“It is a pleasure to accord to Senator Sumner the approval
of his most judicious course on the same subject. We take
the more pleasure in this approval, because it has often
been our fortune to differ with Mr. Sumner in regard to
the treatment of some of the most important questions
before the country. But in regard to our foreign relations,
holding as he does the responsible position of Chairman of
the Senate Committee on that subject, we confide in him as
a safe, wise, and thoroughly well-informed guide.”
These are illustrations of the American press. Very different
was that of London, so far as it spoke. One of our countrymen,
then abroad, and closely observing the manifestations of
opinion, remarked that the speech was attacked, but not
reprinted.
“The excellence of any such effort is to be measured now in
this country only by the amount of attack it calls out, and
I was therefore much pleased to see that the _Times_ lost
its temper in criticizing you. It is a significant fact,
that neither it nor any of its allies have ventured to
reprint the speech. They confine themselves to a style of
criticism that I should call blackguard, against you, Mr.
Seward, and Mr. Everett.”
In contrast with the prevailing tone was the London Peace
Society, which, in its Annual Report, spoke of the speech.
“They felt it right to reprint the very able speech
delivered by Mr. Charles Sumner on the affair of the
Trent, because, while explicitly surrendering every right
on the part of the American Government, as respects that
transaction, he does so on such broad principles as in
the judgment of the Committee it would be greatly to
the advantage of all civilized states to adopt and act
upon in their relations with each other. Copies of this
pamphlet were sent to all Members of Parliament, and to a
large number of newspapers and periodicals throughout the
kingdom.”[115]
The character of the attack by the _Times_ will be seen by a
few passages from a leader, January 25, 1862.
“The last mail has brought us another attempt, made in
a speech five columns long by Mr. Charles Sumner in the
American Senate. This gentleman is, perhaps, the one
American who has been most petted and fêted over here.
Mr. Charles Sumner was the greatest drawing-room lion of
his day, and his mane was combed by a thousand delicate
hands, often held up in admiration at his gentle roarings.
In America he has arrived at the high distinction of
Senator for Massachusetts and Chairman of the Committee
for Foreign Affairs; but after the very general hilarity
throughout Europe caused by Mr. Seward’s diplomatic
_fiasco_, it seems to have been thought necessary to
put some one forward to make ‘a scathing exposition of
British inconsistency,’ and to show what a victory over
the old country had been obtained. So Charles Sumner is
the man.… Mr. Sumner has not done his work ill. But
then he had peculiar facilities for it. ‘Who best has
known them can abuse them best.’ Moreover, his audience
at Washington was not difficult. Gentlemen who could
congratulate themselves on Bull Run required no cogent
reasons for seeing a glorious triumph, first in the seizure
of the Trent, and then in the compulsory surrender of
the prize.… No wonder, then, that Mr. Charles Sumner’s
speech in the Senate has been a great success. We are
told that all the foreign ambassadors--except only Lord
Lyons, whom nothing but severe diplomatic etiquette kept
away--came round him and congratulated him; and that after
its delivery, ‘our respected mother, England,’ is ‘left
out in the cold,’--whatever that may mean. The two points
which seem especially to have been admired are, first,
‘the absence of any allusion in his speech to the Negro
Question,’--showing that he is by no means so obstinate
upon that matter as had been feared,--and, second, ‘the
signal rebuke he administered to England.’ We can go some
way with Mr. Sumner’s encomiasts in this admiration. It
at least shows a versatile and cosmopolitan mind. His
‘allusions to the Negro Question’ are evidently only absent
from his Washington speeches because they are kept entirely
for English use, and are not fitted for home consumption;
whereas the ‘rebukes’ are manufactured expressly for the
American market, and are never offered for acceptance on
this side of the Atlantic.… It is of no great consequence
to us what clouds of dust American statesmen may choose to
raise in order to escape from their difficulty. Now that
they have eaten the leek, they may declare, if they please,
that it was exquisite in its flavor, and had been presented
to them as a mark of honor.…
“The case of the Trent has not made any new precedent
whatever, nor can it clash with any precedent upon which
in modern times we ever did or could have intended to
rely. The forcible removal of those four men from under
the British flag was a rude outrage, redeemed neither by
precedent nor principle, and it has been resented and
repaired. If all the Federal Senate make set speeches till
doomsday, they can make no more of it.”
In the course of its objurgations, the _Times_ seeks to repel
the parallel between the taking by Captain Wilkes and the
taking of American citizens by British cruisers, and here it
asserts:--
“In the current number of the _Quarterly Review_ it is
conclusively shown that only two men ‘claiming to be
Americans’ were taken by our cruisers out of American ships
in the year preceding the war of 1812.”[116]
“Only two men ‘claiming to be Americans’”! Lord Castlereagh,
in the House of Commons, immediately after the breaking out
of the war, admitted that there were in the British fleet
three thousand five hundred men “who claimed to be American
subjects.”[117] The _Times_ perhaps intended “only two men”
really American. But here is strange and total oblivion of the
fact, that, in every case of taking, whether the victim was
American or not, whether two or two hundred were seized, there
was an exercise of the very prerogative it condemned in Captain
Wilkes, although he had an excuse beyond that of any British
cruiser.
This leader of the _Times_ was followed by an article, dated
at the Temple, January 28, from its famous correspondent
“Historicus,” known to be Mr. Vernon Harcourt, a writer
of admirable power on questions of International Law, and
afterwards a distinguished member of Parliament. In this
article the same spirit appeared, with the same personality,
and the same hardihood of assertion. Beginning with elaborate
flings at Mr. George Sumner, where the causticity is reinforced
from _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he comes to the Senator, and, in the
tone already adopted by the _Times_, refers to his reception
in London: “It would be scarcely too much to say, that, for
a single season, Mr. Charles Sumner enjoyed a social success
almost equal to that of the ‘Black Sam’ himself. He was
regarded as ‘a man and a brother,’ and he could not have been
better treated, if he had had real black blood in his veins.”
This is to prepare for what follows.
“It is impossible adequately to describe the ‘threat
speech’ in the Senate, except by saying that Charles,
if possible, out-Sumners George. The great object of
this remarkable oration is to prove that the surrender
of Messrs. Slidell and Mason is a great triumph for the
American Government. There is, proverbially, no accounting
for taste; and if the American people are of Mr. Sumner’s
opinion, I do not see why we should complain of their
contentment. Some people, like Uriah Heep, are ‘very
’umble,’ and their meekness is an edifying spectacle. We
demanded the restoration of the prisoners, not in order
to mortify the American people, but for the purpose of
vindicating the honor of our flag and asserting the
established principles of Maritime Law.”