“To show the infamous slanders to which the fanatical
leaders are obliged to resort, in order to goad on their
followers to the new crusade against the South, we
republish an extract from Mr. Sumner’s last speech in
Massachusetts.”
In England, Colonel T. Perronet Thompson, the Freetrader, and
former Member of Parliament, in his series of articles in the
Bradford _Advertiser_, after enumerating the topics, said:--
“The man who has no curiosity to know what the first
statesman in America says on all these heads would go to
bed without asking whether the fire in the next street was
put out, or if the house next his own began to smoke. The
very jobbers in Rebel bonds, or builders of the Shenandoah,
might feel a desire to know which way the thing was going.”
The _Scotsman_, a foremost journal at Edinburgh, commenced a
leader on this speech as follows:--
“It would be at least difficult to name a man in the United
States, or rather the States now under process of being
reunited, who is better entitled to a respectful hearing,
all the world over, than Mr. Charles Sumner. He has had but
one object,--a noble object, worthy any calculable amount
of struggle and sacrifice; and he has pursued it ardently,
bravely, disregarding both party and personal consequences,
and letting no other object stand in the way or turn him
aside for a moment from the straight path. He has sought
only the Abolition of Slavery, and has deemed nothing else
worth fighting for.”
The response by correspondence was prompt and earnest from
various parts of the country. The letters from which extracts
are taken, with the exception of that from Great Salt Lake
City, were received immediately after the delivery of the
speech.
* * * * *
Charles Stearns, ardently against Slavery, and familiar with
the Rebel States, wrote from Springfield:--
“After an absence from good old Massachusetts of eleven
years, my heart was made glad, the other day, by seeing
a notice in the papers that you were to speak at the
Republican Convention at Worcester. I immediately hastened
thither, and felt happy beyond measure, as I listened to
the deafening applause with which your appearance upon the
platform was greeted.”
Rev. John T. Sargent, the Liberal clergyman, wrote from
Boston:--
“That noble speech of yours at the Worcester Convention,
so complete in its analysis of our national condition,
dangers, and duties, ought to be printed in letters of
gold, and emblazoned henceforth as the established moral
code of every one of our States.”
David A. Wasson, the honest thinker and student of philosophy,
wrote from Boston:--
“God bless you, and make you strong for the arduous and
immense work that is immediately before you! The coming
session of Congress will, I think, be preëminently the
critical and cardinal day in all American legislation. I
look forward to it with unspeakable anxiety. If only your
counsels had been accepted, how clear, how easy, all would
be! Now the situation is fearfully complicated.”
Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace
Society, wrote from Boston:--
“Let me express the earnest hope that you will economize
your strength for the great conflict soon to come during
the approaching Congress. I never doubted the final success
of our arms; but when the sword should be sheathed, I have
always expected to see our worst crisis in our last grapple
with slaveholders. We shall quite need all your prudence,
forecast, energy, courage, and decision, to meet the
dangers ahead from returning Rebels.”
Rev. Charles Brooks, eminent for his services to education,
wrote from Medford:--
“I thank you, I thank you a thousand times, for your
sound, comprehensive, and patriotic speech at Worcester.
Shakespeare says, ‘Things by season seasoned are.’ Never
was a word more fitly spoken. It is the best speech I have
read for years, and will become historic.”
William I. Bowditch, the able conveyancer and Abolitionist,
wrote from Boston:--
“I read your speech yesterday morning with great
satisfaction, and yet with considerable misgiving as to
whether its truths will be acted on. I doubt if the North
has been punished enough to induce it to forego the attempt
of trying again to circumvent God.”
P. R. Guiney, on the day the speech was delivered, wrote from
Boston:--
“I am under an overwhelming conviction, that, unless the
views which you express are substantially adhered to,
Despotism will have gained all that Liberty won in our
recent war. The Battle of Gettysburg was not more of a
crisis than this. May God prosper you!”
Professor George W. Greene, scholar and author, wrote from East
Greenwich, R. I.:--
“I received your Worcester speech this morning. I
must write a line to say I have read it carefully and
thoughtfully, and say ‘Amen’ to it all. God grant it may go
into every house and every heart! I look with deep anxiety
for the opening of Congress. You have yet your hardest
fight to win; but it is the fight of God and Humanity, and
you will win it.”
Professor Charles D. Cleveland, an ardent Abolitionist and
successful teacher, recently Consul at Cardiff in Wales, wrote
from Philadelphia:--
“Many, many thanks to you for your noble speech at the
Worcester Convention. Oh that your words might unite with
the heart of the President and bring forth appropriate
fruits! For the last two or three months I have been quite
desponding as to his course.”
