A travelling bag, properly one made of carpet.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, I. I. v. 64 (R.). Coningsby … had lost the key of his carpet bag.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls. (1872), I. 1. Our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags, being already packed and labelled.
b. attrib., as in carpet-bag adventurer, government, rule (U.S. slang): see next.
1874. Fraser’s Mag., Aug., 155. The double curse of negro and carpet-bag rule.
1878. G. W. Julian, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 279. A ring composed of carpet-bag adventurers.
1886. Dicey, Engl. Case agst. Home Rule, 108. The so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is … the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro Vote.
