The Bangor Jeffersonian, also of Maine, said:—
“In the United States Senate, on Monday and Tuesday of last week, Mr. Sumner made a speech which will occupy a very conspicuous place in the history of the American Union, not so much for its advocacy of any merely formal plan or scheme of national legislation for Reconstruction as for its closer relations to the great fundamental principles which constitute the ideal of a truly republican government It goes to the very foundation of things.”
In a leading article of more than two columns, the New York Herald said, in a different vein:—
“Mr. Sumner’s Oration.—Negro Suffrage the Whole Duty of the Nation, and the Only Escape from our Difficulties.—Mr. Sumner, in his Senatorial pleading in the case of the negro, has given to the country an elaborate evidence of the utterly impracticable and visionary character of his political views. His oration is admirable in all purely literary respects, and indicates an abundant industry and research; but its theories of society, its interpretations of the Constitution, and its assumptions as to the history of the country and of the war are inadmissible, excepting only what is said of the Constitutional Amendment.…
“Those parts of the oration which claim suffrage for the negro, as a necessary policy of the nation, will require but little answer by argument; for the country and the world—all men outside the Radical Republican party—will completely deny the truth of the points from which they start.…
“We quite agree with Mr. Sumner in the grand fact that the Constitutional Amendment gives Congress full power to settle the position of the negro in the Southern States, and even to give him the suffrage. We are quite sure that this oration has not shown the necessity, the justice, or even the expediency of this gift. Still it may be expedient, necessary, and just.”
The speech attracted attention in Europe. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, of Paris, which is so comprehensive a representative of the French mind, a leading article by M. Forcade presents a parallel between Mr. Sumner’s speech and the famous speech of the time in the French Assembly by M. Thiers, where Liberty was the theme.
“The very day when M. Thiers delivered his speech we were occupied in reading the remarkable speech which Mr. Sumner has just pronounced in the Senate at Washington, and which the last mail from America has brought us. The speech of Mr. Sumner is the recent political event in the United States.
“The illustrious American Senator, the chief of the radical party in the Senate, proposed to himself to deduce from the most careful examination of the Constitution of his country those principles according to which should be settled that difficult problem which the Americans call Reconstruction,—that is to say, the return of the Rebel States into the Union. We shall not undertake to judge the practical bearing of the opinions of Mr. Sumner on the great question which agitates the United States; but it is impossible for us not to render homage to the patriotic piety which breathes in his beautiful discourse. As M. Thiers wished to derive the liberal destinies of France from the great principles of the Revolution, so Mr. Sumner applied himself to exhibit in the origin of the Constitution of the United States the fundamental principles of republican government of modern times.…
“Is it not a remarkable coincidence, that these voices of two great patriots, who, almost at the same moment, without any concert, obey instinctively the mysterious law which moves the people destined to guide civilization, answer to each other with so much splendor from opposite sides of the Atlantic? All the news from the United States show that the effect produced by the speech of Mr. Sumner has been immense.… The habitual adversaries of Mr. Sumner, the Democrats in Congress, covered themselves with honor in uniting in the testimonials of respect which were so universally rendered to the radical Senator. In the pride inspired by this beautiful and good oratorical plea, the Americans turn in a friendly spirit toward our Old World, and do not dissemble the hope that this speech will do them more honor in Europe than any public act in their country since the decree of Emancipation. We are charmed, for our part, to justify this hope.”[204]