Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation

by Current and Richard Nelson Current

Book Overview

Woodrow Wilson described them as men bent on "an expedition of profit," who used "the negroes as tools for their own selfish ends." Horace Greeley, while running for President, denounced them as "fellows who crawled down South in the track of our armies, generally at a very safe distance in the rear." The South, in turn, hotly condemned them as "the larvae of the North," "vulturous adventurers," and "vile, oily, odious."
Richard Nelson Current's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195048733
• ISBN13: 9780195048735
• Release Date: September 1989
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

American history you should know

An Civil War eminent historian demolishes the myths about carpetbaggers. The book follows 10 Northerners who became some of the more prominent leaders of the reconstructed South in the post-war era. Their actions belie the stereotypical story of greedy, slippery Northerners that was created to explain away the failure of Reconstruction after the North gave up on it. Read this book along with Eric Foner's masterpiece on the same subject. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Civil War, the South, or race relations. To understand America you need to know the story of Reconstruction - and it is likely not the one you learned in school. A fascinating read.