Union League

So my second question in this rapid fire, you know, set that I had for you was what's one course in New Jersey that you haven't played that you want to?

Bayonne, Galway, Union League, the 27

Hall.

I haven't played that yet.

This one still exists.

It's called the Union League and it's in Philadelphia and it's one of the premier unions.

elite fraternities that still exist today i understand they can keep their their uh membership of a certain caliber through their very high initiation prices if you want to join today it might cost you 50 grand or something uh just as an initiation fee so they uh they keep the riffraff out that way but they have an awesome clubhouse and things like that it's it's pretty cool just as a fraternity.

But they were formed, they called themselves the Union League, they were a Republican club, and they were formed as a fraternal aid association to help Union veterans and to support the war effort, in particular Lincoln's re-election.

And then during Reconstruction, they became a very important force of Republican politics in the South, which is an important sidetrack The Republican Party did not exist in the South in 1860.

It did not have any organization in the South.

He was inaugurated in 1861.

There was no organization on the ground.

Stoneman saw that he must hold his hand on the throat of the South and fight another campaign.

Howell and Lynch furnished the publication committee of the Union League the matter, and they printed 4,500,000 pamphlets on, quote, Southern atrocities, end quote.

The Northern states were hostile to Negro suffrage, the first step of his revolutionary program, and not a dozen men in Congress had yet dared to favor it.

Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Kansas had rejected it by overwhelming majorities, but he could appeal to their passions and prejudices against the barbarism of the South.

Any door, the right support.

"Neither the Freedmen's Bureau nor the Army has ever loosed its grip on the throat of the South for a moment.

These disturbances and atrocities are dangerous only when printed on campaign fly paper." "And how will you master and control these 10 great Southern states?" "Through my Reconstruction Acts by means of the Union League.

As a secret between us, I am the soul of this order.

At first all had gone as planned.

Lynch and Howell brought to him a report on quote, Southern atrocities, end quote, secured through the councils of the secret oath-bound Union League, which had destroyed the impression of General Grant's words and prepared his followers for blind submission to his committee.

Yet the rally of a group of men in defense of the Constitution had given the president unexpected strength.

Stoneman saw that he must hold his hand on the throat of the South and fight another campaign.

Howell and Lynch furnished the publication committee of the Union League the matter, and they printed four million five hundred thousand pamphlets on quote, Southern atrocities, end quote.

The Northern states were hostile to Negro suffrage, the first step of his revolutionary program, and not a dozen men in Congress had yet dared to favor it.

Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Kansas had rejected it by overwhelming majorities, but he could appeal to their passions and prejudices against the barbarism of the South.

But even these were repealed at the first breath of criticism.

He's a friend of Nixon's.

Anyway, it was their friendship and his desire to have me paint his friend Richard Nixon for the Union League in New York way back in 1980, I believe it was.

Yes.

That's how that came about.

Did you actually do a painting or an illustration? Yeah, no, I did a full painting of them.

Where are those now? Are they exhibited

somewhere? The main feature of the show I had in Paris a few years later, and now it was hanging in the Union League.

I don't know where it is right now.