“We have said that Mr. Sumner’s was doubtless a strong and
forcible speech; and yet we wish he had made it on some other
bill than that providing for the admission of Kansas.”
A Boston paper, in a letter from Washington, contained the following
reply to the _New York Tribune_.
“And speaking of Kansas, I may here say that a number of
leading Kansas men have called on Mr. Sumner to assure him that
the _Tribune’s_ idea, that his speech injured the prospect of
the admission of their State, never found lodgement in their
minds. They thank him for it, and assure him, that, of their
own knowledge, the fate of the bill was decided before he took
the floor.”
The _New York Evening Post_, after observing that the speech was
“elaborate, learned, eloquent, and exhaustive of every topic on which
it touched,” said:--
“Though nominally relating to the bill for the admission of
Kansas, his remarks took a wider range, and were a general
arraignment of the system of Slavery, as it exists in the
Southern States of this Union, in all its moral, political, and
social aspects.…
“No one, we presume, can fail to admire the ability and cogency
of this address; but whether the peculiar line of argument was
called for at this time, or whether it will aid in the passage
of the Kansas Admission Bill, may admit of doubt.”
The _New York Times_ was as little sympathetic as the _Tribune_.
“From beginning to end it was a vehement denunciation of
Slavery. The labor of four leisure years seems to have been
devoted by Mr. Sumner to collecting every instance of cruelty,
violence, passion, coarseness, and vulgarity recorded as having
happened within the Slave States, or as having been committed
by a slaveholder.… But, aside from its utter irrelevancy to the
Kansas Question, what general good can be hoped for from such
envenomed attacks upon the Slave States? Do they tend in any
way to promote the public welfare? Do they aid in the least the
solution of what every sensible man acknowledges to be the most
delicate and difficult problem of this age?”