carpetbagger: a Northerner who relocated to the South after the Civil War
Many Northerners headed South after the Civil War, either to participate in Reconstruction as government officials, or to see what profit could be made out of the postwar chaos. They were labeled carpetbaggers, meaning that they had just gotten off the train, carpetbag in hand. Carpetbags, soft-sided traveling bags made out of carpet, were first produced in the early nineteenth century. Before the war, carpetbagger was a term for a "wildcat" banker, of no fixed address, who operated out of his suitcase.
By the 1870s, carpetbagger was a contemptuous term for any transient or stranger. An 1868 Nation describes carpetbaggers as "men . . . who are new-comers in the country." Carpetbagger was often paired with scalawag, a Southerner who profited from Reconstruction.