Putting aside all question of concession or compromise, the single question remains, How shall we treat the seceding States? And this is the question which the new Administration will be called to meet. I see well that it will naturally bear much and forbear long,—that it will be moved by principle, and not by passion,—and that it will adopt the harsh instrumentalities of power only when all other things have failed. And I see well the powerful allies which will be enlisted on its side. There will be the civilization of the Christian world, speaking with the innumerable voices of the press, and constituting a Public Opinion of irresistible energy. There will be the great contemporary example of Italy, after a slumber of centuries aroused to assertion of her rights,—and of Russia also, now completing that memorable act of Emancipation by which Freedom is assured to twenty millions of serfs. There will be also the concurring action of European powers, which, turning with disgust from a new confederacy founded on Human Slavery, will refuse to recognize it in the Family of Nations. There will be also the essential weakness of Slavery with the perils of servile insurrection, which, under the influence of this discussion, must become more and more manifest in every respect. There will be also the essential strength of Freedom, as a principle, carrying victory in its right hand. And there will be Time, which is at once Reformer and Pacificator. Such are some of the allies sure to be on the side of the Administration.
FOREIGN RELATIONS: ARBITRATION.
Report from Committee on Foreign Relations, advising the President to submit the San Juan Boundary Question to Arbitration, in the Senate, March 19, 1861.
By the withdrawal of Southern Senators, the Republicans were left with a majority in the Senate, enabling them to reorganize the Standing Committees, which was done March 8, 1861. At the head of the Finance Committee was Mr. Fessenden, instead of Mr. Hunter,—of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Trumbull, instead of Mr. Bayard,—of the Military Committee, Mr. Wilson, instead of Mr. Jefferson Davis,—and of the Naval Committee, Mr. Hale, instead of Mr. Mallory. Mr. Sumner was appointed Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in place of Mr. Mason, of Virginia, who had held this position from December 8, 1851. With the former on the new Committee were Messrs. Collamer, of Vermont, Doolittle, of Wisconsin, Harris, of New York, Douglas, of Illinois, Polk, of Missouri, and Breckinridge, of Kentucky. The appointment of Mr. Sumner to this important position was contrasted with his treatment at an earlier day, when the omission of his name from any committee was justified on the ground that he was “outside of any healthy political organization in this country,” and this Senatorial sally was received with “laughter.”[141] Mr. Hale and Mr. Chase were in the same category. Only Democrats and Whigs were accepted: such was the Law of Slavery. At last this was all changed.
The reorganization of the Committees attracted the attention of the press at home and abroad. It was properly recognized as marking a change from old to new. The London Star, in an elaborate article on the transition, welcomed especially the new Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations.
“The Republican Senators have selected for the Chairman of this Committee the Hon. Charles Sumner, a statesman deservedly honored in this country, not only for his eloquence as an orator, but for his unswerving fidelity to the cause of Freedom. No man could have been chosen for this office in every respect more acceptable to the English people. It is not only as the Antislavery legislator, who, from the first moment that he took his seat in the Senate as the representative of Massachusetts, has ever raised his voice and given his vote for the hapless negro,—it is not only as the patriot who almost suffered martyrdom on the floor of the Senate Chamber from the ruffian hand of Preston S. Brooks, that the English people will be disposed to regard his appointment with hearty approval: he has established other claims to our sympathy and admiration, which we must not be slow to recognize. Mr. Sumner is well known in this country—scarcely less, indeed, than in America—as the stanch friend of Peace. Years ago, in his famous oration on the True Glory of Nations, he set forth the advantages of a pacific policy, with arguments as cogent and irresistible as those which have been employed by Mr. Cobden, and with an eloquence of language and a fertility of illustration which revived the oratory of classic times.…
“And if during the period of Mr. Lincoln’s administration causes of dispute should unhappily arise between America and Great Britain, or any other foreign power, Mr. Sumner will not fail to point to arbitration as the only reasonable and satisfactory mode of settling international differences. He will not, if he can help it, permit San Juan to be made a casus belli, or tolerate any more of those periodical expeditions against the weak and effeminate republics of South America, by which Mr. Buchanan and his predecessors treated with contempt the solemn injunctions of the Fathers of the Republic, that their posterity should avoid the fatal quicksands of European diplomacy, and abstain from intermeddling with the affairs of other states.”