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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.
"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.
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This was supposed to be a mockery of the concept of “waving the bloody shirt.” In April 1871, Massachusetts Congressman Benjamin Butler had made an impassioned speech on the floor of the House. He spoke about ongoing lynchings and racial tensions in the post-war South, encouraging military intervention.
This is the same type of political violence from which we get the term "waving the bloody shirt". There isn't much dobut that terrorist paramilitary groups supporting the Democratic Party were active in those states.
Indeed, it was obvious that Butler and his Republican colleagues in the House were using the doorkeeper affair as a vehicle to wave the bloody shirt for political advantage. After all, 1878 was an election year, and the Republicans could certainly be expected to use the controversy as an issue.
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.
