For black southerners, the answer to this is quite clear.
Blacks in the South would have supported Reconstruction because it helped them. During
Reconstruction, governments were actually doing things to help the freed slaves. Black
people had rights during this time and many were even part of the state
governments.
White Southerners who supported Reconstruction
were derided as "scalawags" and were said to be traitors to the South who were simply in
it for the money. This view is no longer accepted by most historians. Most historians
now emphasize that the "scalawags" were people who supported the Republican Party on
principle. Some of them were people from mountain areas who were generally opposed to
secession in the first place. Others, like James Longstreet (who was a Confederate
general) decided that the Republicans' ideas were needed in order to remake the
South.
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