User:Muttnick/sandbox10

To ease the fears of an IP user and to provide future Wikipedians with a proper historical account, I have taken it upon myself to revamp the "Origins and symbolism" subsection by ridding it of any vestiges of the Lost Cause and updating it with proper historical sources. Here is my reasoning for the removals/changes:

Lost Cause

 * I have done away with E. Merton Coulter's explanation of the Red Shirts' rise because he is neither a fair nor accurate source. If anyone has objections, I welcome you to find The South During Reconstruction on archive.org, look at the proper page range (starting around p. 368) and tell me how it is unbiased.
 * I have removed the reference to Benjamin Butler's "waving the bloody shirt" speech because such an incident never occurred.

Organization
The "Origins and symbolism" section was terribly disorganized. There were seemingly two origins for the red shirts: (1) the Coulter explanation; and (2) waving the bloody shirt speech. Because the second option never occurred, it was easy to just focus on the first albeit using different historical sources.

The edit
The Red Shirts were founded by Eugene Weatherspoon Gary, a white supremacist and Chairman of the Edgefield County Democratic Executive Committee. In 1876, Gary authored the "Edgefield Plan" which sought to restore white Democratic rule to South Carolina. Among its edicts was the requirement that club members wear red shirts. Gary disagreed with Wade Hampton, the Democrat's candidate for governor in South Carolina, who appealed to Black voters with the promise of continuing progressive reforms of Reconstruction. Rifle clubs formed the foundation of Gary's Redshirts in Edgefield. The Red Shirts disrupted Republican rallies, intimidated or assassinated black leaders, and discouraged and suppressed black voting at the polls. The movement spread throughout South Carolina. In July of 1867, Redshirts took part in the Hamburg Massacre. The suspects accused in the the massacre wore red shirts as they marched on September 5 to their arraignment in Aiken, South Carolina.

Wearing a red shirt became a source of pride and resistance to Republican rule for white Democrats in South Carolina. Women sewed red flannel shirts and made other garments of red. It also became fashionable for women to wear red ribbons in their hair or about their waists. Young men adopted the red shirts to express militancy after being too young to have fought in the Civil War.

Black members of the Red Shirts
One of the Edgefield Plan's edicts stated that Democrats were to organize or pretend to organize clubs of African Americans.