The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1911-06-13
THE THOMAS MILLER
OF RECONSTRUCTION DAYS
Recollections OF Days When Every
body Toted a Pistol-The Shot
That Was Trained Tor
Miller.

A. 3. Williams in Roanoke Times.
Sometimes a single name or small
incident will open foodgates OF recol-
lections of those who have seen and
felt things and bring to very vivid
life old times and long arrays of dead
men. We read in the South Carolina
newspapers that T. E. Miller has been
removed summarily by the new COVER
nor from his long held position as
president of the colored university at
Orangeburg.
This is Canary Miller" quite an
old man now and long ago reconclIeo
to white rule and become good man
useful citizen. He was different 5:
years ago when he sat in the South
Carolina legislature as a representa-
tive from Beaufort-a short, square
built man, seven-eighths white, wear
ing a. heavy light gray sack suit, with
his habit of running his hands into the
pockets of his coat and fairly clear in
dication of a loaded revolver in each
pocket Other nasty habits had Can
ary." He sat as member of the last
attempt at Republican legislature
in a Southern State in the last year of
the Reconstruction era. He sat with
"The Ring-Tailed Roarer of the Com
bahee," black negro whose gullah
dialect from the coast of Africa,
whose immediate ancestry was so
strong that white Man from the up
country barely could understand him
when he addressed the house; also
with the "Duke Of Marlboro an unc-
tuous yellow scoundrel, representing
the very garden spot of the State, who
used to rise up and thunder from a
broad chest and wide throat when
the house in chorus rendered: Hold
the Fort for Hayes and Wheeler"
How it did reverberate, rendered to
the air of 'EIold the Fort, for I am
Coming" when the South Carolina
legislature refreshed itself with song.
In the Legislature.
Canary" was not of the group col
lectively known as "The Forty Thiev-
es," but he was about as full of fight
and venom as a rattlesnake. One
hundred and twenty-five was the legal
membership of the house Of represen-
tatives in the year of the mighty up
rising of the white people under lead
ership Of Wade Hampton, the out
bursting and exploding of fighting
and desperate civilization against a
$4,000 negro majority, the law and
Ulysses S. Grant in the presidents
seat. The Democrats had elected 64-
on the face of the returns. BY means
they kept two or three Republican
representatives at their homes; but
when their names we're called they
answered. Dummies, ringers" had
been put in to answer for them and no
Democrat dared any knowledge that
the realities were not there. Who
could identify one lowland corn field
negro from another? Then the DEM
ocrats, again by means, won over two
or three. Tom Hamilton was among
them. He must have been a descend
ant of a Zula chieftain, because later,
when his brethren clamored against
him, he rose, tall and straight, his skin
smooth and sleek as silk, and remark
ed that sometimes he went out in his
field and killed a rice bird with re-
volver for his sport; Whereupon his
brethren whimpered into silence be-
cause thew knew it was so. Men,
white or black, who could drive a pis-
tol bullet through rice bird at eigh-
teen steps were valuable at the mo-
WSuL duO W NC 1CSpOSCOO- OoI "AANAA
the Democrats gained over recruits
the Republicans -*:Radicals'' every
body called them then-simply went
through the formality Of declaring
seats from some Democratic counties
vacant and filed them with any body
who might be handy, wearing any
names that might fit, and so retained
their legal majority, to be certified to
Washington.
So it befell that on December day
the IS Democrats and their colored
allies, sitting in Carolina hall at Co.
lumbia, decided to go and occupy the
hall of the house Of representatives at
the State house. They went trooping
close behind Lawrence Orr, Of Ander-
son county, six feet and four inches
high and two hundred and Sixty