15 Facts About Carpetbagger

1.

Carpetbagger later wrote Yazoo; Or, on the Picket Line of Freedom in the South .

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2.

Carpetbagger was the last Republican to represent that state in the U S House of Representatives, having served from 1883 to 1885.

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3.

Carpetbagger died in Vicksburg sixteen days after he left Congress.

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4.

Carpetbagger was appointed South Carolina's attorney general from 1868 to 1872 and was elected Republican governor from 1874 to 1877.

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5.

Carpetbagger was narrowly re-elected in a campaign marked by egregious voter fraud and violence against freedmen by Democratic Red Shirts, who succeeded in suppressing the black vote in some majority-black counties.

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6.

Carpetbagger made eloquent speeches advocating that the plantations be broken up and distributed among the freedmen.

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7.

Carpetbagger was accused of using his position as governor to trade in state bonds for his personal benefit.

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8.

Carpetbagger first came to New Orleans with the Union Army in 1863 and never left the area.

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9.

Carpetbagger eventually became vice-chair of the Georgia Republican Party, a state senator and the head of an African-American militia which he hoped to use against the Ku Klux Klan.

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10.

Carpetbagger returned to Ohio after 18 months and moved back to Arkansas by 1870.

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11.

Carpetbagger's election is notable because he was elected as a black Democrat during a campaign season notorious for white intimidation of black and Republican voters in black-majority eastern Arkansas.

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12.

Carpetbagger was the first-known black Democrat elected to the Arkansas General Assembly.

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13.

Carpetbagger returned to Arkansas in 1888, setting up practice as a lawyer.

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14.

Carpetbagger left the state in the 1890s after it disenfranchised black voters.

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15.

Carpetbagger was instrumental in organizing African-American dockworkers into the Labor Union of Colored Men, to gain them jobs at the docks after 1870.

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