Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[113] Northern cities men were forced to wear badges of “loyalty,” and every house required to hang out the Federal flag as a signal of patriotism, and an evidence of their support of the war. This peculiarly Yankee exhibition in flags pervaded nearly every square mile of country, and was carried even into the sanctuary. Pulpits were dressed with the Stars and Stripes; Sunday-school children wore the colours of the Federal ensign; the streets were rubicund with the bunting; and even in distant parts of the country flags floated from gate-posts and tops of trees, as evidences of “loyal” sentiments and marks for protection against “vigilance committees.” This singular exhibition of “Union” sentiment was not a mere picturesque affair; it was attended with fearful riots and violence, and the man who refused to display a piece of bunting was treated as a criminal and outlaw, pursued by mobs, and threatened with death.

Into this crusade against the South all parties and sects and races were strangely mingled. Old contentions and present animosities were forgotten; Democrats associated with recreants and fanatics in one grand league, for one grand purpose; foreigners from Europe were induced into the belief that they were called upon to fight for the “liberty” for which they had crossed the ocean, or for the “free homesteads” which were to be the rewards of the war; and all conceivable and reckless artifices were re sorted to to swell the tide of numbers against the South.

But what was most remarkable in this display of popular fury was its