American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) by Various

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Mr. President, I feel that I owe an apology to the Senate for having
occupied their attention so long, and a still greater apology for having
discussed the question in such an incoherent and desultory manner. But
I could not forbear to claim the right of closing this debate. I thought
gentlemen would recognize its propriety when they saw the manner
in which I was assailed and misrepresented in the course of this
discussion, and especially by assaults still more disreputable in some
portions of the country. These assaults have had no other effect upon me
than to give me courage and energy for a still more resolute discharge
of duty. I say frankly that, in my opinion, this measure will be as
popular at the North as at the South, when its provisions and principles
shall have been fully developed, and become well understood. The people
at the North are attached to the principles of self-government, and
you cannot convince them that that is self-government which deprives a
people of the right of legislating for themselves, and compels them to
receive laws which are forced upon them by a Legislature in which they
are not represented. We are willing to stand upon this great principle
of self-government every-where; and it is to us a proud reflection that,
in this whole discussion, no friend of the bill has urged an argument
in its favor which could not be used with the same propriety in a free
State as in a slave State, and vice versed. No enemy of the bill has
used an argument which would bear repetition one mile across Mason and
Dixon's line. Our opponents have dealt entirely in sectional appeals.
The friends of the bill have discussed a great principle of universal
application, which can be sustained by the same reasons, and the same
arguments, in every time and in every corner of the Union.

CHARLES SUMNER,

OF MASSACHUSETTS.' (BORN 1811, DIED 1874.)

ON THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS;

SENATE, MAY 19-20, 1856.

MR. PRESIDENT:

You are now called to redress a great transgression. Seldom in the
history of nations has such a question been presented. Tariffs, Army
bills, Navy bills, Land bills, are important, and justly occupy your
care; but these all belong to the course of ordinary legislation. As
means and instruments only, they are necessarily subordinate to the
conservation of government itself. Grant them or deny them, in greater
or less degree, and you will inflict no shock. The machinery of
government will continue to move. The State will not cease to exist. Far
otherwise is it with the eminent question now before you, involving, as
it does, Liberty in a broad territory, and also involving the peace of
the whole country, with our good name in history forever more.

Take down your map, sir, and you will find that the Territory of Kansas,
more than any other region, occupies the middle spot of North America,
equally distant from the Atlantic on the east, and the Pacific on the
west; from the frozen waters of Hudson's Bay on the north, and the tepid
Gulf Stream on the south, constituting the precise territorial centre of
the whole vast continent. To such advantages of situation, on the very
highway between two oceans, are added a soil of unsurpassed richness,
and a fascinating, undulating beauty of surface, with a health-giving
climate, calculated to nurture a powerful and generous people, worthy
to be a central pivot of American institutions. A few short months only
have passed since this spacious and mediterranean country was open only
to the savage who ran wild in its woods and prairies; and now it has
already drawn to its bosom a population of freemen larger than Athens
crowded within her historic gates, when her sons, under Miltiades,
won liberty for man-kind on the field of Marathon; more than Sparta
contained when she ruled Greece, and sent forth her devoted children,
quickened by a mother's benediction, to return with their shields, or on
them; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings,
she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced the
whole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecy
and Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over the
chivalrous hosts of France.

