The Salem Gazette said:—
“It is a pleasure to accord to Senator Sumner the approval of his most judicious course on the same subject. We take the more pleasure in this approval, because it has often been our fortune to differ with Mr. Sumner in regard to the treatment of some of the most important questions before the country. But in regard to our foreign relations, holding as he does the responsible position of Chairman of the Senate Committee on that subject, we confide in him as a safe, wise, and thoroughly well-informed guide.”
These are illustrations of the American press. Very different was that of London, so far as it spoke. One of our countrymen, then abroad, and closely observing the manifestations of opinion, remarked that the speech was attacked, but not reprinted.
“The excellence of any such effort is to be measured now in this country only by the amount of attack it calls out, and I was therefore much pleased to see that the Times lost its temper in criticizing you. It is a significant fact, that neither it nor any of its allies have ventured to reprint the speech. They confine themselves to a style of criticism that I should call blackguard, against you, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Everett.”
In contrast with the prevailing tone was the London Peace Society, which, in its Annual Report, spoke of the speech.
“They felt it right to reprint the very able speech delivered by Mr. Charles Sumner on the affair of the Trent, because, while explicitly surrendering every right on the part of the American Government, as respects that transaction, he does so on such broad principles as in the judgment of the Committee it would be greatly to the advantage of all civilized states to adopt and act upon in their relations with each other. Copies of this pamphlet were sent to all Members of Parliament, and to a large number of newspapers and periodicals throughout the kingdom.”[115]
The character of the attack by the Times will be seen by a few passages from a leader, January 25, 1862.
“The last mail has brought us another attempt, made in a speech five columns long by Mr. Charles Sumner in the American Senate. This gentleman is, perhaps, the one American who has been most petted and fêted over here. Mr. Charles Sumner was the greatest drawing-room lion of his day, and his mane was combed by a thousand delicate hands, often held up in admiration at his gentle roarings. In America he has arrived at the high distinction of Senator for Massachusetts and Chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs; but after the very general hilarity throughout Europe caused by Mr. Seward’s diplomatic fiasco, it seems to have been thought necessary to put some one forward to make ‘a scathing exposition of British inconsistency,’ and to show what a victory over the old country had been obtained. So Charles Sumner is the man.… Mr. Sumner has not done his work ill. But then he had peculiar facilities for it. ‘Who best has known them can abuse them best.’ Moreover, his audience at Washington was not difficult. Gentlemen who could congratulate themselves on Bull Run required no cogent reasons for seeing a glorious triumph, first in the seizure of the Trent, and then in the compulsory surrender of the prize.… No wonder, then, that Mr. Charles Sumner’s speech in the Senate has been a great success. We are told that all the foreign ambassadors—except only Lord Lyons, whom nothing but severe diplomatic etiquette kept away—came round him and congratulated him; and that after its delivery, ‘our respected mother, England,’ is ‘left out in the cold,’—whatever that may mean. The two points which seem especially to have been admired are, first, ‘the absence of any allusion in his speech to the Negro Question,’—showing that he is by no means so obstinate upon that matter as had been feared,—and, second, ‘the signal rebuke he administered to England.’ We can go some way with Mr. Sumner’s encomiasts in this admiration. It at least shows a versatile and cosmopolitan mind. His ‘allusions to the Negro Question’ are evidently only absent from his Washington speeches because they are kept entirely for English use, and are not fitted for home consumption; whereas the ‘rebukes’ are manufactured expressly for the American market, and are never offered for acceptance on this side of the Atlantic.… It is of no great consequence to us what clouds of dust American statesmen may choose to raise in order to escape from their difficulty. Now that they have eaten the leek, they may declare, if they please, that it was exquisite in its flavor, and had been presented to them as a mark of honor.…
“The case of the Trent has not made any new precedent whatever, nor can it clash with any precedent upon which in modern times we ever did or could have intended to rely. The forcible removal of those four men from under the British flag was a rude outrage, redeemed neither by precedent nor principle, and it has been resented and repaired. If all the Federal Senate make set speeches till doomsday, they can make no more of it.”