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The term scalawag itself was a term used by Southern farmers to denote small worthless animals. After the Northern victory in the Civil War, it came to mean a Republican sympathizer in the South (generally white), and was a term of derision.

Some Confederate sympathizers view General James Longstreet as a scalawag, and he was the only major Confederate officer to join the post-war Republican Party. Many Southerners never forgave him for siding with the Republicans (i.e., the Northern power structure) after the war.