Carpet-Baggers

a term of reproach applied by the people of the Southern States to political adventurers from the North. At the close of the Civil War a swarm of Northern men, often without principle, and usually without property interests, located in the Southern States with a view to use the negro vote to secure office. These unscrupulous, moneyless officeholders were not inappropriately dubbed "carpet-baggers." Consult Thomas Nelson Page's Red Rock, a recent novel, for a Southern view of the case.