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Reconstruction corruption and the redeemers’ prosecution of Francis Lewis Cardozo

This essay recreates in detail the 1877 trial of Francis L. Cardozo, who was state treasurer and a leading African American political figure in Reconstruction South Carolina. Cardozo's trial and conviction provides a quintessential example of the white Redeemers’ racially perverted reaction to the supposedly systemic corruption of the state's Reconstruction government. The essay reveals how much the prosecution of Cardozo was motivated and permeated by racial and political motives. The detailed examination should encourage a re‐evaluation of the history of Reconstruction corruption in the South, and of the Redeemers’ reaction to it.