The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction

In The Scalawags, James Alex Baggett ambitiously uncovers the genesis of scalawag leaders throughout the former Confederacy. Using a collective biography approach, Baggett profiles 742 white southerners who supported Congressional Reconstruction and the Republican Party. He then compares and contrasts the scalawags with 666 redeemer-Democrats who opposed and eventually replaced them. Baggett follows the life of each scalawag before, during, and after the war, revealing real personalities and not mere statistics. This is the first Southwide study of the scalawags, and its scope and astounding wealth of sources make it the definitive work on the subject.