<P> Whites and blacks in South Carolina developed different memories of Reconstruction and used them to justify their politics . James Shepherd Pike, a prominent Republican journalist, visited the state in 1873 and wrote accounts that were widely reprinted and published as a book, The Prostrate State (1874). Historian Eric Foner writes: </P> <Dl> <Dd> The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extravagance, and under the control of "a mass of black barbarism ." The South's problems, he insisted, arose from "Negro government ." The solution was to restore leading whites to political power . </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extravagance, and under the control of "a mass of black barbarism ." The South's problems, he insisted, arose from "Negro government ." The solution was to restore leading whites to political power . </Dd> <P> Similar views were developed in scholarly monographs by academic historians of the Dunning School based at Columbia University in the early 20th century; they served as historians at major colleges in the South, influencing interpretation of Reconstruction into the 1960s . They argued that corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers controlled for financial profit the mass of ignorant black voters and nearly plunged South Carolina into economic ruin and social chaos . The heroes in this version were the Red Shirts: white paramilitary insurgents who, beginning in 1874, rescued the state from misrule and preserved democracy, expelled blacks from the public square by intimidation during elections, restored law and order, and created a long era of comity between the races . </P>

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