Actually, the notion that Reconstruction governments were particularly corrupt is mostly BS spun by pro-Confederate “Lost Cause” apologists. It would be more accurate to say that Gilded Age governments generally were rather corrupt by modern standards, whether North, South, East, or West.
Corrupt/incompetent. The ex-confederates were barred from office., which meant that the natural leaders of the community were frozen out. There simply weren’t enough southern Unionist leaders to take over, and of course their authority was undercut by their association with the Army. The Carpetbaggers were a mixed lot. Lots of idealists mixed with lots of opportunists. Many ex-Union officers who thought of the South as their chance to get ahead. I guess you can say that the average Carpetbagger government was no more corrupt than the Tammany machines. The difference being that in the South pawns were the ex-slaves and in the North, the immigrants. Nor were they any more competent. People forget that the war may look in retrospect like a moral crusade, but it unleased great disorder and unrest in Noerth as well as South. Ruthless men like Rockefeller and Carnegie built their fortunes on federal contracts. A major between North and South is that in the South all the great fortunes were swept away. The Redeemer governments were no better than the ones they replaced, but at least they weren’t the puppets of the North.