Against this Territory, thus fortunate in position and population, a
crime has been committed, which is without example in the records of
the past. Not in plundered provinces or in the cruelties of selfish
governors will you find its parallel; and yet there is an ancient
instance, which may show at least the path of justice. In the terrible
impeachment by which the great Roman orator has blasted through all
time the name of Verres, amidst charges of robbery and sacrilege, the
enormity which most aroused the indignant voice of his accuser, and
which still stands forth with strongest distinctness, arresting the
sympathetic indignation of all who read the story, is, that away in
Sicily he had scourged a citizen of Rome--that the cry, "I am a Roman
citizen," had been interposed in vain against the lash of the tyrant
governor. Other charges were, that he had carried away productions of
art, and that he had violated the sacred shrines. It was in the presence
of the Roman Senate that this arraignment proceeded; in a temple of
the Forum; amidst crowds--such as no orator had ever before drawn
together--thronging the porticos and colonnades, even clinging to
the house-tops and neighboring slopes--and under the anxious gaze of
witnesses summoned from the scene of crime. But an audience grander
far--of higher dignity--of more various people, and of wider
intelligence--the countless multitude of succeeding generations, in
every land, where eloquence has been studied, or where the Roman name
has been recognized,--has listened to the accusation, and throbbed with
condemnation of the criminal. Sir, speaking in an age of light, and a
land of constitutional liberty, where the safeguards of elections are
justly placed among the highest triumphs of civilization, I fearlessly
assert that the wrongs of much-abused Sicily, thus memorable in history,
were small by the side of the wrongs of Kansas, where the very shrines
of popular institutions, more sacred than any heathen altar, have been
desecrated; where the ballot-box, more precious than any work, in ivory
or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered; and where
the cry, "I am an American citizen," has been interposed in vain against
outrage of every kind, even upon life itself. Are you against sacrilege?
I present it for your execration. Are you against;robbery? I hold it up
to your scorn. Are you for the protection of American citizens? I show
you how their dearest rights have been cloven down, while a Tyrannical
Usurpation has sought to install itself on their very necks!

But the wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably
aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any common lust for
power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a
virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; and
it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave State,
the hideous off-spring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the
power of slavery in the National Government. Yes, sir, when the whole
world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, and
to make it a hissing to the nations, here in our Republic, force--ay,
sir, FORCE--has been openly employed in compelling Kansas to this
pollution, and all for the sake of political power. There is the simple
fact, which you will in vain attempt to deny, but which in itself
presents an essential wickedness that makes other public crimes seem
like public virtues.

But this enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of
wickedness which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it is
understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine
feud not only in this distant Territory, but everywhere throughout the
country. Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local,
but national. Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all the arches
of the horizon threatening to darken the broad land, which already
yawns with the mutterings of civil war. The fury of the propagandists of
Slavery, and the calm determination of their opponents, are now diffused
from the distant Territory over widespread communities, and the
whole country, in all its extent--marshalling hostile divisions, and
foreshadowing a strife which, unless happily averted by the triumph
of Freedom, will become war--fratricidal, parricidal war--with an
accumulated wickedness beyond the wickedness of any war in human annals;
justly provoking the avenging judgment of Providence and the avenging
pen of history, and constituting a strife, in the language of the
ancient writer, more than foreign, more than social, more than civil;
but something compounded of all these strifes, and in itself more than
war; _sal potius commune quoddam ex omnibus, et plus quam bellum_.

Such is the crime which you are to judge. But the criminal also must be
dragged into day, that you may see and measure the power by which all
this wrong is sustained. From no common source could it proceed. In
its perpetration was needed a spirit of vaulting ambition which would
hesitate at nothing; a hardihood of purpose which was insensible to the
judgment of mankind; a madness for Slavery which would disregard the
Constitution, the laws, and all the great examples of our history;
also a consciousness of power such as comes from the habit of power;
a combination of energies found only in a hundred arms directed by
a hundred eyes; a control of public opinion through venal pens and a
prostituted press; an ability to subsidize crowds in every vocation
of life--the politician with his local importance, the lawyer with his
subtle tongue, and even the authority of the judge on the bench; and
a familiar use of men in places high and low, so that none, from the
President to the lowest border postmaster, should decline to be its
tool; all these things and more were needed, and they were found in
the slave power of our Republic. There, sir, stands the criminal,
all unmasked before you--heartless, grasping, and tyrannical--with an
audacity beyond that of Verres, a subtlety beyond that of Machiavel, a
meanness beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond that of Hastings.
Justice to Kansas can be secured only by the prostration of this
influence; for this the power behind--greater than any President--which
succors and sustains the crime. Nay, the proceedings I now arraign
derive their fearful consequences only from this connection.

