USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -history, “scalawag” was a term used for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party after the Civil War.

Detailed explanation-2: -scalawag, after the American Civil War, a pejorative term for a white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction or who joined with black freedmen and the so-called carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies.

Detailed explanation-3: -The term scalawag was originally used as far back as the 1840s to describe a farm animal of little value; it later came to refer to a worthless person. For opponents of Reconstruction, scalawags were even lower on the scale of humanity than carpetbaggers, as they were viewed as traitors to the South.

Detailed explanation-4: -"Scalawag” was the derogatory nickname used by conservative southern whites to describe other southern whites who were active members of the Republican Party during Reconstruction.

Detailed explanation-5: -Carpetbagger” and “scalawag” are derisive epithets which southern Democrats, or Conservatives, applied to white Republicans, or radicals, during Congressional or Radical Reconstruction. Carpetbagger referred to Republicans who had recently migrated from the North; scalawag referred to southern-born radicals.