And while scalawags are usually portrayed as advocates of radical racial reforms and "social equality," the truth is that most scalawags shared Southern biases. While they favored abolishing slavery (and had a decided self-interest in black voting), ideas such as integrated schools and "race mixing" found few advocates among them. Rather, they favored economic development, industrialization, and an educated public. Many of the state colleges in the south and many of the South's public school systems were founded by scalawag governments. And though some had a fondness for the "stars and bars" and a fair number served under it, they put "Old Glory" first. Basically, the scalawags of the 1860s were in many respects similar to the Southern Republicans of today.

Who were the scalawags, then? They were, as they would have said, "loyal men," who believed that loyalty and some good ideas constituted a license to lead. In the end, though, the scalawags made the mistake of trying to reign backed by armies and minority voting, without broader support. When the troops went away, their governments collapsed. Still, it is interesting to contemplate what the history of the South would have been like had the industrialized, progressive, pro-free enterprise region that began to emerge at the end of the 1960s Civil Rights era happened a century earlier. Had that occurred we would live in a very different, less racially divided, and even more prosperous country.

Wellesley College historian Elizabeth Varon's Southern Lady, Union Spy is a biography of Elizabeth Van Lews, a prominent scalawag, but not a very typical one. A Southern lady from a leading merchant family, Elizabeth spent her life in her family's mansion in Church Hill, Richmond's wealthiest anti-bellum neighborhood. Like many from the merchant class, Elizabeth was a Whig and an anti-secessionist. Unlike most, though, once the war began Van Lew's didn't give up her Union allegiance. Rather, she used her ample contacts among pre-war Unionists, pro-Union blacks, her social position, and her natural guile to build the most effective Northern espionage network in the South.

It is a stirring story. Van Lew's began her work slowly, bringing aid to Federal Soldiers held in the various Confederate prisons in the Richmond area. Appalled by the conditions Union soldiers were held in, she worked to aid a successful breakout attempt from Libby prison.

Later, in what may be her most spectacular coup, she located, retrieved, and sent to Union lines in one of the only two metal caskets in Richmond the remains of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, a Union officer and Admiral's son who had been killed in a raid on Richmond and whose body had been mutilated and put on display by Confederate authorities, operating under the probably mistaken belief that Dahlgren had been sent to murder Davis and the Southern Cabinet.

Beyond these spectacular deeds, though, Van Lew's main contribution was using her network to update Union leaders about the Confederate armies strength and plans. Towards the end of the conflict, she was in communication with U.S. Grant about twice a week.