The appearance of the Senate at the delivery of the speech was
described by the correspondent of the _New York Herald_ in his letter
of the same date.
“During the delivery of this exasperating bill of charges,
specifications, and denunciation of that ‘sum of all
villanies,’ Slavery, a profound and most ominous silence
prevailed on the floor of the Senate and in the galleries.
We have no recollection in our experience here, running
through a period of twenty years, of anything like this
ominous silence during the delivery of a speech for Buncombe,
on Slavery, by a Northern fanatic or a Southern fire-eater.
We say ominous silence, because we can only recognize it as
something fearfully ominous,--ominous of mischief,--ominous of
the revival in this capital and throughout the country of the
Slavery agitation, with a tenfold bitterness compared with any
previous stirring up of the fountains of bitter waters.”