carpetbaggers, epithet used in the South after the Civil War to describe Northerners who went to the South during Reconstruction to make money

the first luggage was made out of carpet. After the Civil War, people traveled all over the South, buying up property for cheap. Some were frauds who pretended to be tax-collectors, and some were con artists. The term later applied to politicians who used their power for unscrupulous means.

After the end of the civil war the Republicans who came to settle in the south were termed carpet baggers by the southerns. Now a days its used as a term to describe outsiders' attempting to gain advantage, especially in areas they previously had no connection with. Basically, a fancy word for opportunists.

1) The third kind of flying Answerbaggers, after winged Baggers and Jetpackers. They use flying carpets. ;-) 2) "A carpet bag is a traveling bag made of carpet, commonly from an oriental rug, ranging in size from a small purse to a large duffel bag. Such bags were popular in the United States and Europe during the 19th century. They are still made to this day, typically as women's decorative small luggage and purses, although typically no longer out of old carpets. The carpetbaggers of the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War were given their name from this type of luggage which they carried. From the Scientific American Supplement, No. 561 October 2, 1886 "The old-fashioned carpet bag (Fig. 1) is still unsurpassed by any, where rough wear is the principal thing to be studied. Such a bag, if constructed of good Brussels carpeting and unquestionable workmanship, will last a lifetime, provided always that a substantial frame is used." Carpet bags sometimes also served the dual use as a "railway rug", a common item in the 19th century to keep warm in drafty and unheated rail-cars. The rug could either be opened as a blanket, or latched up on the sides as a dual purpose traveling bag. From Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879): "... my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights." " Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bag Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger

The manufacturers in the USA who made leather goods started to make bags with handles out of old carpets.In the days of when the first railways were built, people needed something to carry their clothes in when travelling by train.The carpetbag idea took off in a big way and soon everybody who travelled seemed to have one.People seen carrying one became known as carpetbaggers.

hillary clinton is one.