Part 26

“I have written very plainly to the President, urging delay. But I fear he will pursue his wrong course. With illegal courts and usurping ‘reconstruction,’ I know not where you and I shall be. While we can hardly approve all the acts of the Government, we must try and keep out of the ranks of the Opposition. The danger is that so much success will reconcile the people to almost anything.”

August 26th, Mr. Stevens wrote from his home at Lancaster, Penn.:--

“I am glad you are laboring to avert the President’s fatal policy. I wish the prospect of success were better. I have twice written him, urging him to stay his hand until Congress meets. Of course he pays no attention to it. Our editors are generally cowardly sycophants. I would make a speech, as you suggest, if a fair occasion offered. Our views (‘Reconstruction and Confiscation’) were embodied in our resolutions [in the Republican State Convention, recently held] at Harrisburg, amidst much chaff. Negro suffrage was passed over, as heavy and premature. Get the Rebel States into a territorial condition, and it can be easily dealt with. That, I think, should be our great aim. Then Congress can manage it.”

In the same spirit, Hon. B. F. Wade, of the Senate of the United States, July 29th, wrote from his home at Jefferson, Ohio:--

“I regret to say, that, with regard to the policy resolved upon by the President, I have no consolation to impart. To me all appears gloomy.… The salvation of the country devolves upon Congress and against the Executive. Will they be able to resist the downward tendency of events? My experience is not calculated to inspire me with confidence.”

Hon. Henry Winter Davis, the able, eloquent, and courageous Representative in Congress from Baltimore, June 20th, in a long letter to Mr. Sumner, on our perils and duties, wrote:--

“One way is to pass a law by two-thirds over the President’s veto, prescribing the conditions of reconstruction of any State government, and declaring _none_ republican in form which excludes negroes from voting. Such a law the President will be obliged to obey and execute.… The other mode of solving the problem, over the head of the President, is to pass an Amendment of the Constitution prescribing universal suffrage.… We have the requisite majority to pursue either of these plans; but is there nerve for the work? I have too often failed to inspire my political friends with that elevated sense of their own authority to dictate the course of affairs, to be sanguine of success in measures which require so much unity, energy, and singleness of purpose as these. The last Congress was not equal to it; is the present Congress?… Now do me the favor to give me your views as fully as I have given you mine. I trust you are not, as I am, in despair.”[248]

In the course of the summer a pamphlet was published in Boston, entitled “Security and Reconciliation for the Future: Propositions and Arguments on the Reorganization of the Rebel States,”--being a collection of resolutions by Mr. Sumner, with the article in the _Atlantic Monthly_,[249] the speech on the admission of Senators from Arkansas,[250] and the Louisiana debate.[251] The large edition of this collection drew attention, and helped prepare for the speech at the State Convention. A few extracts will show its reception.

* * * * *

Dr. George B. Loring, the agriculturist, afterwards Chairman of the State Committee of the Republican party in Massachusetts, and President of the Massachusetts Senate, wrote from Salem:--

“I only wish all our statesmen had taken the ground adopted by yourself; it would have saved us infinite trouble. It entitles you to eternal thanks, and receives daily more and more assent.”

Hon. John C. Underwood, District Judge of the United States, wrote from Alexandria, Va.:--

“I have read your collected arguments on the subject of Reconstruction with great pleasure and profit. Let me thank you for convincing me, very much against my will, that to allow immediate representation to the Rebel States would be a cruel breach of faith and honor to the freedmen, and that we of the South must be just to these poor people, and submit to a genuine republican government, before we deserve admission again into the American family. I trust no petty personal ambition will prevent my full appreciation of the immensely important work for our country and humanity which you have so well performed.”

Hon. Charles Eames, the able lawyer and scholar, former Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands, and Minister at Venezuela, residing in Washington, wrote from the sea-shore at Long Branch:--

“It is a noble monumental record, worthy both of the subject and of the Senator, and which will stand a landmark in our parliamentary history. Every new day, as it comes, brings new attestation of your wisdom and foresight, and of the truthful views which from the first, and almost, if not altogether, alone in Congress, you took and faithfully expounded on the whole question of Reconstruction. The idea of hurrying these lately Rebel communities into participation in the enactment and administration of our laws seems to me the most absurd blunder ever perpetrated in history, with the possible exception of that earlier and still more monstrous enormity of error which assigned to them the right to give by silence a negative vote on the purposed change of our fundamental law.”