In now opening this great matter, I am not insensible to the austere
demands of the occasion; but the dependence of the crime against Kansas
upon the slave power is so peculiar and important, that I trust to be
pardoned while I impress it with an illustration, which to some may
seem trivial. It is related in Northern mythology that the god of Force,
visiting an enchanted region, was challenged by his royal entertainer to
what seemed an humble feat of strength--merely, sir, to lift a cat from
the ground. The god smiled at the challenge, and, calmly placing his
hand under the belly of the animal, with superhuman strength strove,
while the back of the feline monster arched far up-ward, even beyond
reach, and one paw actually forsook the earth, until at last the
discomfited divinity desisted; but he was little surprised at his
defeat when he learned that this creature, which seemed to be a cat, and
nothing more, was not merely a cat, but that it belonged to and was a
part of the great Terrestrial Serpent, which, in its innumerable folds,
encircled the whole globe. Even so the creature, whose paws are now
fastened upon Kansas, whatever it may seem to be, constitutes in reality
a part of the slave power, which, in its loathsome folds, is now
coiled about the whole land. Thus do I expose the extent of the present
contest, where we encounter not merely local resistance, but also the
unconquered sustaining arm behind. But out of the vastness of the crime
attempted, with all its woe and shame, I derive a well-founded assurance
of a commensurate vastness of effort against it by the aroused masses of
the country, determined not only to vindicate Right against Wrong,
but to redeem the Republic from the thraldom of that Oligarchy which
prompts, directs, and concentrates the distant wrong.

Such is the crime, and such the criminal, which it is my duty in this
debate to expose, and, by the blessing of God, this duty shall be done
completely to the end. * * *'

But, before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a
general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from
Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in
championship of human wrongs. I mean the Senator from South Carolina
(Mr. Butler), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas), who, though
unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally
forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder
Senator from his seat; but the cause, against which he has run a
tilt, with such activity of animosity, demands that the opportunity of
exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak.
The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and
believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and
courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his
vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though
polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight--I mean the
harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her
be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out
from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or
hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy
of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all
surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock equality of all
kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave States
cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, he
misnames equality under the Constitution--in other words, the full power
in the National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to
separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction
block--then, sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South
Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted Senator! A second
Moses come for a second exodus!!

But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was
"measured," the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has
undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on
this floor. He calls them "sectional and fanatical;" and opposition to
the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating fanaticism."
To be sure these charges lack all grace of originality, and all
sentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator does not hesitate. He
is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a
flagrant sectionalism, which now domineers over the Republic, and yet
with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position--unable to see himself
as others see him--or with an effrontery which even his white head ought
not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his
sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who
strive to bring back the Government to its original policy, when Freedom
and not Slavery was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will not
do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senator
that it is to himself, and to the "organization" of which he is the
"committed advocate," that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon
them. For myself, I care little for names; but since the question has
been raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is in
no just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national;
and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high places of the
Government the tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from South
Carolina is one of the maddest zealots. * * *

As the Senator from South Carolina, is the Don Quixote, the Senator from
Illinois (Mr. Douglas) is the Squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza,
ready to do all its humiliating offices. This Senator, in his labored
address, vindicating his labored report--piling one mass of elaborate
error upon another mass--constrained himself, as you will remember, to
unfamiliar decencies of speech. Of that address I have nothing to say
at this moment, though before I sit down I shall show something of its
fallacies. But I go back now to an earlier occasion, when, true to his
native impulses, he threw into this discussion, "for a charm of powerful
trouble," personalities most discreditable to this body. I will not stop
to repel the imputations which he cast upon myself; but I mention them
to remind you of the "sweltered venom sleeping got," which, with other
poisoned ingredients, he cast into the caldron of this debate. Of other
things I speak. Standing on this floor, the Senator issued his rescript,
requiring submission to the Usurped Power of Kansas; and this was
accompanied by a manner--all his own--such as befits the tyrannical
threat. Very well. Let the Senator try. I tell him now that he cannot
enforce any such submission. The Senator, with the slave power at his
back, is strong; but he is not strong enough for this purpose. He is
bold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, "l'audace!
l'audace! toujours l'au-dace!" but even his audacity cannot compass this
work. The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger,
said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the "stamps" down the
throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure. He
may convulse this country with a civil feud. Like the ancient madman, he
may set fire to this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander than
the Ephesian dome; but he cannot enforce obedience to that Tyrannical
Usurpation.

