wave the bloody shirt: foment political strife by keeping controversies alive

This expression first appeared during Reconstruction, when Northerners who used incendiary rhetoric to keep alive bitter feelings against the South were said to be waving the bloody shirt. The meaning later broadened to mean any sort of rabble rousing or divisiveness in politics. The phrase is sometimes traced to the tradition of Corsican blood feuds, where the murdered man was laid out on a bier surrounded by his weapons, and with his bloody shirt hanging above his head. The widow or another female mourner would eventually begin wildly waving the shirt around her head as an expression of her sorrow and to rouse the mourners into taking revenge. Another possibility is that the phrase comes from the 1603 Scottish battle of Glenfruin. Reputedly, the widows of the battle rode on palfreys in front of James VI, displaying their husbands' bloody shirts in an effort to rouse his support.

Political commentators still occasionally speak of waving the bloody shirt. However, it now seems to imply fomenting political trouble by referring to any war or other violent event.

Read more about this expression in Let's Talk Turkey: The Stories Behind America's Favorite Expressions (Prometheus, June 2008).