Part 10

DEAR SIR,--I cannot be at your proposed meeting, where are to assemble the patriotism, intelligence, and wealth of the metropolis; but I recognize its importance, and cry to it _God-speed!_

The work before us is plain. Kansas must be saved from a tyrannical usurpation, under which Slavery has been forcibly established on Free Soil. This is the special object of labor to which we are summoned by every consideration of regard for that distant Territory, and also by every sentiment of love for our common country. But this can be done only by her immediate welcome into the Union, under her present Constitution, as a Free State,--of course without recognition of the usurping Tyranny. Upon this we must insist, as the means essential to the end.

In achieving this result, an incidental good will be accomplished, which of itself should impel us to any exertion. The Slave Oligarchy has staked its power in the National Government upon the support of this usurpation. In the madness of its despotism, it has selected a position the least tenable of all its assumptions. To dislodge it from this position, and at the same time from its disgusting supremacy in the National Government, will be one and the same work. And all this will be easy to do, if the good people of the populous North, forgetting past differences, will but rally together. _Union to save Kansas, and Union to save ourselves_, should be the watchword.

Believe me, dear Sir, very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

E. D. MORGAN, Esq., Chairman, &c.

THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS:

THE APOLOGIES FOR THE CRIME; THE TRUE REMEDY.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE, MAY 19 AND 20, 1856.

Such busy multitudes I fain would see Stand upon Free Soil with a people free. GOETHE, _Faust_, Part II. Act V.

Nihil autem gloriosius libertate præter virtutem, si tamen libertas recte a virtute sejungitur.--JOHN OF SALISBURY, _Polycraticus_, Lib. VII. cap. 25.

On the 17th of March, 1856, Mr. Douglas introduced “A Bill to authorize the People of the Territory of Kansas to form a Constitution and State Government, preparatory to their Admission into the Union, when they have the requisite Population.” Subsequently, Mr. Seward moved, by way of substitute, another bill, providing for immediate action, and entitled “A Bill for the Admission of the State of Kansas into the Union.” Debate ensued, and was continued by adjournment from time to time. In the course of this debate, on the 19th and 20th of May, Mr. Sumner made the following speech.

* * * * *

This speech found unexpected audience from an incident which followed its delivery. It became a campaign document in the Presidential election then at hand, and was circulated by the hundred thousand. Besides reprint in newspapers, there were large pamphlet editions in Washington, New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Editions appeared in German and Welsh. It was reprinted in London, in a publication by Nassau W. Senior, the eminent publicist and economist, entitled “American Slavery: A Reprint of an Article on ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and of Mr. Sumner’s Speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856.”

At the period of its delivery an intense excitement prevailed throughout the country. At the North there was a deep sense of wrong, with indignation at the pretensions of the Slave Power, yearning for a voice in Congress that should speak out the general sentiment. These influences reached Mr. Sumner before he spoke, in numerous letters.

Hon. William Jay, of New York, the able and eminent Abolitionist, being on the point of sailing for Europe, wrote thus:--

“It is with heavy forebodings in regard to Kansas that I leave the country. I have long been convinced that the great obstacle to the cause of human rights and the ultimate prosperity and freedom of our native land is the corruption of the moral sense of our nation. We are very religious as a people, so far as religion is convenient, and consistent with money-getting, office, and power; but so far as it interferes with those pursuits, we are a nation of infidels. To me it seems the Democratic party is utterly and ostentatiously profligate, the unblushing advocates of human slavery and piratical warfare, the most God-defying party which ever cursed our country. As to Slavery, the Church is exerting a most corrupting influence. Our cotton parsons preach to please the rich pew-holders, and are becoming more and more bold in defending Slavery, while ---- keeps watch and ward over the press of the Tract Society as the guardian of human bondage, and decent men are not ashamed to give their hands to this shameless renegade, this reproach to Christianity. The violence, insolence, cruelty, and injustice springing from Slavery are gradually drifting into anarchy,--and anarchy leads first to civil war, and then to military usurpation.

“But duty is ours, and events belong to Providence. I think all honest men must now be convinced that nothing is gained to Freedom by compromises. Had Webster been a true man, there would have been no trouble about Kansas. I never see his portrait or bust without a shudder. I am for bold deeds and bold language.

‘Fear admitted into public councils Betrays like treason.’

“May God direct and bless you!”

Another friend wrote from Massachusetts as follows.

