Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 177

Price Realized: $ 406
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(OHIO.) My Countrymen to Arms . . . Cold Blooded Murder, Treason, Aye, More than All, Bull-Dozing Stalks Abroad in the Land. Letterpress broadside illustrated with plat map, 38 1/4 x 24 3/4 inches; folds, minor wear and foxing, spot-mounted on strips of paper towel (not a conservation practice we endorse), 1 1/2 inches of restoration in lower left corner just touching border. Np, 25 May 1877
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Taken literally, this broadside tells a crazy tale. A local Ohio Democratic politician named John Henry Blose (1838-1919), styling himself "Commanding General," seems to be offering free house lots in Tremont City, Clark County, OH, to form some sort of radical anti-Reconstruction commune as "the only way of escape from the impending danger." A long rant against various forms of crime stalking the land also name-checks national political figures of both parties such as Clement Vallandigham, Rutherford Hayes, and Horace Greeley. It makes two references to "bull-dozing," which might be a general reference to overbearing behavior or more likely in this context to the racist practice of voter intimidation which Democrats were then using to thwart Reconstruction in the south. A postscript orders "No Murphy's allowed on the premises," an apparent reference to followers of a charismatic temperance advocate who was then drawing large crowds of "Murphy Boys" in Ohio--temperance not being a plank on the Democratic platform.
Tremont City was real, and this plat seems to represent real streets. Blose was real as well--he was then running for Clark County Commissioner, a race he won that fall in the pinnacle of his local political career. We suspect, however, that the offer to be present on 25 May to claim land was not real. It was likely a satire mocking Blose and his hard-line views. Or maybe not--humor from bygone centuries can be tough to calibrate. None traced at auction or in OCLC.