“The greatest speech of the season is certainly Charles
Sumner’s magnificent philippic against ‘The Great Barbarism.’
The learning and research, the array of facts, the apt and
eloquent quotations, the striking illustrations, and the
vivid imagery of the oration are its least merits. The style
and diction are as clear as crystal, as pure as water, and
sonorously musical. The entire tone of the speech is dignified
and lofty.…
“Indeed, we admire his courage, his unequalled moral _pluck_.
In this day of compromise and timidity, of bated breath and
base concession, when it is the loathsome fashion to say that
the Slavery Question should be discussed only as a matter of
profit and loss, it is refreshing to hear a Senator speak in
the spirit of Jefferson and the Fathers. Besides, does not
the South challenge us to discuss the abstract question? Do
not Benjamin, Toombs, Stephens, Curry, Keitt, Lamar, Hunter,
Slidell, Brown, Hammond, Chesnut, Mason, Pryor, Clingman,
Fitzhugh, and _all_ the Southern politicians, discuss the
question of Slavery in the abstract? Do they not deliver
long arguments to prove that Slavery is right, just, benign,
civilizing, and necessary,--that it is the proper condition of
the negro and the working-man? And is any free Northern man so
poor a poltroon as to say that these men shall not be _replied
to_? What! shall all the South be privileged to praise and
applaud Human Slavery, and not even Charles Sumner be allowed
to _describe it as it really is_?”