A meeting of ‘"Southern Men"’ in New York.
The following letter appears in the Atlanta (Ga.) Intelligencer. It shows what sort of men led the late meeting of ‘"loyal"’ Southern men in New York:I find the following paragraph in the Charleston Mercury, of the 22d inst:
‘ "Certain individuals, hailing from the South, publish in the New York papers a card calling a 'Union War Meeting.' Among the names, 27 in number, signed to the 'call' are the following: Waiter S. Carr and J. M. Bird from South Carolina; 'Hon' Philip Frazer, C. L. Robinson, Jos. Remington, John S. Sammis, and Wm. Offatt, from Florida."
’ Lest there be any one who may be led to believe that those men named as hailing from Florida are Southerners I desire to give you a short account of them the ‘ "Hon."’ Philip Frezer is a Northern man (I think a Pennsylvanian,) by birth and education and his whole political life and tenets, while in Florida, proved him to be a Northern man in every instinct of his mean and low nature, although he married a Southern lady, and lived some length of time in the South. He is a third or fourth-rate petty lawyer, and at the Florida bar was held in utter contempt by its respectable members for his habitual villainous practices in the honorable profession.
C. L. Behinson is a Boston man, (a representative of since broken down establishment of that city,) who went to Jacksonville in 1858 as a merchant. He is an educated man of good address. manners to. He was shrewd in business matters, and managed to make the people there, generally, believe that he was a saint and he soon secured a large and lucrative trade on fictitious capital. His abolition proclivities, however were discovered by the more discerning, alike from occasional sentiments dropped from hit lips, his political associates, and the entertainment of free egresses at his table, and in his family generally.
Joseph Remington was a New York butcher adventurer, who went to Jacksonville about three years age and engaged in business as a clerk, or overseer at one of the lumber mills near the city, but proving to be worthless to his employer, he remove to the city and set up, in advertisements, a hired room, &c., for a commission merchant.--His utter want of character and capacity prevented him from getting any customers, and the last of his achievements there, that I know anything of, was butchering a number of hogs for a Government contractor. He was a low, ill-mannered fellow, having the air and slang of a New York butcher.
John S. Sammis. This delectable fellow no doubt receives especial favor and attention among the New Yorkers, and particularly on account of his negro wife and beautiful mulatto daughters.--He went to Florida and settled on the St. Johns river about 25 or 30 years ago, a poor carpenter, and seeing early thereafter a chance to make his fortune right away by marrying a free negress he did so, and has raised up quite a family of brownies The large property he thus got gave him some importance among all who wished to use him, and he became in due time one of the notable rich men of the St. Johns. Without the prestige of his money, he is one of that class of low men, of hoggish qualities, that a gentleman would keep standing at his door while he dispatched business with him.
Of Offutt I knew nothing; but from the crowd he appears in I have no doubt that he, together with Walter Carr and J. M. Bird, who profess to hail from S. C., is ‘"a bird of the same feather,"’ and hatched in the same nest. Whatever of means or temporary position those men from Jacksonville, Florida, may or have had, they owe it to Southern institutions and to the people amongst whom they settled, and who fostered them, and whom, in the hour of trial, they betrayed. When the Yankees evacuated Jacksonville, in May last, those men, cowards like, ran from their homes, dreading to meet the faces of the people whom they had outraged.
