South Carolina’s Franklin J. Moses: Scalawag, But No Paskudnyak?
A scalawag may be a nogoodnik or even a paskudnyak, but in the subtitle of Benjamin Ginsberg’s brisk, informed “Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag during Radical Reconstruction” from Johns Hopkins University Press, “scalawag” has a more precise historical meaning. Applied after the Civil War to Southern whites who joined political forces with freed…
