The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1881-05-12
A GREAT SPEECH.
Senator Butler Excoriates Frye, and Gives
the Country Food for Solid Thought.

Is this eternal, everlasting, insatiate,
Unsuitable crusade upon the South never
to stop? Ifsecession was crime and
mistake, oh how egregiously has the
South suffered for it! If maintaining
slavery in her midst was crime, how
the revenges of time have settled with
her for it! Is there then never to be
cessation, stop to tantalizing, misrepre-
senting, calumniatinga people who have
had problem to deal with that no peo-
pie have ever had ever since civilization
dawned on the earth-such problem, 1
say, as no people have ever had to solve.
They have been and are doing the best
they can to solve it fairly and honestly
and truthfully, and in accordance with
that love of Constitutional liberty and
Republican freedom which was born
with them. It seems to me that, instead
of helping us to solve it, the Republican
party have thrown obstacles in our way,
and then curse and anathematize and
abuse and misrepresent US because we
act with the Northern Democracy. In
all those dark days, in all those
days of terror and suffering and
wrong, that the Anglo-Saxon race of
the South was subjected to, not word
of kindness, not an expression of
relief, not whisper of sympathy di,' we
get from anybody at the North, except
the brave, gallant Democracy of that
section-not whisper. When we were
down, when we " ere being tramped upon,
when we were being robbed, our Repub-
lican friends sat silent as the grave and
never extended finger for our relief;
but as long as their political allies, the
solid Republican South, we're plying their
avocation, everything was lovely and the
people had to submit. When in the
course of time, in Gods own providence,
that nightmare was shaken off by the
Anglo-Saxon race and it became Demo
cratic, then the hue and cry is raised
from one end of the country to the other,
"The solid South menaces the liberties of
this country" and in the language of the
Senator from Maine is wicked, criminal
usurpation of the rights of the people,
"Oh! consistency thou art indeed
Jewell" How mems minds andsouls and
bodies are warped and deformed by the
love aud lust Of political power! And
how conveniently cant and hypocrisy
enables men to shift their political sails
and back and fill before any breeze!
I know not, Mr.. President, whether
the South is solid or not. / do say, how.
ever, that so far as our Democratic solid
ity is concerned, she is solid for good
government; she is solid for the honest
administration of affairs; she is solid for
the education of her children; she
is solid for the development of her
industries; she is solid in encouraging
the people of all sections of this country
to come and lire under her beautiful
climate and partake of the almost bound
less possibilities of her future; she is
solid for the peace and order of socie.
ty, and there is not sentiment in the
heart of any man in the South, who is
man, that feels scintilla of hostility for
the colored race. Why should we? As
the Senator from Maine said, patheti-
cally, they staid at home while we were
at the front in the army of the Confeder
acy and protected our wives and chill
dren. So they did; and | hope God may
strike me down and paralyze my right
arm ifI have cherished sentiment of
hostility to those kind.hearted people
who protected my wife and children.
No, sir, it is base calumny upon the
manhood and the courage, and the honor
Of the Southern men to Say that they
would oppress the weak and the lowly
and the humble-born. l wish [ could
take the senator, I wish l could take all
those senators to my home-and | hope
I shall be excused for the egotism-I
wish | could take that senator to my
home, among those people who have
known me from my infancy, and ask
them if have ever done them a wrong;
ask them ifI have not, when their Re.
publican friends were standing back,
gone to the front in their defence and to
their assistance. should like for him to
go to-day to my home, upon my farm,
and see the one hundred and thirty-six
colored people there, and ask them
whether I ever did them an injury or
not?
am not quite prepared to admit, now.
ever, and the senators, if they give
expression to their honest sentiments,
are not quite prepared to admit that
those people, recently released from sla-
very, are fit to be judges and governors
and legislators and magistrates and
when the Senator from Maine says, "we
educate our voters in New England"
and says, "why do not you educate yours
in the South 2" throw back to him
the inquiry, that when you had absolute
control of those people, when you were
reconstructing the governments of the
South, when you controlled every Office
from Governor to constable and dictated
every line Of the reconstruction measures,
why did you not provide an educational
qualification for the suffrage in South
Carolina? The white people of that
State had no voice in the form and char
acter of the charter which was to be the or.
ganic law of their future government from
which they were to derive protection for
their lives, their liberties, their families,
and their property. They were as voice
less as the tomb, and as powe,less .s the
shorn Samson