swering yea, when we were all asked to answer yea

or nay.

This brief effort of Mr. Sumner at a critical moment found response, not only from his constituents, but from the North generally. In Massachusetts many made haste to testify that the petition praying for such a shameful surrender had been signed by large numbers without knowing its true character, while the Common Council of Boston, then controlled by Compromisers, also made haste to censure Mr. Sumner, declaring, in formal resolution, that his assertion in the Senate with regard to the petitioners was "undignified, unbecoming a Senator and a citizen of Boston, and untrue."

As through this remarkable petition, and the speech of Mr. Crittenden in presenting it, Massachusetts was vouched for Slavery, a few witnesses may be properly adduced to show how the signatures were obtained, and also what was the real sentiment of the people there.

William Lloyd Garrison, always watchful for Human Rights, and knowing the wiles of Compromise, wrote from Boston:

"For one, I desire to thank you for declaring in the Senate that the petition from Boston, asking for any compromise to propitiate the South, did not represent the sentiment even of the city, but was signed by multitudes ignorantly and recklessly, the left hand not knowing what the right hand did. I wish it were in your power to have that list of names critically examined. I am quite sure that hundreds of names would be proved to be 'men of straw.' I have been told that the names of Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker (!), 1 and my own, were appended to it. This is possible, but hardly credible. Still, excepting the Border-Ruffian returns in Kansas, I do not believe there was ever a petition more impudently and fraudulently presented to a legislative assembly than the one from this city.

"I congratulate you upon being the special object of the Courier's malignant abuse. Do not fear of being fully sustained by Massachusetts in your boldest utterances; and how posterity will decide is easily seen."

M. P. Kennard, an excellent citizen and business man, wrote from Boston:

"The petition was placed in the lobby of our post-office, under the charge of a crier, who saluted every one who passed him with, 'Sign this petition?' - and it was thoughtlessly signed by men and boys, native and foreign."

Charles W. Slack, of the newspaper press, wrote from Boston :·

1 He was already dead.

"You are entirely right relative to the signers of the Crittenden Petition. Boys, non-voters, foreigners, anybody, were taken, who could write a name. The city police canvassed all the out-of-the-way places, and took the names they could gather. . . . . Glad that you spoke as you did. We look to you to give the key-note. None knows Massachusetts better than you, and none will be more faithful to her, come weal or woe."

Dr. William J. Dale, afterwards the Surgeon-General of Massachusetts, wrote from Boston:

-

"The other day a neighbor of ours, Mr. Brown, an intelligent citizen, a provision dealer, corner of Derne and Temple Streets, stopped me and said, If you ever write Mr. Sumner, tell him that I, with many others, signed that Crittenden Petition under an entire misapprehension.' Says he, 'I would cut off my right hand before it should sign so infamous a proposition.' That is the feeling among the middling-interest people. The so-called Union men assume the air and manner of slave-overseers. They have overdone the thing here."

J. Vincent Browne, afterwards Collector of Internal Revenue in the Essex District of Massachusetts, wrote from Salem : :

"At least twenty persons who signed the paper in this city have said to me, Why, Mr. Crittenden's propositions are merely to restore the Missouri Compromise. I was told so, when I signed.' When the truth was told them, as usual, they were astonished. And so men trifle with their rights, and are trifled with."

John Tappan, a venerable citizen, loving peace, but hating Slavery, and anxious that Massachusetts should be right, wrote from Bos

ton:

"I thank you for it, and believe it speaks the sentiments of a vast majority of all parties in this and the other New England States. The only reason assigned by some of the signers is, that it was not expected that it would pass as offered, but lead to some compromise.

"Be assured the heart of the Commonwealth is with you, and that, if ever we were called upon for firmness in maintaining our Constitutional rights, it is now; and although I pray God no blood may be shed in the conflict, yet submission to the demands of Slavery is not to be the alternative.

"I rejoice the conflict has come in my day, although, on the verge of fourscore, I may not live to see harmony restored."1

Rev. John Weiss, the eloquent preacher and author, wrote from Milton, Massachusetts :

"Your little speech lies in the hand like an ingot, - dense and precious,

1 Mr. Tappan died March 25, 1871, in the ninetieth year of his age.

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 better 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.

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.

avers.

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 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