How Were Carpetbaggers And Scalawags Similar

A temporary political vacuum existed in the postwar south.

How were carpetbaggers and scalawags similar.

The democrats alleged that the scalawags were financially and politically corrupt and willing to support bad government because they profited personally. Although the term is still used today its origins are steeped in opposition to. Scalawags were denounced as corrupt by democrats. Meanwhile white southerners who supported reconstruction era republicans were called scalawags by their political enemies who considered them traitors to the south and just as bad if not worse.

The opponents of the scalawags claimed they were disloyal to traditional values. Carpetbaggers and scalawags were both epithets coined by southern democrats who opposed the social change of reconstruction. Senators in the radical years all carpetbaggers. Beginning in 1867 they formed a coalition with carpetbaggers one sixth of the electorate and scalawags one fifth to gain control of southern state legislatures for the republican party.

The name is derived from suitcases made of carpet carried by many of the northern immigrants. Carpetbaggers were northerners who entered the region after the war. The state elected three u s. Both louisiana governors under radical reconstruction henry clay warmoth 1868 1873 and william pitt kellogg 1873 1877 were carpetbaggers.

Both the groups supported the rights of the black people which. Confederate military and political leaders were temporarily prohibited from participating in the political process. Scalawags along with carpetbaggers were also targets of violence mainly by the ku klux klan. For this reason carpetbaggers were more numerous and more powerful in louisiana than in any other southern state.

The term is commonly used in historical studies as a neutral descriptor of southern white republicans although some historians have discarded the term due to its history of pejorative connotations. Like the similar term carpetbagger the word has a long history of use as a slur in southern partisan debates.