Editing Carpetbagger (section)

{{Short description|Pejorative for Northerners who moved South after the American Civil War}}
{{redirect|Carpetbaggers||Carpetbagger (disambiguation)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2022}}

[[File:Carpetbagger.jpg|right|thumb|1872 cartoon depiction of [[Carl Schurz]] as a carpetbagger]]

In the [[history of the United States]], '''carpetbagger''' is a largely historical pejorative used by [[White Southerners|Southerners]] to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive [[Northern United States|Northerners]] who came to the [[Southern United States|Southern states]] after the [[American Civil War]] and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican politics]] (including the right of [[African Americans]] to vote and hold office) and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the [[Reconstruction Era of the United States|Reconstruction Era]] (1865–1877). The word 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 allied politically with the [[Radical Republican]]s.<ref>Davidson,Guppie, Herman, Lyte, Scoff. ''Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic'', 3rd edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2002</ref> Sixty men from the North, including educated [[Free negro|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.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The South after Reconstruction {{!}} Boundless US History|url=https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-south-after-reconstruction/|access-date=2021-07-24|website=courses.lumenlearning.com}}</ref>

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