[Ads-l] "bulldoze(r)" (June 1876)

[Ben Zimmer]

John Kelly has a post on the Oxford Dictionaries blog about the racist
roots of "bulldozer" -- it goes back to violent voter intimidation tactics
in the 1876 elections.

----
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2018/02/14/word-racist-roots-bulldozer/
To suppress their vote or coerce them away from casting their ballots for
Republicans, Democratic supporters would intimidate black voters with
threats or acts of violence. This practice especially plagued the 1876
presidential election, and in Louisiana came to be called bull-dozing.
----

Linking to:
https://jubiloemancipationcentury.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/bulldozing-reconstruction-and-southern-voters/

The post mentions that the earliest known examples of the word, from
Louisiana sources, date from the summer of 1876, but I don't see the early
cites given anywhere. HDAS and GDoS have cites from later in 1876, and the
OED2 entry for "bulldoze" just cites an unnamed and undated "American
newspaper" from that year. ("If a negro is invited to join it [a society
called ‘The Stop’], and refuses, he is taken to the woods and whipped. This
whipping is called a ‘bull-doze’, or doze fit for a bull.")

Here are the earliest examples I've found for the various forms.

* bulldozle, bulldozer

New Orleans Republican, June 20, 1876, p. 1, col. 1
Monday or Tuesday night W.Y. Payne, a colored man, of East Baton Rouge, was
taken from his home, at Holt's place, at night, from his bed, and was
afterward found hung to a tree, two miles above that place, on the plank
road near White's bayou. He had committed no offense; all had been quiet,
but he was the secretary of the Third Ward Republican Club of that parish.
He was therefore "bulldozled," which is of late the local name of the
actions of the "Regulators." Besides this many other negroes have within a
few days been taken from their homes and brutally whipped and beaten, a
milder means of correction sometimes adopted by the bulldozers.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471753/bulldozled/

* bulldoze

New Orleans Republican, June 24, 1876, p. 1, col. 4
Lorenzo Jackson, of J.A. Campbell's plantation, was bulldozed, terribly
whipped, the excuse being he had stolen a gun in 1872.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17471800/bulldozed/

* bulldozing (ppl. adj.)

New Orleans Republican, June 28, 1876, p. 1, col. 5
So complete is the reign of terror created by the bulldozing Regulators of
East Feliciana and East Baton Rouge, that a half of the inhuman brutalities
practiced on innocent colored men will never be told.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/17472010/bulldozing/

--bgz

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