The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS271 ful several authors' accounts of Southern difficulties in printing stamps, improvising envelopes, and transporting the mails. Social historians and anyone studying propaganda could find source material in patriotic envelopes printed during the war. Letters sent through the blockade, across the embatded Mississippi River, and by prisoners of war throw light on aspects of daily life. Articles by MacBride publish in their entirety a letter written in Libby Prison by Union General Neal Dow and several brief letters of General Robert E. Lee. Such documents suggest to Civil War historians that philatelic literature contains an abundance of sometimes overlooked original sources. Despite its formidable price, Crown's book should attract some historians to join its probably mainly philatelic audience . Frank L. Byrne Kent State University The Scahwag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881. By Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins. (University, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1977. Pp. 220. $12.00.) This is a welcome, useful, but ultimately disappointing book. It is welcome and useful primarily because of its novelty: although there have been numerous articles dealing with particular facets of scalawag history—most particularly attempting to determine the backgrounds of these southern white Republicans—this is the first booklength study of the scalawags in any state. As such a "first," it contains a wealth of useful detail, uncovered through careful exploration of manuscripts and newspapers, on Alabama's postwar Republican politicians. Unfortunately, however, this volume also suffers from methodological and conceptual shortcomings. Professor Wiggins presents two major conclusions. First, despite the propaganda of white Democrats—and of subsequent historians— the scalawags were hardly the scum of Alabama, misfits who could find success only by joining the conquering northern Republicans. Rather, they were "realistic and perceptive men who hardly deserve the epithet of 'local lepers,' which they have borne for a century " (p. 135). More interesting to most readers will be her second conclusion, mat despite the conviction of most scalawags mat they were being denied their fair share of the spoils of office, in fact they dominated (at least numerically) the Alabama Republican party. Indeed, the most valuable service of this book is the demonstration that "[t]he number of offices they held was far out of proportion to the number of votes they brought to the party" (p. 90). Professor Wiggins finds that of the 117 Alabama Republicans who occupied the most important political positions between 1868 and 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY 1881, seventy-six were scalawags, thirty-five carpetbaggers, and only six blacks. If scalawags consistendy complained that they were being slighted, it was because they "resented the nomination, appointment , or election of any newcomer or any black to any office as an affront to loyal native whites who had survived the hardships of war" (p. 133). Despite its utility, this book lacks the kind of sophistication, imagination, and technique called for by its subject. Most recent investigations of scalawags, for example, have contained analyses of election returns (in order to determine who voted for the scalawags ), and of legislative roll-calls (in order to determine whether scalawags voted as a recognizable bloc, distinguishable from other Republicans). Because Professor Wiggins eschews election analysis, her study becomes less a well-rounded investigation of Alabama scalawags than an account of the activities of scalawag leaders prominent enough to appear in local newspapers and political correspondence . Because she shuns roll-call analysis, she is forced to delineate political factions impressionistically, on the basis of what politicians said, or a priori, on the basis of whether they were scalawags , carpetbaggers, or blacks, rather than objectively, on the basis of how they voted. As a result, this study probably overemphasizes the degree to which Republican factions were defined by color or place of birth, and slights intraparty rivalries based on personality, ideology, and struggles over patronage. Conceptually, too, this book has limitations. The effort to rehabilitate the scalawags is dated. Twenty years ago the demonstration that southern Republicans were not "local lepers" might have been newsworthy; surely, given the present state of Reconstruction historiography, today it is not. Increasingly, as one reads through this book, one becomes dissatisfied with the old-fashioned political narrative, tired of the repeated insistence that the scalawags were moderate realists...