“It was a labored, but concealed, attack on the Constitution and its framers. Mr. Sumner did not dare speak his sentiments fully, and boldly attack Washington and the illustrious Fathers. He preferred the insidious course of instilling into the minds of his audience sentiments of hatred to the Constitution, so that they might look complacently hereafter on the Abolition revolution which he contemplates.”
An extract from the Principia, at New York, the organ of Abolitionists insisting always upon the utter unconstitutionality of Slavery, will suffice on the other side.
“Our readers at a distance will be interested and encouraged to know that the most radical portions of it received the most enthusiastic applause from the immense assemblage, on that occasion, without eliciting the slightest expression of dissent. This was remarkably true, even of that portion of it which defended the Abolitionists from the charge of having caused our present national troubles, and, on the contrary, gave them ample and due credit for keeping alive the flame of Freedom by their opposition to Slavery, and forewarning the country of the evils it was bringing upon us. To ourselves and a remnant of our old associates, on the platform and in the meeting, who remembered the scenes of mob violence in this city in 1833-34, and the attempted renewal of the same riots in the same Cooper Institute only about two years since, when Cheever and Phillips were interrupted and threatened, the contrast was most striking and cheering.”
Correspondents expressed themselves warmly.
Richard Warren, of Plymouth stock, wrote from New York:—
“Congratulating you, Sir, and our country, that the day now seems not far distant when America is to fulfil the destiny assigned to her, and be throughout all her borders a land of freemen without slaves, and honoring you for the labor you have so well performed in the past and in the present, I have to express the gratification with which I listened to your true words on Wednesday last in this city, and to subscribe myself as one who heard you at Plymouth,[239] and who always hears you when opportunity offers.”
Richard J. Hinton, the courageous and liberal journalist, was moved to write from Kansas:—
“Having just finished the perusal of your late oration in New York City, I cannot let the opportunity pass of sending my thanks, and I know therein I speak for Kansas, for the emphatic opinions and masterly exposé of the cause of, and remedy for, this most stupendous rebellion. Such things as you there so eloquently express give the soldiers of Freedom in Kansas heart and courage in the work of giving Freedom to all.”
Orestes A. Brownson, whose able and learned pen was so active on the same line with Mr. Sumner, wrote from Elizabeth, New Jersey:—