“The oration made by Mr. Sumner is not a mere speech in the common meaning of the term, but rather a thoroughly digested treatise, carefully prepared, on the basis of a great number of facts and quotations. It unites the most thorough-going philosophical research, regardless of the conflict of its results with the nearest practical aims, to that variegated poetical coloring, which, appealing to the power of imagination, is an indispensable element of an efficient speech. Even to the best speeches of Senator Seward Sumner’s speech stands in proportion as an oil painting of richest coloring and most dramatic grouping of figures to a mere black crayon etching. If Mr. Sumner’s speech had been uttered before the meeting of the Chicago Convention, he would undoubtedly have occupied a prominent rank among the candidates of the radical portion of the Republican party.”
The Sunday Transcript, of Philadelphia, said:—
“The greatest speech of the season is certainly Charles Sumner’s magnificent philippic against ‘The Great Barbarism.’ The learning and research, the array of facts, the apt and eloquent quotations, the striking illustrations, and the vivid imagery of the oration are its least merits. The style and diction are as clear as crystal, as pure as water, and sonorously musical. The entire tone of the speech is dignified and lofty.…
“Indeed, we admire his courage, his unequalled moral pluck. In this day of compromise and timidity, of bated breath and base concession, when it is the loathsome fashion to say that the Slavery Question should be discussed only as a matter of profit and loss, it is refreshing to hear a Senator speak in the spirit of Jefferson and the Fathers. Besides, does not the South challenge us to discuss the abstract question? Do not Benjamin, Toombs, Stephens, Curry, Keitt, Lamar, Hunter, Slidell, Brown, Hammond, Chesnut, Mason, Pryor, Clingman, Fitzhugh, and all the Southern politicians, discuss the question of Slavery in the abstract? Do they not deliver long arguments to prove that Slavery is right, just, benign, civilizing, and necessary,—that it is the proper condition of the negro and the working-man? And is any free Northern man so poor a poltroon as to say that these men shall not be replied to? What! shall all the South be privileged to praise and applaud Human Slavery, and not even Charles Sumner be allowed to describe it as it really is?”
The Daily Democrat, of Chicago, said:—
“This is the great speech of the day. It paints American Slavery as it is, and as it has never been painted before. No Republican can look upon the picture which Charles Sumner draws of this Barbarism without feeling his heart swell with hatred against it, and without recording a new vow to labor unceasingly for its extinction.”
Early in the controversy Frederick Douglass’s Paper bore testimony as follows.
“At last the right word has been spoken in the Chamber of the American Senate. Long and sadly have we waited for an utterance like this, and were beginning at last to despair of getting anything of the sort from the present generation of Republican statesmen; but Senator Sumner has now exceeded all our hopes, and filled up the full measure of all that we have long desired in the Senatorial discussions of Slavery. He has dared to grapple directly with the Hell-born monster itself. It is not the unreasonableness of the demands of Slavery, not the aggressions nor the mere arrogance of the Slave Power, insufferable and unconstitutional as these have been, that have now so thoroughly aroused the soul and fired the tongue of the learned and eloquent Senator of Massachusetts, but the inherent and brutal barbarism of Slavery itself.… His manner of assault is, we think, faultless. It was calm, self-poised, earnest, brave, and yet completely guarded. The network of his argument, though wonderfully elaborate and various, is everywhere, and in all its parts, strong as iron. The whole slaveholding Propaganda of the Senate might dash themselves against it in a compact body, without breaking the smallest fibre of any of its various parts.”