About five years before William Archibald Dunning was thrown out of Dartmouth for being a part of a mob retaliating on bullies, James S. Pike reported on Reconstruction and wrote a book that helped change the dialogue in the North regarding the treatment of the South. Dunning is often credited with establishing the un-constitutional and unnecessarily violent and chaotic Reconstruction history that is so hated today, but did he?

James Pike was a reporter and his book The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government reads like it. From 1850 to 1860 he was the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Tribune. He was widely known and was first a Whig and then a Republican. He was appointed as minister to the Netherlands by Lincoln in 1861 where he served until 1866. He then returned to the Tribune and also wrote for the Sun.

He established himself as a Radical Republican and opposed President Johnson. He supported black suffrage and the disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates. This is what makes his book so interesting.

In early 1873 Pike spent a few months in South Carolina and reported on what he saw and experienced. His columns were carried across the country. This provided much of the material for his book which does not paint the Radical Republican version of events. He had a complete change of perspective.

I have not read much of the book but from the table of contents you get a good idea of the tone and content. With entries like the “Humiliation of Whites” and “Society bottom side up” it is clear he does not like what he sees. He has many chapters on fraud and one section called “The treasury drained by thieves”. He also calls for things like “Greater Political Tolerance…” and indicates “Immigration its greatest need”.

Historian John Hope Franklin addresses Pike and says it has been proven by looking at his journals and notebooks that Pike created a “distorted picture that discredited reconstruction at the time” by leaving out some things and embellishing others. Franklin believed Pike’s portrayal was “giving vent to his long-held racist views”. Franklin appears to be a straight shooter and I tend to accept his conclusions but for a Radical Republican to have such a change of perspective says something.