CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI.
APPEAL FOR THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES.
Letter to the Republican Committee at Boston, June 21, 1856.
The selection of a Republican candidate for the Presidency gave rise to the customary discussion in the newspapers, in the course of which the New York Tribune, under date of June 6, 1856, expressed itself as follows.
“The People’s Convention, which assembles at Philadelphia on the 17th instant, will be called first to decide this question: Can the opponents of Slavery Extension elect whomsoever they may choose to nominate? If, on a careful comparison of views, this question can be confidently answered in the affirmative, we have next to consider who, by early, earnest, faithful, protracted, unswerving service to the cause, has done most for the triumph of Humanity and Impartial Freedom; and in that view but three names can be seriously considered, namely, those of William H. Seward, of New York, Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, and Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts. They are all capable, reliable, and deserving, and either of them would worthily fill the highest office in the Republic. We will not weigh their respective claims, but we shall support to the utmost of our ability whichever (if either) of them shall be nominated.”
The Republican National Convention assembled at Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, and chose Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, as presiding officer. At an informal ballot for President there were 359 votes for John C. Fremont and 196 for John McLean; New York also gave two votes for Mr. Sumner and one for Mr. Seward. Mr. Fremont was thereupon nominated unanimously. At an informal ballot for Vice-President there were 259 votes for William L. Dayton, 110 for Abraham Lincoln, 46 for N. P. Banks, 43 for David Wilmot, 35 for Charles Sumner, 15 for Jacob Collamer, 9 for John A. King, 8 for S. C. Pomeroy, 7 for Thomas Ford, 5 for Henry Wilson, 4 for Cassius M. Clay, 3 for Henry C. Carey, 2 for J. R. Giddings, 2 for W. F. Johnston, and 1 for A. C. M. Pennington. On a formal ballot, Mr. Dayton was nominated unanimously.
Mr. Sumner, who was at the time a guest of Francis P. Blair, at his place near Washington, addressed the following letter to a meeting at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, for the ratification of the nominations.
Silver Spring (near Washington), June 21, 1856.
MY DEAR SIR,—I am not strong enough for public speaking, even if I were strong enough for a journey to Boston. Besides, my duties in the Senate have the first claim upon me, and to them I must give my first returning strength. Therefore am I constrained to decline the invitation with which you have honored me.
But I am strong enough to send from my present retreat a brief expression of cordial concurrence in the nominations made by the People’s Convention at Philadelphia, and also of the gladness with which I shall support them, by voice and vote, with mind and heart.
I have long honored Colonel Fremont for his genius in geographical enterprise, his eminent intelligence, his manly fortitude, his perfect integrity, and his easy command of men,—swaying to his own beneficent purpose even the savages of the forest, while Nature herself, in her winter fastnesses, bowed before his march. It is well, at this moment, when a Great Crime is instigated and sustained by the National Government, that such a man, with courage which will not be questioned, and with sensitiveness to right which will not rest, should be summoned to grapple with the wrong-doers. And permit me to say that I find no force in the objection that he has never been a politician.
Your candidate for Vice-President is worthy to enjoy the same enthusiastic support. As lawyer, as judge, and as Senator, Mr. Dayton has been conspicuous for character and ability; and I rejoice to believe that he will soon have a larger field of activity, where these can be employed for the good of our common country, while the Senate, which is the stronghold of Human Slavery, will be compelled to receive as its presiding officer a representative of Human Freedom.
But better even than the candidates is the Declaration of Principles, under which we now go forth to conquer. Such a Declaration, promulgated by such a Convention, is in itself the beginning of victory. Strong in simplicity and truthfulness, it must prevail just so soon as it is comprehended. It expresses objects which should enlist the Conservative, while they enlist the Reformer,—which should rally all who turn with respect to the example of the Fathers, while they rally all who are filled with aspirations for a brighter future on earth. It proposes to save Kansas from the revolting usurpation established in that fair Territory, and in this good work it joins issue with the Slave Oligarchy, now swaying our whole country; so that, in saving Kansas, we shall necessarily overthrow this Despotism, and save ourselves. For support, it appeals to all, without distinction of party, who love their country. It appeals to the true Democrat, whose democracy is founded on the recognition of Human Rights; it appeals to the true Whig, who is animated by that hatred of despotic power which inspired those who earliest wore the name; it appeals to the true American, who is ready to forget all other questions for the sake of union to save Liberty endangered; and it appeals to the foreign-born, who, rejoicing in the privileges of American citizens, will not hesitate to join in this holy endeavor to vindicate them against the aggressions of an Oligarchy worse than any tyranny from which they have fled. In this appeal all former differences are forgotten, while men,
“Erewhile that stood aloof, as shy to meet,
Familiar mingle here, like sister streams
That some rude interposing rock has split.”
In this contest there is every motive to union, and also every motive to exertion. Now or never! now and forever!—such was the ancient war-cry, which, embroidered on the Irish flag, streamed from the Castle of Dublin, and resounded through the whole island, arousing a generous people to new struggle for ancient rights; and this war-cry may be fitly inscribed on our standard now. Arise now, or an inexorable slave-driving Tyranny will be fastened upon you. Arise now, and Liberty will be secured forever.
Present my regards to your associates in the good cause, and believe me, my dear Sir,
Always faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Seth Webb, Jr., Esq.
LONGING FOR RESTORATION TO ACTIVE DUTIES,
WITH APPEAL TO THE YOUNG MEN OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Letter to the Committee of a Young Men’s Convention at Fitchburg, August 5, 1856.
Cresson, Alleghany Mountains, Pa.,
August 5, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—I wish that I could be with the young men of Massachusetts at their proposed Convention, but I am so feeble still that I am constrained to turn away from all temptations and opportunities of labor. In writing this letter I infringe a rule prescribed by my physician.
We have been told that “the duties of life are more than life”; and I assure you that the hardest part of my present lot is the enforced absence from public duties, and especially from that seat where, as a Senator from Massachusetts, it is my right, and also my strong desire at this moment, to be heard. But in the coolness of the mountain retreat where I now am, I begin to gather hope of returning strength,—if too tardily for the performance of any public duties during the session of Congress now about to close, yet in season to take part in the rally of the people for the protection of Liberty in Kansas, and for the overthrow of the oligarchical Tyranny which now degrades our Republic.
Meanwhile I commit the cause which we have at heart to the generous sympathies of the people, who will surely rise to smite the oppressor. Especially do I invoke the young. They are the natural guardians of Liberty. Thus has it been throughout all history; and never before in history did Liberty stand in greater need of their irresistible aid. It is the young who give spontaneous welcome to Truth, when she first appears an unattended stranger. It is the young who open the soul with instinctive hospitality to the noble cause. The young men of Massachusetts act under natural impulses, when they step forward as body-guard of the Republican party.
The great discoverer Harvey, on announcing the circulation of the blood, was astonished to find that no person upward of forty received this important truth. The young only embraced it. More fortunate than this discovery, our cause rallies in its support alike the experience of age and the ardor of youth; but it is in the glowing embrace of the young that it finds assurance of victory.
Were I able to make myself heard throughout the land, I would say to the young men everywhere who truly love Liberty: “Your candidate has been the renowned pioneer of civilization in unsettled wastes: associate yourselves with him now as pioneers of Liberty in the National Government; help him unfurl at Washington the flag which he first unfurled on the peaks of the Rocky Mountains; and be copartners with him in the glory of redeeming our beloved country.”
Present to the young men of Massachusetts, whom you represent, the assurance of my sincere interest in their happiness and welfare, and believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
George H. Hoyt, Esq., of the Committee, &c.
APPEAL TO THE REPUBLICANS OF RHODE ISLAND.
Letter to a Committee, September 4, 1856.
Cresson, Alleghany Mountains, Pa.,
September 4, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—Were I well, I should regard your letter as a summons. But I am still in the hands of physicians, by whom I am carefully warned against all public effort. Most reluctantly, at this period of our country’s trial, do I submit.
Accept for the Convention which will assemble at Providence my best wishes. Let it apply itself with earnestness, diligence, and singleness of purpose to the rescue of our fair land from the tyranny which now degrades it. Here is room for all,—the aged and the young, the Conservative and the Reformer. Surely, Rhode Island, if not utterly disloyal to herself, if not utterly disloyal to New England civilization, if not utterly disloyal to the Republic of which she constitutes a part, will rise up as one man and insist that Kansas shall be secured to Liberty, and that the Slave Oligarchy shall be driven from its usurped foothold in the National Government. At all events, this State, first planted by the Author of Religious Freedom, will see that Human Rights do not suffer through the votes of her children.
Believe me, my dear Sir, faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
CONTRIBUTION FOR KANSAS.
Letter to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath, of the New York Tribune, September 23, 1856.
Messrs. Greeley and McElrath:—
I have watched with interest your generous fund for the relief and liberation of Kansas, now insulted, trodden down, torn, and enslaved by the President of the United States, acting as the tool of the tyrannical Slave Oligarchy. To other funds for this important charity I have already given according to my small means; but, as a constant reader of the “Tribune,” I cannot miss the opportunity which you afford to protest anew against an unparalleled Crime, and to contribute anew to its mitigation. Please to accept the check which I enclose for one hundred dollars. I wish it were more, when so much is needed.
Believe me, Gentlemen, your faithful servant,
Charles Sumner.
Philadelphia, September 23, 1856.
REGRET FOR CONTINUED DISABILITY.
Letter to Hon. Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, September 24, 1856.
Hamilton, Monday, September 29, 1856.
Editors of the Cincinnati Gazette:—
Tens of thousands of the Friends of Freedom were anxious to meet Senator Sumner at this place on Friday last. Many went away disappointed. I had assured the Committee of Arrangements, that, if the state of his health permitted, he would attend the meeting.
I have just received the enclosed private letter, which I venture to hand for publication, that those who were disappointed may understand and appreciate the cause of his non-attendance. It is in answer to a letter in which I urged Mr. Sumner to spend a fortnight in the Miami Valley for recreation, and to appear at the Hamilton meeting, even if his health should not permit him to speak.
Very truly yours, &c.
Lewis D. Campbell.
Philadelphia, Wednesday, September 24, 1856.
MY DEAR SIR,—Your letter of the 9th of September, after travelling to Boston, at last found me here, where I am still detained under medical treatment, away from my home, which I have not visited since I left it at the beginning of the late session of Congress, now ten months ago.
With sorrow inexpressible, I am still constrained to all the care and reserve of an invalid. More than four months have passed since you clasped my hand as I lay bleeding at the Senate Chamber, and my system is even now so far from the firmness of health that any departure from the prescribed rule is sure to occasion a relapse. I could not reach Ohio except by slow stages; and were I there, I should not have the sanction of my physician in exposing myself to the excitements of a public meeting, even if I said nothing. This is hard, very hard, for me to bear; for I long to do something at this critical moment for the cause. What is life without action?
For a while, at least, I must leave to others the precious satisfaction of laboring for Liberty and the redemption of our country. But I have the comfort of knowing that never before was I so little needed.
God bless Ohio for her glorious testimony already, and her more glorious promises!
Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Hon. Lewis D. Campbell, Hamilton, Ohio.
EFFECT OF A VOTE FOR BUCHANAN:
APPEAL TO THE REPUBLICANS OF ILLINOIS.
Letter to a Committee of Republicans at Joliet, October 2, 1856.
The local paper reports that this letter “was received with tremendous applause.”
Philadelphia, October 2, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—I am sorry that I cannot be with the Republicans of Illinois at Joliet on the 8th of October, according to the invitation with which they have honored me; but inexorable, long-continued disability and the admonitions of medical skill keep me back still from all public effort, and even from return to my home, which I have not visited for more than ten months.
It is hard to renounce the opportunity which you offer me; for I have constantly hoped to visit Illinois during the present contest, and in plain language put to her people the questions which they are to decide by their votes. These are all involved in the Freedom of Kansas, but they are manifold in form.
Are you against the extension of Slavery? If yea, then vote for Fremont.
Are you especially against the extension of Slavery BY FORCE? If yea, then vote for Fremont.
Are you against the erection of the Slave Oligarchy as the dominant power in our Republic? If yea, then vote for Fremont.
Are you against the violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens? If yea, then vote for Fremont.
Audacious sophistry, often exposed, but still flaunting abroad, may seek to deceive you. It may foam with abuse and bristle with perversion of fact; but it cannot obscure the unquestionable truth, which now stares everybody in the face, that a vote for Buchanan is a vote for all these bad things. It is a vote not simply for the extension of Slavery, but also for the extension of Slavery BY FORCE, involving, besides, the erection of the Slave Oligarchy as the dominant power in our Republic, and the violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens. Surely, Illinois will not be led to sanction such enormities. Hers will be the path of Liberty, which is, of course, the path of true patriotism. Through her agency incalculable harm has already come to the Republic; but I cannot forget that she has begun a glorious reparation, by introducing to the National Councils a Senator of rare skill in debate, of sweetest purity of character, and of perfect loyalty to those principles by which Liberty will be secured, and our good name extended in history. I refer to Mr. Trumbull, who now belongs to the whole country, which is justly grateful for his eminent services. With his example before her, Illinois cannot wander again into the support of Slavery.
Give to the Republicans of Illinois my hearty God-speed, and let my absence speak to them.
Ever faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
To Hon. J. O. Norton.
APPEAL FOR THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE.
Letter to a Committee of Hudson River Counties, Poughkeepsie, New York, October 3, 1856.
Philadelphia, October 3, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—Among valued opportunities, which, by the dictation of my physician and the admonitions of continued ill-health, I am constrained to forego, is that afforded by the invitation, with which I have been honored, to meet the Republicans of the Hudson River Counties at Poughkeepsie. They will, I trust, believe me not indifferent to their kindness, or to the cause in whose name they are to assemble.
Nothing but necessity could keep me thus aloof, a mere looker-on, while the great battle of Freedom is waged. The pleasure of the sight to a spectator secure in the distance has been declared by an ancient poet in a much admired passage, reproduced by a greater modern:—
“’Tis pleasant also to behold from far
The moving legions mingled in the war.”
Yet the impulse and ardor of my convictions do not allow me to be content in any such retirement. I wish to enter the strife, and give such powers as I can to the righteous cause. But I am forbidden.
It only remains that from my retreat I should send all that for the present I can give, the prayers and benedictions of one yet too feeble for any exertion.
While thus sitting apart, I am permitted to survey the field and to recognize the ensigns of triumph now streaming in the fresh northern breeze. Everywhere the people are aroused, at least away from the pavement of great cities, where, too often, human perversity is such as to suggest that “God made the country and man made the town.”
Iowa, at the extreme West, and Maine, at the extreme East, testify to a sentiment which must prevail also in the intermediate States. In proper season New York and Pennsylvania will confess it. And this is natural; for the whole broad country has been shocked by the enormities of which Mr. Buchanan, in the pending contest, is the unflinching representative, and Mr. Fillmore the cautious, but effective, partisan.
In this contest I discern the masses of the people, under the name of the Republican party, together with good men regardless of ancient party ties, arrayed on the one side, while on the other side is the oligarchical combination of slave-masters, with the few Northern retainers they are yet able to keep, composed chiefly of sophists whose lives are involved in a spider’s web of fine-spun excuses, hirelings whose personal convictions are all lost in salary, present or prospective, and trimmers whose eyes fail to discern present changes of opinion only because they are fastened too greedily upon ancient chances of preferment. Such are the parties.
And I discern clearly the precise question on which these parties are divided. In stating it I answer it.
The Territory of Kansas has been made the victim of countless atrocities, in order to force Slavery upon its beautiful, uncontaminated soil. By lawless violence a Government has been established there, which, after despoiling the citizen of all his dearest rights, has surrounded Slavery with the protection of pretended statutes. And the question is distinctly submitted to the American people, “Are you ready to sanction these enormities?” This is the simple question. The orators of Slavery, freely visiting Poughkeepsie, could not answer it, and therefore they have kept it out of sight. But there the question stands.
Refusing to become partakers of such wrong, you will contribute not only to the freedom of Kansas, but also to the overthrow of the brutal and domineering Oligarchy which seeks to enslave Kansas, simply as a stepping-stone to the enslavement of the whole country. Surely, no man can hesitate, when Freedom requires his vote. Nay, more, is not this cause worth living for? is not this cause worth dying for?
Accept my thanks for the special kindness of your communication, and my regrets that I can answer it only by this imperfect letter.
Believe me, dear Sir, ever faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Stephen Baker, Esq.
RELIEF FOR KANSAS.
Letter to a Committee of the Kansas Aid Society at Boston, October 3, 1856.
