Social Issues

A temporary political vacuum existed in the postwar South.

Confederate military and political leaders were temporarily
prohibited from participating in the political process. Republican
governments filled the void and were able to retain control by
depending upon the votes of the newly enfranchised blacks. Blacks
were vital to the process, but that did not mean that they ran affairs.
Two groups actually pulled the strings of government:
▪ Scalawags — a derogatory term (originally describing worthless
livestock) applied to native white Southerners who supported
the federal reconstruction plan and cooperated with the blacks
in order to achieve their ends. Some of the scalawags were
entirely above board, having opposed the Confederacy in
earlier times and later wanted a new South to emerge from the
rubble. Others cooperated with or served in the Republican
governments in order to avail themselves of money-making
opportunities.
▪ Carpetbaggers—also a term of derision, but applied to
Northerners who went South during Reconstruction, motivated
by either profit or idealism. The name referred to the cloth bags
many of them used for transporting their possessions, but
today is applied to any recently arrived opportunist. Despite the
negative connotation of the name, many carpetbaggers were
sincerely interested in aiding the freedom and education of the
former slaves.
In 1867, white Southerners generally stayed away from the
elections to their constitutional conventions, preferring military rule
to letting blacks vote in a democratic election. In their absence,
control passed to the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who
maintained control as long as the Republican party was in power in
the South.
Carpetbaggers used their influence during the writing of new state
constitutions to incorporate some progressive concepts from their
places of origin. For instance, Robert K. Scott used his dominance
of the South Carolina convention to model that state's new
constitution on that of his home state of Ohio. However, after being
 elected the Republican governor of South Carolina, he engaged n
some interesting practices such as providing the legislature with its
own saloon.
For the most part, it was the carpetbaggers who were the dominant
factor in the Deep South, where the black vote would have
outnumbered the white, while the scalawags were influential in the
Upper South. Both the scalawags and the carpetbaggers were
resented by many Southerners and became the targets of the Ku
Klux Klan.

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