Hon. John Y. Smith, an able and independent thinker, wrote from Madison, Wisconsin:--

“Pray, honored Sir, do not be discouraged by the stupid prejudices with which you have to contend, but fight it out, and you may save the nation; for at no time during the war was it in greater peril than it is at this moment. The Ship of State has gallantly borne up through the storms of war, but I fear that President Johnson, with the best intentions, is running her straight upon the rocks.”

A few extracts from newspapers attest the impression made by the Speech.

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The Boston _Transcript_, which reported the speech on the afternoon of its delivery, said:--

“Mr. Sumner has made many powerful addresses, on many important occasions; but we think our readers will admit that he has never presented a more masterly argument, on a more important occasion, than that which he has urged on the Union Republicans in his speech of to-day. Clear and pointed in statement, felicitous in illustration, admirable in arrangement, cogent in logic, affluent in learning, with occasional bursts of eloquence which light up and animate, but never disturb, the course of the argument, the speech cannot fail to exert an immense influence on the formation of that public opinion which is to determine the mode by which one of the most momentous questions ever brought before the American people shall be definitely settled.… Mr. Sumner does not merely attempt to convince the understanding; he strikes through it to the national conscience and sense of humanity and honor. His sentences are full of heat, as well as light,--will lodge in the minds they inform, and influence the will which votes, as well as the judgment which assents.”

The Albany _Morning Express_ said:--

“Let us call Senator Sumner a fanatic, if we will; let us pronounce him a man of one idea, if we choose; but let us at least award him the honor he deserves.… If Charles Sumner is wrong, his example is right. We have not so many politicians true to eternal principle, we have not so many statesmen devoted with a single purpose even to their own conception of the best interests of the country, we have not so many counsellors studious only of strict justice, that we can afford to throw away the Senator from Massachusetts. Whether we regard him as right or wrong, there is something sublime in his steady, persistent, unwavering devotion to his idea. Such honesty cannot be impugned. Such fidelity cannot be misinterpreted.… Senator Sumner has always been in advance of the mass. He is a leader a long way ahead, a pioneer through trackless mazes. It is his mission to discover a path where the throng shall follow.”

With different spirit, the New York _Herald_, in an article entitled “Senator Sumner on the Rampage,” said:--

“We now have an essay from Senator Sumner, who, mounted on his ‘Bay horse,’ makes a furious assault upon the President and his policy, and, in fact, everybody, except the blacks in the South.… He is determined to fight it out, if it takes the remainder of his life. The public now know his position, and just what the Jacobins intend to do. The President can also understand the nature of the opposition which he is to have arrayed against him in the next Congress.… The Rebellion, he declares, is not ended, nor Slavery abolished. If he means by the former term Northern rebellion, he is not far out of the way; for it is very evident that a rebellion has commenced in the North, and has been inaugurated in Massachusetts, with Senator Sumner as high-priest and prophet.”

The New York _World_, in an article entitled “The Massachusetts Declaration of War against the President,” said:--

“It is not worth while to spend words on the formal resolves of the Massachusetts Convention. They but condense, in more staid and decorous language, the sentiments of Mr. Sumner’s speech; and we prefer to dip out of the fountain. The unanimous election of Mr. Sumner as the presiding officer, the applause which greeted his speech, the panegyrics lavished upon it by the Republican press of Boston, and its harmony with every public utterance in Massachusetts, from the Faneuil Hall meeting in May down, are so many seals of its authentication as a true exposition of the purposes of the Republican party. Charles Sumner is the Republican platform incarnate.”

Other papers show how it was received in States lately in rebellion.

The Memphis _Argus_, of Tennessee, said:--

“Yesterday we received, under the frank of ‘C. Sumner,’ his recent infamous speech at Worcester, Massachusetts. We use the word _infamous_ advisedly, temperately; for viler or more wilful and malicious slanders of a great, suffering, and submissive people, vanquished in war by overwhelming odds, but honestly accepting all the legitimate results of their defeat, and patriotically anxious to resume their old places in a full, restored Union, were never published to the world by the filthiest political scavenger that ever plied his trade in the foul services of party.”

The Augusta _Transcript_, of Georgia, said:--

“To show the infamous slanders to which the fanatical leaders are obliged to resort, in order to goad on their followers to the new crusade against the South, we republish an extract from Mr. Sumner’s last speech in Massachusetts.”

