Scalawag

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The term scalawag or also scallywag was originally a dialect expression of the American southern states for inferior cattle.

After the Confederation's defeat in the Civil War , white sympathizers of the Republican Party , the party of the victorious President Abraham Lincoln , were insulted as scalawags in the southern states . Behind the ingratiation to the former enemy, established southerners suspected opportunism, that is, the attempt to want to enrich themselves from the spoils of victory - the economy of the south.

James Longstreet , a general in the Confederate Army , was often ostracized as a scalawag because he was the only leading figure in the South to befriend the new rulers.

Northerners who came to the defeated south after the end of the war were insulted as carpet excavators because they were accused of wanting to enrich themselves with the spoils of victory.

literature

  • James Alex Bagett: The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction . LSU Press, 2004, ISBN 9780807130148

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul McFedries: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weird Word Origins . Penguin, 2008, ISBN 9781101217184 , p. 154 ( excerpt (Google) )
  2. ↑ Richard Zuczek: Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era: MZ and primary documents, Volume 2 : Greenwood, 2006, ISBN 9780313330759 , p. 547 ( excerpt (Google) )
  3. ^ William L. Richter: Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction . Scarecrow Press, 2011, ISBN 9780810879591 , p. 413 ( excerpt (Google) )
  4. ^ William L. Richter: Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction . Scarecrow Press, 2011, ISBN 9780810879591 , pp. 97–99 ( excerpt (Google) )