John Penington, the scholarly bookseller, wrote from
Philadelphia:--
“With its matter I fully sympathize; but I was particularly
struck with the aptitude and felicity of your illustrations
of the various points of your argument.”
William Goodell, the early and constant Abolitionist, author
of “Slavery and Anti-Slavery,” a history also of the “American
Slave Code,” wrote from Bozrahville, Connecticut, where he was
then residing:--
“In my rural retreat, where I am for the present
recruiting my health, a copy of the _Commonwealth_
containing your great speech at Worcester, September 14th,
providentially falls into my hands, and I cannot forbear
trespassing upon your time one moment to congratulate and
to thank you, which I do most heartily, upon your great
achievement, and for your signal service to your country,
in the hour of its greatest peril,--_greatest_ I say,
because, as I fear, so little perceived and so little
understood.… If you had spent the whole summer in preparing
that speech, I see not how you could have improved it, nor
how your time and talents could have been more worthily
or more usefully employed.… You well say, ‘We must look
confidently to Congress’; to which permit me to add, that
for the leadership of Congress the country must look to
_you_, whose ‘course is fixed,’ who ‘will not hesitate,’
who ‘will not surrender.’”
Hon. Wayne MacVeagh, Chairman of the Republican State Committee
of Pennsylvania, afterwards Minister at Constantinople, wrote
from West Chester, Pennsylvania:--
“I have just finished reading your superb speech at
Worcester, in the complete form in which you sent it to
me, and cannot go to bed without thanking you for it. The
right word, in the right time, by the right man,--what more
should we ask?”
William Hickey, Chief Clerk of the Senate, where he had been
a life-long officer, and author of a well-known edition of
the Constitution with accompanying documents, wrote from
Washington:--
“Your speech ably maintains the consistency, ability, and
patriotism which have uniformly distinguished your course,
from your first essay in the sacred cause of Liberty, which
has elicited so much of disinterested zeal and indomitable
courage and perseverance on your part as to call forth,
in my hearing, from the most honorable and intelligent
of your political opponents from the South, declarations
attributing those qualities to you in an eminent degree,
giving you credit for consistency and unmistakable
integrity of purpose. Your exertions have in a very great
degree contributed towards the defeat of the Rebellion and
the victory of the Government over its enemies, and you
have now the satisfaction of enjoying the fruits of your
labors and the exercise of your literary superiority and
transcendent talents.”
Hon. John C. Underwood, who had written shortly before on
Reconstruction,[252] wrote from Alexandria, Virginia:--
“I thank you for your Convention speech. Its positions and
arguments are so overwhelming that I feel almost certain
that your efforts will succeed with our people, and that
you will be acknowledged the wise statesman and enlightened
Christian patriot that I know you are.”
General Saxton, an Antislavery army officer, commanding in
South Carolina, wrote from Charleston:--
“I most fully sympathize with and cordially indorse every
word and line. In the future, the wisdom of your position
will be fully established and vindicated.”
Hon. Charles D. Drake, an eminent lawyer and law-writer,
afterwards United States Senator from Missouri, and Chief
Justice of the Court of Claims, wrote:--
“Being detained at home by indisposition, I was glad of the
privilege of at once reading your latest views on the great
questions of the day in connection with Reconstruction.
For them, and for the heroic spirit with which you take
your stand, and determine ‘to fight it out on that line,’
I offer you my most sincere and fervent thanks. May God
preserve your life and health, and enable you to fight it
out to a complete victory!”
Hon. Charles Durkee, formerly Senator of the United States from
Wisconsin, and then Governor of Utah, wrote from Salt Lake City
to Governor Farwell, of Wisconsin:--
“I have just finished reading Mr. Sumner’s great speech
delivered at the Massachusetts State Convention. What a
masterly argument! It embodies the condensation of Calhoun,
the strength of Webster, and more than the eloquence of
Clay. In logic, in illustration, in simplicity of truth, I
have never read a state-paper that equals it. Its timely
utterance how fortunate for the country! He inspires
some of the most vital parts of the Constitution (which
heretofore have been a dead letter) with new life and
activity. Washington and Lincoln led in the first and
second revolutions, but it was left for Charles Sumner to
lead in the third,--a revolution in _Constitutional and
Republican ideas_. Be so kind as to thank him, in my name,
for this timely effort in behalf of his country and in the
cause of the oppressed.”
Such words from distant places were an encouragement to the
speaker. Evidently he was not alone, nor had he spoken in vain.