Charles Sumner 194
Josiah G. Abbott 38
Caleb Gushing 2
Charles Francis Adams 1
In the House there were slight manifestations of applause when
the result was announced, but they were promptly checked by the
Speaker.
The result was noticed by the press throughout the country.
The venerable _National Intelligencer_, at Washington, which
had been opposed to the principles and policies of Mr. Sumner,
employed the following generous terms.
“This is the third time that this gentleman has been thus
honored by the Legislature of Massachusetts. Such repeated
tokens of confidence would seem sufficiently to indicate,
that, whatever dissent from the views of Mr. Sumner may
elsewhere exist, he is the favorite, as he is admitted
by all to be the able, representative of the opinions
entertained by a majority of the people of this great and
influential State. And these views now predominate in the
conduct of the present Administration, which may be said to
have adopted, reluctantly and at a late day, the political
and military policy early commended to its favor by Mr.
Sumner.
“If we are not able to concur with Mr. Sumner in certain of
his opinions on questions of domestic politics, it gives
us only the greater pleasure to bear our cheerful and
candid testimony to the enlightened judgment and peculiar
qualifications he brings to the discharge of the important
duties devolved on him as Chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Relations in the Senate. In this capacity he has
deservedly won the confidence of the whole country.”
Such testimony from a political opponent attested the change
that had occurred in public policy and private feeling.
The _Tribune_ exhibited the change in yet stronger light.
“By a vote of nearly six to one, Massachusetts again
declares her confidence in her long-tried Senator, and, on
an issue defined with unmistakable clearness, for the third
time returns him to his seat.
“The contrast between his present position and that which
he held on first entering the Senate is instructive. Then
an arrogant Democratic majority with unequalled effrontery
declared him outside of any healthy political organization,
excluded him from the Committees, denied him parliamentary
courtesies, and withheld the common civilities of social
intercourse and acquaintance. There were hardly three or
four Senators in Congress who were in any degree identified
with his opinions. He declared them none the less boldly,
and his speeches for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act,
on the Nebraska Bill, and on the Crime against Kansas
finally exasperated the slaveholding oligarchy into
personal violence, and for words spoken in orderly debate
he was brutally assaulted on the floor of the Senate and
seriously injured. This outrage, and the enthusiastic
approval with which it was received throughout the South,
were largely instrumental in rousing the North to a right
estimate of the system and the political power which sought
such means of defence.”
The _Liberator_, by the pen of its faithful and able editor,
William Lloyd Garrison, gave expression to the sentiments of
those most enlisted against Slavery.
“Thus has Massachusetts nobly vindicated her name and fame
as the foremost State of all the world in the cause of free
institutions, and trampled beneath her feet the malignant
aspersions cast upon the political reputation of her gifted
Senator by the minions of a traitorous Slave Oligarchy. The
vote is an overwhelming one, notwithstanding the desperate
efforts of Mr. Sumner’s enemies to make his defeat a sure
event. Such enemies only serve to prove his personal worth
and public usefulness, and their factious and profligate
character.
“Mr. Sumner’s friends in Washington proposed, last week,
to give him a serenade in honor of his reëlection to the
Senate; but, hearing of their intention, he declared that
the compliment was not in accordance with the present
condition of public affairs, and intimated that he
preferred that the funds subscribed for the music should be
donated to the Massachusetts Soldiers’ Relief Association,
which was done.”
In Mr. Sumner’s reëlection the cause of Emancipation triumphed,
and Massachusetts was fixed irrevocably on that side.