“Let us call Senator Sumner a fanatic, if we will; let us
pronounce him a man of one idea, if we choose; but let
us at least award him the honor he deserves.… If Charles
Sumner is wrong, his example is right. We have not so
many politicians true to eternal principle, we have not
so many statesmen devoted with a single purpose even to
their own conception of the best interests of the country,
we have not so many counsellors studious only of strict
justice, that we can afford to throw away the Senator from
Massachusetts. Whether we regard him as right or wrong,
there is something sublime in his steady, persistent,
unwavering devotion to his idea. Such honesty cannot be
impugned. Such fidelity cannot be misinterpreted.… Senator
Sumner has always been in advance of the mass. He is a
leader a long way ahead, a pioneer through trackless mazes.
It is his mission to discover a path where the throng shall
follow.”
With different spirit, the New York _Herald_, in an article
entitled “Senator Sumner on the Rampage,” said:--
“We now have an essay from Senator Sumner, who, mounted on
his ‘Bay horse,’ makes a furious assault upon the President
and his policy, and, in fact, everybody, except the blacks
in the South.… He is determined to fight it out, if it
takes the remainder of his life. The public now know his
position, and just what the Jacobins intend to do. The
President can also understand the nature of the opposition
which he is to have arrayed against him in the next
Congress.… The Rebellion, he declares, is not ended, nor
Slavery abolished. If he means by the former term Northern
rebellion, he is not far out of the way; for it is very
evident that a rebellion has commenced in the North, and
has been inaugurated in Massachusetts, with Senator Sumner
as high-priest and prophet.”
The New York _World_, in an article entitled “The Massachusetts
Declaration of War against the President,” said:--
“It is not worth while to spend words on the formal
resolves of the Massachusetts Convention. They but
condense, in more staid and decorous language, the
sentiments of Mr. Sumner’s speech; and we prefer to dip
out of the fountain. The unanimous election of Mr. Sumner
as the presiding officer, the applause which greeted his
speech, the panegyrics lavished upon it by the Republican
press of Boston, and its harmony with every public
utterance in Massachusetts, from the Faneuil Hall meeting
in May down, are so many seals of its authentication as a
true exposition of the purposes of the Republican party.
Charles Sumner is the Republican platform incarnate.”
Other papers show how it was received in States lately in
rebellion.