subs. (American political).—A political adventurer. [After the Civil War, numbers of Northerners went South. Honest or not, they were looked upon with suspicion by the Southerners, and, as they were generally Republican in politics and joined with the freedmen at the polls, the nickname CARPET-BAGGER came to have, and still retains, a political significance. It was unjustly applied to many well-meaning men, but at the same time it fitted the horde of corrupt adventurers who infested the South, and whose only ‘property qualification’ was contained in the carpet bag with which they had arrived from the North. Originally, however, a CARPET-BAGGER was a ‘wild-cat banker’ out West: a banker, that is, who had no local abiding place, his worldly possessions being contained in a carpet bag.] Applied to politics the term has become of general application.—Cf., SCALAWAG.
1868. Daily News, 18 Sept. All CARPET-BAGGERS and ‘scalawags’ are whites. The CARPET-BAGGERS are immigrants from the North, who have thrown themselves into local politics; and through their influence with the negroes obtained office.
1871. New York Post, April. ‘The general drift of public sentiment is, that the CARPET-BAGGERS, scalawags, ex-slaves, ex-slaveholders, rebels reconstructed, rebels unreconstructed, and Southern loyalists should be left, for a brief period at least, to fight out their own battles, in their own way; and that if the nation is ever again to become a party to their quarrels, it shall be on no slight pretext and for no trivial purpose.’
1877. Temple Bar, May, p. 107. At the same moment a swarm of adventurers settled in the conquered states, and became governors, judges, tax-collectors, and so on. These are the CARPET-BAGGERS of history. They came with two shirts, got salaries of (on an average) four thousand dollars per annum, and made fortunes of a million in four years!
