The Prostrate State  "Racial Backlash"  1874

By 1874, a backlash against Reconstruction policies had begun in the North, caused in part by the widespread corruption of President Ulysses S. Grant's administrations and corruption in the Southern state governments by Republican Reconstruction rulers. A decrease in sectionalism and a growing sympathy for the downtrodden white population in the ex-Confederate states also helped foster a desire to see the South returned to home rule. Many Northerners were disillusioned with the carpetbag Reconstruction governments and believed that granting black suffrage might have been a mistake. Former abolitionists were becoming disappointed with what freed blacks had been able to achieve, and they felt blacks were ungrateful for the efforts made in their behalf.

James S. Pike, a veteran antislavery journalist, was dispatched to South Carolina by the New York Tribune in 1873 to report on the status of that state's Reconstruction government. The articles Pike sent back to New York were published in 1874 as a book titled The Prostrate State. Pike represented South Carolina's government as being politically corrupt and extravagant with public funds. The state, said Pike, was under the control of "a mass of black barbarism... the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw." Though he had been an abolitionist, Pike held racist beliefs and made no effort to talk to black Carolinians while gathering information for his articles.

Pike's book added impetus to the antiblack press that was sweeping the North. The Nation editor, Edwin L. Godkin, echoed Pike's belief that blacks were innately incapable of governing. "We owe it to human nature to say that worse governments have seldom been seen in a civilized country." Godkin added that South Carolina's freedmen had an "average intelligence but slightly above the level of animals." The Prostrate State promoted racist attitudes in the North and helped pave the way the way for the return of the Southern states to white supremacist rule.

Fascinating Fact:  When sections of The Prostrate State citing political corruption in South Carolina's Reconstruction government were read on the floor of the House of Representatives, black South Carolina Congressman Robert Smalls stood up and asked "Have you the book there of the city of New York?"


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