Final answer:
The term 'scalawags' referred to white Southerners who supported Reconstruction efforts and allied with carpetbaggers and freed blacks, often considered traitors by other Southerners.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term scalawags was used by some Southerners to describe fellow white Southerners who supported the Reconstruction. Scalawags allied themselves with carpetbaggers (Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction) and freed blacks, and were seen as traitors for cooperating with the Republican aims to modernize the South. Originally, scalawags were Southern whites who, by supporting Reconstruction efforts, drew the ire of other Southerners who felt betrayed by their actions. Being labeled a scalawag meant being ostracized and targeted by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, who saw them as enemies to the Southern way of life and as agents of change in a society that had been rocked by the Civil War and its aftermath. By the end of Reconstruction, the term had cemented its place in the historical lexicon as a derogatory word for white Southerners who chose to support Reconstruction policies, which included advancements in civil rights and shifts in the political power structure of the post-Civil War Southern United States.