
A scalawag was a white southerner from the United States who supported the Republican Party and its policies during the Reconstruction era of the American South (1865-1877). Most "Scalawags" had previously been supportive of the conservative Whig Party and its successor, the Constitutional Union Party, and many of them identified primarily as Whigs as late as the 1890s. Scalawags were disloyal to the southern tradition of white supremacy, and they supported the South's transition into a modernized region of the USA; they were often seen as corrupt by pro-segregation southerners. Ultimately, the Republicans would not gain a major foothold in the south, as the Democratic Party ruled the region as the "Solid South", and social pressures led to most Scalawags joining the Democratic Party during the 1870s.