and of the color which charms my eyes at least. Nothing can be truer than your statement, that multitudes of people do not know what they sign, when they indorse the Crittenden propositions. I, for one, had not read them till quite lately. They have not been freely ventilated in the newspapers. When, the other day, the Boston papers undertook to print them formally, people were shocked..... The 4th March will come with a fatal suddenness for all the plotters and expecters and adjustment-mongers. Just at the proper moment, not a moment too soon nor too late, you spoke a word which will help to clear the air."

Others wrote correcting the statement with regard to signatures in different towns. Some in a few words exposed the petition. Professor Convers Francis wrote from Cambridge: "The big Boston petition, so far as I can learn, is regarded here as a piece of gammon, except, perhaps, in certain quarters of the business world." Rev. R. S. Storrs, the venerable divine, wrote from Braintree: “A great hoax, that famous petition for the Crittenden Compromise!" This testimony, which might be extended indefinitely, will relieve Massachusetts from a painful complicity, and help keep her history bright.

The resolutions of the Boston Common Council did not fare bet

ter than the petition. Among newspapers, the Boston Advertiser

remarked :

"It is hardly necessary for us to say that we do not concur in all respects in the policy which Mr. Sumner is understood to follow at this crisis; but in the matter of this petition we certainly hold that he was plainly right. And we are led to this belief by observing the industrious efforts made by those who urged the signing of the petition to conceal the true meaning of the scheme which is known as Mr. Crittenden's. .. It appears to us also that Mr. Sumner gave not only the most friendly, but also a most natural, account of the manner in which a large number of these petitioners must have been led to this singular mistake."

The New York Tribune stated the case.

"A great many dull people, and a few clever ones, lately signed a petition asking Congress to adopt the Crittenden Compromise. When this document was taken up in the Senate, Mr. Sumner said, with much calmness and in the most courteous spirit, that he believed the signers had so high a regard for the name of Crittenden that they had put their signatures to a paper which they could not have fully understood in all its obligations, bearings, and propositions. This was a very gentle letting-down of the Bostonians, much more tender treatment than they deserved. Nevertheless, the remark raised a breeze in the respectable city, such as only a small thing can create in that place. It would never do to say that any Boston man or boy could sign a paper the whole of which he had not read and digested. So the Common Council, of all bodies in that town, took up the matter, and actu

ally passed a vote of censure on Senator Sumner for mildly hinting that the signers aforesaid were rather hasty than wicked, stupid, or weak."

A sonnet by David A. Wasson, which appeared at this time, expresses gratitude to Mr. Sumner, with small sympathy for compromise in any form.

66 TO CHARLES SUMNER.

"THOU and the stars, our Sumner, still shine on!
No dark will dim, no spending waste thy ray;
And we as soon could doubt the Milky Way,
Whether enduring were its silver zone,
As question of thy truth. Their light is gone
Whose beam was borrowed: ever will Accident,
Upon a day, the garment it hath lent

make beggars of its kings anon.
Thou and the stars eternal, inly fed

From God's own bosom with celestial light,
Must needs emit the glory in ye bred;

Alike it is your nature to be bright:
And I, while thou art shining overhead,
Know God is with us in the gloomy night."

DUTY AND STRENGTH OF THE COMING

ADMINISTRATION.

FROM NOTES OF undelivered SPEECH ON THE VARIOUS PROPOSITIONS of Compromise, February, 1861.

MR. SUMNER Contemplated a speech reviewing the various propositions of Compromise, but he never made it. The following passages are given, as proposed at the time.

I

WOULD not say a word except of kindness and

respect for the Senator of Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN]. But that Senator must pardon me, if I insist that he is entirely unreasonable in pressing his impracticable and unconstitutional propositions so persistently in the way of most important public business. Yesterday it hindered a great measure of Internal Improvement. To-day it blocks the admission of a State into this Union, being none other than Kansas, which has earned a better hospitality.

The Senator makes his appeal in the name of the Union. But I must remind him that he takes a poor way of showing that attachment to the Union which he avers. He turns round and lectures us who are devoted to the Union, when his lecture should be addressed to the avowed and open Disunionists in this Chamber. Nay, more, he actually sides with the Disunionists in their claims. Imagine Washington, Frank

VOL. V.

21

EE

lin, Jefferson, John Jay, Andrew Jackson, or Henry Clay, in the place of the venerable Senator. They would not wheel towards the known friends of the Union, and ask an impossible surrender of sacred principles, but rather face to face address the Disunionists frankly, plainly, austerely, calling upon them to renounce their evil schemes, to acknowledge the National Constitution, and especially in this age of light to make no new demands for Slavery.

In reply to the Senator, who so constantly lectures us, I say, look to the good examples of our history; take counsel of the Spirit of Nationalism, rather than Sectionalism, and be willing to defend the Constitution as it is, rather than patch it over with propositions which our fathers would have disowned.

Putting aside all question of concession or compromise, the single question remains, How shall we treat the seceding States? And this is the question which the new Administration will be called to meet. I see well that it will naturally bear much and forbear long,

that it will be moved by principle, and not by passion, — and that it will adopt the harsh instrumentalities of power only when all other things have failed. And I see well the powerful allies which will be enlisted on its side. There will be the civilization of the Christian world, speaking with the innumerable voices of the press, and constituting a Public Opinion of irresistible energy. There will be the great contemporary example of Italy, after a slumber of centuries aroused to assertion of her rights, and of Russia also, now completing that memorable act of Emancipation by which Freedom is assured to twenty millions of serfs. There will be also

-

the concurring action of European powers, which, turning with disgust from a new confederacy founded on Human Slavery, will refuse to recognize it in the Family of Nations. There will be also the essential weakness of Slavery with the perils of servile insurrection, which, under the influence of this discussion, must become more and more manifest in every respect. There will be also the essential strength of Freedom, as a principle, carrying victory in its right hand. And there will be Time, which is at once Reformer and Pacificator. Such are some of the allies sure to be on the side of the Administration.