where did the phrase hell in a handbasket come from
To hell in a handbasket I. Windslow Ayer's 1865 polemic[2] alleges, "Judge Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois at an August meeting of Order of the Sons of Liberty said: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would 'send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"[3]
Inferno (Dante) Those whose attitude toward material goods deviated from the appropriate mean are punished in the fourth circle. They include the avaricious or miserly (including many "clergymen, and popes and cardinals"),[44] who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. The hoarders and spendthrifts joust, using as weapons great weights that they push with their chests: