Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1879-06-27


did-was the sensation of the hour. The ne
groos listened to him with pride, the whites
with contemptuous amazement at tho copl-
ousnoss of his words, and the coolness of his
assertions. If, two minutes after the fer
vors of the orators eloquence had ceased to
blaze any man from Vermont had tried him
rs to trade in horses or in town-lots, he
would have found him as sharp at bargain rs
the sharpest in any market.
Alas for poor Milton he was changed by
his eating Of the tree of knowledge in more
ways than intellectually. A Democratic ed
itor himself told me that he had bought the
man in reference to one railroad subsidy pend
ing in the Legislature of which, so far as his
own color was concerned, the cx-slave was
leading member in very literal sense of the
word A republican lawyer, equally to my
own knowledge, had purchased him as re-
garded another and still more lucrative mat
ter in the same august body Worse still,
persons having rival claims before the legis
iaturc found out afterward that although each
had "sccurCd" the influence Of this distin-
guishcd statesman Mt a high figure, the Hon.
Milton had, in the end, betrayed them both
in behalf Of third and higher bidder
mighty uncertain" were politics in those
days. Before the war, his master had puid,
say, fifteen hundred dollars for his carriage
driver, but it was at last only the body of
the man that he obtained These days it was
the soul instead of the former slave which
buyers purchased In the old days, Milton
had no agency in the mutter at all to-day he
was his own Ruction,rr loud and eager, and
/ it may be because it was his soul that he was
selling, but he certainly asked and got tre-
/ mendous prices. 1t is true that Legislative
/ white sheep as well as black, were bought
| and sold in his region exactly as butchers and
/ traders do sheep by the flock, but 1t was
worse than that. Deep down in their souls
| those poor freedmen wanted do know, to
| do what wia right. They all looked up to
/ the Hon. Milton with pride and perfect trust,
and his money was made by getting up cor
ners' in his own people and speculAting IN
/ their pitiful ignorance. To which party the
! Hon. Milton finds 1t for his present interest
to belong l do not know. The fact is, just
now he exists in condition of suspended in
fallibility. While awaiting events he pos
sesses serenity in lying-lyng upon the
stump, in the papers, before Congressional
committees, which is iudescribable.
do not blame the man for being yellow,
any more than do for being so very oily and
supple, if it were not that lie reminded you
/ so much of tiger there Is such feroclty IN
him as to the making of money. There were
rumors that he led midnight parties, first on
one Of the political sides and then on the
other, for the purpose Of frightening voters
of his own color-dark and deyiish parties
| which left more than one man dead and mu-
tilated in the cypress swamp but the whit
est lady in the land could not deny the charge
with greater apparent horror than he does,
aud who knows 1t is a general impression
that the Hon. Milton is at bottom the great
est Of cowards but who can tell what dcsper-
| ate bravery he might not show in some trop-
ical gust Of passionI Your feeling, however
is that he is less apt to be swept away him
self than to be himself the gust which, for
his own ends sweeps others before him.
knew n Southern Congressman who came
within one vote Of being elected speaker of
the House before the civil war. During that
conflict, he was Union man, general in the
Federal army and the provisional governor of
a Southern state.
''St down, sir, sit down he said to me in
his Office one day after the war was over.
'Sit down; l want to tell you one thing.
You know that when the war began, was an
unboliever, an atheist ? OF course every
body knew it. Now, sir, what want to say
is that, since then, / have seen things so or
dered, contrary to, otherwise than, immeas-
urably unlike, and superior to, the passions
or plans Of any man or set of men, that, sir,
and his voice became low, and to my amaze
ment his eyes filled with tears, - now do
know that there Is "A God who governs the
world He has mado!' In this belief lies the
strong consolation OF a good many OF us,
South and North. The chemistry OF events
in the South-the diplomacy, would prefer
to call it, of Providence there's as wonder
full as is the crystallzation Of the salts, or the
generations and motions of the planetary
system. Possibly We could not have had the
| constitutional amendments II the ballot had
not been put INTO the astonished hands OF the
former slaves. That seem to us now to have
been in some senses most disastrous neces-
sity and remedy And yet look calmly at IT,
If the power OF voting had been withheld
from them Professionally, they would have
been fermenting, possibly an insurgont
mass until they obtained It, They have had
it, and awful is the mess they have made OF
it, rs We all acknowledge, not so much by
reason Of their Ignorance as of the rascahty
Of unprinciplcd Adventures. Nom they
seem, as "A body at least, to have settled down
: to hard work, contented to struggle up indi
yidually as the rest of us have to do, Mat
tcrs have changed astoundm6ly OF late
Where the Hon. Milton once was, so to speak
everybody, he is now nobody. When he wa
q slave he was a zero now he seems to have
become a zero again. Worse, he is a zerC
which tried desperately to do something grea
- and rrinously failed However, no on'
dreamed sixteen years ago, let us remember
that the slave would become the senator; ant
: who dare prophesy as to what the man ma!
4 come to be sixteen years hence! Let us no
be too certain. In tropical lands where ther'
has been one earthquake there may be anoth
r er. The Hon. Milton seems to have becom,
r n sort of eX-phenomenon, but he is too new
, to science to be accurately classified and final
t ly catalogued even yet.
4 / sometimes wonder, rs | look at him, l
: he was not really better off that Sunday, cent
, uries ago, it seems to be, when he came TO
= me to marry his young master. lie perplexe