“Pardon me for the expression of an earnest wish to hear from you soon on the Kansas Freedom Question. However ably ---- and others have treated it, and they have done noble things, I am persuaded that you can impress the public mind with the magnitude of the momentous issue more than any other man.

“Excuse me again for suggesting, that, as Douglas charges as a reason, or pretence, for calling the Freedom party ‘Black Republicans,’ because, as he says, their platform all relates to ‘the Nigger Question,’ it may with the greatest force be retorted, that the party in power should justly be named Black Democrats, because their whole foreign and domestic policy is dictated by the slaveholding oligarchy, and basely surrenders every other interest of the country to it, if it interfere.

“Especially, I know that it would exceedingly gratify the friends of Freedom, if the arrogance and bullyism of Douglas could be signally rebuked, and his faithlessness to the honor and welfare of his native land be conspicuously exhibited.”

Eli Thayer, of Worcester, who, more than any other person, was author of the system of emigration which was redeeming Kansas, addressed Mr. Sumner as follows, under date of May 8.

“I am happy to learn that you intend to speak next Monday. In my judgment that speech has a very important mission to perform, and I rejoice that it is soon to be before the people. But there will be gnashing of teeth among the defenders of Slavery. Be prepared, therefore, for the worst of their endeavors.

“Your shafts will fall among them as did those of the far-shooting god among the Greeks before the walls of Troy, when he punished them for enslaving the daughter of his priest:--

Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ’ ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο.

“My friend Mr. Williams will be present to hear you. I envy him the pleasure of the occasion.

“May good fortune attend you!”

Dr. Le Baron Russell, of Boston, an active member of the Emigration Society, wrote, under date of May 11:--

“We have had enough of truckling in Northern men. It is time for us to show that we mean to submit to the Southern bravado no longer. I have always felt humiliated by the tone our men have taken in Congress, yielding everything, and never daring to assert their rights or to exercise their true power to crush these fellows into submission.”

Such was the prompting under which Mr. Sumner spoke, while the whole country watched the debate. The response to the speech was in harmony with the prompting.

The correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ thus by telegraph described the speech immediately after its delivery:--

“Senator Sumner’s Kansas speech is the most masterly, striking, and scathing production of the session. The galleries were crowded with intellect, beauty, and fashion, and the anterooms were also thronged. His excoriation of Douglas was scornfully withering and scorching. He designated Senator Butler as the Don Quixote of Slavery, and Douglas as its Sancho Panza. Mr. Sumner never before made such an impression in force, manner, and emphatic style. He was animated and glowing throughout, hurling defiance among the opposition, and bravely denouncing the Kansas swindle from first to last. Some passages quite electrified the Chamber, and gave a new conception of the man. Finer effect has rarely been produced.”

The scene was sketched by a correspondent of the _Missouri Democrat_, at St. Louis, as follows.

“It may be rash to publish in Missouri a just estimate of the abilities of an Abolitionist. Sectional opinion demands caricatures, and not portraits. It views the leading men of the other section through the medium of its fear, its hatred, or its contempt, and can recognize no likeness, unless the features are distorted and the canvas is darkened, unless the countenance is wicked and the figure hideous.

“Sumner had an audience calculated to arouse all his faculties, and to remind him that his position was in many respects similar to that of Burke, when he impeached Warren Hastings. His brother Senators were mostly in their seats,--by no means a common occurrence. The lobbies were crowded with the great outside politicians, of whom Senators and Members are frequently the instruments, who originate and guide political movements by means of the press. Francis P. Blair, and Thurlow Weed, and Robert J. Walker, and bevies of Southern delegates to the Cincinnati Convention were there; and the young orators of the House were also there,--Stephens, the keenest blade in the Proslavery ranks, looking as if his face was the battle-ground of boyhood and old age, and Keitt, measuring himself silently with Sumner, and doubtless thinking that the speech to which he was listening so attentively was like a Burmese idol, a monster covered with jewels. The ladies’ gallery was crowded to excess, and the fair ones overflowed into the anteroom of the Senate. The letter-writers in double file occupied their own gallery (for which their best thanks are due to John P. Hale), and passed upon the speech as it gradually came forth. The people in compact mass occupied the background.

