The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-11-15
SENATOR NORWoOD'S DESCRIPTION
OF A CARPET.BACGER.

Senator Norwood, of Georgia, in his gres
speech in that town on the Saturday pr,
ceding election day: ..
The reconstruction acts have wrought i'm
measurable evils, but, perhaps, the greatest {
/ have great admiration for the genius VIII
first used that word, "carpet-bagger." VIVA
can be more expressive? His like the worl
has never seen, from the days of Cain, or q
the forty thieves in the tabled time of al
Bahia. Like the winds, he blows and "
hear the sound thereof but no man knowetl
whence he cometh or whittier he goeth.
Natural historians will be in doubt how t.
class him. Ornithologists will claim him, be
cause in many respects he is bird OF prey
He lives only on corruption, and takes hi
flight as soon as the carcass is picked. IL
other particulars he resembles tue migratOr,
crane For, when driven by the frigidity OF
social ostracsm from the North, he flies with
marvellous instinct to the torrid and unctuoui
embrace of his African mates and peer:
among the swanps of our Southern shore
As the crane fills his craw, so this creature lls
his bag for the fight, and, as the crane, wheI
the days grow hot, flaps his wings, and scream
ing through, the air, returns to the North
60 this ill-omened biped, when times become
warm in the South, gathers up his legs and
ON the wooden head Of the figure of justice
commonly known as the Attorney General,
and browns the air with croakings about South
ern outrage and wrong. In the other respects
he is like the marsupial family Of quadrupeds,
for as they are named from the pouch or bag
in which they carry their young, SO he derives
his name from the bag he carries and in which
are stored all his earthly possessions. The
opossum is of the marsupial family, and the
carpet-bagger, like that animal, does all his
travelling at night.
Solomon was wise man but he did not
know everything. He was wrong in saying
ssThere is nothing new under the sum-" The
world has swung ON for thousands of years
through wars and pestilence through famine
and plague, has been visited by tempests and
earthquakes, frogs and flies, murrain and lice,
but never until the year of our Lord 1867, was
any portion Of the globe afflicted by a carpet
Dagger. Solomon did not know him, nor did
David or jeremiah conceive of such Ca
hmity. If they had the songs of David and
the book Of jeremiah would have been lost to
mankind, for they would have committed
suicide ut the very imagining of such woe.
Though he sprung into existence soon after
the war, the carpet-bagger is no offspring Of
that martial COTTON. The time was not gravis
marie when he was Matched or Uttered There
is no look of Mars, but there is infinite specu4
lation in his eyes. A reward as large as that
offered by the Roman Emperor for new and
savory dish, could not tempt the most aban-
doned, perjured negro to swear, that he has
which he has SO often drawn by his incen-
diary work. His courage oozes out at his de-
parting heels. During any "little upleasant-
ness" this pharisee becomes, as by magic, a
publican, for he takes his stand safar off," He
is no product of war. He is 'the canker of q
quiet world and of q peace which is despot-
ism enforced by bayonets. His valor is dis
erection; his industry, perpetual strife; and his
eloquence "the parcel Of reckoning" of
chances as he smells out path which may
lead from the White House to custom house,
post Office, the internal revenue bureaux, or,
perehance, to either wing of the Federal
capitol. His shibboleth is 'sthe Republican
party" From that party he sprung as natu-
rally as maggots from putrifaction. His
relation to that party is that Of pimp to
bawd, for his meritorious service is re-
warded in proportion to the number of
i1nocent negro victims he inveigles to
Gntify its lust for power. Like Wanda and
0otth he never trays without wearing his
masters collar; and he is equally content
whether turned loose to chase like sleuth-
hound the monarch of Southern soil, or called
by snap of the fingers to eat the garbage of
his party. His collar is his passport to roam
at large, and it matters not with what persist
ence he may break into Southern gentle
mans closet, his master will not permit him
to be muzzled, for he is ''the OK that treadeth |
out the corn" as well as 'the ass that knoweth |
his masters crib" |
Wherever two or three or more negroes are |
gathered together in the name of Grant, he,
like leprous spot is seen, and his cry, like |
the daughter Of the horse leech is always |
"give, give" me office.
Without office he is nothing; with Office he |
is nuisance. Out of Office he is beggar;
in Office he grows rich till his eyes stick out !
with fairness. Out of Office he is, hat in hand,
the outside ornament of every negro's cabin;
D plantation loafer and the nations hzarone;
in Office he is an adept in addition, subtrac-
ton and silence" Out of Office he is the
orphan ward of the administration and the
general signpost of penury; in Office he is the
suppliant for social equality with
Southern gentlemen.
His former neighbors in the unknown re-
gion whence he fed, wonder, not at his flight,
but at his escape and concealment But
when, rs sometimes happens, he reaches
labelled as Senator or Represent
alive from the province of Louisiana, or South
Carolina, or Alabama, or Mississippi. and in
voiced and consigned to President Grant or
some of his henchmen, the romance of the
SO wells his identity, that those
aeighbors gather in the Capitol, and with field
glasses in hand they wrangle and swear (?) in
he galleries in angry dispute whether the
,ficial eautcmaton be Tichborne or his coun-
erfeit. He is at best, but Cinderella at the
,all -
We wonder at his slippers, his face, clothes and
hair,
But the greatest wonder is, how he ever got ,
there. II
Our wonder, however, is not as great or dis
facting as his own. For, when he thinks Of F,
he fairy Recons truction, which wrought tbs
marvellous change in him, and then see the I
amiliar pompkin which he, from early, and /
ond association had come to regard as an elder ,
brother, suddenly transmitted into a carriage
md gayly caparisoned horses, and examines 7
his glass slippers, and then tfMorously ven I
ured to look down. down into the depth Z
where his fairy found him among the cinders
md ashes OF Southern desolation, his head
md ha |