“I now introduce to you Massachusetts’—ay, Boston’s—honored son. I need not praise him, I need not eulogize him; but I will simply say, it is Charles Sumner.”
The enthusiasm that followed Senator Sumner’s stepping on the platform was not surpassed by anything that has been seen in the Hall since Senator Webster took the same place on his return from Washington years ago. The air below was dark with waving hats, and along the galleries white with fluttering kerchiefs. When the applause subsided, a colored man cried out, “God bless Charles Sumner!” in an earnest, trembling, “tearful” voice, and the applause was renewed.
The meeting is described as “of much enthusiasm on the part of the overflowing audience that gathered and tried to gather within the ancient walls.”
A few sentences from the London Morning Star will show how this effort was recognized at a distance.
“The Massachusetts Senator has lately had a meeting with his constituents. Fragments and summaries of his speech at Faneuil Hall have found their way into most English newspapers. Let the sympathizers with the South produce, if they can, from their side of Mason and Dixon’s line, any utterance to compare with it in all the qualities that should commend human speech to human audience.…
“This representative of a powerful community addresses to his fellow-citizens considerations upon the conduct of a war in which they and he are more deeply interested than any English constituency has been in any war which England has waged since the days of Cromwell. It is such a speech as Hampden might have spoken in Buckinghamshire, or Pym in the Guildhall. It treats both of principles and policy,—of the means of success, and of the ends which can alone sanctify the struggle or glorify success. It breathes throughout the spirit of justice and of freedom.…
“Throughout his public life, Mr. Sumner has held the same doctrines, expressed the same spirit.… He is the leader of a party, as well as the representative of the first New England State, and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress. Too advanced a thinker and too pure a politician for office in a Cabinet undecided on the Slavery Question, he has pioneered its way and shaped its conclusions. Is he not a man whose name should check the blustering apologists of Slavery and Secession?… The Rebellion is just such a blow at the Union as Preston Brooks struck at Charles Sumner; and yet there are English hands and voices to applaud the deed, as worthy heroes of patriotism and civilization.”
In urging Emancipation, Mr. Sumner always felt, that, besides sustaining the cause of justice, he was helping our country with foreign nations.