A VERY large edition of this speech was printed at Washington, immediately after its delivery. Another appeared at Boston, with a portrait; and another at San Francisco, with the Republican Platform. While the Rebellion was still warring on the National Government, an edition was brought out in New York by the "Young Men's Republican Union," to which Mr. Sumner prefixed a Dedication to the Young Men of the United States, which will be found in its proper place, according to date, in this collection.

A letter from that devoted friend of the Slave, the late George L. Stearns, of Boston, under date of March 1st, 1860, shows something of the outside prompting under which Mr. Sumner spoke.

"I have just read 's speech. He stands up to the mark well, for a politician; but we want one who believes a Man is greater than a President, and who would not lift his finger to obtain the best office in the gift of our nation, to raise this question above the political slough into its true position. Charles O'Conor, in his late speech in New York, affirmed, that, if Slavery were not a wise and beneficent institution for the black as well as the white, it could not be defended.' We want you to take up the gauntlet

that he has thrown down so defiantly."

A letter from William H. Brooks, of Cambridgeport, unconsciously harmonized with Mr. Stearns.

"Feeling that our nation is now in the very throes of her deliverance, and I trust her prompt deliverance, from bondage to her, not Thirty, but Three Hundred Thousand Tyrants, may I frankly say, that, if not inconsistent with your health and safety, which are on no consideration to be perilled, you could aid more than any single person, or score of them, in effectually accomplishing the great triumph... The unseen forces of public opinion are gathering and forming for the great November conflict. Your long, enforced, and martyr silence will give a depth of impression and moving power and ten thousand echoes to your words beyond their accustomed might."

....

Something about the menace of violence after this speech, with illustrations of its reception at the time, is postponed to an Appendix.

Kansas was not admitted as a State into the Union until January 29, 1861, after the slaveholding Senators had withdrawn to organize the Rebellion, when the bill on which the present speech was made became a law.

SPEECH.

R. PRESIDENT,- Undertaking now, after a si

MR. more than four years, to address the

lence of more

Senate on this important subject, I should suppress the emotions natural to such an occasion, if I did not declare on the threshold my gratitude to that Supreme Being through whose benign care I am enabled, after much suffering and many changes, once again to resume. my duties here, and to speak for the cause so near my heart. To the honored Commonwealth whose representative I am, and also to my immediate associates in this body, with whom I enjoy the fellowship which is found in thinking alike concerning the Republic,1 I owe thanks which I seize the moment to express for indulgence extended to me throughout the protracted seclusion enjoined by medical skill; and I trust that it will not be thought unbecoming in me to put on record here, as an apology for leaving my seat so long vacant, without making way, by resignation, for a successor, that I acted under the illusion of an invalid, whose hopes for restoration to natural health continued against oftrecurring disappointment.

When last I entered into this debate, it became my duty to expose the Crime against Kansas, and to insist

1 "Eadem de Republica sensisse."—CIC., Orat. in Pisonem, c. 32.

upon the immediate admission of that Territory as a State of this Union, with a Constitution forbidding Slavery. Time has passed, but the question remains. Resuming the discussion precisely where I left it, I am happy to avow that rule of moderation which, it is said, may venture to fix the boundaries of wisdom itself. I have no personal griefs to utter: only a vulgar egotism could intrude such into this Chamber. I have no personal wrongs to avenge: only a brutish nature could attempt to wield that vengeance which belongs to the Lord. The years that have intervened and the tombs that have opened1 since I spoke have their voices, too, which I cannot fail to hear. Besides, what am I, what is any man among the living or among the dead, compared with the question before us? It is this alone which I shall discuss, and I begin the argument with that easy victory which is found in charity.

The Crime against Kansas stands forth in painful light. Search history, and you cannot find its parallel. The slave-trade is bad; but even this enormity is petty, compared with that elaborate contrivance by which, in a Christian age and within the limits of a Republic, all forms of constitutional liberty were perverted, all the rights of human nature violated, and the whole country held trembling on the edge of civil war, while all this large exuberance of wickedness, detestable in itself, becomes tenfold more detestable, when its origin is traced to the madness for Slavery. The fatal partition between. Freedom and Slavery, known as the Missouri Compromise, the subsequent overthrow of this partition, and the seizure of all by Slavery, - the violation of plighted

1 Mr. Brooks and Senator Butler were both dead.

faith, the conspiracy to force Slavery at all hazards into Kansas, the successive invasions by which all security there was destroyed, and the electoral franchise itself was trodden down, the sacrilegious seizure of the very polls, and, through pretended forms of law, the imposition of a foreign legislature upon this Territory,- the acts of this legislature, fortifying the Usurpation, and, among other things, establishing test-oaths, calculated to disfranchise actual settlers friendly to Freedom, and securing the privileges of the citizen to actual strangers friendly to Slavery, - the whole crowned by a statute, "the be-all and the end-all" of the whole Usurpation, through which Slavery was not only recognized on this beautiful soil, but made to bristle with a Code of Death such as the world has rarely seen, all these I fully exposed on a former occasion. And yet the most important part of the argument was at that time left untouched: I mean that found in the Character of Slavery. This natural sequel, with the permission of the Senate, I now propose to supply.

Motive is to Crime as soul to body; and it is only when we comprehend the motive that we can truly comprehend the Crime. Here the motive is found in Slavery and the rage for its extension. Therefore, by logical necessity, must Slavery be discussed, not indirectly, timidly, and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly. It must be exhibited as it is, alike in its influence and its animating character, so that not only outside, but inside, may be seen.

This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place. They may turn away wrath; but what is the wrath of man? This is no time to aban

don any advantage in the argument. Senators some

10

times announce that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing of the moral question. This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions, of White and Red Roses, of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong, between Good and Evil. Such a battle cannot be fought with rosewater. There is austere work to be done, and Freedom cannot consent to fling away any of her weapons.

If I were disposed to shrink from this discussion, the boundless assumptions made by Senators on the other side would not allow me. The whole character of Slavery, as a pretended form of Civilization, is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all reserve on this side. In these assumptions Senators from South Carolina naturally take the lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who pronounced Slavery "the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions," 1 and Mr. McDuffie, who did not shrink from calling it "the corner-stone of our republican edifice," the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. HAMMOND] insists that its "frame of society is the best in the world" 3; and his colleague [Mr. CHESNUT] takes up the strain. One Senator from Mississippi [Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS], adds, that Slavery

1 Speech in the Senate, February 6, 1837: Works, Vol. II. p. 632. See Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery, by William Jay, p. 509.

2 Message to the Legislature of South Carolina, November, 1835.

8 Speech in the Senate, March 4, 1858: Congressional Globe, 35th Cong. 1st Sess., p. 961.