U.S. Political slang. [f. CARPET-BAG + -ER.] A scornful appellation applied, after the American Civil War of 1861–5, to immigrants from the Northern into the Southern States, whose ‘property qualification’ consisted merely of the contents of the carpet-bag that they had brought with them. Hence, applied opprobriously to all Northerners who went south and tried, by the Negro vote or otherwise, to obtain political influence; and generally to any one interfering with the politics of a locality with which he is thought to have no permanent or genuine connection.
Hence Carpet-baggery, Carpet-baggism.
1868. Daily News, 18 Sept., 3/3. All ‘carpetbaggers’ and ‘scalawags’ are whites. The carpetbaggers are immigrants from the North who have thrown themselves into local politics, and through their influence with the negroes obtained office.
1872. Spectator, 21 Sept., 1194. At the elections which took place in June, 1868, ‘Carpet-baggers’ and other adventurers who put themselves forward as the friends of the freedmen were everywhere successful.
1880. Gen. Grant, in New-York Times, 26 Oct., 1/3. See the prosperity and the thrift that has been brought to these new States by these carpet-baggers!
1881. Philada. Record, No. 3459. 2. The ‘solid south’ is a protest against carpetbagism … in the form of Northern men going down in person to take charge of Southern politics.
1884. Milnor (Dakota) Teller, 30 July. To abolish this infamous system of territorial carpet-baggery, and to require all appointees to territorial offices to have been two years residents of the territory.
Mod. Eng. Newsp. The electors have preferred the local man to a carpet-bagger from London.
