This is from the Herald. The same incident is thus reported in the Tribune.
“And if we came to hanging every traitor in this country in the order of their guilt, the next man who marched upon the scaffold after Jefferson Davis would be Charles Sumner. [Loud applause, the greatest of the evening thus far. Groans for Sumner. Great excitement. Cries of ‘Put him out!’ Cries, ‘Where is Horace Greeley?’]”
A correspondent of a Boston paper, taking up the strain, echoed it for the benefit of Massachusetts.
“There are now two war-cries in New York, and the great Union mastiff is as ready to pounce upon one of the brutes as upon the other. If there are two parties outside of the doomed radicals, they are those, the most violent of them, who would hang Jeff. Davis and Sumner together, and those who would hang Davis first and Sumner afterwards.
“If Sumner is reëlected to the Senate, he may not find it convenient to pass through this city. That his name is odious, infamous, is not all,—it is cursed and abominable. The blood of thousands sacrificed to his ambition and personal revenge cries to Heaven against him, and if a Massachusetts Legislature can still support him by its vote, those who do so will deserve to lose their children at the altar of this Moloch.”
The New York Herald followed with a leader, July 16th, entitled, “Senators Wade and Sumner,” which, after announcing that the terms of these Senators would expire on the 4th of March next, made the following appeal.
“By the foulest means they have succeeded in clogging the wheels of our progress in the war, and have made another year of battles unavoidable. Had it not been for them and their coadjutors, the war would have been over and the Union restored on the Fourth of July instant. More than any other men they are responsible for the useless sacrifice of blood and treasure in the past, and for the three hundred thousand more men and five hundred millions more dollars which will have to be perilled in the future. Practically, and in the most emphatic sense, they are traitors to the country and enemies of the nation. From them, more than from a thousand Vallandighams, Jeff. Davis has received aid and comfort; for they have strengthened his forces by exasperating the South and by dividing and weakening the North. We hope that the loyal men of Massachusetts and Ohio will raise these questions in the coming elections for State legislators, and vote down every man who is pledged or who intends to vote for the reëlection of these twin traitors, Sumner and Wade. They have only escaped Fort Lafayette and the gallows because the Government has distrusted its own power and misunderstood the sentiments of the loyal people. Let this misunderstanding now end, and let Messrs. Sumner and Wade find, when they return to their homes, that they are held personally and politically responsible for their infamous and treasonable course.”
The friends of Emancipation in Massachusetts were not inactive. The issue thus presented was accepted by the formal nomination of Mr. Sumner, at the annual Republican State Convention at Worcester, September 10th.
The Convention was organized by the choice of the following officers.