Such busy multitudes I fain would see
Stand upon Free Soil with a people free.
GOETHE, _Faust_, Part II. Act V.
Nihil autem gloriosius libertate præter virtutem, si tamen
libertas recte a virtute sejungitur.--JOHN OF SALISBURY,
_Polycraticus_, Lib. VII. cap. 25.
On the 17th of March, 1856, Mr. Douglas introduced “A Bill
to authorize the People of the Territory of Kansas to form
a Constitution and State Government, preparatory to their
Admission into the Union, when they have the requisite
Population.” Subsequently, Mr. Seward moved, by way of
substitute, another bill, providing for immediate action, and
entitled “A Bill for the Admission of the State of Kansas into
the Union.” Debate ensued, and was continued by adjournment
from time to time. In the course of this debate, on the 19th
and 20th of May, Mr. Sumner made the following speech.
* * * * *
This speech found unexpected audience from an incident which
followed its delivery. It became a campaign document in the
Presidential election then at hand, and was circulated by the
hundred thousand. Besides reprint in newspapers, there were
large pamphlet editions in Washington, New York, Boston, and
San Francisco. Editions appeared in German and Welsh. It was
reprinted in London, in a publication by Nassau W. Senior, the
eminent publicist and economist, entitled “American Slavery: A
Reprint of an Article on ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the ‘Edinburgh
Review,’ and of Mr. Sumner’s Speech of the 19th and 20th of
May, 1856.”
At the period of its delivery an intense excitement prevailed
throughout the country. At the North there was a deep sense of
wrong, with indignation at the pretensions of the Slave Power,
yearning for a voice in Congress that should speak out the
general sentiment. These influences reached Mr. Sumner before
he spoke, in numerous letters.
Hon. William Jay, of New York, the able and eminent
Abolitionist, being on the point of sailing for Europe, wrote
thus:--
“It is with heavy forebodings in regard to Kansas that
I leave the country. I have long been convinced that
the great obstacle to the cause of human rights and the
ultimate prosperity and freedom of our native land is the
corruption of the moral sense of our nation. We are very
religious as a people, so far as religion is convenient,
and consistent with money-getting, office, and power; but
so far as it interferes with those pursuits, we are a
nation of infidels. To me it seems the Democratic party
is utterly and ostentatiously profligate, the unblushing
advocates of human slavery and piratical warfare, the
most God-defying party which ever cursed our country.
As to Slavery, the Church is exerting a most corrupting
influence. Our cotton parsons preach to please the rich
pew-holders, and are becoming more and more bold in
defending Slavery, while ---- keeps watch and ward over
the press of the Tract Society as the guardian of human
bondage, and decent men are not ashamed to give their hands
to this shameless renegade, this reproach to Christianity.
The violence, insolence, cruelty, and injustice springing
from Slavery are gradually drifting into anarchy,--and
anarchy leads first to civil war, and then to military
usurpation.
“But duty is ours, and events belong to Providence. I think
all honest men must now be convinced that nothing is gained
to Freedom by compromises. Had Webster been a true man,
there would have been no trouble about Kansas. I never see
his portrait or bust without a shudder. I am for bold deeds
and bold language.
‘Fear admitted into public councils
Betrays like treason.’
“May God direct and bless you!”
Another friend wrote from Massachusetts as follows.
“Pardon me for the expression of an earnest wish to hear
from you soon on the Kansas Freedom Question. However ably
---- and others have treated it, and they have done noble
things, I am persuaded that you can impress the public mind
with the magnitude of the momentous issue more than any
other man.
“Excuse me again for suggesting, that, as Douglas charges
as a reason, or pretence, for calling the Freedom party
‘Black Republicans,’ because, as he says, their platform
all relates to ‘the Nigger Question,’ it may with the
greatest force be retorted, that the party in power should
justly be named Black Democrats, because their whole
foreign and domestic policy is dictated by the slaveholding
oligarchy, and basely surrenders every other interest of
the country to it, if it interfere.
