“Facing the mouth of Union guns, southerners were forced to accept northerners and people of color as their newly elected officials. That, by the way, is where the term “carpetbagger” comes from. The northerners who came south to take offices carried their possessions in carpet bags.”
Michael, how could you omit the third part of Reconstruction state governments — that is, Southern whites who were part of the pro-Union and/or antislavery minority among their fellows, and who the ex-planters called ‘scalawags’? While it is true that some of them were self-seekers, most were members of a political minority that had been effectively muzzled before the Civil War. I know; my paternal ancestors were among them.