Scalawag
In United States history, scalawag (sometimes spelled scallawag or scallywag) was a pejorative slur referred to white Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts after the conclusion of the American Civil War.
[3] The term is a derogatory epithet, yet it is used by many historians in works by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins (1991), James Alex Baggett (2003),[4] Hyman Rubin (2006), and Frank J. Wetta (2012).
[6] The term was later 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.
[1] Historian Ted Tunnel writes: Reference works such as Joseph Emerson Worcester's 1860 Dictionary of the Caribbean Spanish Language defined scalawag as "A low worthless fellow; a scapegrace."
In early 1868 a Mississippi editor observed that scalawag "has been used from time immemorial to designate inferior milch cows in the cattle markets of Virginia and Kentucky."
That June the Richmond Enquirer concurred; scalawag had heretofore "applied to all of the mean, lean, mangy, hidebound skiny [sic], worthless cattle in every particular drove."
During the 1868–69 session of Judge "Greasy" Sam Watts' court in Haywood County, North Carolina, William Closs testified that a scalawag was "a Native born Southern white man who says he is no better than a negro and tells the truth when he says it".
[9] After the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson undertook policies designed to bring the Southern United States back to normal as soon as possible, while the Radical Republicans used Congress to block President Johnson's policies, which favored ex-Confederates.
Despite being a minority, scalawags gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of 1867, which disenfranchised the majority of Southern white voters as they could not take the Ironclad oath, which required they had never served in Confederate armed forces or held any political office under the state or Confederate governments.
Historian Harold Hyman says that in 1866 Congressmen "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which Southern Unionists and Negroes protected themselves.
"[10] The coalition controlled every former Confederate state except Virginia, as well as Kentucky and Missouri – which were claimed by both the North and the South – for varying lengths of time between 1866 and 1877.
And the number increased as the President granted individual pardons or issued new proclamations of amnesty ... Their primary interest was in supporting a party that would build the South on a broader base than the plantation aristocracy of Antebellum days.
Some 117 Republicans were nominated, elected, or appointed to the most lucrative and powerful state executive positions, judgeships, and federal legislative and judicial offices between 1868 and 1881.
In state offices during Reconstruction, white southerners were even more predominant: 51 won nominations, compared to 11 carpetbaggers and one black.
Rubin shows that the collapse of the Republican coalition came from disturbing trends of corruption and factionalism that increasingly characterized the party's governance.
These failings disappointed Northern allies who abandoned the state Republicans in 1876 as the Democrats under Wade Hampton reasserted control.
One complained that Alcorn's policy was to see "the old civilization of the South modernized" rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution.
Although a former enslaver, Alcorn characterized slavery as cancer upon the body of the Nation and expressed the gratification that he and many other Southerners felt over its destruction.
[4] The term 'scally' is also used in the United Kingdom to refer to elements of the working class and petty criminality, in a similar vein to the more contemporary chav.
"[16] However, historian Eric Foner argues there is not sufficient evidence that scalawags were any more or less corrupt than politicians of any era, including Redeemers.
Included, too, were people who wanted to be part of the ruling Republican Party simply because it provided more opportunities for successful political careers.
[4] As Thomas Alexander (1961) showed, there was persistent Whiggery (support for the principles of the defunct Whig Party) in the Southern United States after 1865.
