By Dan Dickinson

The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction by James Alex Baggett, Louisiana University Press, Baton Rouge. Louisiana, 271 pages. $55.00.

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Sorty of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Yankee Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy by Elizabeth Varon, Oxford University Press, New York, New York, 261 pages. $35.00.

Visit any bookstore and you'll see shelves groaning with volumes about America's Civil War. Titles abound regarding battles, leaders, and campaigns. They extol famed units, detail soldier life, and even present "oddball" stories about women who served dressed as men and children who fought while pretending to be men. Taken together, the Civil War is America's formative historical obsession.

Encased in these tomes are some of our best historical and fictional writings, by such distinguished authors as Shelby Foote, James McPherson, Bruce Catton, and U.S. Grant. What is lacking are volumes detailing the events that led to disunion in the first place. Absent, too, have been studies that tell us much about the fact that, while a majority of Southerners favored leaving the Union, a substantial number of Southerners didn't support secession. And while most Southern dissenters accepted the inevitable, more than a few sided with the Union throughout the war, providing moral and material support, and, in some cases, intelligence.

After the Federal victory, many of these same pro-Union elements came to dominate Reconstruction politics. These individuals have earned the epithet "scalawags," to distinguish them from their Northern emigre counterparts, the "carpetbaggers." The "scalawags'" subsequent fall led to the development of a "Redemption" south not hugely different from the gracious, class dominated, and almost feudal society of anti-bellum times.

Yet, the question must be asked: Did the Redeemer's victory lead to a better South? Or did the Redeemer triumph delay the South's progress for an additional century? If the answer is the latter, just what is the proper place of the "scalawags" in American history?

The present volumes offer two views on the scalawags, one from a general perspective, the other highly personal. Both, in their different ways, seek to answer these questions.

According to historian James Baggett's impressively researched study, the "scalawags" were pro-Union Southerners who had opposed secession in the years leading up to the Civil War. Few were Republicans (Lincoln didn't even appear on the ballot in the South), most were Whigs, and the vast majority voted for John Bell's anti-secession Constitutional Union Party in the 1861 election--an effort that carried most border states and scored strongly in much of the south.

When secession came, most "scalawags" offered reluctant support to the Southern Cause. Others emigrated north or sat the war out. More than a few resisted, either forming pro-Union guerilla outfits such as North Carolina's Patriots of America or providing intelligence to the invading Northern Armies.

As parts of the South fell, the "scalawags" emerged, joining with "carpetbaggers" in forming "State Governments" in union occupied territory. Except in West Virginia, these efforts did little but inflame the mostly pro-South inhabitants. As pathetic as these quasi-state fiefdoms were, though, these efforts did train the "scalawags" in how to write constitutions, hold elections, and make laws. When the Confederacy collapsed, the "scalawags" found a political vacuum in the South. They were more than happy to fill it.

Thus, from 1865 - 1874, while many white Southerners were disenfranchised, "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" ran most of the South. Thanks to the resumption of voting rights and the violence of the Klan, the "scalawags" were then swept out of power, to appear in history only as corrupt, sadistic, and cartoonish caricatures in such movies as "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind."

Were the "scalawags" so bad? Blaggett argues that the scalawags bore little resemblance to the backstabbers of Southern myth. Contrary to the stereotype of the scalawag as an ignorant country bumpkin, most "scalawag" leaders were middle to upper class professionals, well educated, and with some experience in government. While there were few rich planters among them, many were prominent merchants, lawyers, and manufacturers who bridled against the backwardness of the plantation system.