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"Waving the bloody shirt" and "bloody shirt campaign" were pejorative phrases, used during American election campaigns during the Reconstruction era, to deride opposing politicians who made emotional calls to avenge the blood of soldiers who died in the Civil War.
Bloody shirt, in U.S. history, the post-Civil War political strategy of appealing to voters by recalling the passions and hardships of the recent war. This technique of “waving the bloody shirt” was most often employed by Radical Republicans in their efforts to focus public attention on.
Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865 may have marked the military end to the war, while the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and the triumph of Redemptionist politics in the former Confederate States, may stand as alternative landmarks in a not so unanimously-embraced closure of the Rebellion.
“Waving the Bloody Shirt:” Reconstruction Era Violence and Political Identity. Content warning: This post discusses murders motivated by racism against African Americans. Some quotations include language that is considered inappropriate by today’s standards.
Biographer Hans Trefousse notes that the congressman waved the bloody shirt in support of Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill, for example, and he conjured up images of Ku Klux terror during his 1876 congressional race.
" Waving the bloody shirt " and " bloody shirt campaign " were pejorative phrases, used during American election campaigns during the Reconstruction era, to deride opposing politicians who made emotional calls to avenge the blood of soldiers that died in the Civil War.
The vicissitudes in the post-Civil War period of images made of the conflict tell us a great deal about the lack of permanence and the constant struggle to make images “mean”, even for an event as momentous as the American Civil War.
