Here’s an intriguing discovery by E. Joseph Murphy of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which I gratefully discovered thanks to his Twitter account, @e_joseph_murphy.
The Pittston Gazette of Pittston, Pennsylvania, on August 6, 1863, published the following account, stating that “at a torchlight procession in Belleville, Ill.,” the week preceding, “one of the transparencies contained the following,” which was a list of 28 sobriquets for Ulysses S. Grant, deemed earned no doubt by General Grant’s conquest of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1863. The transparency ended with “Go in U.S. I see it now!“
Transparencies were backlit measures of “paper or lightweight cloth, such as silk, linen, calico or muslin,” according to Shannon Selin, an historical fiction author residing in Stratford, Canada. You can learn more about them on her blog, ShanonSelin.com.
“Uncompromising Sockdolager” seemed curious. According to the definitions provided to Google by Oxford Languages‘ (Oxford University Press), sockdolager has two meanings: 1. “a forceful blow,” and “2. an exceptional person or thing.” And Wiktionary.org notes it as being U.S. slang, specifically, with 1837 being the date of the earlier instance cited under the entry, with a variant spelling, i.e., from James Kirke Paulding’s Lion of the West: “He’ll come off as badly as a feller I once hit a sledge hammer lick over the head—a real sogdolloger.”)
I guess both definitions work here!
Mr. E. Joseph Murphy is an educator, a public historian, and the Program Manager for the Destination Freedom: Underground Railroad Walking Tour, Waverly, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania.
