“Mr. Sumner gives, within limits as brief as the nature of the case would permit, the arguments which influenced the Committee after a laborious investigation of the point in dispute. He performs this duty in a temperate, lucid, and convincing manner, rising above all asperity or excitement, and viewing the question as it affects the best interests of the human race. At the same time he has steered almost entirely clear of the track marked out by Secretary Seward, the great body of his argument being drawn from events and precedents in the history of our own country.… We take the greater pleasure in referring to the elaborate arguments brought forward by Senator Sumner, inasmuch as certain parties seem to think that Secretary Seward’s able reply to Lord Lyons on this subject was nothing but a graceful backing down before superior force,—that he strove to hunt up precedents on behalf of a position which was in fact defensible only because our Government could not accept the gauntlet thrown down by that of Great Britain. No unprejudiced person, we think, can peruse Mr. Sumner’s speech without arriving at a different conclusion. It should rather be an occasion for national congratulation than humiliation, that Great Britain has, de facto, abandoned her old ground, and planted herself on doctrines and practice strictly, and for a time almost exclusively, American.”
The Burlington Daily Times, of Vermont, said:—
“We have not room to print the elaborate and convincing argument of Senator Sumner on the seizure of the Rebel emissaries, Mason and Slidell. Notwithstanding all that has been said, it is fresh and original, and is a complete vindication of the course of the Administration in promptly restoring the seized persons to the British Government. It cannot remove the animosities which the course of England has kindled among Americans; but it cannot fail to heal the galled sense of wounded national honor, because it is shown by the argument that it has not been wounded at all,—that the feeling of shame and dishonor which has been experienced has been resting on imaginary and false grounds.”
The Boston Transcript said:—
“Fortunately for Mr. Sumner, events have arisen which have enabled him to demonstrate that he is not ridden by one idea. As Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the most important post that a Senator of the United States can hold in the present emergency of the nation, he has shown talents and acquirements which every fair mind cannot but appreciate. The ‘inevitable negro’ is banished from this arena, and the country has been astonished by the solidity of Mr. Sumner’s learning, the amplitude of his understanding, and the sagacity of his judgment on all the vital questions which have arisen in his special department. His speech on the affair of the Trent is a masterpiece. He goes beyond all the precedents of the conservative lawyers of New England, and all the arguments of the Secretary of State, to the essential principles of International Law, as recognized by the great thinkers and statesmen of the Continent of Europe, and as contended for by our own Government. He, the man who has most cause to hate Slidell and Mason, and who, from his Abolitionist proclivities, would be most opposed to delivering them up, is found to exceed even Mr. Seward in his desire to establish the rights of neutrals and ignore the passions of the hour.”
The Norfolk County Journal said:—
“It is a work of supererogation to say one word in its praise. Public opinion has already stamped it as one of the great speeches of the present generation of American statesmen. In the acquaintance which it displays with International Law, the impregnability of its argument, the classic finish of its diction, and the statesmanlike temper which it brings to the discussion, it has gained for its author new honors, and done much to counteract a prejudice against our Senator which too many had mistakenly allowed to possess their minds.”
The Haverhill Publisher said:—
“The late speech of the Senator on the Trent affair is one of the ablest state papers that have appeared in this country for years, and will have a powerful influence upon the English mind in settling the present disturbed state of feeling, and also in securing the practical acknowledgment of a great principle in International Law. Those who have found the most fault of late with Mr. Sumner for his efforts to keep fresh before the country the cause of our present disaster, as an important thing to be considered, while struggling for relief, are now among the first to do him honor for his unanswerable argument upon the Trent Question, and the principle involved. In the end, the country and the world will as fully agree with him, practically, upon the question of Slavery. No man can more truly be said to be the man for the hour than can Senator Sumner.”