Philadelphia, October 3, 1856.
MY DEAR SIR,—There is inspiration in a good cause, which is shown at once in the improved character of all who embrace it. Especially is this apparent in the young. Never is youth so radiant as under its influence. The young men of Boston have done wisely for themselves in associating together for the relief of Kansas. All that they can do will be twice blessed,—blessing them in their lives, and blessing distant despoiled fellow-citizens.
With pleasure I learn that the Governor will preside at your earliest public meeting. But this is only according to the just rule of life. Kindred to honors are duties; and the head of a Christian Commonwealth should be the head of this Christian charity, while every citizen should range in place, and our beloved Massachusetts, by the contributions, voices, and votes of her unanimous children, should become one united, compact, all-embracing Kansas Relief Society, at once an overflowing fountain of beneficence and an irresistible example to the country. For myself, I would rather a thousand times serve this cause, even in the humblest capacity, than be a Governor indifferent to its appeals.
All that can be given is needed; and whoso gives bestows upon a missionary enterprise, which, in the footsteps of Liberty, will carry peace, civilization, Christianity, the Bible, and all blessings of earth and heaven. To such a charity every person must give; if in no other way, the man who has two coats must sell one, and let Kansas have the other. But, while encouraging this effort, candor compels the confession that all your contributions will be of small account, unless a President and Congress are chosen who shall give their sympathies to Freedom rather than to Slavery. Only in this way can the rod of the oppressor be broken. A vote for such men will be a contribution to Kansas.
Present my thanks to your associates, and accept for yourself the assurance of my special gratitude for that constant devotion to human freedom by which you have been distinguished.
Ever faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Dr. W. F. Channing.
DUTY TO VOTE FOR KANSAS AND FOR BURLINGAME.
Letter to a Meeting at Faneuil Hall, October 29, 1856.
Philadelphia, October 29, 1856.
SIR,—I cannot be at Faneuil Hall on Saturday evening, according to the invitation with which I have been honored. But, though feeble still, I hope to be in Boston on the succeeding Tuesday, to vote. If not strong enough to speak, I trust at least to be able to perform this duty of the citizen.
My vote will not be needed; but I am unwilling that the opportunity should pass of uttering my determined NO against the efforts now making to subjugate Kansas and to install the Slave Oligarchy in permanent control of the National Government. Against this dreadful conspiracy I protest, with all the ardor of my soul; and I know no way in which I can hope to make this protest immediately effective, except by casting my vote for those candidates openly and unequivocally hostile to the consummation of the crime.
Especially shall I vote for Burlingame; and I shall do this, not only because I think him worthy of honor, and admire his generous nature, intrepidity, and eloquence, but because I have at heart the good name of Boston, and the welfare of my country. Boston should sustain Burlingame, not merely for his sake, but for her own sake,—not merely to do him honor, but to save herself from dishonor,—not merely from local pride, but to strengthen Liberty and to serve the whole Republic, now endangered alike from criminal audacity and from subservient timidity.
I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your faithful servant,
Charles Sumner.
To the Chairman of the Meeting at Faneuil Hall.
PUBLIC RECEPTION OF MR. SUMNER,
ON HIS RETURN TO BOSTON:
WITH THE SPEECHES:
November 3, 1856.
As it became known that Mr. Sumner would return home to vote, a Boston committee visited Philadelphia to urge his acceptance of a banquet, with the understanding that he should simply show himself there without speaking. Acting under medical advice, he declined this invitation. The sympathy of the community found vent in a public reception.
The reception of Senator Sumner, on his return to Boston, was an imposing popular demonstration.[1] It was purely a peaceful and spontaneous celebration. There was no organization of enthusiasm; there were no military, no fire companies, no associated bodies, to swell the ranks of the procession or attract attention. Those of his fellow-citizens, simply, who wished to testify respect and sympathy, went forth to meet him; through the mouth of one, the most venerable and honored of their number, they welcomed him on his entrance within the limits of the city, and the chief executive magistrate of the Commonwealth greeted him on his arrival beneath the shadow of the State capitol. In both places, and also before Mr. Sumner’s residence in Hancock Street, there were vast concourses of citizens, assembled to do honor to their Senator.
The weather was favorable; the atmosphere was clear and warm for the season; and although the appearance of the sky at times boded rain, none fell until late in the evening, long after the exercises of the day were concluded.
Mr. Sumner arrived in this vicinity on Sunday morning, November 2d. On Monday he drove from Professor Longfellow’s, in Cambridge, where he had been staying, to the house of Amos A. Lawrence, Esq., at Longwood, in Brookline. Soon after one o’clock, the invited guests, who had assembled at the State House, proceeded in open carriages to Longwood, where they were joined by Mr. Sumner, who passed along the line of carriages, and was silently greeted by the gentlemen rising and removing their hats. The carriages then proceeded across to Roxbury, and thence along Washington Street to the Boston line, which was reached at three o’clock. Here the cavalcade was assembled, together with a vast concourse of citizens.
The chief marshal was General John S. Tyler, assisted by the following gentlemen as aids: Major John C. Park, Colonel R. I. Burbank, Major Moses G. Cobb, E. Webster Pike, Esq., Adjutant-General E. W. Stone, Colonel A. J. Wright, Colonel W. W. Bullock, and Carlos Pierce, Esq.
The following were the assistant marshals: Captain I. F. Shepard, Charles H. Hawes, W. E. Webster, F. L. Chapin, O. H. Dutton, Major F. A. Heath, F. B. Fay, Julian O. Mason, A. A. Dunnels, Stephen Rhoades, H. D. Child, Leister M. Clark, Charles W. Pierce, R. F. Martin, Rufus Frost, F. A. Fuller, J. W. Wolcott, William B. Spooner, Henry D. Williams, Colonel Robert Cowdin, of Boston, and Eugene Batchelder, Charles D. Hills, D. P. Ripley, of Cambridge.
As it went up Washington Street, the cavalcade numbered, by actual count, about eight hundred horsemen; but its numbers were subsequently increased by fresh arrivals, in couples and in groups, to over a thousand.
On the head of the cavalcade reaching the borders of Roxbury, it halted, and the whole was drawn up in a long line at the upper side of Washington Street, facing the centre. For over half an hour it waited for the cortege from Brookline which was to escort Mr. Sumner, and when at last the latter appeared, it was received with hearty cheers and music from the Brigade Band. It consisted of some sixteen or eighteen barouches or carriages, containing the Committee of Arrangements and other gentlemen.
The barouche which contained Mr. Sumner was drawn by magnificent horses. With Mr. Sumner was the Rev. Professor F. D. Huntington, of Harvard University, and Dr. Perry, of this city, Mr. Sumner’s physician. Among those in the succeeding barouches were Messrs. Abbott and James Lawrence, George and Isaac Livermore, Edwin P. Whipple, George R. Russell, Charles G. Loring, J. Huntington Wolcott, Hon. E. C. Baker, President of the Senate, Dr. Beck and Rev. Dr. Francis, of Cambridge, Professor Lovering, and James Russell Lowell, the poet,—that which followed Mr. Sumner’s barouche containing Professor Longfellow, and George Sumner, the brother of the Senator.
As the carriage with Mr. Sumner touched the line between Roxbury and Boston, there was a general cheer, which was continued along far into the distance,—the Brigade Band playing “Hail Columbia.” The first division of the cavalcade wheeled to the left, and formed into an escort. The carriages of Mr. Sumner and the Committee came next in succession, and then the two remaining divisions fell into column.
A few rods north of the Roxbury line the cavalcade came to a halt, when Mr. Sumner’s carriage was driven alongside of that containing Hon. Josiah Quincy, and Hon. Alexander H. Rice, mayor of Boston. After greetings between the parties, Professor Huntington introduced Mr. Sumner to Mr. Quincy in the following brief address.
“Mr. Quincy,—The Committee of Arrangements for welcoming the Hon. Charles Sumner to his home present him here to you, Sir, a venerated representative of the city of his birth. He comes back from his public post, where he has bravely advocated the cause of all freemen, to enjoy a freeman’s privilege and discharge a freeman’s duty. He comes, a cheerful and victorious sufferer, out of great conflicts of humanity with oppression, of ideas with ignorance, of scholarship and refinement with barbarian vulgarity, of intellectual power with desperate and brutal violence, of conscience with selfish expediency, of right with wrong. Boston does well in coming out to greet him. For that ample and lofty manhood, trained under her education and consolidated in her climate, has added new dignity to her old renown. It has joined her name more inseparably than ever with the aspirations of Christian liberty, and the honors of disinterested patriotism, throughout the earth, and through all time.”
Mr. Quincy then addressed Mr. Sumner as follows.
“Mr. Sumner,—It is with inexpressible pleasure that I address you this day as the voice of the great multitude of your fellow-citizens. In their name, and by their authority, I welcome you to your home in Massachusetts, expressing their honor and thanks for the power and fidelity with which you have fulfilled your duties as their representative in the Senate of the United States, where, ‘unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,’ you kept your love, your zeal, your loyalty to Liberty,—where neither number nor example, threat nor sneer, ‘within you wrought to swerve from truth, or change your constant mind.’ [Applause.]
“You return to your country, Sir, after having given glorious evidences of intellectual power, which touched, as with the spear of Ithuriel, the evil spirit of our Union, causing it at once to develop in full proportions its gigantic deformity, compelling it to unveil to the Free States its malign design to make this land of the free a land of slaves. [Voices, ‘Never! never!’]
“You have suffered, and are still suffering, for your intrepid faithfulness. But suffering in the cause of Truth and Liberty is the heaven-laid path to win ‘the crown which Virtue gives after this mortal change to her true servants.’ [Hearty cheers.]
“I rejoice that my life has been prolonged to this day,—that I am permitted to behold the dawnings of ancient Liberty through the broken openings of the clouds, which for more than fifty years the spirit of Slavery has extended over this Union. I thank Heaven that now, at last, the Free States are beginning to awaken to a sense of their dangers and their duties,—that, at length, they begin to realize that the Slave States have overleaped the bounds of the Constitution. The apathy of half a century may delay for a time the triumphs of Freedom, but come they will. Final success is certain. Never again will the Free States in silence acquiesce in the farther extension of slave domain. [Loud applause, and cries of ‘Never! never!’] Henceforth they will hear and attend to the warning voice of Washington, solemnly uttered in his Farewell Address,—‘Submit not to Usurpation,’—‘Resist, with care, the spirit of Innovation upon the Principles of the Constitution.’ [Cheers.]
“We welcome you, Sir, as the champion of Freedom [loud cheers], and as one to whom the deliverance which we hope may yet be destined for our country will be greatly due.”
Mr. Sumner, who had been standing in his carriage, uncovered, then spoke, in a subdued voice, and evidently under the influence of deep feeling, as follows.
MR. QUINCY,—A year has nearly run since I left Boston in the discharge of public duties. During this period, amidst important events, I have been able to do something which my fellow-citizens and neighbors, speaking by your authoritative voice, are pleased to approve. I am happy in this approbation. Especially am I happy that it is conveyed by the eloquent words of one who from my childhood has been with me an object of unaffected reverence, who was the municipal head of my native city while I was a pupil at its public schools, and who was the head of the University while I was a pupil in that ancient seat.
Boston, early in her history, set her face against Slavery. By a vote, entered upon her Town Records, as long ago as 1701, she called upon her Representatives “to put a period to negroes being slaves.” If I have done anything to deserve the greeting you now lavish, it is because I have striven to maintain those principles here declared, and to extend them to other places,—stretching the venerable shelter of Faneuil Hall even over distant Kansas. [Loud applause.]
You have made allusion to the suffering which I have undergone. This is not small. But it has been incurred in the performance of duty; and how little is it, Sir, compared with the suffering of fellow-citizens in Kansas! How small is it, compared with that tale of woe which is perpetually coming to us from the house of bondage!
With you I hail the omens of final triumph. I ask no prophet to confirm this assurance. The future is not less secure than the past.
You are pleased to quote injunctions of Washington. If ever there was occasion to bear these, not only in memory, but in heart, the time is now, when Usurpation is the order of the day, and the Constitution is set at defiance. Beyond these precepts is also his great example, which, from first to last, teaches the constant lesson of fidelity, in standing up for the liberties of our country, in undoubting faith that the good cause cannot fail.
The rule of duty is the same for the lowly and the great; and, in the communication which I addressed to the Legislature of Massachusetts, accepting the trust which I now hold, I ventured to adopt the determination of Washington, and to avow his confidence. In both I hope to hold fast unto the end. [Loud cheers.]
Mr. Sumner then passed from the carriage in which he had been riding into that of Mr. Quincy and Mayor Rice. Professor Huntington also took a seat in the same carriage, which was drawn by six splendid gray horses. A body-guard of marshals mounted, and of police, formed on each side of the barouche, in order to keep the multitudes in the streets from pressing up to shake hands with Mr. Sumner.
The cavalcade then proceeded onwards, amid repeated cheers of the multitudes lining the streets on both sides. In accordance with directions from his physician, Mr. Sumner acknowledged these demonstrations only by a wave of the hand.
On reaching Newton Street, on Blackstone Square, a long line of beautiful young ladies was ranged upon the pavement on the south side, each holding a bouquet, to present to Senator Sumner. Previously, however, a very interesting scene took place. Mrs. C. W. Pierce, Mrs. G. L. Goodwin, Mrs. Henry Keyes, and Miss Mary Pierce—each dressed in white, with wreaths on their heads, and wearing elegant sashes—came forward, and presented Mr. Sumner splendid bouquets, which action seemed to give him much gratification. But the receipt of another from the hands of a lovely child, carried up to the Senator in the arms of a gentleman, and a similar act in Shawmut Avenue, were peculiarly grateful to him. No previous or subsequent circumstances during the day seemed to give Mr. Sumner such true delight as these kindnesses. On proceeding forward, the ladies showered their bouquets upon him from sidewalks and windows along the street, until the carriage was pretty nigh full. As the floral burden accumulated, he laughed the more heartily, and spoke his gratitude to every one of the fair donors his voice could reach. All along Newton Street, and the west side of Blackstone Square, the procession was cheered in the most enthusiastic manner. Ladies crowded almost every window, and the scene was the most brilliant along the route.
As the procession reached the Boston Female Orphan Asylum on Washington Street, the inmates of that institution were seen ranged in front of the building, waving their handkerchiefs, and displaying on a white banner a beautiful wreath of evergreen intermingled with flowers, with the motto,—
“We weave a wreath for Charles Sumner.”
This was the only point on the route of the procession where Mr. Sumner rose to his feet. Here the kindness of these orphaned ones so touched his feelings, that he could not help acknowledging it in this way.
Attached to several of the bouquets thrown to Mr. Sumner were appropriate and expressive mottoes. The principal of them were as follows.
“No bludgeon can dim the lustre of our champion of Freedom.”
“Massachusetts’s most honored son. If the ladies could vote, he would be the next President.”
“A warm welcome from warm hearts to the noblest man America has ever borne in her bosom! 78 Shawmut Avenue, Nov. 3, 1856.”
“Welcome home! The sons and daughters of Massachusetts greet her noblest defender.”
“Infants welcome him whose name lives immortal in the hearts of his countrymen.”
“Welcome, dear friend of justice!”
All along the line of procession, namely, down Washington Street, Newton Street, Shawmut Avenue, Dover Street, Washington Street, West Street, Tremont Street, Boylston Street, Charles Street, and Beacon Street to the State House, the crowds which greeted the honored Senator at every point were great.
At the corner of Washington and Newton Streets, over Washington, there was a fine display of flags and streamers. From the house of Mr. Nickerson, fronting on Franklin Square, was a splendid triumphal arch, between two elm-trees, flags and streamers surrounding the word—
“Welcome!”
Newton Street had a large number of flags, the union jack displayed alternately with the national ensign on staffs projecting from Franklin Square. The entire street was strewed with evergreens. It was a beautiful display.
At the junction of Newton Street and Shawmut Avenue, the houses of Benjamin Smith and Alfred A. Andrews were splendidly decorated with festoons and flags. Between them, floating above Newton Street, was the following:—
“Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend her noble Sumner!”
The house of E. G. Dudley, at the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Waltham Street, made a fine appearance. Besides flags and festoons, was the following, wreathed in black:—
“May 22, 1856.”
Beneath this was the following:—
“Welcome, thrice welcome!”
At the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Dover Street, on the house of Rev. Mr. Sargent, was the following significant motto:—
“To the Right!”
pointing the route of the procession.
