Scalawag in the context of Horatio Seymour

In the United States, Southern Unionists were white Southerners living in the Confederate States of America and the Southern Border States opposed to secession. Many fought for the Union during the Civil War. These people are also referred to as Southern Loyalists, Union Loyalists, or Lincoln's Loyalists. Pro-Confederates in the South derided them as "Tories" (in reference to the pro-Crown Loyalists of the American Revolution). During Reconstruction, these terms were replaced by "scalawag" (or "scallywag"), which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican Party.

Tennessee (especially East Tennessee), Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, North Carolina, and Virginia (which included West Virginia at that time) were home to the largest populations of Unionists. Other (primarily Appalachian) areas with significant Unionist influence included North Alabama, North Georgia, Western North Carolina, the Texas Hill Country, northern Loudoun County in Virginia, North Mississippi, North Texas, the Arkansas Ozarks, and the Boston Mountains in Arkansas. These areas provided thousands of volunteers for Union military service. Western North Carolinians, for example, formed their own loyalist infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments, while West Virginians formed a new Union state admitted in 1863.

The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They were typically led by White yeomen and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.

During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces, and Southern state governments were dominated by Republicans, elected largely by freedmen and allies. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens and the votes they would cast for the party. The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude), enshrined such political rights in the Constitution.