There were signs of this contest in the autumn of 1861, when Mr. Sumner called for Emancipation as our best weapon.[133] Governor Andrew saw it coming. In a letter, dated June 9, 1862, with reference to the appointment of officers in the Internal Revenue Bureau, he used the following language.
“The Hunkers will make the most strenuous efforts to secure a large representation in this agency, so that, by means of their influence with the people (and in travelling from town to town), they can poison the minds of prominent citizens against you, and accomplish your defeat by securing a Legislature favorable to their purposes.
“Depend upon it, that they are calculating largely upon the Tax Bill as an element in their desperate ‘strategy’ for the fall campaign.”
The New York Tribune, in a vigorous article, June 24, 1862, entitled “Mr. Sumner’s Seat,” set forth reasons “why many earnest Republicans in other States would regret the retirement of Mr. Sumner.” Here it said:—
“Most of our Republican statesmen have a political history antecedent to our existing organizations. Mr. Sumner, nearly alone, is nowhere regarded as having Whig or Democratic predilections, but as purely and wholly Republican.
“Other statesmen, however profoundly Republican, regard collateral questions with an observing interest: the Tariff, the Currency, the Pacific Railroad, &c., largely engross their attention. Mr. Sumner profoundly believes it of paramount, absorbing interest that the nation should be just, even to her humblest, most despised children, and that Righteousness is the essential condition of material and other prosperity. Never inattentive to or neglectful of any public duty, never even accused of sacrificing or opposing the interest of Massachusetts in any matter of legislation, he is yet known to believe that her interests can never be truly promoted by sacrificing those of Humanity. In an age of venality and of uncharitable suspicion, he was never even suspected of giving a mercenary or selfish vote; in an atmosphere where every man is supposed to have his price, and to be scheming and striving for self-aggrandizement, no man ever suggested that Charles Sumner was animated by sinister impulses, or that he would barter or stifle his convictions for the Presidency. The one charge brought against him by his many bitter adversaries imports that he is a fanatic,—not that it was ever imagined that he is the special devotee of any fane or sect, but that he sincerely believes it the end of civil government to hasten the coming of God’s earthly kingdom by causing His justice to pervade every act, every relation, and thus making the earth, so far as human imperfection will permit, a vestibule of heaven.”
In warning against possible combination to defeat his reëlection, the article said:—
“All that the Republicans of other States can and do ask is, that no back-stairs intrigue, no chimney-corner arrangement, shall send to Boston a Legislature secretly pledged to oust him, and elected by constituencies profoundly ignorant of any such manipulation.… All we ask is, that those who vote at the polls to supersede Mr. Sumner in the Senate shall know for what they vote, and not be duped by professions only made to deceive.”
The adverse spirit showed itself at a large public meeting in New York, July 1st, which was entitled by the Herald, “The Anti-Abolition and Anti-Secession Movement.—Disunion the Fruit of Abolition.” Here Hon. William Duer, of Oswego, seemed to become the mouthpiece of the excited multitude.
“No emancipation and turning loose upon them hordes of uncivilized and ignorant Africans.… No tyrant in history has ever made his name execrated by measures more despicable than such as those proposed by the Abolitionists for the humiliation and destruction of the South. The Southern people have been deluded by their leaders in the same way as the Northern people, and, in his opinion, the next man who walked up the scaffold after Jefferson Davis should be Charles Sumner. [Loud and long-continued applause, mingled with hooting and groans for Sumner. Some person in the meeting attempted to say a word in his favor, but his voice was quickly drowned in loud shouts of ‘Put him out!’]”