释义 |
carpet-ˈbagger U.S. Pol. slang. [f. carpet-bag n. + -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 which 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 connexion. Hence carpet-ˈbaggery, carpet-ˈbaggism.
1868Daily News 18 Sept., All ‘carpetbaggers’ 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. 1872Spectator 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. 1880Gen. Grant in New York Her. 26 Oct., See the prosperity and the thrift that has been brought to these new States by these carpet baggers! 1881Philada. 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. 1884Milnor (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. |