“Especially, I know that it would exceedingly gratify
the friends of Freedom, if the arrogance and bullyism of
Douglas could be signally rebuked, and his faithlessness to
the honor and welfare of his native land be conspicuously
exhibited.”
Eli Thayer, of Worcester, who, more than any other person, was
author of the system of emigration which was redeeming Kansas,
addressed Mr. Sumner as follows, under date of May 8.
“I am happy to learn that you intend to speak next Monday.
In my judgment that speech has a very important mission
to perform, and I rejoice that it is soon to be before
the people. But there will be gnashing of teeth among the
defenders of Slavery. Be prepared, therefore, for the worst
of their endeavors.
“Your shafts will fall among them as did those of the
far-shooting god among the Greeks before the walls of Troy,
when he punished them for enslaving the daughter of his
priest:--
Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ’ ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο.
“My friend Mr. Williams will be present to hear you. I envy
him the pleasure of the occasion.
“May good fortune attend you!”
Dr. Le Baron Russell, of Boston, an active member of the
Emigration Society, wrote, under date of May 11:--
“We have had enough of truckling in Northern men. It is
time for us to show that we mean to submit to the Southern
bravado no longer. I have always felt humiliated by the
tone our men have taken in Congress, yielding everything,
and never daring to assert their rights or to exercise
their true power to crush these fellows into submission.”
Such was the prompting under which Mr. Sumner spoke, while the
whole country watched the debate. The response to the speech
was in harmony with the prompting.
The correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ thus by telegraph
described the speech immediately after its delivery:--
“Senator Sumner’s Kansas speech is the most masterly,
striking, and scathing production of the session. The
galleries were crowded with intellect, beauty, and fashion,
and the anterooms were also thronged. His excoriation
of Douglas was scornfully withering and scorching. He
designated Senator Butler as the Don Quixote of Slavery,
and Douglas as its Sancho Panza. Mr. Sumner never before
made such an impression in force, manner, and emphatic
style. He was animated and glowing throughout, hurling
defiance among the opposition, and bravely denouncing the
Kansas swindle from first to last. Some passages quite
electrified the Chamber, and gave a new conception of the
man. Finer effect has rarely been produced.”
The scene was sketched by a correspondent of the _Missouri
Democrat_, at St. Louis, as follows.
“It may be rash to publish in Missouri a just estimate of
the abilities of an Abolitionist. Sectional opinion demands
caricatures, and not portraits. It views the leading men
of the other section through the medium of its fear, its
hatred, or its contempt, and can recognize no likeness,
unless the features are distorted and the canvas is
darkened, unless the countenance is wicked and the figure
hideous.
“Sumner had an audience calculated to arouse all his
faculties, and to remind him that his position was in
many respects similar to that of Burke, when he impeached
Warren Hastings. His brother Senators were mostly in their
seats,--by no means a common occurrence. The lobbies
were crowded with the great outside politicians, of whom
Senators and Members are frequently the instruments,
who originate and guide political movements by means
of the press. Francis P. Blair, and Thurlow Weed, and
Robert J. Walker, and bevies of Southern delegates to the
Cincinnati Convention were there; and the young orators of
the House were also there,--Stephens, the keenest blade
in the Proslavery ranks, looking as if his face was the
battle-ground of boyhood and old age, and Keitt, measuring
himself silently with Sumner, and doubtless thinking
that the speech to which he was listening so attentively
was like a Burmese idol, a monster covered with jewels.
The ladies’ gallery was crowded to excess, and the fair
ones overflowed into the anteroom of the Senate. The
letter-writers in double file occupied their own gallery
(for which their best thanks are due to John P. Hale), and
passed upon the speech as it gradually came forth. The
people in compact mass occupied the background.
