carpetbagger

In the history of the United States, carpetbagger was a derogatory term applied by former Confederates to any person from the Northern United States who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War; they were perceived as exploiting the local populace.

The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics (which included the right of African Americans to vote and hold office), and those individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war.

In practice, the term carpetbagger was often applied to any Northerner who was present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1863–1877). The term is closely associated with 'scalawag', a similarly pejorative word used to describe native White southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.

White Southerners commonly denounced 'carpetbaggers' collectively during the post-war years, fearing they would loot and plunder the defeated South and be politically allied with the Radical Republicans. Sixty men from the North, including educated free blacks and slaves who had escaped to the North and returned South after the war, were elected from the South as Republicans to Congress.

The majority of Republican governors in the South during Reconstruction were from the North. Historian Eric Foner argues: ... most carpetbaggers probably combine the desire for personal gain with a commitment to taking part in an effort 'to substitute the civilization of freedom for that of slavery'. ... Carpetbaggers generally supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing the South – civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, the establishment of public school systems.

Since the end of the Reconstruction era, the term has been used to denote people in analogous historical situations, often to describe people who move into a new area for purely economic or political reasons, despite not having ties to that place.