The house of Dr. Parks, No. 88 Dover Street, was beautifully decorated,—an eagle above the upper-story windows, holding a number of streamers, which were gathered below. The following was inscribed upon the building:—
“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
The piano-rooms of T. Gilbert were decorated, with the words in front,—
“Welcome, Freedom’s Defender!”
There were many other similar decorations. If longer time had been given, the demonstration would have been other than it was.[2] But it was not in decorations that the citizens of Boston welcomed home the beloved son of Massachusetts; it was rather with emotion too deep for utterance that they received him.
The scene at the State House was beyond description. The area in front, the long range of steps leading to the Capitol, the Capitol itself, the streets in the vicinity, the houses even to the roofs, were packed with human beings. The assembled thousands greeted him with long continued cheering.
Mr. Sumner arrived in front of the Capitol, where a platform had been erected. His Excellency Governor Gardner, the Executive Council, and the Governor’s Staff were escorted by the Sergeant-at-Arms, Benjamin Stevens, Esq. Mr. Sumner was then introduced by Professor Huntington in an eloquent speech, as follows.
“May it please your Excellency,—In behalf of the Committee of Reception, I present to your Excellency the Hon. Charles Sumner, Senator of Massachusetts in the Congress of the United States. It is needless to recount here his services to our Commonwealth, to the whole Republic, to the principles of a pure and just nationality, to elegant learning, to Christian statesmanship, to the liberties and the rights of man. These are all safely recorded in the imperishable history of the country and the race. How deeply they are written in the hearts of his fellow-citizens let this vast and enthusiastic concourse bear witness. He returns to his friends; but his friends are wherever justice is revered. He returns to his neighbors; but he has a neighbor in every victim of wrong throughout the world. He returns to the State that entrusted her interests to his charge, having proclaimed—according to the spirit of her own institutions and her people—the doctrine of the Brotherhood of all States, in the bonds of universal Peace. He stands at the door of her Capitol, and in the presence of her Chief Magistrate,—stands here her faithful steward, her eloquent and fearless advocate, her honored guest, her beloved son!”
His Excellency replied briefly as follows.
“Sir,—I am admonished by the Committee of Arrangements that my words must be few and brief.
“This is no political ovation. The Chief Marshal of the procession announces that no political mottoes will be admitted into the ranks. By the same sense of propriety I am admonished that no political phrases are appropriate here.
“This is the spontaneous outpouring of your friends and neighbors and fellow-citizens to welcome you from your field of intellectual victory,—and to welcome you also from your bed of pain and suffering. I cordially add my tribute, humble, save what my official station imparts to it, to crown the just and welcome offering.
“We hail you with warm hearts, not only as the eloquent orator, the accomplished scholar, and the acknowledged statesman,—not only as the earnest friend of suffering humanity and of every good cause,—not only as one who, educated in the institutions and by the altars and firesides of Massachusetts, has won for himself imperishable laurels on the arena of the nation’s conflicts,—but especially now do we welcome you as the successful defender of her integrity and her honor. [Cheers.]
“In her name I declare that the base and cowardly blows which fell on you struck through you into her. Within the circuit of the sun’s flight after I heard of that assault, before such an assemblage as rarely gathers in Faneuil Hall, I pledged Massachusetts to stand by you. [Loud applause.]
“And she does stand by you to-day. She will stand by you to-morrow [enthusiastic cheers]; and she will stand by you in her defence forever. [Loud cheering.]
“I welcome you, then, most cordially and warmly, in her name, again to her borders. Every thrilling breast and kindling countenance around you in this immense throng welcomes you,—Boston welcomes you,—Massachusetts welcomes you.
“In her name I trust that the quiet of your home may speedily restore you to perfect health, so you can again go forward to your sphere of duty, to new achievements, and new victories.
“And now, Gentlemen, fellow-citizens, one word to you. The duty of the day over, let us, one and all, leave our distinguished friend to the undisturbed quiet of his own home, to the fond caress of one whose ear is at this moment bent in anxious watching for the earliest warning of his approach, that he may there recover, not only from his past illness, but from the present excitement and the fatigues of travel. At present our kindest attentions will consist in scrupulously avoiding exacting intrusions.
“To you, Sir, again, in the name of our glorious old Commonwealth, I extend a cordial welcome. [Loud cheers.]”
Three times three cheers were then given for Mr. Sumner, who attempted to reply; but his voice was more feeble than in replying to Mr. Quincy. He spoke, with great difficulty, as follows.
May it please your Excellency,—
It is a pleasure to be once more among the scenes of home; to look upon familiar objects,—the State House, the Common, and well-known streets. It is more pleasant still to behold the countenances of friends. And all this pleasure, Sir, is enhanced by the welcome which you now give me, in behalf of the beloved Commonwealth which for five years I have served, honestly, earnestly, and constantly, in an important field of duty, to which I was introduced by an unsought suffrage.
Sir, I thank you for this welcome. I thank, also, the distinguished gentlemen who have honored this occasion by their presence. I thank, too, these swelling multitudes who contribute to me the strength and succor of their sympathies; and my soul overflows especially to the young men of Boston, out of whose hearts, as from an exuberant fountain, this broad-spreading hospitality took its rise.
My earnest desire, often expressed, has been, that I might be allowed to return home quietly, without show or demonstration of any kind. And this longing was enforced by my physical condition, which, though vastly improved at this time, and advancing surely towards complete health, is still exposed to the peril of relapse, or at least to the arrest of those kindly processes of Nature essential to the restoration of a shattered system. But the spontaneous kindness of this reception makes me forget my weakness, makes me forget my desire for repose.
I thank you, Sir, for the suggestion of seclusion, and the security which that suggestion promises to afford.
Something more, Sir, I would say, but I am admonished that voice and strength will not permit. With your permission, therefore, I will hand the reporters what I should be glad to say, that it may be printed.
[The remainder of the speech is printed from Mr. Sumner’s manuscript.]
More than five months have passed since I was disabled from the performance of my public duties. During this weary period I have been constrained to repeat daily the lesson of renunciation,—confined at first to my bed, and then only slowly regaining the power even to walk. But, beyond the constant, irrepressible grief which must well up in the breast of every patriot, as he discerns the present condition of his country, my chief sorrow has been caused by the necessity, to which I was doomed, of renouncing all part in the contest for human rights, which, beginning in Congress, has since enveloped the whole land. The Grecian chief, grievously ill of a wound from the stealthy bite of a snake, and left behind while his companions sailed to the siege of Troy, did not repine more at his enforced seclusion. From day to day and week to week I vainly sought that health which we value most when lost, and which perpetually eluded my pursuit. For health I strove, for health I prayed. With uncertain steps I sought it at the seashore and I sought it on the mountain-top.
“Two voices are there: one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!”[3]
I listened to the admonitions of medical skill, and I courted all the bracing influences of Nature, while time passed without the accustomed healing on its wings. I had confidently hoped to be restored so as to take my seat in the Senate, and to be heard there again, long before the session closed. But Congress adjourned, leaving me still an invalid. My next hope was, that I might be permitted to appear before the people during the present canvass, and with heart and voice plead the great cause now in issue. Here again I have been disappointed, and the thread of my disability is not yet spun to the end. Even now, though happily lifted from long prostration, and beginning to assume many of the conditions of health, I am constrained to confess that I am an invalid,—cheered, however, by the assurance that I shall soon be permitted, with unimpaired vigor, to resume all the responsibilities of my position.
Too much have I said about myself; but you will pardon it to the occasion, which, being personal in character, invites these personal confessions. With more pleasure I turn to other things.
I should feel that I failed in one of those duties which the heart prompts and the judgment confirms, if I allowed this first opportunity to pass without sincerest acknowledgment to my able, generous, and faithful colleague, Mr. Wilson. Together we labored in mutual trust, honorably leaning upon each other. By my disability he was left sole representative of Massachusetts on the floor of the Senate, throughout months of heated contest, involving her good name and most cherished sentiments. All who watched the currents of debate, even as imperfectly as I did in my retirement, know with what readiness, courage, and power he acted,—showing himself, by extraordinary energies, equal to the extraordinary occasion. But it is my especial happiness to recognize his unfailing sympathies for myself, and his manly assumption of all the responsibilities of the hour.
I am not here to indulge in eulogy, nor to open any merit-roll of service; but the same feeling which prompts these acknowledgments to my colleague embraces also the Commonwealth from whom we have received our trust. To Massachusetts, mother of us all,—great in resources, great in children,—I now pledge anew my devotion. Never before did she inspire equal pride and affection; for never before was she so completely possessed by those sentiments which, when manifest in Commonwealth or citizen, invest the character with its highest charm, so that what is sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. My filial love does not claim too much, when it exhibits her as approaching the pattern of a Christian Commonwealth, which, according to the great English Republican, John Milton, “ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body.”[4] Not through any worldly triumphs, not through the vaults of State Street, the spindles of Lowell, or even the learned endowments of Cambridge, is Massachusetts thus,—but because, seeking to extend everywhere within the sphere of her influence the benign civilization which she cultivates at home, she stands forth the faithful, unseduced supporter of Human Nature. Wealth has its splendor, and the intellect has its glory; but there is a grandeur in such service which is above all that these can supply. For this she has already the regard of good men, and will have the immortal life of history. For this she has also the reproach and contumely always throughout the ages poured upon those who have striven for justice on earth. Not now for the first time in human struggles has Truth, when most dishonored, seemed most radiant, gathering glory even out of obloquy. When Sir Harry Vane, courageous champion of the English Commonwealth, was dragged on a hurdle up the Tower Hill to suffer death by the axe, one of the multitude cried out to him, “That is the most glorious seat you ever sat on!”[5] And again, when Russell was exposed in the streets, on his way to a similar scaffold, the people, according to the simple narrative of his biographer, imagined they saw Liberty and Virtue sitting by his side. Massachusetts is not without encouragement in her own history. She has seen her ports closed by arbitrary power,—has seen her name made a byword of reproach,—has seen her cherished leaders, Hancock and Adams, excepted from all pardon by the crown; but then, when most dishonored, did Massachusetts deserve most, for then was she doing most for the cause of all. And now, when Massachusetts is engaged in a greater cause than that of our fathers, how serenely can she turn from the scoff and jeer of heartless men! Her only disgrace will be in disloyalty to the truth which is to make her free.
Worse to bear—oh, far worse!—than the evil speaking of others is the conduct of some of her own children. It is hard to see the scholarship which has been drawn from her cisterns, and the riches accumulated under her hospitable shelter, now employed to weaken and discredit that cause which is above riches or scholarship. It is hard, while fellow-citizens in Kansas plead for deliverance from a cruel Usurpation, and while the whole country, including our own soil, is trodden down by a domineering and brutal Despotism, to behold sons of Massachusetts in sympathy, open or disguised, with the vulgar enemy, quickening everywhere the lash of the taskmaster, and helping forward the Satanic carnival, when Slavery shall be fastened not only upon prostrate Kansas, but upon all the Territories of the Republic,—when Cuba shall be torn from a friendly power by dishonest force,—and when the slave-trade itself, with all its crime, its woe, and its shame, shall be opened anew under the American flag. Alas, that any child of Massachusetts, in wickedness of heart, or in weakness of principle, or under the delusion of partisan prejudice, should join in these things! With such I have no word of controversy at this hour. But, leaving them now, in my weakness, I trust not to seem too severe, if I covet for the occasion something of the divine power
“To bend the silver bow with tender skill,
While, void of pain, the silent arrows kill.”[6]
Gladly from these do I turn to another character, yet happily spared to Massachusetts, whose heart beats strong with the best blood of the Revolution, and with the best sentiments by which that blood was enriched. The only child of one of the authors of American Liberty, for many years the able and courageous Representative of Boston on the floor of Congress, where his speeches were the masterpieces of the time, distinguished throughout a long career by the grateful trust of his fellow-citizens, happy in all the possessions of a well-spent life, and surrounded by “honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,” with an old age which is second youth, Josiah Quincy, still erect under the burden of eighty-four winters, puts himself at the head of our great battle,—and never before, in the ardor of youth, or the maturity of manhood, did he show himself so grandly conspicuous, and add so much to the heroic wealth of our history. His undaunted soul, lifted already to glimpses of another life, may shame the feebler spirits of a later generation. There is one other personage, at a distant period, who, with precisely the same burden of winters, asserted the same supremacy of powers. It is the celebrated Dandolo, Doge of Venice, at the age of eighty-four, of whom the historian Gibbon has said, in words strictly applicable to our own Quincy: “He shone, in the last period of human life, as one of the most illustrious characters of the times: under the weight of years he retained a sound understanding and a manly courage, the spirit of an hero and the wisdom of a patriot.”[7] This old man carried the Venetian Republic over to the Crusaders, and exposed his person freely to all the perils of war, so that the historian describes him, in words again applicable to our day, saying: “In the midst of the conflict, the Doge, a venerable and conspicuous form, stood aloft, in complete armor, on the prow of his galley,” while “the great standard of St. Mark was displayed before him.”[8] Before the form of our venerable head is displayed the standard of a greater republic than Venice, thrilling with its sight greater multitudes than ever gazed on the standard of St. Mark, while a sublimer cause is ours than the cause of the Crusaders; for our task is not to ransom an empty sepulchre, but to rescue the Saviour himself, in the bodies of his innumerable children,—not to dislodge the Infidel from a distant foreign soil, but to displace him from the very Jerusalem of our Liberties.
May it please your Excellency, I forbear to proceed further. With thanks for this welcome, accept also my new vows of duty. In all simplicity let me say that I seek nothing but the triumph of Truth. To this I offer my best efforts, careless of office or honor. Show me that I am wrong, and I stop at once; but in the complete conviction of right I shall persevere against all temptations, against all odds, against all perils, against all threats,—knowing well, that, whatever may be my fate, the Right will surely prevail. Terrestrial place is determined by celestial observation. Only by watching the stars can the mariner safely pursue his course; and it is only by obeying those lofty principles which are above men and human passion that we can make our way safely through the duties of life. In such obedience I hope to live, while, as a servant of Massachusetts, I avoid no labor, shrink from no exposure, and complain of no hardship.
The cavalcade then moved rapidly away, escorting Mr. Sumner to his home in Hancock Street.
On arriving there, he was again welcomed with unbounded enthusiasm by a large crowd assembled in the street and on the sidewalks, the windows being filled on both sides up and down the street. The crowd cheered vociferously for Mr. Sumner, his mother, the Governor, Hon. Josiah Quincy, Hon. N. P. Banks, and Hon. Anson Burlingame. Mr. Sumner and his mother appeared at the window and bowed their acknowledgments, which called forth general and enthusiastic plaudits. The multitude then, giving three parting cheers for the distinguished Senator, separated, and the ceremonies of reception terminated.
Many of the business firms closed their stores during the afternoon. The paper agreeing to do so was headed by A. & A. Lawrence & Co., Gardner Brewer & Co., Parker, Wilder, & Co., Denny, Rice, & Gardner, Wilkinson, Stetson, & Co., Blake, Bigelow, & Co., Pierce Brothers & Flanders, &c.
AID FOR KANSAS.
Letter to Hon. M. F. Conway, November 17, 1856.
Hon. M. F. Conway, afterwards Representative in Congress from Kansas, in communicating this letter to the public, reported that it “was of great value in securing the appropriation of twenty thousand dollars by the Legislature of Vermont in aid of Kansas.”
Boston, November 17, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—I wish that I could aid your efforts to interest the State Legislatures for Kansas. To these Legislatures I look at this exigency for something worthy of the cause which is now in jeopardy. They have the power, and this is the very moment to exert it. God bless the State which begins!
Surely liberty in Kansas, involving our own liberty also, is worthy of every effort. To its security every citizen should contribute according to his means; and I know no better rule for the State Legislatures than for the citizen. These Legislatures should all contribute according to their means,—the more, the better. And such contributions, like every other charity, will be twice blessed.
Accept my best wishes for Kansas, and believe me, dear Sir,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Judge Conway, of Kansas.
CONGRATULATION ON REËLECTION OF ANSON BURLINGAME AS REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS.
Letter to a Banquet at Faneuil Hall, November 24, 1856.
Hancock Street,
Monday Evening, November 24, 1856.
DEAR SIR,—I am sorry to renounce any opportunity of doing honor to Mr. Burlingame; but my careful physician does not allow me yet to take part in the excitement of a public meeting, and I yield to his prescription.
