Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-07-30
a Voice from the snnth.

We listened attentively to the rebel Colonel
who spoke on Tuesday evening. The min
Cling of Southern and Northern people can
not but be benefit, if better understand
ing between citizens of all parties is reached.
The North Carolina gentleman was quite
clever, and yet rather technical in his way of
stating things. He said that three issues
were settled by the war, and only three, viz,
slavery, supremacy of the Union and negro
suffrage. He, however, did not mention the
new form of slavery under sanction of South
ern laws, by which thousands of negroes are
being sentenced to hard labor for long terms
for petty larceny and other minor offenses,
and who are being sold to the highest bidder
for term of years, placed in chain gangs un-
der cruel task-masters, guarded by armed men
with bloodhounds, as in the old days of slav-
cry; who are building the highways and rail-
roads and doing other labor, and are dying
off under their cruel treatment in some in
stances at the startling rate of % per cent
That was a bit of sarcasm when he said that
the negro could vote with perfect freedom
He evidently had forgotten that Wade Hamp-
ton lately made speech in South Carolina in
which he told the negro that while he had
the right to vote he could do so only by vot-
ing the Democratic ticket 1t did not occur
to him to mention the laws in some of the
Southern States establishing property quail
ifcation, no man being allowed to vote whose
taxes are in arrears, and q heavy penalty
fixed upon any one who either pays another
mans taxes or loans him money to do 3d.
He did not refer to the thousands of poor
men, mostly blacks who are thereby depriv-
ed of their votes. With a grand whirlwind
of rhetoric he declared that there was no
bulldozing in the South and then, finding
that such statement was too barefaced for a
Vermont audience, he got it down to within
six or eight hundred miles of his own resi-
dence then, thinking that might be taken
as fish story, he afterward limited it to a
hundred and fifty; and, choking up good
deal at that, he at length brought it down to
his own county; then, probably remember
ing the records as to the ku-kux deviltry
there, he Strengthened himself up TO one
grand effort and put it strong by not remem-
bering any within his personal knowledge.
If he had been as candid as he wanted his
hearers to believe he was, he would have am
plitied his statement by saying that the ku-
klux had so thoroughly done their work in
his own county and state that they no longer
found it necessary TO hunt, shoot and whip
the negroes in order to bring them under
Democratic control. His cheek was perfect
ly superb when he characterized any man as
liar who disputed his statements Well
this noble rebel colonel will find out that
while that kind of southern argument may
convince in his section, it is poor stuff to
convert New Englanders with. Slavery pre-
vented immigration but did he not know
that thousand emigrants from Europe had
landed and settled in his own State since the
war, and that the cussedness of his party had
driven out all but six families Hancock re-
stored the trial by jury will the rebel gen.
tleman tell the northern people why the
southern people have seen fit to deny the
colored man this right, and why there is no
punishment for murder and pillage as prac-
ticed against the Republicans of the South !?
But with the glittering generalities and swash
which he knew well how to use, one would
imagine that about all the bulldozing there is
in this country is in our neighboring county
of Bennington, and all crime is limited to
Vermont, and all virtue embodied in Ben
Hill, Robert Toombs, JEFF Davis, yellow-fe
yer Blackburn, and his associates.