During the eleven-year period of Reconstruction, the newly freed slaves, called "freedmen", became sharecroppers, farming the land on shares with the landowners. They also acquired the right to vote and hold office. Together with "carpetbaggers" (Northerners who had come South seeking opportunities) and "scalawags" (Southern anti-slavery whites who had joined the Republican Party), the white population lost their control of local and state government. Intimidated by the occupying Federal troops, the white population were militarily and politically dominated by what they perceived as corrupt Republican administrations imposed upon them by force by their Northern enemies.