My best wishes attend your distinguished guest to-night and always. His recent triumph is the occasion of special joy, not only in Massachusetts, but everywhere throughout the free North. Many who voted against him must, in their better moments, condemn themselves,—as much as they have been condemned by others. If not entirely dead to generous impulses, they must be glad that they failed. If not entirely insensible to appearances, they must look with regret at the means employed to accomplish the end proposed. If not entirely indifferent to principles, they must look with amazement at the unprecedented, incongruous, and eccentric political conglomerate of which they constituted a part.
It was natural that the propagandists of Slavery, acting under dictation from Washington, should vote against Mr. Burlingame. It was natural that others, who allow themselves to be controlled by the rancors and jealousies of party, should do likewise. But it was hard that this blow at Freedom should be attempted in the name of Trade, and that merchants of Boston should be rallied against a candidate who had done so much to make Boston respectable. And yet this extraordinary conduct is not without parallel in history. The earliest antislavery effort of England was against the Barbary corsairs, and this, it is well known, was opposed by “the mercantile interest.” And this same “mercantile interest,” as you also know, set itself against the great antislavery enterprise of Clarkson and Wilberforce, when they demanded the suppression of the slave-trade. Such examples teach us not to be disappointed, when this interest is invoked against our efforts. But I rejoice to know that in Boston there are honorable exceptions, and, if anything be expected from me to-night, let it be a tribute to one of these. I propose the following toast.
The Merchants of Boston.—May they all appreciate the spirit of him among their number, who, when pressed to vote against Mr. Burlingame on mercantile grounds, nobly replied at once, “I am a merchant, but at the polls I mean to be a patriot.”
Accept my thanks for the honor of your invitation, and believe me, dear Sir,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
Joseph Story, Esq.
THE LATE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OUR BUNKER HILL.
Letter to a Committee at Worcester, November 24, 1856.
Boston, November 24, 1856.
MY DEAR SIR,—Not willingly do I give up the opportunity of uniting with the gallant Republicans of Worcester in celebrating our recent victories; but my health, though vastly improved, has limitations which I cannot with prudence neglect, and these forbid the indulgence to which you kindly invite me. Please tender to the Republicans my cordial congratulations. Clearly do I see the beginning of the end. All New England, with New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, constitute an irresistible phalanx for Freedom, while our seeming reverse in the Presidential election is only another Bunker Hill. If toasts are in order at your festival, let me propose the following.
The late Presidential Election.—Like Bunker Hill, it teaches us our strength, and gives assurance of speedy triumph.
Believe me, my dear Sir, faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
LET MASSACHUSETTS HELP KANSAS.
Letter to James Redpath, Esq., January 10, 1857.
Hancock Street, January 10, 1857.
MY DEAR SIR,—I am happy that you are still active for Kansas. Much remains to be done. Indeed, I think that no effort can be safely relaxed, until the Territory is admitted into the Union as a Free State.
The Slave Oligarchy has not yet abandoned its darling idea of a new Slave State, and this can be defeated only by vigilance. The lull which seems now to prevail does not persuade me to repose. Too much is at stake. Besides, I have read the fable of the cat in the meal.
Of course, emigrants who love Freedom, and, if need be, are willing to die in her cause, must be encouraged to plant themselves in the Territory. But we who stay at home must contribute to their comfort and protection, and, since this can be done most effectively through State Legislatures, these must be enlisted. The name of a State Legislature will be a tower of strength.
Massachusetts, which, throughout our history, has led in every liberal movement, must lead now by a generous appropriation, which, if not needed, may not be used, but which, in any alternative, will be an irresistible token of her sincerity, an example to other States, and a fountain of encouragement to distant fellow-citizens. I cannot believe that Massachusetts will hesitate. Her people have already opened their hearts to Kansas, and the public treasury should be opened as wide as their hearts.
Accept my thanks for the good you have done and the good you are still doing, and believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
James Redpath, Esq.
ACCEPTANCE OF SENATORSHIP, ON REËLECTION.
Letter to the Legislature of Massachusetts, January 22, 1857.
In the winter of 1856, the American party having the control of the Legislature of Massachusetts, members of this party were reported as entering into a plan to choose a Senator in place of Mr. Sumner at the expiration of his term, March 4, 1857, thus anticipating the action of the Legislature to be chosen in the autumn following. The plan was discussed in newspapers and in contemporary letters. It excited the anxiety of Mr. Sumner’s political friends so far, that, at their request, he was induced to obtain from the Secretary of the Senate the adverse precedents, which were published at the time in the newspapers. The discussion of the question was arrested by the event which soon followed, turning all eyes to him, and making him more than ever the representative of Massachusetts.
The new Legislature seemed to have been constituted for the reëlection of Mr. Sumner. It came together January 7, 1857, when, even before the message of the Governor, it was insisted that the election should be proceeded with, and January 9th was fixed upon for this purpose. On that day, in pursuance of an order of the House, the Clerk called the roll of members, when each responded viva voce with the name of the person for whom he voted, as follows.
| Charles Sumner, of Boston, | 333 |
| Robert C. Winthrop, of Boston, | 3 |
| Nathaniel J. Lord, of Salem, | 2 |
| George W. Gordon, of Boston, | 1 |
| Erasmus D. Beach, of Springfield, | 1 |
| Charles B. Goodrich, of Boston, | 1 |
| Otis P. Lord, of Salem, | 1 |
| Edward Everett, of Boston, | 1 |
| William Appleton, of Boston, | 1 |
| Rufus Choate, of Boston, | 1 |
| —— | |
| Total vote, | 345 |
| Members absent or not voting, | 10 |
| —— | |
| Whole number of members, | 355 |
The announcement of the vote was received with applause.
In the Senate the vote was taken in the same way, January 13th, and every member responded with the name of “Charles Sumner, of Boston,” the vote being unanimous, when the President announced that “Hon. Charles Sumner, of Boston, having received the entire vote of the Senate, in concurrence with the House, is elected United States Senator from this State for the term of six years from the fourth of March next.”
The Boston Daily Advertiser noticed this event as follows.
“It is impossible to refrain from comparing the election of yesterday with Mr. Sumner’s previous election in the same place six years ago. Now he receives nearly all the votes, on the first ballot, taken on the third day of the session, every member speaking aloud his vote. Then he received only the exact number necessary for a choice,—one more than half the whole number; and the election was not effected until the twenty-sixth ballot, taken on the one hundred and fourteenth day of the session (April 24, 1851), and the votes were thrown in sealed envelopes. Then he was the candidate of a party which threw 27,636 votes in the State, at the preceding popular election, or about one fifth of the whole number. Now he is the candidate of a party which threw 108,190 votes in the State, at the last popular election, or about two thirds of the whole number. Then he was chosen to a body where he could expect to find but two or three associates sympathizing with his sentiments. Now he is a member of a party which has a majority in the lower House of Congress, and numbers a quarter of the members even of the Senate of the United States. Truly, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”
The New York Tribune had the following comment.
“We need not, in view of recent events, point out the change which has taken place in the public sentiment of Massachusetts. It is not too much to say that Mr. Sumner is at this moment the most popular man in the State, the opinions of which he so truly represents. Nor will it do to attribute this general love, honor, and sympathy entirely to the felonious assault made upon Mr. Sumner. Had he been less true to the cause committed to his keeping, had he trimmed and temporized, and spoken softly when he should have spoken sharply, he would have been safe from the bludgeon of the bully, and might have won the smiles instead of the expectorations of a certain servile Senator. The people of Massachusetts have estimated Mr. Sumner’s service in all its length and breadth; they have duly weighed all its incidents and indignities,—what he has suffered, what he has accomplished, and what he has failed to accomplish; and their verdict, expressed in yesterday’s almost unanimous vote in the House of Representatives, bestows upon him a crown of honor which may well assuage the hope deferred of a tardy convalescence. Few public men have had such large opportunities, few public men have so nobly improved them.”
On the 23d of January, 1857, Hon. Charles A. Phelps, Speaker of the House of Representatives, laid before the House the following letter, which was read, and, on motion of Hon. Charles Hale, of Boston, entered at large upon the Journal.
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives,—
I have been officially notified that the people of Massachusetts, by concurrent votes of both branches of the Legislature, have charged me with the duty of representing them in the Senate of the United States for another term of six years, on the expiration of that which I now have the honor to hold. This renewed trust I accept with gratitude enhanced by the peculiar circumstances under which it is bestowed. But far beyond every personal gratification is the delight of knowing, by this sign, that the people of Massachusetts, forgetting ancient party hates, have at last come together in fraternal support of a sacred cause, compared with which the fate of any public servant is of small account.
When first selected for this eminent trust, I was a stranger to all official life. Untried in public affairs, I was taken up, and placed, without effort of my own, and even without antecedent aspiration, in the station where, after an experience of nearly six years, you now, with spontaneous unanimity, bid me remain. About to commence a fresh term of service, I turn with honest pride to that which is about to close, while I greet anew the duties and responsibilities of my position,—hoping, that, by conscientious endeavor, I may do something in the future better than in the past, and mindful that “he that girdeth on his harness should not boast himself as he that putteth it off.”
The duties of a public servant are not always conspicuous. Much of his time is absorbed in cares which, if not obscure, are little calculated to attract public attention. Massachusetts justly expects that no such interests shall be neglected. But, by solemn resolutions of her Legislature, by the votes of her people, and by the voice of her history, Massachusetts especially enjoins upon her representatives to see, that, at all hazards, and whatever else may suffer, Freedom shall prevail. I cannot neglect this injunction.
Alike by sympathy with the slave and by determination to save ourselves from wretched thraldom, we are all summoned to the effort now organized for the emancipation of the National Government from a degrading influence, hostile to civilization, which, wherever it shows itself, even at a distance, is brutal, vulgar, and mean, constituting an unnatural tyranny, calculated to arouse the generous indignation of good men. Of course, no person, unless ready to say in his heart that there is no God, can doubt the certain result. But this result, like every great good, can be accomplished only by well-directed effort. I know something of the labor and trial which such service imposes; I also know something of the satisfaction it affords, giving to all who truly espouse it a better joy than anything in office or honor. In the weary prostration of months, from which I have now happily risen, the sharpest pang came out of my enforced separation from the cause which was so dear to me; and now my content is in the assurance that to this service I may dedicate the vigorous health which, through medical care and the kindly ministrations of Nature, I am permitted to expect. In this well-founded assurance, I welcome the trust which has been again conferred upon me, while I once more bespeak the candid judgment of my fellow-citizens, and once more invoke the guardianship of a benignant Providence.
I have the honor to be, fellow-citizens, with grateful regard,
Your faithful servant and Senator,
Charles Sumner.
Boston, January 22, 1857.
The following tribute, taken from contemporary newspapers, attests a feeling much above that of ordinary politics, and therefore illustrates this record.
“‘CHARLES SUMNER, OF BOSTON.’
“‘Three hundred and thirty-three members answered to their names, with the words, “CHARLES SUMNER, of Boston”; and as the Clerk responded with the same words to each vote, they rang upon the ears of the large assembly more than six hundred times during the hour occupied with calling the roll.’
“‘It is said, no sound is ever lost,—that every word uttered upon earth is echoed and reëchoed through space forever.’
“Old Massachusetts! nobly thou
This day thy work hast done;
Proudly thou speakest for the Right,
And for thy honored son:
“Three hundred voices on the air,
Ringing the loved name forth;
Three hundred voices echoing back,
‘Charles Sumner, of the North!’
“Throughout the land, beyond the sea,
The voices will be heard;
His name shall stand for Liberty,
The freeman’s rallying word.
“Throughout the land, beyond the sea,
Above, in arches high,
Voices are ever echoing
A name that ne’er will die.
The stars more brightly shine:
Is one more glorious than the rest?
Old Bay State, it is thine!
“Gather fresh laurels, twine two wreaths,
Wreaths for a victory won,—
Loved Massachusetts, one for thee,
One for thy chosen son!”
GRATITUDE FOR SYMPATHY OF THE PEOPLE OF VERMONT.
Letter to Hon. Ryland Fletcher, Governor of Vermont, March 7, 1857.
The Legislature of Vermont, at its recent session, passed a series of joint resolutions, highly complimentary, and indorsing Mr. Sumner’s last speech in the Senate. On receiving a copy, Mr. Sumner wrote the following reply.
New York, Saturday, March 7, 1857.
To His Excellency, Ryland Fletcher, Governor of Vermont.
SIR,—At the last moment before leaving for foreign lands in quest of that vigorous health which for nearly ten months has been taken from me, I have received notice of the resolutions adopted by the Legislature of Vermont, and approved by your Excellency, which give the official sanction of a generous, virtuous, and intelligent State to my speech in the Senate on the 19th and 20th of May last, exposing the Crime against Kansas. Such a token is precious to me in every respect,—not only because it assures me of the personal sympathy of the people of Vermont, declared through their representatives, but because it attests their interest in that cause which is more important than any person.
I cannot accept this public approval of my speech without seizing the occasion to express a heartfelt joy that I was permitted to make it, and also my humble determination, with returning strength, to do something that shall still further unmask the portentous Barbarism which has fastened on our Republic, and installed itself in all the high places of power.
I have the honor to be, Sir, with much respect,
Your faithful servant,
Charles Sumner.
A LAST WORD FOR KANSAS, ON SAILING FOR EUROPE.
Letter to James Redpath, Esq., March 7, 1857.
On board Steamship Fulton, March 7, 1857.
MY DEAR SIR,—I trust that you and our friends will not be disheartened in efforts for Kansas. Much must still be done, or the night of Slavery will settle down on that beautiful Territory.
Surely the Legislature of Massachusetts will feel the inspiration of a great cause, and pledge itself by a generous appropriation to its support. I hear of constitutional impediments, but I believe that all such will be found to have bottom in the lukewarm hearts of objectors rather than in the Constitution.
There are some who think that anything for Slavery is constitutional, but nothing for Freedom. With me the opposite rule prevails, and I venture to say that any other rule must bring discredit upon a country calling itself a Commonwealth.
I trust, also, that the people of Kansas will stand firm, and that, if need be, they will know how to die for Freedom. Do any sigh for a Thermopylæ? They have it in Kansas, for there is to be fought the great battle between Freedom and Slavery,—by the ballot-box, I trust; but I do not forget that all who destroy the ballot-box madly invoke the cartridge-box.
With a farewell to my country, as I seek a foreign land, hoping for health long deferred, I give my last thoughts to suffering Kansas, with devout prayers that the ruffian Usurpation which now treads her down may be peaceably overthrown, and that she may be lifted into the enjoyment of freedom and repose.
Ever faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
P. S. I entrust this to the pilot, and hope it may reach you.
James Redpath, Esq.
INVITATION TO DINNER BY AMERICAN MERCHANTS IN PARIS.
Letter to the American Merchants at Paris, April 20, 1857.
The following correspondence, with its brief introduction, is copied from Galignani’s Messenger at Paris.
“Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts.—This distinguished American statesman and orator has been tendered a public dinner by the American merchants residing at Paris, in the following complimentary terms.
“Paris, April 28, 1857.
“Dear Sir,—The American merchants residing in Paris, desirous of expressing their high regard and admiration for your noble independence and distinguished services as a Senator of the United States, respectfully invite you to meet them at a public dinner, to be given at such a time during your sojourn in Paris as may be most convenient to yourself.
“Though well aware that you are habitually accustomed to decline all similar requests, we earnestly hope you will yield to our wishes.
“As citizens of the great Republic, representing many States, and all actively engaged in commercial life, we tender you this tribute, as an evidence of our appreciation of your elevated patriotism, unbending integrity, and spotless honor.
“With the highest esteem, we have the honor to be your friends and fellow-citizens.
- “John Munroe,
- B. G. Wainwright,
- Elliot C. Cowdin,
- Samuel P. Holmes,
- A. P. Montant,
- Thomas N. Dale,
- G. F. T. Reed,
- James W. Tucker,
- George T. Richards,
- A. K. P. Cooper,
- George Milne,
- C. L. Sharpsteen,
- Henry Woods,
- W. Endicott, Jr.,
- John C. Martin,
- Walter H. Lewis,
- George L. Todd,
- David Lane,
- V. Mumford Moore,
- J. H. Deming,
- Jos. D. B. Curtis.”
To this invitation Mr. Sumner returned the following reply.
Hôtel de la Paix, Rue de la Paix,
April 30, 1857.
GENTLEMEN,—I have been honored by your communication of the 28th April, where, after referring to my services as Senator of the United States, in language generous beyond the ordinary experience of political life, you are pleased to invite me, in the name of the American merchants residing in Paris, to a public dinner, at such time as may be most convenient to myself.
The voice of hospitality is pleasant in a strange land. But the hospitality which you offer is enhanced by the character and number of those who unite in it, among whom I recognize well-known names, intimately associated with the commerce of my country in one of its most important outposts.
