Scalawag: Difference between revisions

The term scalawag, used in the Reconstruction era in the South of the United States, describes white Southerners who supported the Republican party.

The term was originally derogatory -- prior to that time meaning simply "scamp" -- but is commonly used by historians. The scalawags were the Republican political allies of the former slaves or Freedmen, and the Carpetbaggers. Scalawags were denounced as corrupt by the Democrats, and to some extent by the Dunning School of historians. The two most prominent scalawags were Lee's top lieutenant, General James Longstreet, and Joseph E. Brown, the wartime governor of Georgia.

The conservatives of the era and later roundly denounced them as financially and politically corrupt, and willing to support very bad governments because they profited personally. (see Dunning School.) However their defenders argue that on the whole it is impossible to demonstrate that scalawags as a group were any more or any less corrupt than freedmen, carpetbaggers or Redeemers (white Southerners who came to power after 1877). Social pressure forced most Scalawags to eventually join the conservative/Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted and formed the "tan" half of the "Black and Tan" Republican party, a minority in every southern state after 1877. (DeSantis 1998)

A simple definition of a scalawag is a white Southern Republican. White Southern Republicans included formerly closeted Southern abolitionists as well as former slaveowners who now supported equal rights for freedmen. (The most famous of this latter group was Samuel F. Phillips, who would later argue against segregation in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)). Included, too, were people who wanted to be part of the ruling Republican Party simply because it provided more opportunities for successful political careers. Many historians have described scalawags in terms of social class, showing that on average they were less wealthy or prestigious than other whites. (Baggett 2003)

The mountain districts of Appalachia were often Republican enclaves. (McKinney 1998) They had few slaves, poor transportation, deep poverty, and a standing resentment against the low country politicians who dominated the Confederacy and conservative Democracy in Reconstruction. Their strongholds in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, western North Carolina and the Ozark region of northern Arkansas, became Republicans bastions to the present day. These rural folk had a long-standing hostility toward the plantation class; they had harbored pro-Union sentiments during the war. Andrew Johnson was their representative leader. They welcomed Reconstruction and much of what the Radical Republicans in Congress advocated.

As Thomas Alexander (1961) has shown, there was a persistent Whiggery in the South after the Whig party collapsed in the 1850s. Many became Republicans who advocated modernization through education and infrastructure--especially better roads and railroads. (Many also became Redeemers.)

Baggett (2003) profiled 742 whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, comparing them to 666 Redeemers who opposed and eventually replaced them. He compares three regions, the Upper South, the Southeast, and the Southwest. Baggett follows the life of each scalawag before, during, and after the war, with respect to birthplace, occupation, value of estate, slave ownership, education, party activity, stand on secession, war politics, and postwar politics.

Baggett thus looked at 1400 political activists across the South, and gave each a score:

• score = 1 an 1860 antisecessionist Breckinridge supporter
• 2 1860 Bell or Douglas supporter
• 3 1860 antisecessionist
• 4 passive wartime unionist
• 5 peace party advocate
• 6 active wartime unionist
• 7 postwar Union party supporter

He found the higher the score the more likely the person was a Republican (that is a Scalawag).

One prominent scalawag was James L. Alcorn of Mississippi. Alcorn was the governor of (and later a senator from) Mississippi during Reconstruction. Alcorn's supporters included scalawags, carpetbaggers, and freedmen. Possibly the most significant part of Alcorn’s career was his longstanding battle with Adelbert Ames, at that time the military commander of the Fourth District. Both men were Republicans, and on paper shared the same views. However, there was a significant difference; Alcorn was not as concerned with the rights of freedmen as Ames. In the end, Alcorn separated from the Republican Party when Ames was nominated for governor in 1872.

• Carpetbagger
• Reconstruction
• Redeemers

• Thomas B. Alexander, “Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, l860—77," Journal of Southern History 27 (1961) 305-29, in JSTOR
• Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction Louisiana State University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8071-2798-1
• DeSantis, Vincent P. Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877-1897 (1998)
• Donald, David. "'The Scalawag in Mississippi Reconstruction.” Journal of Southern History 10 (1944) 447-60 in JSTOR
• Ellem, Warren A. “Who Were the Mississippi Scalawags?” Journal of Southern History 38 (May 1972): 2 17—40 in JSTOR
• Hyman, Rubin. South Carolina Scalawags (2006)
• Kolchin, Peter. “Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, and Reconstruction: A Quantitative Look at Southern Congressional Politics, 1868 to 1872” Journal of Southern History 45 (1979) 63-76, in JSTOR
• McKinney, Gordon B. Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community (1998)
• Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics 1869-1879 (1984)
• Wiggins; Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881 (1991) online at Questia