“That Sumner displayed great ability, and showed that in oratorical talent he was no unworthy successor of Adams, Webster, and Everett, no one who heard him will deny. In vigor and richness of diction, in felicity and fecundity of illustration, in breadth and completeness of view, he stands unsurpassed. He laid the classics, the Gothic mythology, the imaginative literature of Europe, and the Bible under tribute for imagery or quotation. That he had the great speech of Cicero and the greater speech of Burke in his mind’s eye, there can be no doubt.

“In his reply to Cass, Douglas, and Mason, who stung him into excitement, he was more successful than at any other time. The collision knocked fire from him; and well it might, for he was abused and insulted as grossly as any man could be; but he replied successfully to the unmeasured vituperation of Douglas, and the aristocratic and withering hauteur of Mason.”

The able correspondent of the _Evening Post_ at New York, William S. Thayer, afterwards Consul-General at Alexandria, furnished this description.

“There is but one opinion among all competent judges as to the unexampled feast of eloquence which has been enjoyed in the Senate for the past two days, from the lips of Senator Sumner. In a speech of five hours in length, he has exhibited the most signal combination of oratorical splendors which, in the opinion of a veteran Senator, has ever been witnessed in that Hall. Indeed, for the union of clear statement, close and well-put reasoning, piquant personality and satire, freighted with a wealth of learned and apposite illustrations, every one of which was subsidiary to the main purpose of the argument, it may safely challenge comparison with the great speeches of Burke, to whom the Massachusetts Senator, in the ripened vigor of his abilities, and in his varied accomplishments, bears no small similitude.… But Mr. Sumner was more fortunate than Burke in drawing and detaining his audience.… From the beginning to the end of each session, not only were the galleries thronged to their utmost capacities with ladies and gentlemen, but all the doorways were completely blocked up with listeners who hung in breathless suspense upon his eloquence. It seemed even as if the members of the other House had adjourned to crowd the lobbies of the Senate. No such scene has been witnessed since the days of Webster.”

A writer in the _Liberator_ thus recorded his impressions on reading the speech:--

“Never, I think, from anything did I receive an impression of greater power and grandeur. It came over me like the sound of many waters. I laid down the paper, and still there seemed to press around me a solemn, majestic anthem from a mighty organ. I can almost imagine that around that sick-bed the invisible angels gather, and that on that bruised and mangled head the rays of a divine halo gleam between the blossoms of an imperishable wreath.”

Another writer, in a country journal of Massachusetts, expresses himself thus:--

“It were the merest commonplace to say that Massachusetts may well be proud of her son. She owes him a debt which she can never fitly discharge. I would avoid estimating him too highly; but it seems to me that it may be said without extravagance, that to much of the firmly knit strength and unassailable logic of a Webster he unites all the fire and fervor of an Otis, with the grace and classic elegance of an Everett. But underlying, interpenetrating, and informing all this brilliancy of genius is the earnest philanthropy of the man,--a philanthropy which gives an effect to all his productions, which the cold-blooded politician, or statesman, even, can never hope to attain. His words go straight to the popular heart, and find there an earnest and immediate response.”

The Rev. Gilbert Haven, in a published sermon at Westfield, Massachusetts, spoke thus:--

“Read the great speech which excited such rage, and won for its author the crown of a martyr. For, before he uttered a word, he knew its probable effect; he measured the danger before he struck the blow. But three or four in all history are its equals in beauty and strength of thought and language,--Demosthenes against the Philipizing Douglas of Athens, the keen, ready, insolent tool of her tyrants,--Cicero against the Atchison Catiline of the Roman Republic,--Burke against the wholesale enslaver of India, Hastings,--Webster against the South Carolinian traducer of Freedom and its fruits: with these four, this stands, and will always stand, equal to the highest in all the literary qualities of an oration, higher than the highest in the sweep of his theme,--the preservation of the liberty, culture, and religion of a great Christian nation.”

The testimony of the press was followed by that of correspondents, who vied in grateful felicitations. Of these a few examples are given.

John G. Whittier, the poet, wrote:--

“I have read and re-read thy speech, and I look upon it as thy best. A grand and terrible philippic, worthy of the great occasion; the severe and awful truth which the sharp agony of the national crisis demanded. It is enough for immortality. So far as thy own reputation is concerned, nothing more is needed. But this is of small importance. We cannot see as yet the entire results of that speech, but everything now indicates that it has _saved the country_.”