There is one aspect in which your invitation is especially grateful. It is this. If I have been able to do anything not unworthy of your approbation, it is because I never failed, whether in majorities or minorities, against all obloquy, and at every hazard, to uphold those principles of Liberty which, just in proportion as they prevail under our Constitution, make us an example to the nations. And since my public course cannot be unknown to you, I am permitted to infer that the public testimony with which you now honor me is offered in some measure to those principles,—dearer to me than any personal distinction,—with which I am proud to know that my name is associated.
The invitation you send me, coming from such a source, couched in terms so flattering, and possessing such an import, presents a temptation difficult to resist. But I am admonished by the state of my health, which is yet far from its natural vigor, that I must not listen to it, except to express my gratitude. In making this excuse, let me fortify myself by the confession that I left home mainly to withdraw from the excitements of public life, and particularly from all public speaking, in the assurance that by such withdrawal, accompanied by that relaxation which is found in change of pursuit, my convalescence would be completed. The good physician under whose advice I have acted would not admit that by crossing the sea I had been able at once to alter all the conditions under which his advice was given.
I cannot turn coldly from the opportunity you offer me. My heart overflows with best wishes for yourselves individually, and also for the commerce which you conduct, mingled with aspirations that your influence may always add to the welfare and just renown of our country. As American merchants at Paris, you are representatives of the United States on a foreign mission, without diplomatic salary or diplomatic privilege. But it belongs to the felicity of your position that what you do well for yourselves will be well for your country, and, more than any diplomacy, will contribute to strengthen the friendly ties of two powerful nations. Pardon the allusion, when I add that you are the daily industrious workmen in that mighty loom whose frame stands on the coasts of opposite continents, whose threads are Atlantic voyages, whose colors are the various enterprises and activities of a beneficent commerce, and whose well-wrought product is a radiant, speaking tissue,—more beautiful to the mind’s eye than any fabric of rarest French skill, more marvellous than any tapestry woven for kings,—where every color mingles with every thread in completest harmony and on the grandest scale, to display the triumphs and the blessings of Peace.
Accept the assurance of the sincere regard with which I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
Your faithful servant and fellow-citizen,
Charles Sumner.
To John Munroe,
B. G. Wainwright,
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esqrs.,
and others, American merchants at Paris.
The vigilant spirit of Slavery did not fail to note this correspondence. Immediately upon its appearance, a well-known Virginian, the reputed owner of large plantations in right of his wife, and long resident in Paris, addressed a letter to Galignani’s Messenger, in which he undertook to set forth what he called Mr. Sumner’s mission in Europe. Here is a specimen.
“That mission, certainly ‘without any diplomatic privilege,’ but peradventure not without perquisites, is to initiate, and, if the exigencies of the cotton market and manufacture do not forbid it, to organize, a systematic agitation in this and the British capital against the Southern States of the Confederacy, and that ‘peculiar institution’ of theirs, so tenderly nursed of yore, and transmitted to them by dear Old Mother England, and which in very modern times has been not less cherished and sustained by the ‘enterprise and activity’ on the coast of Africa of some of her Puritanical progeny in the New World. Under these circumstances can any such subdolous plea as that put forward excuse these ‘American merchants’ from lending themselves to such agencies and influences? If they were sordid and self-seeking adventurers, in pursuit of political capital, rather than the honorable rewards of a liberal and enlightened trade, one could understand, or rather would not marvel at, this pseudo-patriotic partisanship, this unfraternal display of their sectional colors in a foreign land.”
Thus was the invalid in search of health pursued by the same malign spirit from which he had originally suffered.
OUR POLITICS SEEN FROM A DISTANCE.
Letter to a Friend, dated Heidelberg, September 11, 1857.
The following letter found its way into the papers of the time.
Heidelberg, September 11, 1857.
MY DEAR ——,—Weeks have now passed since I have seen a letter or newspaper from home. During this time I have been travelling away from news, and am now famished. On arrival at Antwerp, I trust to find letters at last.
I have been ransacking Switzerland; I have visited most of its lakes, and crossed several of its mountains, mule-back. My strength has not allowed me to venture upon any of those foot expeditions, the charm of Swiss travel, by which you reach places out of the way; but I have seen much, and have gained health constantly.
I have crossed the Alps by the St. Gothard, and then recrossed by the Grand St. Bernard, passing a night with the monks and dogs. I have spent a day at the foot of Mont Blanc, and another on the wonderful Lake Leman. I have been in the Pyrenees, in the Alps, in the Channel Isles. You will next hear of me in the Highlands of Scotland.
I see our politics now in distant perspective, and I am more than ever satisfied that our course is right. It is Slavery which degrades our country, and prevents its example from being all-conquering. In fighting our battle at home we fight the battle of Freedom everywhere. Be assured, I shall return, not only with renewed strength, but with renewed determination to give myself to our great cause.
Ever sincerely yours,
Charles Sumner.
FAREWELL ON SAILING FOR EUROPE A SECOND TIME IN QUEST OF HEALTH.
Letter to the People of Massachusetts, on board Steamer Vanderbilt, New York Harbor, May 22, 1858.
To the People of Massachusetts:—
Two years have now passed, since, when in the enjoyment of perfect health, I was suddenly made an invalid. Throughout this protracted period, amidst various vicissitudes of convalescence, I seemed to be slowly regaining the health that had been taken from me, until I was encouraged to believe myself on the verge of perfect recovery.
But injuries so grave as those originally received are not readily repaired; and a recent relapse painfully admonishes me, that, although enjoying many of the conditions of prosperous convalescence, I am not yet beyond the necessity of caution. This has been confirmed by the physicians in Boston and Philadelphia most familiar with my case, who, in concurrence with counsels previously given by medical authorities in Europe, have enjoined travel as best calculated to promote restoration. Anxious to spare no effort for this end, so long deferred, I to-day sail for France.
To the generous people of Massachusetts, who have honored me with an important trust, and cheered me by so much sympathy, I wish to express the thanks which now palpitate in my bosom, while I say to them all collectively, as I would say to a friend, Farewell!
These valedictory words would be imperfect, if I did not seize this occasion to declare, what I have often said less publicly, that, had I foreseen originally the duration of my disability, I should at once have resigned my seat in the Senate, making way for a servant more fortunate in the precious advantages of health. I did not do so, because, like other invalids, I lived in the belief that I was soon to be well, and was reluctant to renounce the opportunity of again exposing the hideous Barbarism of Slavery, now more than ever transfused into the National Government, infecting its whole policy and degrading its whole character. Besides, I was often assured, and encouraged to feel, that to every sincere lover of civilization my vacant chair was a perpetual speech.
Charles Sumner.
On board Steamer Vanderbilt,
New York Harbor, May 22, 1858.
HONOR TO THE INVENTOR OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
Letter to Professor Morse, in excusing himself from a Dinner at Paris, August 17, 1858.
Hôtel and Rue de la Paix, Paris,
Tuesday, August 17, 1858.
MY DEAR SIR,—I have fresh occasion to be unhappy that I am still an invalid, because it prevents me from joining in the well-deserved honors which our countrymen here are about to offer you.
As I would not be thought indifferent to the occasion, I seize the moment to express in this informal manner my humble gratitude for the great discovery with which your name will be forever associated. Through you Civilization has made one of her surest and grandest triumphs, beyond any ever won on a field of battle; nor do I go beyond the line of most cautious truth, when I add, that, if mankind had yet arrived at a just appreciation of its benefactors, it would welcome such a conqueror with more than a marshal’s baton.
I write to you frankly, and with a still cordial memory of that distant day, when, in the company of a friend who is no longer on earth, I first had the happiness of taking you by the hand.
Believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,
Ever sincerely yours,
Charles Sumner.
Professor Morse.
LONGING FOR DUTIES OF POSITION.
From a Letter to a Friend, dated at Aix, Savoy, September 11, 1858.
This extract is taken from the public papers of the time.
Aix, Savoy, September 11, 1858.
…
Look at the map of Europe, and you will find, nestling in the mountains of Savoy, between Switzerland and France, the little village of Aix, generally known as Aix-les-Bains, from the baths which give it fame. There I am now. The country about is most beautiful, the people simple and kind.
My life is devoted to health. I wish that I could say that I am not still an invalid; yet, except when attacked by the pain on my chest, I am now comfortable, and enjoy my baths, my walks, and the repose and incognito which I find here.
I begin the day with douches, hot and cold,—and when thoroughly exhausted, am wrapped in sheet and blanket, and conveyed to my hotel, and laid on my bed. After my walk, I find myself obliged again to take to my bed for two hours before dinner. But this whole treatment is in pleasant contrast with the protracted suffering from fire which made the summer a torment. And yet I fear that I must return to that treatment.
It is with a pang unspeakable that I find myself thus arrested in the labors of life and in the duties of my position. This is harder to bear than the fire. I do not hear of friends engaged in active service—like Trumbull in Illinois—without a feeling of envy.
…
Charles Sumner.
INDEPENDENCE AND UNITY OF ITALY.
Letter to a Public Meeting at New York, February 17, 1860.
This meeting was at the City Assembly Rooms, and was addressed by Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, Hon. Charles King, Rev. H. W. Bellows, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Hon. Joseph Hoxie, and Professor O. M. Mitchel. According to the New York Tribune, the letter of Mr. Sumner “was received with much enthusiasm.”
Senate Chamber, February 16, 1860.
GENTLEMEN,—You do me no more than justice, when you suppose that my sympathies are with Italy in her present noble struggle. If I do not attend the meeting at New York, according to the invitation with which I am honored, it is because other duties here keep me away.
To the cause of Human Freedom everywhere I am bound by all ties, whether of feeling or principle. To Italy also—venerable, yet ever young, with that fatal gift of beauty which from all time she has worn—I confess a sentiment of love and reverence; I am sorrowful in her sorrow, and happy in her happiness.
Surely, by her past history, and all that she has done for human improvement, we are her debtors. Without Italian genius what now were modern civilization? There is no art, or science, or activity, or grace, in which she has not excelled or led the way. If I went into detail, I must mention not only sculpture, painting, engraving, and music, but also astronomy, navigation, bookkeeping, and jurisprudence; and I must present an array of great names, such as no other country can boast. And to all these I must add the practical discoveries of the mariner’s compass, the barometer, the telescope applied to astronomy, and the pendulum as a measure of time.
To the political skeptics and infidels who affect to doubt the capacity for freedom of this illustrious people I would say, that Italy, in modern times, was the earliest home of political science, and the earliest author of some of those political truths which have since passed into principles. Besides, divided into separate, sovereign States, with separate systems of legislation, her condition is coincident with our own, to the extent of possessing those local facilities for self-government which are our boast. And then there is the spirit of her sons, as shown in recent efforts, giving assurance of courage, and of that rarer wisdom which knows how to guide and temper courage, both of which shone so conspicuous in the Venetian Manin, worthy compeer of our own Washington.
Allow me to add, that I confidently look to the day when we may welcome into the fellowship of nations a community new in external form, but old in constituent parts,—separate in local governments, but bound in perfect union, with one national flag, one national coin, and one national principle, giving to all the strength of unity,—E Pluribus Unum,—and constituting the United States of Italy. And may God speed this good time!
Accept the assurance of the respect with which I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
TWO LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON.
Letter to the Washington Monument Association of the First School District of Philadelphia, February 21, 1860.
Senate Chamber, February 21, 1860.
DEAR SIR,—It would be a pleasure to be with you at your celebration of the Birthday of Washington, according to the invitation with which you have honored me. But other duties will keep me away.
It is always a delight to listen to the praise of Washington, particularly when his full life is set forth, and he is shown in his real character, ever wise, firm, and true, teaching two commanding lessons: first, by the achievements and trials of a seven years’ war, that his fellow-countrymen should not be willing to be slaves; and, secondly, by the repeated declarations of his life, and especially by his great example in his last will and testament, that his fellow-countrymen should not be willing to be slave-masters. I do not know for which he is to be most honored.
Accept my thanks for the personal kindness of your letter, and believe me, dear Sir,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
George F. Gordon, Esq.
MACAULAY ON SLAVERY.
Communication to the New York Tribune, March 3, 1860.
The same paper contained the article of Macaulay entitled “The West Indies,” from the Edinburgh Review, January, 1825, Vol. XLI. pp. 464-488. The day after its appearance, the New York Herald, in a leader with the caption, “Macaulay, Sumner, and Slavery,” sought to disparage the testimony, saying, among other things:—
“What Mr. Sumner now introduces is a proof how badly off the party must be for weapons, when they rake them up from the dead magazines of another generation, and written by a youth a little over twenty years of age; or Mr. Sumner has not yet recovered his usual strength of mind, since the injury he received a few years ago at the Capitol. And what does his article amount to? That the British planters in the West Indies treated their slaves very badly, which may or may not be true. But from the abuse of the institution in one place he argues against the policy of its continued existence in any other part of the world. He might as well conclude, that, because many of the English are cruel to their horses, and that it was necessary to pass an Act of Parliament for their protection, therefore horses ought to be emancipated in the United States, and let loose through the country. An argument from the abuse to the disuse of anything is the poorest kind of logic.”
Such was the tone of discussion on the eve of the Presidential election destined to decide the fate of American Slavery.
To the Editor of the New York Tribune:—
SIR,—I ask attention to an eloquent and characteristic article on Slavery, by Macaulay, never yet printed in our country with his name. It is in an old number of the “Edinburgh Review,” while Jeffrey was its editor, and in point of time preceded the famous article on Milton. It is, indeed, the earliest contribution of the illustrious writer to that Review, of which he became a chief support and ornament. As such, it belongs to the curiosities of literature, even if it did not possess intrinsic interest from subject and style.
Here are seen, no longer in germ, but almost in perfect development, those same great elements of style which appear in the maturer essays and the History,—mastery of language, clearness of statement, force, splendor of illustration, an irrepressible sequence of thought and argument, and that same whip of scorpions which he afterward flourished over Barère: all these are conspicuous in this first effort, where he utters the honest, gushing indignation of his soul. Never has Slavery inspired speaker or writer to more complete and scornful condemnation.
The article was called forth by British Slavery in the West Indies; but it is just as applicable to American Slavery. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. Every line bears upon the slave-drivers of our country, with greater force even than upon the slave-drivers of the West Indies; for audacity here goes further than it was ever pushed in the British dominions. It is interesting to find how exact the parallel becomes. In the picture of illiberal men conspiring to support Slavery Macaulay seems to delineate us.
“The slave-drivers may boast, that, if our cause has received support from honest men of all religious and political parties, theirs has tended in as great a degree to combine and conciliate every form of violence and illiberality. Tories and Radicals, prebendaries and field-preachers, are to be found in their ranks. The only requisites for one who aspires to enlist are a front of brass and a tongue of venom.”[9]
Aiming to exhibit Slavery in its laws, without dwelling on the accumulated instances of cruelty, he puts the case on the strongest ground; and here his unimpeachable witness is the statute-book itself. But this same argument bears with equal force upon our Slavery; so that, in reading his indignant exposure of the West India jurisprudence, we see rising before us the kindred enormities of our own Slave States, and acknowledge the truth of his generous words.
He seems also to have anticipated that flagrant sophism, which, under the guise of Popular Sovereignty, insists that men shall be at liberty—“perfectly free” is the phrase of the Nebraska Bill—to buy and sell fellow-men.
“If you will adopt the principles of Liberty, adopt them altogether. Every argument which you can urge in support of your own claims might be employed, with far greater justice, in favor of the emancipation of your bondsmen. When that event shall have taken place, your demand will deserve consideration. At present, what you require under the name of Freedom is nothing but unlimited power to oppress. It is the freedom of Nero.”[10]
The threats of disunion, coming from slave-drivers, are also foreshown, and treated with the scorn they merit.
