From the Kansas and Nebraska Bill came forth a demon. Down to this time the hostility to Mr. Sumner in the Senate was limited. It now became more general, although he had said nothing in any way to justify it, except that he had exposed Slavery and the pretensions in its behalf. From the Senate it extended among the partisans of Slavery.
Meanwhile an incident in Boston was used to arouse a feeling against him. On the evening of the 24th of May Anthony Burns was seized there as a fugitive slave, on the claim of a citizen of Virginia, and detained by the marshal in a room of the Court-House. In the course of the evening of the 26th, immediately after a meeting at Faneuil Hall, addressed by Abolitionists, the Court-House was attacked by a number of citizens, and in the defence, James Batchelder, one of the guard, was killed. The report of his death caused a great sensation at Washington. It was received while the impression of Mr. Sumner's midnight speech was still fresh, and was at once attributed to that effort. Mr. Sumner was treated as responsible for this act, and the official organs of the Administration openly denounced him as "murderer." It was predicted in the speech that the bill would "scatter dragons' teeth," which he was assured would "fructify in civil strife and feud"; but plainly there was nothing to suggest or excite violence, even if at the time the speech had been known in Boston, as it was not. It was concluded on the morning of the 26th of May, at too late an hour for the telegraph, and in fact was not known in Boston until it reached there by mail on the 27th; but Batchelder was killed on the previous evening. And yet, in the face of these unquestionable facts, there was a cry against Mr. Sumner.
The Union, which was the official organ, thus broke forth on the morning of May 30th.
"Boston in arms against the Constitution, and an Abolition fanatic, the distant leader, safe from the fire and the fagot he invokes from his seat in the Senate of the United States, giving the command. Men shot down in the faithful discharge of duty to a law based upon a constitutional guaranty, and the word which encourages the assassin given by a man who has sworn on the Holy Evangelists and in the presence of his Maker to support the Constitution of the country. But our Charles Sumner tells us that a new era has been inaugurated, ... that the Constitution shall not be obeyed, and that Slavery shall at all and every hazard be uprooted and destroyed, in spite of all that has been pledged and written in other days."
The Star, another organ of the Administration, repeated the imputations of the Union, in a long article, of which the following is a specimen.
"If Southern gentlemen are threatened and assaulted, while legally seeking to obtain possession of property for the use of which they have a solemn constitutional guaranty, if legal rights can only be sought for and established at the bayonet's point, certain Northern men now in our midst will have to evince a little more circumspection than they have ever evinced in their walk, talk, and acts.
"Public sentiment in Alexandria is intensely excited in condemnation of Sumner and his allies. We know that it increases in this city every hour. The masses look upon Sumner as responsible for the death of Batchelder. They attribute, and justly, the action of the murderers to the counsel of Sumner. We hope that the public sentiment against these Abolition miscreants who infest Congress and our fair city, and fill the atmosphere in which they move with the odor of a brothel, will not descend to acts of personal violence. Such conduct can find no justification. But let public opinion condemn these men everywhere,—in the street, in the Capitol, in every place where men meet. Let Sumner and his infamous gang feel that he cannot outrage the fame of his country, counsel treason to its laws, incite the ignorant to bloodshed and murder, and still receive the support and countenance of the society of this city, which he has done so much to vilify.
"While the person of a Virginia citizen is only safe from rudeness and outrage behind the serried ranks of armed men, Charles Sumner is permitted to walk among the 'slave-catchers' and 'fire-eaters' of the South in peace and security. While he incites his constituents to resist the Federal laws even to the shedding of blood, concocts his traitorous plots, and sends forth his incendiary appeals under the broad protecting panoply of the laws he denounces, he retains his seat in the Senate, and yet daily violates the official oath which he took to support the Constitution of the United States."