carpetbaggers
Post-war political opportunists
Carpetbaggers were Northerners who went to the South after the American Civil War, supposedly carrying all their belongings in a bag made of carpet fabric—implying they were opportunists with no real stake in the region.
The term now describes any outsider who moves somewhere to exploit local opportunities, especially political ones: The candidate was dismissed as a carpetbagger who'd only lived in the district for six months.
One exploiting shortages
- speculatorOne wagering on outcomes
- interloperOne who enters uninvited
- outsiderOne excluded from group
- fortune-hunterOne pursuing wealthy partners
adventurer · exploiter · parvenu · upstart · arriviste · newcomer · hustler · schemer
Move tissue between bodies
- relocatorOne who changes residence
- settlerOne who colonizes territory
- newcomerRecent arrival somewhere
- emigrantPerson resettling in another nation
outsider · transient · sojourner · itinerant · alien · stranger · intruder · Yankee
Playful troublemakers
- Freedmen's BureauPost-Civil War relief agency
- Radical RepublicansStrict Reconstruction-era congressional bloc
- Andrew JohnsonPost-Civil War president
- Fourteenth AmendmentPost-Civil War constitutional addition
Jim Crow · sharecropping · Ku Klux Klan · disenfranchisement · redeemers · home rule
profiteer
One exploiting shortages
- speculatorOne wagering on outcomes
- interloperOne who enters uninvited
- outsiderOne excluded from group
fortune-hunter · adventurer · exploiter · parvenu · upstart · arriviste · newcomer · hustler · schemer · manipulator
transplant
Move tissue between bodies
- relocatorOne who changes residence
- settlerOne who colonizes territory
- newcomerRecent arrival somewhere
emigrant · outsider · transient · sojourner · itinerant · alien · stranger · intruder · Yankee · missionary
scalawags
Playful troublemakers
- Freedmen's BureauPost-Civil War relief agency
- Radical RepublicansStrict Reconstruction-era congressional bloc
- Andrew JohnsonPost-Civil War president
Fourteenth Amendment · Jim Crow · sharecropping · Ku Klux Klan · disenfranchisement · redeemers · home rule
- 1800s AmericaOregon Trail, Trail of Tears, transcontinental railroad, Civil War, Abraham Lincoln
- Reconstructionfreedmen, Freedmen's Bureau, Fourteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, scalawags
- Civil War aftermath13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, freedmen, Reconstruction, sharecropping
- Reconstruction Southsharecropping, tenant farming, freedmen, Freedmen's Bureau, scalawags
- Southern HistoryDeep South, Antebellum, Old South, Dixie, Confederate
- Southern PoliticsDixiecrats, Jim Crow, poll tax, poll taxes, one-party rule
carpetbaggerslocals
Area's permanent inhabitants
native sons · natives · native daughters · old-timers · pillars of the community
carpetbaggerspublic servants
Government-employed workers
community builders · altruists · stewards · benefactors · do-gooders
carpetbaggersredeemers
Those who deliver others
Southern Democrats · scalawags · Bourbons · old guard · Dixiecrats