Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1885-03-27
The New Minister to England.


|
| from the New York Times of Monday. Sep
| TENDER 8. 88O-Correspondence from
! Burlington, VI.
| The democrats IN ,de foolish move in
crowding their nomination for Governor on
! Mr.. T.. J. Phelps. An able and successful
LAWYER, an Influential member of the last
Constitutional Convention (Which is c0nsti-
tuted without regard to politics.. the grace
| full president of the great Bennington Cen
tennial Celebration, interested and prominent
| in securing game laws and organizing State
| and National Bar Associations and in various
matters of art and general culture he had
| been of late years brought before the people
| in other than political aspects, and many had
| forgotten that he was. during the war one of
the most pronounced and bitter pro-slavery
and snti-war democrats in the country. Had
he maintained his resolution to accept no po-
litical nomination the memory of his attitude
from 1860 to 1865 might have quite passed
away; but the democratic nomination and
his speech of acceptance. in which, with sur
prisinR want of tact. he aired afresh his old
hatred of the African and attacked the South
ern republicans, white and black, with vir-
ulence which few Southern democrats could
equal. and which showed his absolute sympa-
thy with the Blackburns, Buffers, Davises
and Iamptoms of the South. have brought it
into strong prominence. Still stronger light
has been thrown on it by the publication of a
careful stenographic report of a speech made
by Mr.. Phelps in September, 1864, before a
little club of copperheads in Burlington. Ia
this he called MIR. Lincoln a wooden
head" and ''twenteth-rate back
country attorney declared that
the North was lighting simp'y to turn loose
the niggers" and .'whitewash the niger in
the blood of millions :" said that the national
debt had reached a point where 1t could not
be carried though no one was ready to saw
how it could be repudiateI., and otherwise
talked in way which would have delighted
JET Davis. but which jars pretty rudely on
loyal svmpathies among the Green Hills
The Vermonters are willing to shake hands
with any rebel who is truly reconstructed.
and is willing to render such allegiance to
law, order and equal rights in kind if not in
degree, "a they render themselves; but the
people of a treedom-loving State which gave
to the war a soldier for every ten of its in
habitants. male and female, old and Young,
and which lost in killed and wounded more
men in proportion to its quota than any other
State but Kansas, and about as many ~ that
State, would not be very likely to regard
with favor the few Vermonters who held
back while the rest pressed forward. and who
called the soldiers "Hessians" and Lincoln
hireliugs, and would gladly have let the
Union slide if slavery could have been pre- =
served. Whatever else the Green Mountain
boys forget, they do not propose to forget
the war nor the freedom and equality OF
rights which were supposed to be settled bv
it; and as between vlitier of Abraham
Lincoln, denouncer of the war, and a
| friend of rebels in arms, and a man like the
republican nominee, Colonel Farnham, who,
in addition to being an able lawyer and cit.
izen of the highest integrity, was one of the
First Vermont Regiment and has an honora.
BILE record as a Union soldie-, few. if any
voters that ever voted a republican tickle,
have found any room fer hesitation.