“Who can refrain from thinking of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, who, while raised sixty feet from the ground on the hand of the King of Brobdignag, claps his hand on his sword and tells his Majesty that he knows how to defend himself? You will rebel!… But this is mere trifling. Are you, in point of fact, at this moment able to protect yourselves against your slaves without our assistance? If you can still rise up and lie down in security,—if you can still eat the bread of the fatherless and grind the faces of the poor,—if you can still hold your petty Parliaments, and say your little speeches, and move your little motions,—if you can still outrage and insult the Parliament and people of England,—to what do you owe it?”[11]
The sensitiveness of slave property—the same in our Slave States as in the British West Indies—is aptly described in the remark, that a pamphlet of Mr. Stephen or a speech of Mr. Brougham is sufficient to excite all the slaves in the colonies to rebel. And it is shown that in a servile war the master must be loser; for his enemies are his chattels. Whether the slave conquer or fall, he is alike lost to the owner. In the mean time, the soil lies uncultivated, the machinery is destroyed. And when the possessions of the planter are restored to him, they have been changed into a desert.[12]
Here also is an exhibition of the incompatibility between Slavery and Christianity, which ought to be read in every Southern pulpit:—
“The immorality and irreligion of the slaves are the necessary consequences of their political and personal degradation. They are not considered by the law as human beings.… They must become men before they can become Christians.… Can a preacher prevail on his hearers strictly to fulfil their conjugal duties in a country where no protection is given to their conjugal rights,—in a country where the husband and wife may, at the pleasure of the master or by process of law, be in an instant separated forever?… The great body of the colonists have resolutely opposed religious instruction; and they are in the right. They know, though their misinformed friends in England do not know, that Christianity and Slavery cannot long exist together.”[13]
Such is the philippic against Slavery by the first writer of the English language in our day, and one of the first in all times. As testimony to a sacred cause, it is priceless; as a contribution to literature, it cannot be forgotten. Why it was suppressed by American publishers, who gave us the earliest collection of Macaulay’s Essays ever printed in England or America, I know not. Unhappily, this suppression was too much in harmony with the received American system from that day to this, whether in publishing Humboldt’s work on Cuba, the Bishop of Oxford’s work on the American Church, or the engraving of Ary Scheffer’s “Christus Consolator,” from all of which the slave is shut out. That this blame may not fall upon the author himself, it is important to know that the American collection was made without any list supplied by him. In the modesty of his nature, he regarded his contributions to Reviews as fugitive pieces, which he abandoned to the world, without caring to gather them together. It will be for posterity to rejudge this judgment.
In this statement, I rely upon personal recollection of conversations with him. More than twenty years ago—as also more recently—I was in the habit of meeting the great writer in the society of London; and I remember well how, on one of these occasions, when told that an American bookseller proposed to publish a collection of his articles, he very positively protested against it, and refused to furnish a list. Nor is it out of place to add here, that, while his wonderful conversation left on the mind an ineffaceable impression of eloquence and fulness, perhaps without parallel, it also showed a character of singular integrity.
This article is not alone in attesting his sympathy with the Antislavery cause. The first public appearance of Macaulay, while yet a very young man, was at an Antislavery meeting; and one of his most stinging speeches, at the maturity of his powers, in the House of Commons, bore testimony to the depth and constancy of this sentiment.[14] This was natural; for he was son of Zachary Macaulay, one of the devoted Abolitionists who helped to carry, first, the abolition of the slave-trade, and then, at a later day, the abolition of Slavery itself, in the British dominions.
The services of the father, as friend of the slave, have been aptly commemorated by a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, situated in the nave, on the left side of the great door as you enter, and close to the imposing monument of Fox. The son now lies in the same historic burial-place and beneath the same mighty roof,[15] but in Poets’ Corner, distant by more than the whole length of the nave from the tablet erected in honor of his father. In all that multitude of monuments to the illustrious dead, if we except the line of kings, there is but one other instance of father and son enshrined in the Abbey, and that is Lord Chatham and William Pitt, whose monuments are also distant from each other by more than the whole length of the nave.
Such is the conspicuous fellowship of the two Pitts and the Macaulays, father and son, although most unlike in circumstances of life and the services which have secured this common foothold of immortality. In each case, the father, even with the fame of Lord Chatham, has new glory from the son. The resting-places of the two Pitts are known at once on entering the Abbey. Hereafter, the stranger, who has stood with grateful admiration before the grave of the younger Macaulay, will seek with reverent step the simple tribute to his father, the Abolitionist,—mindful that the love of Human Freedom in which the son was cradled and schooled gave to his character some of its best features, and to his career of authorship its earliest triumph.
My purpose is simply to introduce this new-found testimony against Slavery, and not to dwell on the life or character of the author. If I followed a hint from him, the way would be open. Nobody can forget that in one of his most magnificent essays he has availed himself of the interest, transient it may have been, created by a newly discovered prose work of Milton, and has reminded his readers that the dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a Saint till they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him,—a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. Here, indeed, is a relic of Macaulay; but I venture no further.
Charles Sumner.
STATUE OF HORACE MANN.
Letter to Dr. Samuel G. Howe, March 5, 1860.
From the public papers of the time.
Senate Chamber, March 5, 1860.
MY DEAR HOWE,—I am glad to know that you are moving in earnest for a public statue to Horace Mann.
Absence, and not indifference, is my excuse for not associating myself at first with this purpose. Though tardily, I do it now most sincerely, and with my whole heart. I send you for it one hundred dollars; but you will please not to measure my interest in this tribute to a public benefactor by the sum which I contribute. Were I able, it would be ten times as large. If each person in Massachusetts who has been benefited by the vast and generous labors of Horace Mann,—each person who hates Intemperance, and who hates Slavery,—each person who loves Education, and who loves humane efforts for the prisoner, the poor, and the insane,—should contribute a mite only, then his statue would be of gold. Why not at once appeal to good men, and insist upon organization throughout the Commonwealth, reaching into every School District, so that all may have an opportunity to contribute? Pray do this, and if I can serve you any way about it, command me, and believe me,
Always yours,
Charles Sumner.
P. S.—Mr. Seward, who is not a Massachusetts man, asks me to put his name down for fifty dollars. I enclose his subscription.
USURPATION OF THE SENATE IN IMPRISONING A CITIZEN.
Two Speeches, on the Imprisonment of Thaddeus Hyatt for Refusing to testify in the Harper’s Ferry Investigation, in the Senate, March 12 and June 15, 1860.
On his return to the Senate, at the opening of Congress, December 5, 1859, Mr. Sumner encountered the agitation arising from the famous attempt of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. Though warned to enter slowly into the full responsibilities of his position, he was constantly moved by incidents arising from this agitation.
On the first day of the session, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, moved the appointment of a committee “to inquire into the facts attending the late invasion and seizure of the armory and arsenal of the United States at Harper’s Ferry, in Virginia, by a band of armed men,” and the long resolution concluded with “power to send for persons and papers.” The Committee was appointed, with Mr. Mason as chairman, and, in the course of its duties, summoned John Brown, Jr., of Kansas, and F. B. Sanborn and James Redpath, of Massachusetts, who severally failed to appear. Thaddeus Hyatt, of New York, appeared, but refused to testify. Thereupon Mr. Mason reported from his committee the following resolution.
“Whereas Thaddeus Hyatt, appearing at the bar of the Senate, in custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, pursuant to the resolution of the Senate of the 6th of March, instant, was required, by order of the Senate then made, to answer the following questions, under oath and in writing: ‘1st, What excuse have you for not appearing before the select committee of the Senate, in pursuance of the summons served on you on the 24th day of January, 1860? 2d, Are you now ready to appear before said committee, and answer such proper questions as shall be put to you by said committee?’—time to answer the same being given until the 9th day of March following: And whereas, on the said last-named day, the said Thaddeus Hyatt, again appearing, in like custody, at the bar of the Senate, presented a paper, accompanied by an affidavit, which he stated was his answer to said questions; and it appearing, upon examination thereof, that said Thaddeus Hyatt has assigned no sufficient excuse in answer to the question first aforesaid, and in answer to said second question has not declared himself ready to appear and answer before said committee of the Senate, as set forth in said question, and has not purged himself of the contempt with which he stands charged: Therefore,
“Be it resolved, That the said Thaddeus Hyatt be committed by the Sergeant-at-Arms to the common jail of the District of Columbia, to be kept in close custody until he shall signify his willingness to answer the questions propounded to him by the Senate; and for the commitment and detention of the said Thaddeus Hyatt this resolution shall be a sufficient warrant.
“Resolved, That, whenever the officer having the said Thaddeus Hyatt in custody shall be informed by said Hyatt that he is ready and willing to answer the questions aforesaid, it shall be the duty of such officer to deliver the said Thaddeus Hyatt over to the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, whose duty it shall be again to bring him before the bar of the Senate, when so directed by the Senate.”
On the question upon its passage, March 12, 1860, Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.
MR. PRESIDENT,—It is related in English parliamentary history, that, on a certain occasion, when the House of Commons was about ordering the commitment of a somewhat too famous witness to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Speaker interfered by volunteering to say, that “the House ought to pause before they came to a decision upon a point in which the liberty of the subject was so materially concerned.”[16] That same question is now before us. We are to pass on the liberty of a citizen.
Pardon me, if I say that such a question cannot at any time be trivial. But it has an unaccustomed magnitude on this occasion, because the case is novel in this body; so that what you now do, besides involving the liberty of the gentleman at the bar, will establish a precedent, which, in itself, will be a law for other cases hereafter.
Now, if it be conceded that the Senate is invested with all the large powers claimed by the Houses of Parliament, then I cannot doubt its power in the present case, although I might well question the expediency of exercising it. But this is notoriously untrue. It is well known that Parliament is above the constraint of a written Constitution; and it has been more than once declared—much to the indignation of our Revolutionary fathers—that it is “omnipotent” to such extent that it can do anything it pleases, except make a man of a woman, or a woman of a man. The Senate has no such large powers; it is not “omnipotent,” but under the constraint of a written Constitution. Instead of authority in all possible cases, it has authority only in certain specific cases.
If the Senate can summon witnesses to its bar, and compel them to testify, under pains and penalties, it must be by virtue of powers delegated in the Constitution,—I do not say by express grant, but at least by positive intendment. I say positive intendment; for nothing is to be presumed against liberty.
There are certain cases in which the power is clear: first, and most conspicuously, in the trial of impeachments; secondly, in determining the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members; and, thirdly, in punishing its members for disorderly behavior. All these proceedings are judicial, as well as political, in character, and carry with them, as a natural incident, the power to compel witnesses to testify.
Beyond these three cases, which stand on the express words of the Constitution, there are two other cases, quasi-judicial in character, which, though not supported by express words of the Constitution, have grown out of necessity and reason, amounting to positive intendment, and are sanctioned by precedents. I refer, first, to the inquiry into an alleged violation of the privileges of this body, as where a copy of a treaty was furtively obtained and published; and, secondly, to the inquiry into conduct of servants of the Senate, like that now proceeding with regard to the Printer, on the motion of the Senator from New York [Mr. King]. If I were asked to indicate the principle on which these two cases stood, I should say it was that just and universal right of self-defence inherent in every parliamentary body, as in every court, and also in every individual, but which is limited closely by the simple necessities of the case.
Such are the five cases in which this extraordinary power has been heretofore exercised: the first three standing on the text of the Constitution, and the other two on the right of self-defence necessarily inherent in the Senate; all five sanctioned by precedents of this body; all five judicial in character; all five judicial also in purpose and intent; and all five agreeing in this final particular, that they have no legislative purpose or intent. Beyond these cases there is no precedent for the exercise by the Senate of the power in question.
It is now proposed to add a new case, most clearly without any support in the Constitution, without any support in the right of self-defence inherent in the Senate, and without any support in the precedents of the Senate.
A committee has been appointed to inquire into the facts attending the late invasion and seizure of the armory and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry by a band of armed men, and report whether the same was attended by armed resistance to the authorities and public force of the United States, and by the murder of any citizens of Virginia, or of any troops sent there to protect public property; whether such invasion was made under color of any organization intended to subvert the government of any of the States of the Union; the character and extent of such organization; whether any citizens of the United States, not present, were implicated therein or accessory thereto, by contributions of money, arms, munitions, or otherwise; the character and extent of the military equipment in the hands or under the control of such armed band; where, how, and when the same was obtained and transported to the place invaded; also, to report what legislation, if any, is necessary by the Government for the future preservation of the peace of the country and the safety of public property; with power to send for persons and papers.
And this committee, after several weeks of session, now invokes the power of the Senate to compel the witness to testify. The chairman of the committee, the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], who calls for the imprisonment of an American citizen, has shown no authority for such an exercise of power in the Constitution, or in the admitted right of self-defence, or in the precedents of the Senate. He cannot show any such authority. It does not exist.
Surely, where the Constitution, and reason, and precedent, all three, are silent, we might well hesitate to exercise a power so transcendent. But I shall not stop here. I go further, and point out two specific defects in the resolution of the Senate.
First. The inquiry which it institutes is clearly judicial in character,—without, however, any judicial purpose, or looking to any judicial end. The committee is essentially a Tribunal, with power of denunciation, but without power of punishment,—sitting with closed doors, having the secrecy of the Inquisition or the Star Chamber, or, if you please, the Grand Jury,—with power to investigate facts involving the guilt of absent persons, and to denounce fellow-citizens as felons and traitors. If such a power is lodged anywhere outside of judicial tribunals, it must be in the House of Representatives, as the Grand Inquest of the Nation, with its power to impeach all civil officers, from the President down; but it cannot be in the Senate. Let me cite an illustration. The Constitution of Maryland provides expressly that “the House of Delegates may inquire, on the oath of witnesses, into all complaints, grievances, and offences, as the Grand Inquest of the State, and may commit any person for any crime to the public jail, there to remain until discharged by due course of law.” But I deny that the Senate of that neighbor State can erect itself into a Grand Inquest.
If the Senate of the United States have power to make the present inquiry, then, on any occasion of alleged crime, of whatever nature, whether of treason or murder or riot, it may rush to the assistance of the grand juries of the District, or, still further, it may rush to the assistance of the grand juries of Virginia; in short, it will be an inquest of commanding character, and with far-reaching, all-pervading process, supplementary and ancillary to the local inquest,—or, rather, so transcendent in powers, that by its side the local inquest will be dwarfed into insignificance. This cannot be proper or constitutional. But perhaps I am especially sensitive on this point; for, as a citizen of Massachusetts, I cannot forget that her Bill of Rights, originally the work of John Adams, provides expressly that the legislative department shall never exercise judicial powers, and the judicial department shall never exercise legislative powers,—“to the end,” as is solemnly declared, “it may be a government of laws, and not of men.”
But, assuming that the resolution is defective so far as it constitutes an inquest into crime, it may be said that the witness should be compelled to answer the other parts. Surely, the Senate will not resort to any such refinement in order to imprison a citizen.
Secondly. But there is a broader objection still: that, whatever may be the power of the Senate in judicial cases, it cannot compel the testimony of a witness in a proceeding of which the declared purpose is merely legislative. Officers of the Government communicate with Congress and its committees simply by letter. They are not summoned from distant posts, or even from their offices here. And I know not why a distant citizen, charged with no offence, and in every right the peer of any office-holder, should be treated with less consideration. If information be desired from him for any legislative purpose, let him communicate it in the way most convenient to himself, and most consistent with those rights of the citizen which all are bound to respect.
At all events, if this power is to be exercised, let it not be under a simple resolution of the Senate, but by virtue of a general law, passed by both Houses, and approved by the President, so that the citizen shall be surrounded with certain safeguards.
Mr. President, I confidently submit that a power so entirely without support, and also so obnoxious to criticism, at the same time that it is so vast, is not to be carelessly exercised. You cannot send the witness to prison without establishing a new precedent and commencing a new class of cases. You will declare that the Senate, at any time,—not merely in the performance of admitted judicial duties, but also in the performance of mere legislative duties,—may drag a citizen from the most distant village of the most distant State, and compel his testimony, involving the guilt or innocence of absent persons, or, it may be, of the witness himself. This is a fearful prerogative, and permit me to say, that, in assuming it, you liken yourselves to the Jesuits, at the period of their most hateful supremacy, when it was said that their power was a sword whose handle was at Rome and whose point was in the most distant places. You take into your hands a sword whose handle will be in this Chamber, to be clutched by a mere partisan majority, and whose point will be in every corner of the Republic.
If the present case were doubtful, which I do not admit, I feel that I cannot go wrong, when I lean to the side of Liberty. But, even admitting that you have the power, is this the occasion to use it? Is it, upon the whole, expedient? Is the object to be accomplished worth the sacrifice? It is well to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
For myself, Sir, I confess a feeling of gratitude to the witness, who, knowing nothing which he desires to conceal, and chiefly anxious that the liberties of all may not suffer through him, feeble in body and broken in health, hardly able to endure the fatigue of appearing at your bar, now braves the prison which you menace, and thrusts his arm as a bolt to arrest an unauthorized and arbitrary proceeding.
The resolutions were adopted March 12, 1860, and on the same day Mr. Hyatt was committed to the common jail of Washington.
On the 15th of June, 1860, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, Chairman of the Harper’s Ferry Investigating Committee, in submitting his final report, further submitted the following order.
