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" (native whites who had joined the Republican Party), the Freedmen began to exercise almost complete dominance of local and state government. At the same time the native white citizens, intimidated by the occupying federal troops, were militarily and politically dominated by what they perceived as corrupt Republican administrations imposed upon them by the bayonets of their former enemies.