“That Sumner displayed great ability, and showed that in
oratorical talent he was no unworthy successor of Adams,
Webster, and Everett, no one who heard him will deny. In
vigor and richness of diction, in felicity and fecundity
of illustration, in breadth and completeness of view,
he stands unsurpassed. He laid the classics, the Gothic
mythology, the imaginative literature of Europe, and the
Bible under tribute for imagery or quotation. That he had
the great speech of Cicero and the greater speech of Burke
in his mind’s eye, there can be no doubt.
“In his reply to Cass, Douglas, and Mason, who stung him
into excitement, he was more successful than at any other
time. The collision knocked fire from him; and well it
might, for he was abused and insulted as grossly as any man
could be; but he replied successfully to the unmeasured
vituperation of Douglas, and the aristocratic and withering
hauteur of Mason.”
The able correspondent of the _Evening Post_ at New York,
William S. Thayer, afterwards Consul-General at Alexandria,
furnished this description.
“There is but one opinion among all competent judges
as to the unexampled feast of eloquence which has been
enjoyed in the Senate for the past two days, from the
lips of Senator Sumner. In a speech of five hours in
length, he has exhibited the most signal combination of
oratorical splendors which, in the opinion of a veteran
Senator, has ever been witnessed in that Hall. Indeed,
for the union of clear statement, close and well-put
reasoning, piquant personality and satire, freighted with
a wealth of learned and apposite illustrations, every
one of which was subsidiary to the main purpose of the
argument, it may safely challenge comparison with the great
speeches of Burke, to whom the Massachusetts Senator, in
the ripened vigor of his abilities, and in his varied
accomplishments, bears no small similitude.… But Mr. Sumner
was more fortunate than Burke in drawing and detaining his
audience.… From the beginning to the end of each session,
not only were the galleries thronged to their utmost
capacities with ladies and gentlemen, but all the doorways
were completely blocked up with listeners who hung in
breathless suspense upon his eloquence. It seemed even as
if the members of the other House had adjourned to crowd
the lobbies of the Senate. No such scene has been witnessed
since the days of Webster.”
A writer in the _Liberator_ thus recorded his impressions on
reading the speech:--
“Never, I think, from anything did I receive an impression
of greater power and grandeur. It came over me like the
sound of many waters. I laid down the paper, and still
there seemed to press around me a solemn, majestic anthem
from a mighty organ. I can almost imagine that around that
sick-bed the invisible angels gather, and that on that
bruised and mangled head the rays of a divine halo gleam
between the blossoms of an imperishable wreath.”
Another writer, in a country journal of Massachusetts,
expresses himself thus:--
“It were the merest commonplace to say that Massachusetts
may well be proud of her son. She owes him a debt which she
can never fitly discharge. I would avoid estimating him
too highly; but it seems to me that it may be said without
extravagance, that to much of the firmly knit strength and
unassailable logic of a Webster he unites all the fire and
fervor of an Otis, with the grace and classic elegance of
an Everett. But underlying, interpenetrating, and informing
all this brilliancy of genius is the earnest philanthropy
of the man,--a philanthropy which gives an effect to all
his productions, which the cold-blooded politician, or
statesman, even, can never hope to attain. His words go
straight to the popular heart, and find there an earnest
and immediate response.”
The Rev. Gilbert Haven, in a published sermon at Westfield,
Massachusetts, spoke thus:--
“Read the great speech which excited such rage, and won
for its author the crown of a martyr. For, before he
uttered a word, he knew its probable effect; he measured
the danger before he struck the blow. But three or four
in all history are its equals in beauty and strength of
thought and language,--Demosthenes against the Philipizing
Douglas of Athens, the keen, ready, insolent tool of her
tyrants,--Cicero against the Atchison Catiline of the Roman
Republic,--Burke against the wholesale enslaver of India,
Hastings,--Webster against the South Carolinian traducer of
Freedom and its fruits: with these four, this stands, and
will always stand, equal to the highest in all the literary
qualities of an oration, higher than the highest in the
sweep of his theme,--the preservation of the liberty,
culture, and religion of a great Christian nation.”
The testimony of the press was followed by that of
correspondents, who vied in grateful felicitations. Of these a
few examples are given.