It took from the politicians their best card.

South no less than North, "the bloody shirt" was trumps.

It could always be played.

It was easy to play it and it never failed to catch the unthinking and to arouse the excitable.

What cared the perennial candidate so he got votes enough?
What cared the professional agitator so his appeals to passion brought him his audience?
It is a fact that until Lamar delivered his eulogy on Sumner not a Southern man of prominence used language calculated to placate the North, and between Lamar and Grady there was an interval of fifteen years.