One who travels without much baggage. The term was used (1857) with reference to Kansas; but after the war it was applied to the adventurers described (1904) by Mr. Claiborne.—See Notes and Queries, 11 S. iii. 45.
1857. Early in the spring several thousand excellent young men came to Kansas. This was jokingly called the carpet-bag emigration.—Herald of Freedom, Sept. 19 (Lawrence, Kas.).
1868. The carpet-baggers are immigrants from the North, who have thrown themselves into local politics; and through their influence the negroes obtained office.—Daily News, Sept. 18. (N.E.D.)
1871. Unprincipled white men living amongst us, seeing an opportunity of office and plunder, joined the carpet-baggers [in So. Carolina].—‘Southern Hist. Soc. Papers,’ xii. 176.
1877. It was a contest waged against carpet-baggers, and when I say carpet-bagger, I mean by that thief.—Wade Hampton, Speech at Auburn, N.Y., June 19 (Bartlett).
1888. The head of the ticket is one of the most vulnerable men who figured in Southern politics in the carpet-bag era.—Daily Inter-Ocean, n.d. (Farmer).
1904. The military government, which in this city [Petersburg, Va.] had preceded the installation of the carpet bag and scalawag.—J. H. Claiborne, ‘Seventy-Five Years in Old Virginia,’ p. 319.
1904. These were called carpetbaggers, not because the word was descriptive or euphonious, but because they have no other name by which they are known. They were unprincipled adventurers who sought their fortunes in the South by plundering the disarmed and defenceless people…. That a few rapscallions and carpetbaggers might have unlimited license to thieve and plunder.—Id., pp. 323, 326.
