USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In addition to carpetbaggers and freed African Americans, the majority of Republican support in the South came from white southerners who for various reasons saw more of an advantage in backing the policies of Reconstruction than in opposing them. Critics referred derisively to these southerners as “scalawags.”

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: -What was the Reconstruction era? The Reconstruction era was the period after the American Civil War from 1865 to 1877, during which the United States grappled with the challenges of reintegrating into the Union the states that had seceded and determining the legal status of African Americans.

Detailed explanation-4: -carpetbagger, in the United States, a derogatory term for an individual from the North who relocated to the South during the Reconstruction period (1865–77), following the American Civil War.

Detailed explanation-5: -"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.