In England, Colonel T. Perronet Thompson, the Freetrader, and former Member of Parliament, in his series of articles in the Bradford _Advertiser_, after enumerating the topics, said:--

“The man who has no curiosity to know what the first statesman in America says on all these heads would go to bed without asking whether the fire in the next street was put out, or if the house next his own began to smoke. The very jobbers in Rebel bonds, or builders of the Shenandoah, might feel a desire to know which way the thing was going.”

The _Scotsman_, a foremost journal at Edinburgh, commenced a leader on this speech as follows:--

“It would be at least difficult to name a man in the United States, or rather the States now under process of being reunited, who is better entitled to a respectful hearing, all the world over, than Mr. Charles Sumner. He has had but one object,--a noble object, worthy any calculable amount of struggle and sacrifice; and he has pursued it ardently, bravely, disregarding both party and personal consequences, and letting no other object stand in the way or turn him aside for a moment from the straight path. He has sought only the Abolition of Slavery, and has deemed nothing else worth fighting for.”

The response by correspondence was prompt and earnest from various parts of the country. The letters from which extracts are taken, with the exception of that from Great Salt Lake City, were received immediately after the delivery of the speech.

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Charles Stearns, ardently against Slavery, and familiar with the Rebel States, wrote from Springfield:--

“After an absence from good old Massachusetts of eleven years, my heart was made glad, the other day, by seeing a notice in the papers that you were to speak at the Republican Convention at Worcester. I immediately hastened thither, and felt happy beyond measure, as I listened to the deafening applause with which your appearance upon the platform was greeted.”

Rev. John T. Sargent, the Liberal clergyman, wrote from Boston:--

“That noble speech of yours at the Worcester Convention, so complete in its analysis of our national condition, dangers, and duties, ought to be printed in letters of gold, and emblazoned henceforth as the established moral code of every one of our States.”

David A. Wasson, the honest thinker and student of philosophy, wrote from Boston:--

“God bless you, and make you strong for the arduous and immense work that is immediately before you! The coming session of Congress will, I think, be preëminently the critical and cardinal day in all American legislation. I look forward to it with unspeakable anxiety. If only your counsels had been accepted, how clear, how easy, all would be! Now the situation is fearfully complicated.”

Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace Society, wrote from Boston:--

“Let me express the earnest hope that you will economize your strength for the great conflict soon to come during the approaching Congress. I never doubted the final success of our arms; but when the sword should be sheathed, I have always expected to see our worst crisis in our last grapple with slaveholders. We shall quite need all your prudence, forecast, energy, courage, and decision, to meet the dangers ahead from returning Rebels.”

Rev. Charles Brooks, eminent for his services to education, wrote from Medford:--

“I thank you, I thank you a thousand times, for your sound, comprehensive, and patriotic speech at Worcester. Shakespeare says, ‘Things by season seasoned are.’ Never was a word more fitly spoken. It is the best speech I have read for years, and will become historic.”

William I. Bowditch, the able conveyancer and Abolitionist, wrote from Boston:--

“I read your speech yesterday morning with great satisfaction, and yet with considerable misgiving as to whether its truths will be acted on. I doubt if the North has been punished enough to induce it to forego the attempt of trying again to circumvent God.”

P. R. Guiney, on the day the speech was delivered, wrote from Boston:--

“I am under an overwhelming conviction, that, unless the views which you express are substantially adhered to, Despotism will have gained all that Liberty won in our recent war. The Battle of Gettysburg was not more of a crisis than this. May God prosper you!”

Professor George W. Greene, scholar and author, wrote from East Greenwich, R. I.:--

“I received your Worcester speech this morning. I must write a line to say I have read it carefully and thoughtfully, and say ‘Amen’ to it all. God grant it may go into every house and every heart! I look with deep anxiety for the opening of Congress. You have yet your hardest fight to win; but it is the fight of God and Humanity, and you will win it.”

Professor Charles D. Cleveland, an ardent Abolitionist and successful teacher, recently Consul at Cardiff in Wales, wrote from Philadelphia:--

“Many, many thanks to you for your noble speech at the Worcester Convention. Oh that your words might unite with the heart of the President and bring forth appropriate fruits! For the last two or three months I have been quite desponding as to his course.”

