The Brooks–Baxter War, also known as the Brooks–Baxter Affair, was an attempt made by failed gubernatorial candidate Joseph Brooks of the “Brindle-tail” faction of Arkansas' Republican Party to take control of the state from Elisha Baxter, who was the Republican governor. The victor in the end was the Baxter administration, also known as the "Minstrels", supported by "carpetbaggers" over the Brindle-tails supported by "scalawags" and "freedmen".
"A Plague O' Both Your Houses!" by C.S.R. shows "Arkansas" as victim of the feud between the two men.
Powell Clayton
In order to pay for the new infrastructure, Governor Powell allowed the state to be flooded with paper scrip. This is an example of a one dollar note from Fayetteville, Arkansas issued in 1872 worth one dollar for five years after its printing date.
ANARCHY IN ARKANSAS reads this wood cut purportedly showing Baxter's men loading onto a steam ship on their way to attack Brooks forces. This image appeared in many major news papers including the New York Times.
In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical pejorative used by Southerners to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and/or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics, and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The word is closely associated with scalawag, a similarly pejorative word used to describe native white Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.
1872 cartoon depiction of Carl Schurz as a carpetbagger
A cartoon threatening that the KKK will lynch scalawags (left) and carpetbaggers (right) on March 4, 1869, the day Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, will supposedly become president. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, September 1, 1868. The cartoonist had actual local politicians in mind. A full-scale scholarly history analyzes the cartoonː Guy W. Hubbs, Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman (2015)
Historical marker in Colfax, Louisiana that celebrates the Colfax massacre (a mass murder of dozens of African Americans) as "the end of carpetbag misrule in the South." Erected in 1950, the sign was removed in 2021.