Scalawags

//BNative White Southern politicans who joined the Republican party after the war and advocated the acceptance of and compliance with angressional Reconstruction were labeled **__SCALAWAGS.__** To most white southerners, **__SCALAWAGS__** were an unprincipled group of traitorous opportunists who had deserted their countrymen and ingratiated themselves with the hated Radical Republicans for their own material gain. The devastation in the south after the war, coupled with the economic and progressive political action that the// //disen////franchised white population counld not address//. //Scalawags formed a winning coalition with freedmen ( blacks who were former slaves) and northern newcomers ( pejoratively labelled carpetbaggers) to take control of their state and local governments. Though they were a minority, they gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of 1867 that disenfranchised ( Forbidding to vote or hold office ) the majority of southerners who could not or did not wish totake the ironclad oath certifying that they did not serve in confederate military or hold any office under the previous regime.

In 1961, John Hope Franklin gave his assessment of the motives of Southern Unionists. He said that as more Southerners were allowed to vote and participate. South Carolina had about 100,000 **scalawags** or about 15% of the white population. The Republican coalition attracted some wealthier whites, and especially moderates favoring cooperation between open minded Democrates and responsible Republicans.

Although the terms **scalawag** and carpetbagger were terrible labels imposed by political enemies, the historians still use the term when referring to the two groups. Democrats opposed to the Republicans plan for Reconstruction, they called white southerners who joined the Republican Party **scalawags. scalawags** hope to gain political offices with the help of the African- American vote and then used those offices to enrich themselves.
 * Scalawag,** originally used to describe runty or diseased cattle, was the term of opprobrium used for white southerners who joined with former slaves and carpet-baggers in support of Republican policies during the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War . In the states of the upper South, white Republicans were hill country farmers with Unionist sympathies. Those in the Deep South came from planter-business aristocracy with Whig antecedents. No group was committed to black rights or suffrage, their role in Reconstruction was important. Constituting 20 percent of the white electorate, they often provided the crucial margin of victory for the Republicans. In the constitutional conventions of 1867–1868 also in the subsequent state governments, they showed leadership disproportionate to their popular strength.

The Republican Party was the object of much contempt in the American South during the late 1860s. Congress was dominated by radical Republicans who were able to overturn presidential vetoes to get their goals. While President Andrew Johnson supported a lenient policy toward the Southern rebel states, Congress favored a more gradual approach to reunification. In order to prevent another resurgence in the South, Congress delayed the readmission of former Confederate states until Republican governments could established in them. Congress was determined to enact legislation and sponsor constitutional amendments that would extend the rights of citizenship to freed slaves. After four years of horrible combat during the war, many Southerners sided with the Union and with the Republican lawmakers who were determining Reconstruction policy. Andrew Johnson had proved himself an ineffectual leader, and Congress had gotten enough votes to repeatedly override him, they// //impeached him in 1868. Some whites in the South, called **scalawags**, joined with Northern businessmen and politicians (derisively called carpetbaggers) as well as the freed slaves to forge a new South. Southern Democrates unfairly pointed to these individuals as representative of all white Southern Republicans. Some **scalawags** honestly thought that a republican government offered the best chances for the south to rebuild and industrailize. The most were small farmers who wanted to improve their political and economic position and to prevent the former wealthy planters from regaining power//.

Danzer, Gerald A. __The Americans__. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Retrieved August 29, 2006