GENTLEMEN,—Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me. Knowing by recent experience something of the generous Republicans of New York, it is with reluctance that I renounce the opportunity you give me of mingling with them on an interesting occasion.
As citizens of a great metropolis, they have duties of peculiar difficulty. It is in these centres that the Proslavery sentiment of the North shows itself with violence often kindred to that of the plantation, so as almost to justify the language of Jefferson, who called great cities “sores” of the body politic.[166] Even this expression does not seem too strong, when we recognize the infection of Slavery breaking out sometimes in the violence of mobs, and constantly manifest in the press, in public speech, and in a corrupt public sentiment. It belongs to the Republican party, by gentle, healing influences, guided by a firm hand, to inaugurate the work of cure, that health may be substituted for disease.
Meanwhile the wretched disease must be understood, and I venture to call attention to a work just published in New York, where it is exposed with consummate ability: I refer to “Slavery in History,” by Adam Gurowski. The learned author, who vindicates his new title as American citizen by noble effort for the good of his adopted country, exhibits Slavery, from the beginning of time, in all nations and places, as nothing more nor less than a monstrosity, disturbing, corrupting, and debasing the government under which it exists, and all the individuals who are parties to it, directly or indirectly: for no man can sustain Slavery, or in any way apologize for it, without suffering in moral, if not also in intellectual nature. Such a work, founded on careful studies, and executed in the spirit of science, will naturally take a place in libraries; but I am sure that all inquirers into the character of Slavery, and especially all practical Republicans, engaged in efforts to stay the spread of this barbarous disease, ought to welcome it as an ally. No good citizen who makes himself acquainted with Slavery can hesitate to join against it.
Accept my best wishes for the success of your festival, and also the assurance of the respect with which
I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
Your obliged Servant,
Charles Sumner.
Homer Franklin, Abraham W. Kennedy, W. K. Schenck, Esqrs.