The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1893-01-27

| iect for it was there that palmetto log
served SO we'll for breastworks from
with loss. Sumter was like big bricl
barn standing in the water, and it seemed
inhabited by but two or three persons
This was nearly year before the BON
bardment, and not five months after the
hanging of John Brown. My notion is
the City Council sent the tug to convey
members of the observation-disclosures
and reporters-to make a harbor excur.
sion, and Butler was unhappy and scOld-
ing because the managers did not know
how to make their guests comfortable,
and he used language not flattering to the
city of Charleston.
The De nocracy, when the Charleston
Convention was failure, reassembled at
Baltimore, and there Butler and Gushing
withdrew from the regular convention
and joined the Southern seceders, giving
them an air of regularity, and assisting
to nominate Breckenridge for President,
assuring the defeat of Douglass and the
election of Abraham Lincoln. So angry
were the Northern Democrats at Butler
that there was an expectation that he
would be personally assaulted, and when
he made his speech changing conventions
there stood behind him as bodyguard
Psice, Boston prize fighter. Butler
there was in the Charleston and Balti-
more Conventions slaYe-trader from
Georgia. His name was Gaulden, and
he had actually imported cargo of
slaves from Africa. He was not ashamed
or afraid about it, but boosted of it. and
said with cogeAt logic he did not know
that it was any worse to engage in the
African than in the Virginian slave trade,
and he called in vain upon the Virginians
to tell why one branch of the slave trade
was worse than another. He told what
wonderful fello VS. the native Africans
were; said they beat the native Virgin
ians, and were "the MODEST Romans of
them ALL" He would bet on blacks from
the Congo coast as against tho yelloS"
men from tidewater, Virginia. Mr..
Gaulden was on the rampage in the no.
tells at Charleston about his favorite
theme, and at Baltimore he broke out in
the convention as Douglass man, and
made an African slave trade speech Which
was really full of wit and rich with devil
ish humor. 1t was sumner, and was
received with roars of laughter and yells
of approval. The fact that the African
slave trade was applauded was largely
Buffers excuse for going from the Doug
lass to the Breckenridge Convention, and
it is even seriously put forward in his
book. No one conversant with the cir
cumstances can conclude that the slave
trade speech had any real influence on
far as Buffers expressions of doctrine in
the Democratic Conventions of 1860 are
concerned, they were extremely South
ern, and his talk about the Constitution
was according to the South Carolina
rather than the Massachusetts, view, as
those States were rated.
The impression has reached the general
public that Batter was remarkable for
the certainty in his mind, that he clearly
disclosed to many, that the result OF the
breakup of the Democratic party at
Charleston and Baltimore would be war;
but nothing was heard of that in or
around those conventions. The claim of
the Breckinridge Democrats that they
had exceptional prescience cannot be
sustained. The Douglass Democrats
knew better what was going on, and we're
angered deeply at the behavior of the
fire eaters of the South, who thought the
North would not fight, just as the Adolf
tiOnists and other extreme anti slavery
men in the North thought the South
would not fight The Northern Demo
Gratis who really thought war was com
ing were Richardson and Logan of Hi
nois, Pugh and Ward of Ohio, and Others
of the friends of Douglass. Buffers pro-
phetic instinct that told him of the COM
ing events of war was like his sensitive
ness about the African slave trade "open-
ly advocated at Baltimore by Douglass
man from -Gaulden-though it
was 'piracy under the laws of my eoun-
try" The truth is, Gaulden's speech, to
the effect that the African slave trade
was more humane, civilizing and Chris
tianizing than the Virginian slave trade,
was unanswerable. However, it helped
Butler to dramatic point
When Butler, with his Massachusetts,
troops, opened the way to Washington,
he was iu high feather. He had the bet
ter of everybody up to that time. In
spite of the Governor of his State, he
was the first man from Massachusetts,
conspicuously in the field. He had
pleased Abraham Lincoln with his ener-
gy, and was supposed to be the foremost
of the saviors Of Washington City. Gen.
Winfield Scott, was, however, the war
god of the hour, and when there was
talk of danger to the capital, Scott would
point out vessel in the Potomac, with
the words: "a sloop of war, sir; sloop
of war;" as if that settled it. Lincoln
went so far-a as to say: sit seems to me,
If was Beauregard, I'd take Washing
ton" There was too much dash and
fire about Butler to get along with Scott,