“That Sumner displayed great ability, and showed that in oratorical talent he was no unworthy successor of Adams, Webster, and Everett, no one who heard him will deny. In vigor and richness of diction, in felicity and fecundity of illustration, in breadth and completeness of view, he stands unsurpassed. He laid the classics, the Gothic mythology, the imaginative literature of Europe, and the Bible under tribute for imagery or quotation. That he had the great speech of Cicero and the greater speech of Burke in his mind’s eye, there can be no doubt.
“In his reply to Cass, Douglas, and Mason, who stung him into excitement, he was more successful than at any other time. The collision knocked fire from him; and well it might, for he was abused and insulted as grossly as any man could be; but he replied successfully to the unmeasured vituperation of Douglas, and the aristocratic and withering hauteur of Mason.”
The able correspondent of the Evening Post at New York, William S. Thayer, afterwards Consul-General at Alexandria, furnished this description.
“There is but one opinion among all competent judges as to the unexampled feast of eloquence which has been enjoyed in the Senate for the past two days, from the lips of Senator Sumner. In a speech of five hours in length, he has exhibited the most signal combination of oratorical splendors which, in the opinion of a veteran Senator, has ever been witnessed in that Hall. Indeed, for the union of clear statement, close and well-put reasoning, piquant personality and satire, freighted with a wealth of learned and apposite illustrations, every one of which was subsidiary to the main purpose of the argument, it may safely challenge comparison with the great speeches of Burke, to whom the Massachusetts Senator, in the ripened vigor of his abilities, and in his varied accomplishments, bears no small similitude.… But Mr. Sumner was more fortunate than Burke in drawing and detaining his audience.… From the beginning to the end of each session, not only were the galleries thronged to their utmost capacities with ladies and gentlemen, but all the doorways were completely blocked up with listeners who hung in breathless suspense upon his eloquence. It seemed even as if the members of the other House had adjourned to crowd the lobbies of the Senate. No such scene has been witnessed since the days of Webster.”
A writer in the Liberator thus recorded his impressions on reading the speech:—
“Never, I think, from anything did I receive an impression of greater power and grandeur. It came over me like the sound of many waters. I laid down the paper, and still there seemed to press around me a solemn, majestic anthem from a mighty organ. I can almost imagine that around that sick-bed the invisible angels gather, and that on that bruised and mangled head the rays of a divine halo gleam between the blossoms of an imperishable wreath.”
Another writer, in a country journal of Massachusetts, expresses himself thus:—
“It were the merest commonplace to say that Massachusetts may well be proud of her son. She owes him a debt which she can never fitly discharge. I would avoid estimating him too highly; but it seems to me that it may be said without extravagance, that to much of the firmly knit strength and unassailable logic of a Webster he unites all the fire and fervor of an Otis, with the grace and classic elegance of an Everett. But underlying, interpenetrating, and informing all this brilliancy of genius is the earnest philanthropy of the man,—a philanthropy which gives an effect to all his productions, which the cold-blooded politician, or statesman, even, can never hope to attain. His words go straight to the popular heart, and find there an earnest and immediate response.”
The Rev. Gilbert Haven, in a published sermon at Westfield, Massachusetts, spoke thus:—