Carl Schurz depicted as a carpetbagger
A carpetbagger was the southern American term for northerners who came to the American South after the American Civil War to exploit the availability of jobs in the Reconstruction-era South. Most carpetbaggers were from the liberal US Republican Party, and sixty of them were elected to office during Reconstruction. In politics, they supported civil rights legislation, economic development, and the establishment of public schools, democratizing and modernizing the South.