In 2000, I wrote a master's thesis on the career of a "carpetbag" Republican politician in the South, Horatio Bisbee (who after the failure of Reconstruction relocated to his native state of Maine). I picked up "The Scalawags" because 1) Southern-born white Republicans in Reconstruction were a faction I wanted more knowledge about, and 2) I was hoping for more information about the wartime role of Southern Unionists. I was disappointed in 2) but 1) was a goal this book managed to meet.
The Republican Party in the South during Reconstruction had three basic components. The largest was the recently freed African-Americans. The second largest was the carpetbaggers, white Northerners who came to the South as part of or on the heels of the advancing Union armies. The smallest, in some states fewer than 2,000, was the white men who had lived in the South prior to secession (not all of whom were born there) and became Republicans after the war for various reasons. This group was known to their enemies (and because those enemies won, to historians) as the "scalawags." (This word is derived from the Scots "scollowag, originally used. . .to denote inferior livestock." p.1-2)
Reconstruction in political terms was not uniform throughout the South. In some places, carpetbaggers had the upper hand; in others it was the scalawags. A higher proportion of Republicans in the Upper South were scalawags, which may have something to do with the Republican Party remaining viable longer there than in the Lower South. Scalawags came around gradually to supporting African-American suffrage and typically (in some cases because they had fought for the Confederacy) opposed the disfranchisement of former Confederates.
I would not call this a well-written book. It moves from state to state presenting anecdotes about the behavior, conventions, and elections of scalawags in various places. You don't really have time to identify with any of the characters and a biography of a prominent scalawag might therefore be a superior way for people unfamiliar with the period to be introduced to the scalawags. The means whereby the Democratic "redeemers" took over and destroyed the Republican Party and the short-term potential for a multiracial society also receive scant attention, but then, this is not a book about them. The book was probably most disappointing in offering so little information about the Southerners especially from the Upper South who served in the Union Army. A few individuals who did so are covered in passing, but not the exploits of the regiments they formed.
My personal favorite scalawags were the Mackey family (Unitarians like myself) of South Carolina. Edmund Mackey served in Congress and married a mixed-race woman, while his uncle, Confederate veteran Thomas Mackey, accurately summed up life in the Deep South during Reconstruction (and Jim Crow) with the following quote: "A great injustice has been done to the people of Edgefield. It is charged that they kill negroes on account of their political opinions. That is altogether a mistake; they do it for Sport." If I get back into history in a more serious way, biographies of these two might be projects I would undertake. If you are a serious student of Reconstruction, this is an indispensable book, but if you are looking for an introduction, Foner's "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution" is probably where you should start.
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