The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1881-05-10

Senator Frye Of Maine, which the more FOOLISH
stalwart newspapers have applauded to the echo,
could be distributed In every part Of the country
as an example of the length to which profess
sional fanaticism can carry an ambitious politi-
clan. We have faith and confidence in the COM
mon sense and the sense of justice Of the Ameri-
can people Not only win Mr.. Frye vainly call
the spirits of hatred and revenge from the vast
deep of the past, but he win also cause reac-
ton among people of his own school by the
malice and fragrant untruths Of his utterances
The first part of Mr.. Frye's speech was de-
voted to an exposure of suppositious frauds and
outrages in the South. We call them suppose
tious, because with single grain Of actual fraud
or violence. Mr.. Frye would flow whole Mis-
sissippi of talk. The trustwerthiness of his
statement can be measured by the passionate
peroration. With almost comical audacity, Mr..
Frye denounces the South and the institution Of
slavery as though the Northern States were net
equally responsible with the Southern States for
it's existence and continuance. This is the key
10 the whole harangue. Mr.. Frye regards as q
crime the slavery which helped to make this
people rich and which left the South poor. The
Northern States sold their slaves and received
the money for them; the Southern States as
their right under the Constitution, kept their
slaves and were robbed of them by the victori-
GUS North. Senator Brown, in answering Mr.
Frye, exposed very happily the reasons for the
differences in the condition of the North and
South. He said:
There was period in the history of Massa-
chusetts and New England when the slave trade
cd in
it; slavery was prohibited in its original charter,
and she manfuly resisted tor a time And as
noticed the other day in a beck in the library
that think good authority, in the convention
that framed the Constitution of the United States
Georgia and South Carolina made 1t condition
precedent to the Union that the importation OF
slaves within reasonable time should be pro-
hibited New England, do not think, made
that a condition precedent Those who made
the trade profitable insisted on longer time to
| import. When you imported the slaves their
labor was not found to be very remunerative on
the barren and bleak hills and shores of Massa-
chusetts and New England. There was q more
congenial cline; there was place where the
cotton grew and the tobacco grew, and various
productions that you could not raise in New
England, and your ancestry brought them dewn
and sold them to u.s. and our ancestors bought
them from you and gave their money for them,
| and you took that money and / presume you
put it into brick and morter, and into fisheries
and factories and shipping, and you went to
work building upon it. twas substantial wealth
to YOU and you knew how to take care of the
| dollar.
"But there is another reason why you are rich
and we are poor. During the time we held slave
property guaranteed to rs by the Constitution,
and since that time the farmers and planters,
| the mechanics and the labOring classes of this
country generally have been taxed under the
tariff laws of the United States TO build up and
maintain New England factories and New Eng
land interests. With the money which you have
received from that source and from the fisheries
at the expenses or under the protection of the
government, and from the importation of slaves
and from other sources, you have grown rich and
| powerful, while we, by the loss of slaves pur-
chased from you, have grown poor Hence you
are able to appropriate large sums for educational
purposes, while we are not able 10 raise like
sums.
You grew rich first by the import alton of
slaves and by selling them to US, and you in
vested your money we'll We held them for two
or three generations and we made their labor
profitable; but sometime after the trade had
ceased to be profitable and we were prosperous,
those high moral ideas that the honorable Sena-
tor from Maine referred to where he contrasted
civilization in New England, founded on the
Bible and the school-beok, with barbarism in the
South, as he termed it-these moral ideas quick
ened the conscience of Massachusetts and New
England to such an extent that they saw the
horrors of slavery, and wall went up over it
and they were so shocked that they absolutely
violated the compact of the Constitution, and
their Senators will not deny it, in refusing to
carry out the agreement of Massachusetts when
the Constitution was formed, that she would
ranAer bach tn the nWner hia fl Gitiva slavA when
he went into your States. And the honorable
Senator from Maine tells us very diseraceful
scene there, as ne considers 1t, where the troops
mad 10 be called out to the number of 1000 or
soma other large number to execute this law
and return poor negro back to slavery again.
=" In the days when your fathers called them
Dlackamores, and when they were proper traffic.
that sympathy was net so lively, conscience was
not then so quickened. But though we had
bought the property, and paid you for it, and
owned it, and though it had been q condition
precedent to the formation Of the Union and the
adoption of the Constitution that you would
agree to surrender fugitives to US when they fed,
and though you had agreed to this, yet those
high moral ideas of civilization as ccntrasted
with barbarism rose to such a s1blime height
finally that you could not carry out the CON-
pact. and your conscience would not permit it,
Allow me to tell you that we charged that
broken compact on your part as one of the rea-
sons which we thought at that time justified us
in taking the steps we took 10 try 10 defend sla.
very by our strong arms, when you would not
keep that compact with us that you had SOL
EMMY engaged TO keep. The war did ensue as
the Senator said, and il resulted in the abolition
OF slavery. Your high moral ideas prevailed. l
mense loss we felt there, am glad il is so; but,
bear in mind, we are tainted with our poverty
now because We cannot educate the negro
Take your part of the tax on your shoulders and
| pay us the two billion dollars that were lost in
the negro after We had bought him from you,
| and we will then be able TO educate him. AS
| necessity of war you sweep slavery from exist
| cnce, and you take from US our property you con-
f1scate 1t, so to speak for if the abolition of sa-
very, which was legal property under The Con-
situiiOn Of the United States was not cOnfiscated
if The destruction Of two billion dollars worth of
property was not cOnfscated wi hen YOU srnyed
ii without paying for il, what do you call con-
hscalion? True. you left Us poor, very DOOR We
are not able now to educate the poor negroes as
they ought to be educated and we desire 10 edu.
cafe them. Pay US for them by taxing YOUR
selves and We will agree to appropriate every
dollar oil il 10 their education"
MIR. Frye in his speech is savage and barba
rous enough One who knew nothing of the
condition of the country except what he learned
from the Maine Senator, would suppose the
Southern States to be a compound of Dahomey,
Bulgaria and Asiatic Turkey. The fact is that
In the Southern States population increases rap
Idly, the cotton crop Of the year is the largest
ever known, white people and colored people
are improving their condition, mines are being
opened, railroads are building, new factories are
Springing up on all sides. In the eye of the
Northern capitalists the Southern States are the
most promising field for the investment of CAPT.
tai Such hard facts as these blunt The point of