The carpetbaggers were usually white from the northern states that had remained loyal to the federal government of Washington DC and went to the southern states for various reasons. Many of them were abolitionists, religious ministers and people with sincere reformist and altruistic intentions, whose purpose to emigrate was to help the great mass of newly freed black slaves (and often left to their fate by the new authorities) or to help the population of whites of the south who suffered the ravages of the Civil War, working in the south as school teachers, clergymen, small merchants, lawyers or journalists.
However, many other carpetbaggers were rejected by the southern population to accuse them of being mere opportunists who tried to take advantage of the victory of the Union in the Civil War to monopolize the political positions that had become vacant in the South, others were accused of simply to obtain benefits through the abuse of power in the former Confederate States, taking advantage of the impoverishment of a large part of the local elite after the war, and to think only of benefiting as much as possible to return to their States of origin in the North.