“Ordered, That Thaddeus Hyatt, a witness confined in the jail of this city for refusal to appear and testify before said committee, be discharged from custody, and that a copy of this order be delivered to the jailer by the Sergeant-at-Arms, as his warrant for discharging said prisoner.”
On the question upon its passage, Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I welcome with pleasure the proposition for the discharge of Mr. Hyatt from his long incarceration in the filthy jail where he has been detained by the order of the Senate. But I am unwilling that this act of justice should be done to a much injured citizen, without for one moment exposing the injustice which he has received at your hands.
The case, it seems to me, can be made as plain as a diagram.
We must not forget a fundamental difference between the powers of the House of Representatives and the powers of the Senate. It is from the former that the Senator from Virginia has drawn his precedents, and here is his mistake.
To the House of Representatives expressly are given by the Constitution inquisitorial powers, while no such powers are given to the Senate. This is contained in the words, “The House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment.” Here, then, obviously, is something delegated to the House, and not delegated to the Senate,—namely, those inquiries in their nature preliminary to impeachment, which may or may not end in impeachment; and since, by the Constitution, every “civil officer” of the national government may be impeached, the inquisitorial powers of the House may be directed against every “civil officer,” from the President down to the lowest on the list.
This is an extensive power, but it is confined solely to the House. Strictly speaking, the Senate has no general inquisitorial powers. It has, we know, judicial powers in three cases under the Constitution:—
1. To try impeachments;
2. To judge the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members;
3. To punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, to expel a member.
In the execution of these powers, the Senate has the attributes of a court, and, according to established precedents, it may summon witnesses and compel their testimony, although it may well be doubted if a law be not necessary even to the execution of this power.
Besides these three cases, expressly named in the Constitution, there are two others, where it has already undertaken to exercise judicial powers, not by virtue of express words, but in self-defence:—
1. With regard to the conduct of its servants, as of its Printer;
2. When its privileges have been violated, as in the case of William Duane,[17] by a libel, or in the case of Nugent,[18] by obtaining and divulging a treaty while still under seal of secrecy.
It will be observed that these two classes of cases are not sustained by any text of the Constitution. If sustained at all, it must be by that principle of universal jurisprudence, and also of natural law, which gives to every body, whether natural or artificial, the right to protect its own existence,—in other words, the great right of self-defence. And I submit that no principle less solid can sustain this exercise of power. It is not enough to say that such a power would be convenient, highly convenient, or important. It must be absolutely essential to the self-preservation of the body; and even then, in the absence of any law, it must be open in our country to the gravest doubts.
“Doubtless,” says Blackstone, “all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient.”[19] But mere convenience is not a proper reason, under a free government, for the assumption of powers not granted; and this is especially the case where the powers are arbitrary and despotic, and touch the liberty of the citizen.
Now, if the present inquiry were in the House of Representatives, and were directed against the President or the Secretary of War, on the ground of negligence or malfeasance at an important moment, it would be clearly within the jurisdiction of that body, which has the sole power of impeachment; but it would not come within the jurisdiction of the Senate, until it became the duty of the latter body to try the impeachment instituted by the House.
But the present inquiry is neither preliminary to impeachment nor on the trial of an impeachment. It has no such element. It is precisely the same as if an inquiry should be instituted into the murder of Dr. Burdell in New York, or into the burning of slaves in Alabama, or into the banks of New York, or into the conduct of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in alleged obstructions of the Fugitive Slave Bill,—with regard to all which the Senate has no judicial powers. And yet it has judicial powers in all these cases, precisely to the same extent that it has in the case of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry.
I know it is said that this power is necessary in aid of legislation. I deny the necessity. Convenient, at times, it may be; but necessary, never. We do not drag members of the Cabinet or the President to testify before a committee, in aid of legislation; but I say, without hesitation, they can claim no immunity which does not belong equally to the humblest citizen. Mr. Hyatt and Mr. Sanborn have rights as ample as if they were office-holders. Such a power as this—which, without the sanction of law, and merely at the will of a partisan majority, may be employed to ransack the most distant States, and to drag citizens before the Senate all the way from Wisconsin or from South Carolina—may be convenient, and to certain persons may seem to be necessary. Throughout all time alleged necessity has been the apology for wrong.
“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.”
Such, according to Milton, was the practice among the fallen angels.
Let me be understood as admitting the power of the Senate, where it is essential to its own protection or the protection of its privileges, but not where it is required merely in aid of legislation. The difference is world-wide between what is required for protection and what is required merely for aid; and here I part from Senators with whom I am proud on other matters to act. They hold that this great power may be exercised, not merely for the protection of the Senate, but also for its aid in framing a bill or in maturing any piece of legislation. To aid a committee of this body merely in a legislative purpose, a citizen, guilty of no crime, charged with no offence, presumed to be innocent, honored and beloved in his neighborhood, may be seized, handcuffed, kidnapped, and dragged away from home, hurried across State lines, brought here as criminal, and then thrust into jail. The mere statement of the case shows the dangerous absurdity of such a claim. “Nephew,” said Algernon Sidney in prison, on the night before his execution, “I value not my own life a chip; but what concerns me is, that the law which takes away my life may hang every one of you, whenever it is thought convenient.” It was a dangerous law that aroused the indignation of the English patriot. But in the present case there is not even a law,—nothing but an order made by a fractional part of Congress.
There are Senators here who pretend to find in the Constitution the right to carry slaves into the National Territories. That such Senators should also find in the same Constitution the right to make a slave of Mr. Hyatt or Mr. Sanborn, or of anybody else, merely to aid legislation, is not astonishing; but I am at a loss how Senators who love Freedom can find any such right in the Constitution.
I say nothing now of precedents from the British Parliament, for they are all more or less inapplicable. We live under a written Constitution, with certain specified powers; and all these are restricted by the Tenth Amendment, declaring that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” But even British precedents have found a critic at home, in the late Chief Justice of England, Lord Denman, pronouncing judgment in the great case of Stockdale v. Hansard,[20]—and also in the words of an elegant and authoritative historian, whose life has been passed in one or the other of the two Houses of Parliament: I refer to Lord Mahon, now Earl Stanhope, who, in his History of England, thus remarks:—
“I may observe, in passing, that throughout the reign of George the Second the privileges of the House of Commons flourished in the rankest luxuriance.… So long as men in authority are enabled to go beyond the law, on the plea of their own dignity and power, the ONLY limit to their encroachments will be that of the public endurance.”[21]
Nothing can be more true than this warning. But Lord Brougham has expressed himself in words yet stronger, and, if possible, still more applicable to the present case.
“All rights,” says this consummate orator, “are now utterly disregarded by the advocates of Privilege, excepting that of exposing their own short-sighted impolicy and thoughtless inconsistency. Nor would there be any safety for the people under their guidance, if unhappily their powers of doing mischief bore any proportion to their disregard of what is politic and just.”[22]
With these observations I quit this question, anxious only that the recent Usurpation of the Senate may not be drawn into a precedent hereafter.
During Mr. Hyatt’s protracted imprisonment, Mr. Sumner visited him constantly, and thus became familiar with the condition of the jail. This led to the introduction of the following resolution, March 13, 1860.
“Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia be directed to consider the expediency of doing something to improve the condition of the common jail of the city of Washington.”
Before the vote on the resolution was taken, Mr. Sumner remarked that he had visited the jail, and found it neither more nor less than a mere human sty; and since the Senate had undertaken to send a fellow-creature there, he thought that the least it could do was to see that something was done to improve its condition.
ABOLITION OF CUSTOM-HOUSE OATHS.
Resolution in the Senate, March 15, 1860.
Mr. Sumner submitted the following resolution, which was considered by unanimous consent, and agreed to.
RESOLVED, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to consider whether the numerous custom-house oaths, now administered under Acts of Congress, may not with propriety be abolished, and a simple declaration be substituted therefor.
BOSTON COMMON, AND ITS EXTENSION.
Letter to George H. Snelling, Esq., of Boston, March 26, 1860.
Mr. Snelling interested himself much with regard to the disposition of the lands west of Boston Common, known as the “Back Bay Lands,” and owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Beyond a general desire to keep them open, his special aim was to have a tidal lake, bordered by avenues with trees. In this effort he was aided particularly by John A. Andrew, afterwards Governor. Other citizens, including the venerable Josiah Quincy, Professor Agassiz, and Dr. Edward Jarvis, wrote letters, published at the time, and used before the Committee of the Legislature to whom the matter was referred. Among these was the following.
Senate Chamber, March 26, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR,—I am grateful for your timely intervention to save our Boston Common, by keeping it open to the western breezes and the setting sun. It is not pleasant, I know, to separate in opinion from those about us; but your object is so disinterested, so pure, so benevolent, so truly in the nature of a charity, that all, even though differing in details, must be glad that you have come forward.
I know well the value of water in scenery. Perhaps nothing else adds so much to the effect of a landscape, which, indeed, without water often seems lifeless, or, as was once said by a valued friend of mine, “like a face without eyes.” Boston, from its peninsular situation, cannot be entirely deprived of this picturesque feature. It seems to me, however, that, in a region like that now in question, we should hesitate long before renouncing the opportunity of adding to its attractions by a piece of water, which, from perennial supply, would always prove an ornament of unsurpassed beauty, as well as a place of recreation, and a source of health.
On this it is useless to enlarge. All who have ever stood on Boston Common will easily see how much this pleasant retreat must lose in charm, when its great western vista is closed; and all who have ever speculated on the probable growth of our metropolis, and the longing of a crowded population for fresh air, will recognize the necessity for open spaces, which will be outdoor ventilators.
Boston is already growing in every direction. A wise forecast, if not able at once to provide all the means needful for its salubrity and adornment, will at least avoid embarrassing the future, when half a million of souls have built their homes about the ancient Trimountain.
Our Common has been ample enough for the past; but the metropolis has already outgrown it in every respect. Besides being too narrow in proportions, it is wanting in those accessories of beauty and of knowledge especially illustrative of Natural History, which, according to the experience of other countries, are proper for public grounds. I wish much to see there, among other things, an arboretum, where every tree that can bear our climate shall find its classified place,—pleasing the eye by its beauty, protecting the body by its shade, and speaking to all by the voice of Science.
Accept the thanks of an absent citizen, who never thinks of his native Boston without a yearning to see it foremost in all that contributes to a true civilization; and believe me to be, my dear Sir,
Very faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
To George H. Snelling, Esq.
ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP A CITIZEN UNDER ORDER OF THE SENATE.
The Case of Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord, Massachusetts, with Speeches in the Senate, April 10, 13, and 16, 1860.
The case of Mr. Sanborn illustrates the reach of the Slave Power, and the extent to which the Senate did its bidding, at the instance of the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill. It is one of the skirmishes in the warfare with Slavery.
April 10, 1860, Mr. Sumner presented the memorial of Mr. Sanborn, which he explained as follows.
I have a memorial, Mr. President, from Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord, Massachusetts, setting forth a gross attempt to kidnap, by men pretending to act in the name of the Senate of the United States. The memorial is authenticated by his affidavit before a notary public. It sets forth, that, on the evening of the 3d of April, certain persons, who had been prowling about his neighborhood, under shelter of night, with fraudulent pretence drew him to his door, seized him, handcuffed him, and then by force undertook to convey him to a carriage. By the courageous interposition of a refined lady, his sister, neighbors were aroused; the village was next summoned by the ringing of bells, and at length that great friend of the oppressed in our country, the writ of Habeas Corpus, arrived on the ground. By intervention of that writ he was taken from the custody of the kidnappers. The next day a hearing was had before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; and Chief Justice Shaw, for thirty years the honored Chief Justice of Massachusetts, whose opinions are respected in every part of the country, representing the full bench, without undertaking to pass upon the question of jurisdiction in the Senate, went on to declare that the power delegated to its Sergeant-at-Arms could not be delegated to another, and that therefore all these proceedings were void, and the prisoner was discharged.
Now, Mr. President, this act, it seems to me, is conspicuous, both from the person against whom it was directed and the place where it was attempted. It was directed against Mr. Sanborn, a quiet citizen engaged in the instruction of youth, a scholar of excellent attainments, of perfect purity, and much beloved by friends and neighbors. It was attempted at Concord, where another seizure was once attempted, which began that revolutionary contest that ended in Independence. I affirm, Mr. President, that a person like Mr. Sanborn, having suffered this outrage at the hands of persons claiming to act in the name of the Senate, has a right to redress in this body: and I assert, still further, that this body owes something to its own character; it ought to wash its hands of such an outrage. I offer his memorial, and ask its reference to the Committee on the Judiciary, and, that the Senate may better understand it, I think it ought to be printed. I move also its printing.
Mr. Mason, of Virginia, Chairman of the Harper’s Ferry Committee, made an explanation of the attempt to arrest Mr. Sanborn, in the course of which he said: “This man Sanborn was in correspondence either with the man who was not long since hung in Virginia for his conduct as a traitor and murderer at Harper’s Ferry, or with some of his associates, I do not recollect which.” At the call of Mr. Fessenden the memorial was read, when Mr. Sumner said, in reply to Mr. Mason:—
I merely wish to correct one error into which the Senator has fallen. He states that Mr. Sanborn was taken from the custody of those pretended officers by a mob. Now nothing is within my knowledge except what is authenticated by that memorial under oath, and there the statement is express that he was not taken from the custody of these pretended officers except by the intervention of the writ of Habeas Corpus, sustained by the posse comitatus of the neighborhood.
Mr. Mason having stated that he expected a return of the officer, at his suggestion the memorial was laid on the table to await that return. To this Mr. Sumner consented, as he declared, with great reluctance, and with the understanding that then it should be referred.
April 13, 1860, Mr. Sumner presented additional papers in the case. After reading these, he said:—
There, Sir, is the official response to the assertion of the Senator from Virginia. The Senator says that Mr. Sanborn was rescued by a mob. It is true there was a mob in Concord. It was a mob of kidnappers, who went there in the name of the Senate of the United States to seize a citizen of Massachusetts. I have here a letter which I have received from a prominent citizen of Concord, present at the time. This is his statement:—
“No rescue by the crowd was made or attempted, till the writ of Habeas Corpus was served; and this, even, Carleton and his fellows resisted, till the deputy sheriff was obliged to use force to take Mr. Sanborn from him.… The arrest was as brutal, cowardly, and outrageous a proceeding as I ever knew in seven years’ experience as sheriff of that county.”
Sir, it is not unnatural that an arrest made under such circumstances should have attracted attention in that town and throughout Massachusetts. It did so. It has excited a feeling of indignation against this attempt, increased, perhaps, when people put the question, “Why all this effort to seize Mr. Sanborn? Why this overthrow of law to accomplish such a purpose?”
It is notorious that there is a citizen of Virginia, formerly chief magistrate of that State, who has openly avowed that he knew much in regard to the very matters in inquiry before that committee, and that rubies could not bribe him to disclose it. He has thrown the challenge down to that committee and this Senate, before the whole country, refusing openly to testify; and yet that committee make no motion to bring Ex-Governor Wise before the Senate, and compel him to testify. Instead, the committee seeks a Northern man, Mr. Hyatt, now in jail, and another Northern man, Mr. Sanborn, who it is well understood know nothing of the matter; and it follows up Mr. Sanborn by an attempt which I characterize here as simply an act of kidnapping.
Mr. Mason, in reply, insisted, at some length, that Mr. Sumner could have no information on the action of the committee, which had not yet reported. To this Mr. Sumner rejoined:—
Mr. President, I profess to have no information except what is open to all the world; and there are two things open to all the world, through the public press: first, that the Ex-Governor of Virginia has more than once declared that he had important information in reference to the matter before the committee, and that rubies would not tempt him to disclose it; and, secondly, it is known that the Ex-Governor of Virginia has not been brought to Washington, as Mr. Hyatt has been, and as an attempt has been made to bring Mr. Sanborn. No kidnappers have been sent into Virginia, nor handcuffs put upon Ex-Governor Wise.
April 16, 1860, Mr. Mason presented to the Senate the warrant for the arrest of Mr. Sanborn, with the return of the Deputy Marshal of Massachusetts to whom it was addressed, and moved its reference to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to inquire and report whether any, and what, further proceedings were necessary to vindicate the authority of the Senate and to effect the arrest of the witnesses. This motion was agreed to. Mr. Sumner then moved that the memorial of Mr. Sanborn, with the additional papers, be taken from the table and referred to the same committee. Here Mr. Mason promptly interposed the very unusual motion that the memorial be rejected. The Chair decided that the motion “to reject” could not take precedence, and therefore the motion to refer was first in order. Then it was that Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.
