“On the same page, again alluding to Mr. Sumner, he says: ‘Our Revolutionary fathers thought nothing of these sickly distinctions which gentlemen use now to make the South odious.’
“Again, on the same page, alluding to other remarks of Mr. Sumner, he says: ‘They may furnish materials for what I understand is a very popular novel,—Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I have no doubt they may do this; but I put it to the gentleman, are his remarks true?’ ‘Are his remarks true?’ was the question, full of insolence and of accusation, put to Mr. Sumner in the face of the Senate.
And again he says: ‘They dealt some hard licks, but they are not true as historical facts.’
“So you will perceive Mr. Sumner was not the first man to raise this question of truth and veracity on the floor of the Senate.
“On the same page the Senator from South Carolina made a misstatement of a fact, which was promptly corrected by Mr. Sumner, and by General Shields, then a member of the Senate.
“On page 237 there are insinuations made of ‘pseudo-philanthropy,’ and also insinuations of ‘mere eloquence,—professions of philanthropy,—a philanthropy of adoption more than affection.’ Yes, Sir, according to the Senator from South Carolina, the Senator from Massachusetts, and those who think with him, have ‘adopted’ their philanthropy; it is not the ‘philanthropy of affection, but of adoption,’—‘a philanthropy that professes much and does nothing, with a long advertisement and short performance.’ These are expressive words, and the Senator from South Carolina should remember that these words, uttered with the peculiar forms which he affects, are anything but calculated to be complimentary to my colleague or any other Senator.
“On the same page, allusions, which, from the context, are in the nature of insinuations, are made against Mr. Sumner and his associates, as to ‘those who stand aloof and hold up an ideal standard of morality, emblazoned by imagination and sustained in ignorance, or perhaps more often planted by criminal ambition and heartless hypocrisy.’ ‘Criminal ambition and heartless hypocrisy’ are the terms used by the Senator from South Carolina, in application to Senators on this floor, and to a large portion of the country, which concurs with them!
“On page 239 he tauntingly speaks of a ‘machine,’ in reference to the people who hold Mr. Sumner’s opinions, ‘oiled by Northern fanaticism.’ I do not know what kind of a machine that is,—a machine ‘oiled by Northern fanaticism.’ The Senator who uses these phrases towards members of this body, and towards a section of the Union, is a Senator who tries to make us believe that he is a man who comprehends the whole country and all its interests, and who has nothing in him of the spirit of a sectional agitator! He takes great offence because my colleague holds him up as one of the chieftains of sectional agitation. I think my colleague is right,—that the Senator from South Carolina is one of the chieftains of a sectionalism at war with the fundamental ideas that underlie our democratic institutions, and at war with the repose and harmony of the country.
“On page 234 he again talks about ‘sickly sentimentality,’ and he charges that this ‘sickly sentimentality’ now governs the councils of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Yes, Sir, the Senator from South Carolina makes five distinct assaults upon Massachusetts. Massachusetts councils governed by sickly sentimentality! Sir, Massachusetts stands to-day where she stood when the little squad assembled, on the 19th of April, 1775, to fire the first gun of the Revolution. The sentiments that brought those humble men to the little green at Lexington, and to the bridge at Concord, which carried them up the slope of Bunker Hill, and which drove forth the British troops from Boston, never again to press the soil of Massachusetts,—that sentiment still governs the councils of Massachusetts, and rules in the hearts of her people. The feeling which governed the men of that glorious epoch of our history is the feeling of the men of Massachusetts of to-day.
“Those sentiments of liberty and patriotism have penetrated the hearts of the whole population of that Commonwealth. Sir, in that State, every man, no matter what blood runs in his veins, or what may be the color of his skin, stands up before the law the peer of the proudest that treads her soil. This is the sentiment of the people of Massachusetts. In equality before the law they find their strength. They know this to be right, if Christianity is true,—and they will maintain it in the future, as they have in the past; and the civilized world, the coming generations, those who are hereafter to give law to the universe, will pronounce that in this contest Massachusetts is right, inflexibly right, and South Carolina, and the Senator from South Carolina, wrong. The latter are maintaining the odious relics of a barbarous age and civilization,—not the civilization of the New Testament,—not the civilization that is now blessing and adorning the best portions of the world.