John Penington, the scholarly bookseller, wrote from Philadelphia:--

“With its matter I fully sympathize; but I was particularly struck with the aptitude and felicity of your illustrations of the various points of your argument.”

William Goodell, the early and constant Abolitionist, author of “Slavery and Anti-Slavery,” a history also of the “American Slave Code,” wrote from Bozrahville, Connecticut, where he was then residing:--

“In my rural retreat, where I am for the present recruiting my health, a copy of the _Commonwealth_ containing your great speech at Worcester, September 14th, providentially falls into my hands, and I cannot forbear trespassing upon your time one moment to congratulate and to thank you, which I do most heartily, upon your great achievement, and for your signal service to your country, in the hour of its greatest peril,--_greatest_ I say, because, as I fear, so little perceived and so little understood.… If you had spent the whole summer in preparing that speech, I see not how you could have improved it, nor how your time and talents could have been more worthily or more usefully employed.… You well say, ‘We must look confidently to Congress’; to which permit me to add, that for the leadership of Congress the country must look to _you_, whose ‘course is fixed,’ who ‘will not hesitate,’ who ‘will not surrender.’”

Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania, afterwards Minister at Constantinople, wrote from West Chester, Pennsylvania:--

“I have just finished reading your superb speech at Worcester, in the complete form in which you sent it to me, and cannot go to bed without thanking you for it. The right word, in the right time, by the right man,--what more should we ask?”

William Hickey, Chief Clerk of the Senate, where he had been a life-long officer, and author of a well-known edition of the Constitution with accompanying documents, wrote from Washington:--

“Your speech ably maintains the consistency, ability, and patriotism which have uniformly distinguished your course, from your first essay in the sacred cause of Liberty, which has elicited so much of disinterested zeal and indomitable courage and perseverance on your part as to call forth, in my hearing, from the most honorable and intelligent of your political opponents from the South, declarations attributing those qualities to you in an eminent degree, giving you credit for consistency and unmistakable integrity of purpose. Your exertions have in a very great degree contributed towards the defeat of the Rebellion and the victory of the Government over its enemies, and you have now the satisfaction of enjoying the fruits of your labors and the exercise of your literary superiority and transcendent talents.”

Hon. John C. Underwood, who had written shortly before on Reconstruction,[252] wrote from Alexandria, Virginia:--

“I thank you for your Convention speech. Its positions and arguments are so overwhelming that I feel almost certain that your efforts will succeed with our people, and that you will be acknowledged the wise statesman and enlightened Christian patriot that I know you are.”

General Saxton, an Antislavery army officer, commanding in South Carolina, wrote from Charleston:--

“I most fully sympathize with and cordially indorse every word and line. In the future, the wisdom of your position will be fully established and vindicated.”

Hon. Charles D. Drake, an eminent lawyer and law-writer, afterwards United States Senator from Missouri, and Chief Justice of the Court of Claims, wrote:--

“Being detained at home by indisposition, I was glad of the privilege of at once reading your latest views on the great questions of the day in connection with Reconstruction. For them, and for the heroic spirit with which you take your stand, and determine ‘to fight it out on that line,’ I offer you my most sincere and fervent thanks. May God preserve your life and health, and enable you to fight it out to a complete victory!”

Hon. Charles Durkee, formerly Senator of the United States from Wisconsin, and then Governor of Utah, wrote from Salt Lake City to Governor Farwell, of Wisconsin:--

“I have just finished reading Mr. Sumner’s great speech delivered at the Massachusetts State Convention. What a masterly argument! It embodies the condensation of Calhoun, the strength of Webster, and more than the eloquence of Clay. In logic, in illustration, in simplicity of truth, I have never read a state-paper that equals it. Its timely utterance how fortunate for the country! He inspires some of the most vital parts of the Constitution (which heretofore have been a dead letter) with new life and activity. Washington and Lincoln led in the first and second revolutions, but it was left for Charles Sumner to lead in the third,--a revolution in _Constitutional and Republican ideas_. Be so kind as to thank him, in my name, for this timely effort in behalf of his country and in the cause of the oppressed.”

Such words from distant places were an encouragement to the speaker. Evidently he was not alone, nor had he spoken in vain.

QUORUM OF STATES NECESSARY IN ADOPTION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, SEPTEMBER 28, 1865.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK EVENING POST.