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American school children are taught the meaning and relevance of the word carpetbagger when they study the epic American Civil War Period of the 1860's. It is true the word made news headlines after the war and rolled off the lips of many Southerners with vehement resentment, as 'Yankees' ventured into the South making great profit from reconstruction of the war ravaged territory south of the Mason-Dixon.

The term "carpet bagger" was coined earlier than the Civil War era in America. It's use began when the Westward Expansion was extending the America's boundaries. People were traveling more and business men needed cheap and easy luggage to carry on board trains and stagecoaches. In the 1830's tailors and tradesmen (saddle makers) saw the rising need for inexpensive luggage. They could buy carpet remnants for very little money, sew several pieces together, add a leather handle from harness scraps and a carpet saddle bag of sorts was born!

The advent of "wild-cat money" in the Wild West, brought about traveling "mortgage bankers" and financial investment agents. These money men had no permanent office or place of business and carried all their business papers (and sometimes money) in carpet-bags, as they crisscrossed the west financing new development and urban expansion. Hence, they were called "Carpet-Baggers" by the new money ranchers, land barons and miners of the west. They traveled the rail and where they went so went their 'carpetbag' of financial goodies and mischief.

The westward population movement of the 1840' and 1850's provided a large need for these new human saddle bags called "Carpetbags" and a viable industry was born as well as a new American word.

This unique word for the new carry on luggage had no concretely defined socio-political meaning until the Civil War and Reconstruction.

When the American Civil War ended and the period of Reconstruction began in 1865, the word took on a pejorative meaning as Southerners applied it to Northerners who came to the South to help rebuild what the North had destroyed. In many ways the word became a caricature of some Northern entrepreneurs who were looked upon as "lacking higher ideals" and who moved South to prey upon the conquered Southerner' and then would move on to their next opportunity to amass wealth.

Carpetbaggers came to symbolize greedy, selfish, opportunistic Yankees that were considered by Southerners to be the "enemy" and brought forth all the unresolved issues of shame and defeat the South was

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