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Scalawag
In American history, a Scalawag was a Southern white who joined the Republican party during Reconstruction. They formed a coalition with Freedmen (blacks who were former slaves) and Northern newcomers (called Carpetbaggers) to take control of their state and local governments at various times, 1867-1877. Men who had not supported the Confederacy were eligible to take the "ironclad oath," as required by the Reconstruction laws in 1867 to vote or hold office. In the 1870s, many switched from the Republican Party to the conservative-Democrat coalition, called the Redeemers, which defeated and replaced all the state Republican regimes by 1877.
Their primary interest was in supporting a party that would build the South on a broader base than the plantation aristocracy of ante-bellum days. They found it expedient to do business with blacks and carpetbaggers; increasingly after 1872 they returned to the Democratic party as it gained sufficient strength to be a factor in Southern politics.[1]
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