Immediately before the election there was a Republican Rally
at Faneuil Hall, with the following officers: Richard H. Dana,
Jr., Esq., _President_; Dr. Edward Reynolds, Ezra Lincoln,
William Pope, Josiah W. Butler, Aaron Bancroft, Samuel Johnson,
James P. Whitney, Prince Hawes, Daniel Kimball, Charles
M. Ellis, N. Davies Cotton, Frederick A. Sumner, John G.
Webster, George S. Winslow, Henry W. Farley, of East Boston,
William P. Houston, of South Boston, Henry Slade, of Chelsea,
Francis B. Fay, of Chelsea, and James L. Jones, of Chelsea,
_Vice-Presidents_; John D. W. Joy, E. Baker Welch, Franklin W.
Smith, Samuel W. Lane, _Secretaries_.
On taking the chair, Mr. Dana made an able speech especially
in reply to one recently made by Mr. Choate, in the course of
which he said that the Republicans repudiated the charge of
ignoring the Constitution or menacing the Union.
Mr. Sumner was then introduced, and spoke for two hours and a
quarter, with the marked attention of a very large audience.
This speech was reported at length in the papers, and was
afterwards printed in a pamphlet. It particularly discussed
the Slave Oligarchy and its usurpations,--the outrages in
Kansas,--the different political parties,--the rights of
our foreign-born population,--and the Republican party.
Several of these topics, being treated in other speeches,
are omitted here. The part relating to our foreign-born
population attracted attention at the time, and has been
often quoted since. Among the audience were many persons of
the Know-Nothing party, pledged against the foreign-born, who
were there to create difficulty; but Mr. Sumner was allowed
to proceed uninterrupted. The papers speak of “rapturous
applause.” In this vindication of our foreign-born population,
he acted only according to his convictions and all his votes
in the Senate. Although the Know-Nothing party prevailed in
Massachusetts, Mr. Sumner refused all association with it; and
yet, such was the recklessness of misrepresentation, that the
Richmond _Enquirer_ announced him as “the head of the Northern
Know-Nothing party.” The following speech is sufficient answer
to this assertion.
In the course of this speech Mr. Sumner gives his personal
testimony as to Slavery, founded on what he saw in a short
journey he had made through Kentucky as far as Nashville in
Tennessee.