“I am sixty-four years old. Thirty of those years have been
almost exclusively spent in a war of ideas against Slavery,
as a Garrisonian Abolitionist. _Conquer by suffering!
Victory or death! Resistance to tyrants, obedience to God!_
Such have been the watchwords of the battle. You know what
it has cost those who have waged this war of ideas. But I
felt fully rewarded last evening in seeing that audience
so earnestly listening to such sentiments as fell from
your lips. What a revolution in thought and feeling in
twenty-five years! Never again let man be discouraged in a
conflict between _humanity_ and its _incidents_.”
A citizen of Washington confessed the change in his mind from
this speech.
“I have through all my life been a Democrat, and I confess
I have had no great love for you, or what I thought to be
your principles. But a cardinal principle in my ethics
is, that men should always be ‘open to conviction.’ I am
happy to confess that I have been doubly deceived: first,
in the principles and intentions of the Democratic party;
and, second, in the principles and intentions of the
Republicans,--or Abolitionists, as we call them. A friend
handed me your great oration delivered in New York, and I
am so favorably struck with its logic and patriotism that
I am completely proselyted. Mr. Sumner, I want my children
and my children’s children to know that I am a ‘Sumner
man.’”
These expressions from different parts of the country show the
wakeful sympathy which prevailed.