“I am constrained to congratulate you upon making the
Thursday speech on the Trent affair. It has fallen on the
community with the most happy effect. It was most timely
and salutary, and most certainly the great speech of the
session in a higher than a rhetorical sense. It will have
a most wide and extended influence: first, to pacificate
the public sentiment in this country, and also in England;
and then to conciliate European powers, by acceding to the
policy and principles they urge upon us; and, finally, by
clinching England to the construction of International Law
for which we have always contended, and thus driving her
from her offensive pretensions pertinaciously adhered to
for a century. The speech is applauded on all sides, even
by those who do not love our party or you any too well.…
The peroration is particularly splendid, argumentative,
eloquent, and wise. I repeat, that all sorts of people
applaud it, and it is believed that you have done more to
put down our Rebellion by your action in the Senate on
Thursday than all the major-generals have done in the last
six months.”
Joseph Lyman, an early friend and college classmate, wrote from
Jamaica Plain, near Boston:--
“You cannot think how much I was delighted with your Trent
speech. I say nothing of it critically, but that the
statements were truly admirable; and you know very well,
that, when a case is well stated, it is more than argued,
it is adjudged. But this is not why I was so much pleased
with it. It was because it was so thoroughly in your best
line and manner. It showed you to the public as I want to
show you,--as a truly _practical man_. I know as well as
you the absurdity of those who call Antislavery a party of
one idea, of abstraction and transcendentalism, &c.,--as
if the one idea of Humanity did not absorb all others of
practical legislation.”
Rev. Samuel M. Emery, of the Episcopal Church, and a college
classmate, wrote from Portland, Connecticut:--
“It is rather late in the day to congratulate you upon
the lofty position you have reached on the round of
fame and usefulness, but not too late to thank you for
your exhaustive speech on the Trent affair. I, as well
as thousands of Union-loving people, thank you for that
speech.”
William G. Snethen, Abolitionist and lawyer, wrote from
Baltimore:--
“God bless Mr. Sumner! Who shall say that God has not
spared him from the bludgeon of the murderer, not only
to defend the poor negro in his God-given rights, but to
vindicate our country from the insolence of England, and
pronounce judgment against her past wrongs, while according
forgiveness to the tardy penitent?
“You said that the correspondence closed with Governor
Seward’s letter to Lord Lyons. True; but his annotator is
not less illustrious. _Par nobile fratrum!_ I am curious to
see how your speech will be received in England.”