Will the magic nails work on the restless lefties?
Only at short range.
“The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of the steamer Aleck Scott, ‘plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back,’ as her advertisement sometimes read.
The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Or leans, and the yellow fever used to snatch them right and left - eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to ‘plant’ every time the boat landed to wood - “plant” was Roach’s word. One day as Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said:
‘God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet sticking out?’
‘I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because, damn their souls, if you plant ‘em any other way they’ll dig out and vote the first time there’s an election - but look at that fellow, now - you put ‘em in head first and face down and the more they dig the deeper they’ll go into the hill.’
In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way.”
The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 2 1864-1865, (Univ. of California Press, 1981), pp. 313-14.