carolina against the Republicans, notes the historian Paul Escott, "because its truth was apparent."<ref name="Escott 160">Escott 160</ref> The historians [[Eric Foner]] and [[W.E.B. Du Bois]] have noted that Democrats as well as Republicans received bribes and participated in decisions about the railroads.<ref name="Foner, 1988, pp. 387">Foner, 1988, pp. 387</ref> General [[Milton S. Littlefield]] was dubbed the "Prince of Carpetbaggers", and bought votes in the legislature "to support grandiose and fraudulent railroad schemes". Escott concludes that some Democrats were involved, but Republicans "bore the main responsibility for the issue of $28 million in state bonds for railroads and the accompanying corruption. This sum, enormous for the time, aroused great concern." Foner says Littlefield disbursed $200,000 (bribes) to win support in the legislature for state money for his railroads, and Democrats as well as Republicans were guilty of taking the bribes and making the decisions on the railroad.<ref name="Foner, 1988, pp. 387"/> North Carolina Democrats condemned the legislature's "depraved villains, who take bribes every day"; one local Republican officeholder complained, "I deeply regret the course of some of our friends in the Legislature as well as out of it in regard to financial matters, it is very embarrassing indeed."<ref name="Escott 160"/>

Escott notes that extravagance and corruption increased taxes and the costs of government in a state that had always favored low expenditure. The context was that a planter elite kept taxes low because it benefited them. They used their money toward private ends rather than public investment. None of the states had established public school systems before the Reconstruction state legislatures created them, and they had systematically underinvested in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. Planters whose properties occupied prime riverfront locations relied on river transportation, but smaller farmers in the backcountry suffered.<ref name="Escott 160"/>

Escott claimed "Some money went to very worthy causes—the 1869 legislature, for example, passed a school law that began the rebuilding and expansion of the state's public schools. But far too much was wrongly or unwisely spent" to aid the Republican Party leadership. A Republican county commissioner in Alamance eloquently denounced the situation: "Men are placed in power who instead of carrying out their duties...form a kind of school for to graduate Rascals. Yes if you will give them a few Dollars they will liern you for an accomplished Rascal. This is in reference to the taxes that are rung from the labouring class of people. Without a speedy reformation I will have to resign my post."<ref name="Escott 160"/>

[[Albion W. Tourgée]], formerly of Ohio and a friend of President [[James A. Garfield]], moved to North Carolina, where he practiced as a lawyer and was appointed a judge. He once opined that "Jesus Christ was a carpetbagger."<ref>Elliott, Mark, ''Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy V. Ferguson'', Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 119</ref> Tourgée later wrote ''A Fool's Errand'', a largely autobiographical novel about an idealistic carpetbagger persecuted by the [[Ku Klux Klan]] in North Carolina.<ref>Hill, Christopher, "Summary" of a ''Fool's Errand'', http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/tourgee/summary.html</ref>