Scalawag

In United States history, scalawags were Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War.

Like similar terms, such as "carpetbagger," the word has a long history of use as a slur against Southerners considered by other conservative or pro-federation Southerners to betray the region's values by supporting policies considered "Northern," such as desegregation and racial integration. The term is commonly used in historical studies as a neutral descriptor of Southern white Republicans, although some historians have discarded the term due to its history of pejorative connotations.

Origins of the term

The term was originally a derogatory epithet but is used by many historians as a useful shorthand, as in Wiggins (1991), Baggett (2003), Rubin (2006) and Wetta (2012). The word "scalawag", originally referring to low-grade farm animals, was adopted by their opponents to refer to Southern whites who formed a Republican coalition with black freedmen and Northern newcomers (called carpetbaggers) to take control of their state and local governments. Among the earliest uses in this new meaning were references in Alabama and Georgia newspapers in the summer of 1867, first referring to all southern Republicans, then later restricting it to only White ones.