colfax mobilized white southerners by getting -- giving tangibility to their cause. not a lost cause by any stretch of the imagination. rather a very winnable one. that brings us back to bunker hill memorial. of the palmetto cane symbolized more than just a growing amnesia in the country surrounding slavery, emancipation, and the civil war. it also represented the shared history of revolutionary violence that united white americans and that were really being invoked so frequently in period.ennial instead of dividing them, this history brought white men together as soldiers and in the common cause of "good government." rhetoric ofs in the centennial celebrations. not only in boston but in philadelphia, you hear a lot of people talking about good government, which by 1875 had become the code word for white supremacy. minutes before the presentation of the palmetto came, the former national leader of the grand army of the republic, which was a veterans organization, the former national leader had proclaimed, "all true men are with the south in demanding for her piece, o