“We have read as much of Senator Sumner’s speech on the
Barbarism of Slavery as we have had time to read, and must
bear witness that it is one of the ablest, most exasperating,
and most useless speeches we ever read. It shows all through
the genius, the learning, and the hate of its gifted and
abused author. It is manifestly the revenge of the orator on
the institution that through Brooks’s arm struck him down so
brutally. It is intended less to check the growth of Slavery
than to gall Slaveholders. It is a scalding, excoriating
invective, almost without parallel in the annals of oratory.…
As a vengeance for the orator’s own wrongs, it is ample and
admirable. As an implement to aid the great work of repressing
Slavery extension, it is simply worthless, or worse. Slavery is
all that he charges. But slaveholders are not as barbarous as
their system.”
The _Boston Daily Advertiser_ begins by saying of the speech, that “its
denunciation, although strong, is not hot; its profuse learning and
reference to history show elaboration and study; and the whole mass
of reasoning, of rhetoric, and of authority is brought together and
wielded with such skill and power as the greatest masters of oratory
might well envy”; and then the journal proceeds:--
“We confess that in our judgment the argument upon Slavery
itself need be neither long nor elaborate. The Golden Rule
has exhausted the subject, both upon principle and authority.
The testimony of one enlightened slaveholder like Jefferson,
who ‘trembled for his country, when he remembered that God
was just,’ tells us as much of the actual workings of the
institution as all the hideous narratives which its opponents
have culled in such appalling profusion from its current
history. The subject is one which is governed by principles
which are essentially and peculiarly elementary, and we confess
that we see not how any powers of eloquence or reasoning could
turn him who is not convinced by the simple statement of these
few original principles.…
“If the majority of the people are already right upon the main
subject,--and we should otherwise despair of the Republic,--we
must conclude that our efforts will be much more efficacious,
if directed at those constitutional heresies by means of which
this giant evil is at present carrying on its attack. It is in
this way, chiefly, that, within those limits of duty which the
Republican party is ever careful to affirm and observe, we can
hope to act efficiently upon this great question.”
The tone of the Democratic papers appears in the _Albany Atlas and
Argus_.
“No one can rise from a perusal of this speech without a
contempt for the author, and a conviction of his unfitness for
the place.”
Also in the _Boston Post_.
“Charles Sumner’s recent speech is a curiosity that has no
parallel, at least in our Senatorial record. Pedantry, egotism,
fortuitous hypothesis, malice, rhapsody, and verbosity stripe
and emblazon it with disgusting conspicuousness.”
Other papers were grateful and enthusiastic, generally in proportion to
their Antislavery character.