The article rejects the conventional Reconstruction narrative that Democratic violence was pure aggression and Republican force pure self-defense, arguing that both sides’ claims of “defense” and wartime propaganda produced reciprocal racial violence rather than a simple party-line moral divide.

Drawing on Richard Nelson Current’s Those Terrible Carpetbaggers and contemporary sources, it contends that Radical Republicans militarized race relations by arming black militias while denying arms to whites, promoting the belief that only federal troops could prevent a race war, and using black votes to sustain carpetbagger governments.

Applying the non-aggression principle, the piece maintains that genuine self-defense requires clear evidence of imminent violent threat and cannot justify aggressive or preemptive force, a standard it says Republican policy in the South failed to meet.

According to the non-aggression principle, aggressive violence is never justified. But stating the principle is the easy part. Identifying the aggressor is more difficult when the facts are contested and when both sides, in their respective political parties, claim to be “defending” themselves against their aggressive enemies.

In the history of the Reconstruction era, the official narrative is that the Democrats were the aggressors, and Republican violence was “self-defense.” This is often presented as a moral justification for the militarization of race relations under Republican governments. The rationale of the non-aggression principle is then lost, wrongly subverted into its opposite—that violence is justified for those on “the right side of history” fighting against racism.

A closer examination of the facts reveals that the blame for racial violence cannot be assigned superficially along political party lines. Rather, in the aftermath of war, the same propaganda that fueled the war spawned Reconstruction violence.

In the foreword to his book Those Terrible Carpetbaggers, Professor Richard Nelson Current recounts some of these events from the perspective of the “carpetbaggers.” He argues that this history is important, observing that, “Anyone who claims to know anything about American history can tell you who the carpetbaggers were.” He attempts to give an objective analysis, explaining that,

. . .the story is told from the standpoint of these participants in it, not from the usual standpoint, which has been that of their enemies. While trying to see things as the carpetbaggers saw them, the book strives for objectivity in the sense of relying on the critical use of sources and revealing the pertinent facts whether favorable or unfavorable to the subjects.

. . .the story is told from the standpoint of these participants in it, not from the usual standpoint, which has been that of their enemies. While trying to see things as the carpetbaggers saw them, the book strives for objectivity in the sense of relying on the critical use of sources and revealing the pertinent facts whether favorable or unfavorable to the subjects.

By focusing on individuals who were influential during Reconstruction, he shows that not all Republicans—and, indeed, not all Democrats—were the same. Some tried to restore peace and prosperity, while others were in politics for selfish reasons. The “good........

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