“It is true, the country press spoke out and denounced this attack upon Mr. Sumner, and the attempt which is being made to take him from his place and put in it some weak-backed quietist, who, afraid to look this thing in the face, would palter weak commonplaces, and, while the patient writhed in the paroxysms of pain, would administer soothing drops instead of strong medicine to cure the disease. Mr. Sumner struck at Worcester the key-note of an anthem that will, ay, that is now being taken up by the people, and the sound of which will put the croaking of these penny trumpets far out of hearing.”
The Norfolk County Journal, by one of its correspondents, explained the opposition.
“Of course no man with his eyes open needs to be told that this furious onslaught on Mr. Sumner has very little to do with this speech. It is the opening of the war to defeat his reëlection next fall. A year ago the same papers made, if possible, more savage attacks upon Mr. Andrew. Before he was nominated every one of them opposed him, and after his nomination not one of them supported him cordially; and most of them predicted, that, though he might be carried through by the Presidential election, yet in another year the reaction would sweep him into oblivion. They will find themselves equally mistaken about Mr. Sumner.”
Wendell Phillips, alluding to the assaults upon the speech, wrote:—
“If it had no other advantage, suffice it that it shows you who your personal enemies are.”
Not content with arraigning the policy proposed by Mr. Sumner, his assailants became critics of another sort. They insisted that he was wrong in his illustrations from history,—misrepresenting the decree of Emancipation at Athens, and misquoting Plutarch.
The decree of Emancipation can be read, and also the record of the excitement which followed. That Hyperides at a desperate moment proposed Emancipation as a measure of defence against a triumphant conqueror is indisputable, and that such a measure was already known in Athens among war powers is attested by the scholiast of Aristophanes,[177] while a candid interpretation of all the circumstances, including the acceptable peace unexpectedly offered by Philip, points to the conclusion that the latter was unwilling to provoke this untried warfare.[178] This incident is described by a French writer, who gives to it the same effect as Mr. Sumner:—
“Philippe, au bruit de cette proposition, dont l’adoption pouvait ébranler la Grèce entière, s’arrêta, frappé d’épouvante.”[179]
The heaviest blows were on account of Plutarch, and here it is not easy to comprehend the anger displayed. Endeavoring to present the idea of Emancipation in its proper relief, Mr. Sumner brought forward the proclamation of liberty to the slaves, saying nothing of others joining Marius, according to the familiar translation of Langhorne, well satisfied that the slaves were the effective force; and the speech was so reported in the newspapers. Then came the attack, with learned newspaper scholia, garnished with Greek type, insisting that the husbandmen and shepherds, called “freemen” in Langhorne’s translation, and not the emancipated slaves, were authors of the success which carried the illustrious adventurer into the Roman Forum, there to clutch with dying grasp his seventh consulate.
The text of Plutarch is the best answer. That interesting biographer speaks of the slaves first, putting the Proclamation of Emancipation foremost; and this is precisely what was needed for the argument. Nor was Mr. Sumner alone in omitting to mention particularly the husbandmen and shepherds, whether freemen or freedmen. Good scholars had done precisely the same. Dr. Liddell, head master of Westminster School, and one of the authors of the favorite Greek Lexicon, describing this event, gives prominence to the Proclamation of Emancipation, without mentioning any freemen, saying: “Like all the partisan leaders of this period, he offered liberty to slaves, and soon found himself at the head of a large force.”[180] Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology says that Marius “landed at Telamo in Etruria, and, proclaiming freedom to the slaves, began to collect a large force.”[181] And the great historian Niebuhr, after referring to his landing on the coast of Etruria, where he was joined by Etruscan cohorts, adds,—“Marius was not at all delicate in collecting troops, and even restored slaves to freedom on condition of their taking up arms for him.”[182] Thus both these authorities, in harmony with Dr. Liddell, treat the Proclamation as the chief feature, precisely as Mr. Sumner presented it, and all three leave out of view the “freemen.”