Joseph E. Worcester, the distinguished lexicographer, wrote:--

“I take my pen in hand to express to you--shall I say my sympathy or congratulation, or something of both, for the scene through which you have recently passed? No one would wish to be the victim of ‘border-ruffianism,’ which has broken out in so disgraceful a manner at Washington; yet I am happy to be able to congratulate you on standing so honorably as you do in relation to this affair before the public, and that such public feeling is manifested in relation to the transaction. I cannot but hope that the recent occurrence will have a powerful influence in advancing the good cause which you have so zealously and ably defended.”

The Count Gurowski wrote from New York:--

“That is grand and beautiful, what you uttered again, and hurled against traitors,--grand and beautiful in thought (_der Idee_), which is principal with an old German pupil, but not less so in form, for which likewise I have appreciation. I wish I could find new words to communicate to you the impression full of charm and joy, reading your speech this morning. You still ascend in higher regions with every one of your oratorical efforts.”

George P. Putnam, of New York, the eminent publisher, wrote:--

“May so small an item as myself, among the millions who are electrified by this bold and masterly exposition of the great curse of the land, be permitted to join in the expression of hearty admiration of the consummate ability and unflinching fearlessness of the man who thus stands up in the front ranks of the battle for Freedom and Humanity!

“Be assured, dear Sir, that you have gained a great many repenting sinners from the ranks of the timid cotton-bound apologists of Southern tyranny. Scarcely a man of intelligence and standing within my range of observation will now hesitate to indorse heartily your position on this question, which was so recently in advance of the age. ‘There is a good time coming.’”

Simeon Draper, of New York, active and eminent as a political leader, wrote:--

“I sincerely regret that you have received from the hand of an assassin so serious a blow. I pray you may be saved from pain, and soon be brought to your seat in the Senate, and be long spared to defend the right and tell the truth. In this great city of money-worshippers, thank God, there are none to defend this act of cowardice and meanness. Your sufferings may be great and even prolonged by this scoundrelism, _but the life of Slavery will be much shortened_.”

Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, famous for his early and constant warfare with Slavery, afterwards Minister of the United States at Petersburg, wrote:--

“I think your speech is far the best one delivered this session, and will confer upon you immortality as a parliamentary debater,--not merely a ‘maker of addresses,’ as your enemies would have it. I think it will stand right alongside with Webster’s reply to Hayne on the Foot resolution, which was his greatest effort in my judgment, and will be considered equal to it in apt classical allusion, strength of argument, bitter irony, and lofty patriotism. Perhaps the only drawback in the comparison is the studied arrangement of your speech, which, although assisting the memory in the public mind, savors too much of the pulpit, and ‘smells too much of the lamp.’ My dear Sir, I have said thus much of your speech because I think every orator would like to hear a candid criticism from any source, however humble.

“The effect of your speech will be tremendous,--all the more effective on account of the sequel.”

George W. Curtis, of New York, the elegant writer and speaker, wrote to George Sumner:--

“While the whole free country is testifying its respect for the statesman, and its honor for the brave defender of the only great cause in human politics, it is a privilege upon which I congratulate myself, that I may send my love to your brother.

“Tell him that those of us whose pursuits are not political postpone them to the commanding interest of the time, and stand ready to prove our sympathy.

“I am writing an oration, to be delivered before the societies of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut,--unfortunately not until August; my theme is naturally the duty of the American scholar to politics; and as I remember the scholar John Milton, who was the great orator of Liberty in those days, I shall not forget, nor allow my audience to forget, the scholar who in later days--these very summer months, that will not then have passed by--stood in the same way, splendid, not only by the glory of his cause, but by the powers he consecrated to it, and by the wrongs he suffered for it.”

Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar, afterwards Attorney-General, wrote from Concord, Massachusetts:--

“Courage and good cheer, my noble friend! We will stand by you in everything that head can devise or hand can execute.

“If you had been killed, no man could desire a nobler epitaph than your speech; and you will live to say again, in many a form, and on many a fit occasion, the stinging home truths to which no reply could be found but this.”

Edwin P. Whipple, of Boston, admired as a writer, wrote with the warmth of personal friendship:--

“You have been constantly in my mind and heart since the attempt at your assassination, and I must tell you how much I sympathize with the sentiments of your speech, how I glory in its genius, and how impossible it is for me to find words to express my rage and abhorrence in regard to the outrage that followed it. I cannot account for the course of Senator Butler, and of South Carolina, except on the supposition, that, fearing certain charitable persons might think you were too severe in your comments on them, they hastened to prove they were worse than it had ever entered your imagination to conceive them to be.