“Mr. Sumner’s speech last night was the greatest
oratorical and logical success of the year, and was most
enthusiastically praised by the largest audience yet
gathered in New York to hear a lecture.”
The interest was such, that he was constrained, much against
his own disposition, to repeat it in Brooklyn, where he was
introduced by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and then again at
Niblo’s Theatre, New York, where he was introduced by Joseph
Blunt, Esq. The concluding words of Mr. Beecher were as follows.
“I am to introduce to you a statesman who follows a long
train of representatives and statesmen who were false
to the North, false to Liberty; and then they made a
complaint that there was no North! It was because the
North lost faith in her recreant children. It lost faith
in its traitors, and not in Liberty. But now, if the
haughty Southerners wish to engage in any more conflicts
of this kind, I think they will have to find some other
than the speaker to-night with whom to break a lance.
[_Loud cheers._] I do not wish merely to introduce to you
the ‘honorable gentleman’ sent from Massachusetts as a
United States Senator; my wish is to do better than that; I
wish to introduce to you the MAN,--CHARLES SUMNER. [_Loud
applause._]”