The following speech[371] was delivered by Senator Sumner at Cooper Institute, New York, on the afternoon of Saturday, November 5, 1864, before one of the largest audiences ever assembled within the walls of that capacious hall. By this publication, the Young Men’s Republican Union, at whose invitation the speech was delivered, brings to a close the arduous labors of its third Presidential campaign,—the last of a series of political battles, begun, prosecuted, and completed in the interest and for the furtherance of the principles so nobly and eloquently reasserted in the Massachusetts Senator’s last and greatest speech.
Among the auditors, on this occasion, were at least two hundred clergymen, of all denominations, from New York, Brooklyn, Newark, and other adjacent cities. Not less than one thousand ladies, and an equal number of the most eminent citizens of New York, also aided to swell the crowd that assembled to do honor to the distinguished orator, and to express the sympathy and interest they felt in the great cause in whose behalf he was announced to plead.
Besides Francis Lieber, LL. D., the widely known Professor of Political Science in Columbia College, who was chosen Chairman of the meeting by acclamation, there were upon the platform many of the men and women of New York whose names and deeds in various walks of life have illustrated the annals of Freedom’s trials and triumphs in America.
Dr. Lieber, upon taking the chair, made a brief and appropriate address, at the close of which he introduced Hon. Edwin D. Morgan, who read a telegram, received from San Francisco, giving assurance of a Union victory in California: the reading of this despatch was hailed with applause and cheers. When order had been restored, the Chairman presented the orator of the occasion, who was made the recipient of an ovation such as has seldom been accorded to a speaker in New York.
The speech, throughout, was received with every evidence of enthusiasm and approval on the part of the vast audience, the applause frequently interrupting the speaker for several moments, and at times causing the hall to become the scene of the wildest excitement. Few of those who were successful in securing admission on this occasion will forget the rounds of applause, the hearty cheers, the clapping of fair hands, and the waving of hundreds of snowy handkerchiefs, by which the swarming crowd so often testified its appreciation of Mr. Sumner’s scholarly diction, effective eloquence, and patriotic, statesmanlike utterance of these great political truths. It is but simple truth to say, that none of the many political meetings of the campaign, in New York, could at all compare with this mass meeting of the flower of our citizenship, whether regard be had to the numbers, intelligence, social position, or sound sentiments of loyalty, which were the characteristics of the great gathering of November 5th, 1864.