TO WAVE THE BLOODY SHIRT, verb. phr. (American).—To keep alive factious strife on party questions. Primarily, it was the symbol of those, who, during the reconstruction period at the close of the rebellion of the Southern (or Confederate) States, would not suffer the Civil War to sink into oblivion out of consideration for the feelings of the vanquished.
1888. Coldwater (Mich.) Sun, Jan. The BLOODY SHIRT is gradually fading away. The white-winged dove of peace spreads her wings here and there, patriotism forgets and forgives old differences, sectionalism is gradually giving way to love of country—the whole country. In fact, the ill-feeling between the North and South would have died out years ago among the veterans of both sections, had they been left to themselves, and the politicans been as patriotic as they.
1888. New York Weekly Times, 21 March. It is reprehensible to the last degree for the Bourbons of the South to continue to play on the colour line—the Southern BLOODY SHIRT—and then denounce Republican extremists for doing the same thing at the North.
1889. FARMER, Americanisms, s.v. BLOODY-SHIRT. Its application [in allusion to the fierce days of the Corsican vendette] to American politics is credited to Mr. Oliver P. Morton, who, elected United States senator in 1867, and again in 1873, took a prominent part as a leader of the more radical Republicans, favouring a stern policy of coercion in the reconstruction of the Southern States.
