Their complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good If they be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable." The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests of Southern society--the carpet-bagger and scallawag-if found in Dixie's Land after the break of day on the 4th of March next. The genus carpet-bagger is a man with a lank head of dry hair, a lank stomach and long legs, club knees and splay feet, dried legs and lank jaws, with eyes like a fish and mouth like a shark. Add to this a habit of sneaking and dodging about in unknown places-habiting with negroes in dark dens and back streets-a look like a hound and the smell of a poleeat. Words are wanting to do full justice to the genus scallawag. He is a cur with a contracted head, downward look, slinking and uneasy gait; sleeps in the woods, like old Crossland, at the bare idea of a Ku-Klux raid. Our scallawag is the local leper of the community. Unlike the carpet bagger, he is native, which is so much the worse. Once he was respected in his circle; his lead was level, and he would look his neighbor in the face. Now, possessed of the itch of office and the salt rheum of Radicalism, he is a mangy dog, slinking through the alleys, haunting the Gov ernor's office, defiling with tobacco juice the steps of the Capitol, stretching his lazy carcass in the sun on the Square, or the benches of the May or's Court. He waiteth for the troubling of the political waters, to the end that he may step in and be healed of the itch by the ointment of office. For of fice he bums' as a toper 'bums' for the satisfying dram. For office, yet in prospective, he hath bartered respectability; hath abandoned business, and ceased to labor with his hands, but employs his feet kicking out bootheels against lamp post and corner curb, while discussing the question of office. THE FATE OF THE CARPETBAGGER AND THE SCALAWAG [Cartoon by Ryland Randolph in the "Independent Monitor," Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 1, 1868; from copy in possession of the Alabama Department of Archives and History] The carpetbagger from Ohio was Rev. A. S. Lakin, who had just been elected president of the University of Alabama; and the scalawag was Dr. N. B. Cloud, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Alabama. Both were driven away from the University by the Klan. |