Carpet Baggers Scalawags

Following the american civil war if someone called you a carpetbagger or scalawag it wasn t meant as a compliment.

Carpet baggers scalawags.

The first klu klux klan was founded in 1866 in pulaski tennessee. Carpetbaggers and scalawags during and right after the civil war which ended in 1865 many northerners headed south for various reasons. During and immediately after the civil war many northerners headed to the southern states driven by hopes of economic gain a desire to work on behalf of the newly. Pinkney and theodore ropp pp.

Southern dissenters in the civil war and reconstruction. Scalawags constituted perhaps 20 percent of the white electorate. The term carpetbagger was used by opponents of reconstruction the period. White supremacy reasserted its hold on the south as.

Carpetbaggers and scalawags were both epithets coined by southern democrats who opposed the social change of reconstruction. Louisiana state university press 2003. Some wanted to help the freed slaves. Although carpetbagger and scalawag were originally terms of opprobrium they are now commonly used in the scholarly literature to refer to these classes of people.

The term refers to a stranger who travels to a new region for personal gain. Carpetbaggers were northerners who entered the region after the war. Scalawags were white southerners who supported the republican party carpetbaggers were recent arrivals in the region from the north and freedmen were freed slaves. These people were called carpetbaggers by southerners.

Oxford university press 1988. It was applied to politicians and financial adventurers whom southerners accused of coming south to use the newly enfranchised freedmen to obtain office or profit. Carpetbagger derogatory term originally used in the u s. During the reconstruction period 1865 77 to denote a northerner who moved to the south.

Scalawag after the american civil war a pejorative term for a white southerner who supported the federal plan of reconstruction or who joined with the black freedmen and the so called carpetbaggers in support of republican party policies. Artz edited by david h. A traveler who arrives to a new region with only a satchel or carpetbag of possessions and who attempts to gain control over his new surroundings often against the will of the. Among the most zones of klan activity was south carolina where in january 1871 500 masked men attacked the union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners.