But they “turned the rascals out.” Oh, yes—that business has been
attended to with promptness and regularity. An unending procession of
“rascals” has been moving out for a year and a half. “Rascals” who had
invaded the sacred soil of Virginia and Kentucky; who had stolen negroes
and made them free; who had been with Grant at Vicksburg and in the
Wilderness, and with Thomas at Mission Ridge, and with Sherman on the
march to Atlanta and the sea, and with Meade at Gettysburg. Some of
these “rascals” had grown old and gray; some limped out painfully,
because of old wounds; some wore a vacant sleeve; some had voted against
that great Democratic patriot, Vallandigham; and some had, years before,
been guilty of singing a song about hanging a great Democratic statesman
on a sour-apple tree. Men guilty of such “rascalities” as these of
course deserved to be “turned out,” and they were promptly bounced.