Mr. President, I think that I ought not to listen to such a proposition as has been made by the Senator from Virginia with reference to this memorial, without one word in reply. Here is a memorial from a gentleman of perfect respectability, charged with no crime, presumed to be innocent, complaining of gross outrage at the hands of certain persons pretending to act in the name of the Senate. The facts are duly set forth. They are authenticated also by documents now of record. The Senator moves—without any reference to a committee, without giving the petition the decency of a hearing, according to the ordinary forms of this body—that the memorial be “rejected”; and he makes this unaccustomed motion with a view to establish a precedent in such a case. I feel it my duty to establish a precedent also in this case, by entering an open, unequivocal protest against such attempt. Sir, an ancient poet said of a judge in hell, that he punished first and heard afterwards,—“castigatque auditque”; and, permit me to say, the Senator from Virginia, on this occasion, takes a precedent from that court.
To this protest Mr. Mason replied: “The Senator from Massachusetts, it seems to me, makes an opportunity to use language in the Senate Chamber which, so far as my intercourse with the world goes, is not usual out of the Senate Chamber. There is nothing in it that I have a right to take as personally offensive to myself. The Senate is the proper judge and arbiter of the decorum of its own proceedings.”
Then ensued a debate on the return, in which Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, and Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, took part, when Mr. Sumner, at last obtaining the floor, remarked as follows.
Only one word. I presented a memorial to this body, setting forth an outrage. The Senator from Virginia moved its rejection, while he proposed that the case should be proceeded with. I characterized that motion as I thought I was authorized to do, referring to a precedent of antiquity, and that was all; and this is the occasion for a lecture from the Senator on the manner in which one should conduct on this floor. From the heights of his self-confidence he addresses me. Sir, I wish to say simply, in reply, that, when an outrage comes before this body, I shall denounce it in plain terms; and if a precedent from a very bad place seems to be in point, I shall not hesitate to quote it.
Mr. Mason rejoined: “I did not undertake to lecture the Senator, of all others, upon the subject of manners or propriety. I do not mean it offensively, but, for my own convenience, I should consider it time thrown away. All that I said was, that I was not accustomed, in my intercourse with the world outside of this Chamber, to hear language of that sort in the circles in which I move.”
April 17, 1860, the memorial of Mr. Sanborn was referred to the Judiciary Committee, according to the motion of Mr. Sumner.
June 7, Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, from the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the return of the Deputy-Marshal and the other papers, reported a “Bill concerning the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate and the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives,” authorizing the appointment of deputies. This was intended to meet the decision of Chief Justice Shaw, of Massachusetts.[23]
June 15, Mr. Bayard moved to proceed with the consideration of his bill. The motion was not agreed to,—there being, on a division, ayes 22, noes 25. This was the end of that bill.
This incident was much noticed by the Northern press, especially in Massachusetts. The Boston Atlas and Bee expressed itself thus:—
“In our opinion the people of the Free States are never better satisfied with their representatives than when they see them repelling indignantly and manfully the arrogant insults of the slave-driving aristocracy. It will not diminish their attachment to Mr. Sumner, when they take notice that his rebuke of Mr. Mason was not in reply to any insult upon himself, but upon one of his outraged and abused constituents.”
PETITIONS AGAINST SLAVERY.
Speech in the Senate, April 18, 1860.
The treatment of these petitions illustrates the tyranny of the Slave Power to the very eve of its fall. Such an incident is not without historic significance.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I present the petition of Henry Elwell, Jr., and four hundred and fifty-five others, of Manchester, in Massachusetts, earnestly petitioning Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,—to abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the United States Territories,—to prohibit the inter-State slave-trade,—and to pass a resolution pledging Congress against the admission of any Slave State into the Union, the acquisition of any Slave Territory, and the employment of any slaves by any agent, contractor, officer, or department of the National Government; also, a like petition of Alvan Howes and fifty-five others, of Barnstable, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of John Clement and one hundred and nineteen others, of Townsend, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Samuel L. Rockwood and seventy-three others, of Weymouth, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of J. H. Browne and sixty-four others, of Sudbury, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Daniel Hosmer and ninety-eight others, of Sterling, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Albert Gould and one hundred and thirty-one others of Leicester, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of James M. Evelett and two hundred others, of Princeton, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Daniel Otis and seventy-nine others, of South Scituate, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Calvin Cutter and eighty-four others, of Warren, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of R. W. French and thirty others, of Lawrence, Massachusetts; also, a like petition of Edmund H. Sears and two hundred and forty-five others, of Wayland, Massachusetts.
These several petitions I now present. On a former occasion, during this session, a similar petition presented by me was laid upon the table. A similar petition presented by another Senator was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. An authoritative precedent, established after debate, since I have been in the Senate, seems to be the best guide on this occasion. That was on a memorial from four thousand citizens of Boston, praying the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. After ample consideration, during which much was said against the memorialists, no proposition was made to lay their prayer on the table. Following that precedent, and another established during the present session, I move that all these petitions be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. Mason, of Virginia, at once moved that the petitions lie on the table, thus precluding debate and stifling action. The yeas and nays were ordered on motion of Mr. Sumner, and resulted as follows, 25 yeas and 19 nays:—
Yeas,—Messrs. Bayard, Bragg, Chesnut, Clay, Clingman, Crittenden, Davis, Fitch, Fitzpatrick, Gwin, Hemphill, Hunter, Iverson, Johnson of Arkansas, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Polk, Rice, Sebastian, Slidell, and Thomson,—25.
Nays,—Messrs. Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Hale, Hamlin, King, Seward, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, and Wilson,—19.
So the petitions were ordered to lie on the table. The Democrats all voted yea; the Republicans all voted nay.
SAFETY OF PASSENGERS IN STEAMSHIPS FOR CALIFORNIA.
Resolution and Remarks in the Senate, May 21, 1860.
May 21, 1860, Mr. Sumner introduced the following resolution.
“Resolved, That the Committee on Commerce be instructed to consider the expediency of further action, in order to secure proper accommodations and proper safety for passengers on board the steamers between New York and San Francisco, and to increase the efficacy of the existing passenger laws of the United States in their application to California passengers; with liberty to report by bill or otherwise.”
The Senate, by unanimous consent, proceeded to consider the resolution.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I see the Senator from California [Mr. Latham] in his place, and I very gladly take the opportunity of calling his attention particularly to the resolution which I now have the honor to offer. By a communication in the newspapers, from a distinguished source,—a clergyman, who, during the last two months, sailed from Boston to San Francisco,[24]—it appears that the steamers are overloaded with passengers, and without adequate accommodations of other kinds for safety. His statement on the subject is explicit, and has been made in the newspapers, as also in private letters to his friends. I do not know that the evil can be reached by any additional legislation; perhaps no additional legislation is needed; but it is an evil which should be remedied in some way, or else we shall be startled some morning by the news of a great calamity,—the loss of one of these steamers, with, it may be, a thousand passengers.
CANDIDATES WHO ARE A PLATFORM.
Letter to a Ratification Meeting at Buffalo, New York, May 30, 1860.
This was addressed to a meeting at Buffalo for the ratification of the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as President and Hannibal Hamlin as Vice-President.
Senate Chamber, May 30, 1860.
DEAR SIR,—My duties here will not allow me to be with you at Buffalo; but I shall unite with you in every generous word uttered for Freedom, and in every pledge of enthusiastic support to the Republican candidates.
We have a Platform of noble principles, and candidates, each of whom, through his well-known principles and integrity of character, is a Platform in himself.
Accept my thanks for the honor of your invitation, and believe me, dear Sir,
Faithfully yours,
Charles Sumner.
A. W. Harvey, Esq.
THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY.
Speech in the Senate, on the Bill for the Admission of Kansas as a Free State, June 4, 1860.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm
With favor never clasped, but bred a dog.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV. Sc. 3.
A universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II. 622-625.
Onward! onward!
With the night-wind,
Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!
Longfellow, Golden Legend.
Instrumenti genus vocale, et semivocale, et mutum: vocale, in quo sunt servi; semivocale, in quo sunt boves; mutum, in quo sunt plaustra.—Varro, De Re Rustica, Lib. I. cap. xvii. § 1.
Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt;
Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant.
Catullus, Carm. LXIV. 146, 148.
Pone crucem servo.—Meruit quo crimine servus
Supplicium? quis testis adest? quis detulit? Audi;
Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est.—
O demens, ita servus homo est? Nil fecerit, esto:
Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.
Juvenal. Sat. VI. 219-223.
There is a tradition of the Prophet having said, that the greatest mortification at the Day of Judgment will be when the pious slave is carried to Paradise and the wicked master condemned to Hell.—Saadi, The Gulistan, tr. Gladwin, p. 242.
“And the Black Oppressor am I called. And for this reason I am called the Black Oppressor, that there is not a single man around me whom I have not oppressed, and justice have I done unto none.” … “Since thou hast, indeed, been an oppressor so long,” said Peredur, “I will cause that thou continue so no longer.” So he slew him.—The Mabinogion, tr. Lady Charlotte Guest, Vol. I. pp. 341, 342.
After we had secured these people, I called the linguists, and ordered them to bid the men-negroes between decks be quiet (for there was a great noise amongst them). On their being silent, I asked, What had induced them to mutiny? They answered, I was a great rogue to buy them in order to carry them away from their own country, and that they were resolved to regain their liberty, if possible.—Snelgrave, New Account of some Parts of Guinea and the Slave-Trade, p. 170.
A system of concubinage was practised among them worse than the loose polygamy of the savages: the savage had as many women as consented to become his wives; the colonist as many as he could enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma upon the Europeans in their intercourse with those whom they treat as inferior races; there is a perpetual contradiction between their lust and their avarice. The planter will one day take a slave for his harlot, and sell her the next as a being of some lower species, a beast of labor. If she be indeed an inferior animal, what shall be said of the one action? If she be equally with himself a human being and an immortal soul, what shall be said of the other? Either way there is a crime committed against human nature.—Southey, History of Brazil, Chap. VIII., Vol. I. p. 258.
Negro slavery exists in no part of the world without producing indolence, licentiousness, and inhumanity in the whites; and these vices draw after them their earthly punishment,—to look no farther into their fearful, but assured consequences.—Ibid., Chap. XLIV., Vol. III. p. 816.
I had observed much, and heard more, of the cruelty of masters towards their negroes; but now I received an authentic account of some horrid instances thereof. The giving a child a slave of its own age to tyrannize over, to beat and abuse out of sport, was, I myself saw, a common practice. Nor is it strange, being thus trained up in cruelty, they should afterwards arrive at so great perfection in it; that Mr. Star, a gentleman I often met at Mr. Lasserre’s, should, as he himself informed L., first nail up a negro by the ears, then order him to be whipped in the severest manner, and then to have scalding water thrown over him, so that the poor creature could not stir for four months after. Another much applauded punishment is drawing their slaves’ teeth. One Colonel Lynch is universally known to have cut off a poor negro’s legs, and to kill several of them every year by his barbarities.—Rev. Charles Wesley, Journal, Charleston, S. C., August 2, 1736.
You are to have no regard to the health, strength, comfort, natural affections, or moral feelings, or intellectual endowments of my negroes. You are only to consider what subsistence to allow them and what labor to exact of them will subserve my interest. According to the most accurate calculation I can make, the proportion of subsistence and labor which will work them up in six years upon an average is the most profitable to the planter. And this allowance, surely, is very humane; for we estimate here the lives of our coal-heavers, upon an average, at only two years, … and our soldiers and seamen no matter what.—A West-India Planter’s Instructions for his Overseers: John Adams, Works, Vol. X. pp. 339, 340.
The unfortunate man would have been tried upon five other indictments, some of them still more atrocious than the one upon which he was found guilty; and his general character for barbarity was so notorious that no room was left for me even to deliberate. His victims have been numerous; some of them were even buried in their chains, and there have been found upon the bones taken from the grave chains and iron rings of near forty pounds’ weight.… He had been three times married, has left several children; he had been in the Army, had a liberal education, and lived in what is called the great world. His manners and address were those of a gentleman. Cruelty appears in him to have been the effect of violence of temper, and habit had made him regardless of the death and suffering of a slave.—Right Hon. Hugh Elliot, Governor of the Leeward Islands: Memoir, by the Countess of Minto, pp. 409, 410.
Is slavery less slavery in a Christian than in a Mahometan country? I entreat your attention, while I plead the general cause of humanity. In such a cause it is right to appeal to your sensibility as well as your reason. It is now no longer time to flatter petty tyrants by acknowledging that color constitutes a legitimate title for holding men in abject and perpetual bondage. In support of this usurpation what can be urged but the law of the strongest?—Col. David Humphreys, Valedictory Discourse before the Cincinnati of Connecticut, July 4, 1804, p. 29.
Christianity suppressed slavery, but the Christians of the sixteenth century reëstablished it,—as an exception, indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of the races of mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though less extensive, was far more difficult of cure.—Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Bowen, Chap. XVIII. sec. 2, Vol. I. p. 457.
The Kentuckian delights in violent bodily exertion; he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat.… Were I inclined to continue this parallel, I could easily prove that almost all the differences which may be remarked between the characters of the Americans in the Southern and in the Northern States have originated in Slavery.—Ibid., pp. 467, 468.
I visited our State Penitentiary a short time since, and from my own personal observation I am led to the inevitable conclusion that the plan of sending our slaves to the Penitentiary, as a punishment for crime, is exactly the reverse: it is rather a reward than punishment. “Let sober reason judge.”
We punish offenders to prevent crime. I would ask any reasonable man, Is the sending a slave of any of our farms to the Penitentiary a punishment? The white man is punished by being deprived of his liberty for that length of time: what liberty is the slave deprived of? He has as much, and oftentimes more, liberty within the walls of the Penitentiary than on any of those large sugar or cotton plantations. Then where is the punishment? We send white men there, and the dread of going is a stain on his character: what character has the negro to lose? Hence we must come to the conclusion that sending negro slaves to the Penitentiary is not a punishment.
A moment’s reflection will convince any man who has ever had the management of negroes on a plantation, that the well-being and safety of societies demand that any offence committed by a negro, for which the lash is not a sufficient punishment, death should be the penalty.
Taking these things into consideration, would it not be just and laudable to sell all negroes now in the Penitentiary to the highest bidder, on or about the first of November next, by the Sheriff of the Parish of East Baton Rouge, on the same terms and conditions that negroes are sold at present, under an ordinary fi. fa., and, as near as can be, two thirds of the net proceeds of each negro be paid to the former owners or their legal representatives, the balance be and remain in the State Treasury for ordinary purposes?—Weekly Advocate, Baton Rouge, La., Jan. 17, 1858.
A very large edition of this speech was printed at Washington, immediately after its delivery. Another appeared at Boston, with a portrait; and another at San Francisco, with the Republican Platform. While the Rebellion was still warring on the National Government, an edition was brought out in New York by the “Young Men’s Republican Union,” to which Mr. Sumner prefixed a Dedication to the Young Men of the United States, which will be found in its proper place, according to date, in this collection.
A letter from that devoted friend of the Slave, the late George L. Stearns, of Boston, under date of March 1st, 1860, shows something of the outside prompting under which Mr. Sumner spoke.
“I have just read ——’s speech. He stands up to the mark well, for a politician; but we want one who believes a Man is greater than a President, and who would not lift his finger to obtain the best office in the gift of our nation, to raise this question above the political slough into its true position. Charles O’Conor, in his late speech in New York, affirmed, that, ‘if Slavery were not a wise and beneficent institution for the black as well as the white, it could not be defended.’ We want you to take up the gauntlet that he has thrown down so defiantly.”
A letter from William H. Brooks, of Cambridgeport, unconsciously harmonized with Mr. Stearns.
“Feeling that our nation is now in the very throes of her deliverance, and I trust her prompt deliverance, from bondage to her, not Thirty, but Three Hundred Thousand Tyrants, may I frankly say, that, if not inconsistent with your health and safety, which are on no consideration to be perilled, you could aid more than any single person, or score of them, in effectually accomplishing the great triumph.… The unseen forces of public opinion are gathering and forming for the great November conflict. Your long, enforced, and martyr silence will give a depth of impression and moving power and ten thousand echoes to your words beyond their accustomed might.”
Something about the menace of violence after this speech, with illustrations of its reception at the time, is postponed to an Appendix.
Kansas was not admitted as a State into the Union until January 29, 1861, after the slaveholding Senators had withdrawn to organize the Rebellion, when the bill on which the present speech was made became a law.