The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open
threat, but his conduct still implies it. How little that Senator knows
himself or the strength of the cause which he persecutes! He is but a
mortal man; against him is an immortal principle. With finite power he
wrestles with the infinite, and he must fall. Against him are stronger
battalions than any marshalled by mortal arm--the inborn, ineradicable,
invincible sentiments of the human heart; against him is nature in all
her subtle forces; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these. * * *

With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina (Mr.
Butler), who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at the
simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State;
and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his
speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There was
no extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate, which he did not
repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not
make, with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him from
the suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touches
nothing which he does not disfigure--with error, sometimes of principle,
sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in
stating the Constitution, or in stating the law, whether in the details
of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope his mouth,
but out there flies a blunder. Surely he ought to be familiar with the
life of Franklin; and yet he referred to this household character, while
acting as agent of our fathers in England, as above suspicion; and this
was done that he might give point to a false contrast with the agent of
Kansas--not knowing that, however they may differ in genius and fame, in
this experience they are alike: that Franklin, when entrusted with the
petition of Massachusetts Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker,
where he could not be heard in defence, and denounced as a "thief," even
as the agent of Kansas has been assaulted on this floor, and denounced
as a "forger." And let not the vanity of the Senator be inspired by
the parallel with the British statesman of that day; for it is only in
hostility to Freedom that any parallel can be recognized.

But it is against the people of Kansas that the sensibilities of the
Senator are particularly aroused. Coming, as he announces, "from a
State"--ay, sir, from South Carolina--he turns with lordly disgust from
this newly-formed community, which he will not recognize even as a "body
politic." Pray, sir, by what title does he indulge in this egotism? Has
he read the history of "the State" which he represents? He cannot
surely have forgotten its shameful imbecility from Slavery, confessed
throughout the Revolution, followed by its more shameful assumptions for
Slavery since. He cannot have forgotten its wretched persistence in
the slave-trade as the very apple of its eye, and the condition of its
participation in the Union. He cannot have forgotten its constitution,
which is Republican only in name, confirming power in the hands of the
few, and founding the qualifications of its legislators on "a settled
freehold estate and ten negroes." And yet the Senator, to whom that
"State" has in part committed the guardianship of its good name, instead
of moving, with backward treading steps, to cover its nakedness, rushes
forward in the very ecstasy of madness, to expose it by provoking a
comparison with Kansas. South Carolina is old; Kansas is young. South
Carolina counts by centuries; where Kansas counts by years. But a
beneficent example may be born in a day; and I venture to say, that
against the two centuries of the older "State," may be already set
the two years of trial, evolving corresponding virtue, in the younger
community. In the one, is the long wail of Slavery; in the other, the
hymns of Freedom. And if we glance at special achievements, it will
be difficult to find any thing in the history of South Carolina which
presents so much of heroic spirit in an heroic cause as appears in that
repulse of the Missouri invaders by the beleaguered town of Lawrence,
where even the women gave their effective efforts to Freedom. The
matrons of Rome, who poured their jewels into the treasury for the
public defence--the wives of Prussia, who, with delicate fingers,
clothed their defenders against French invasion--the mothers of our
own Revolution, who sent forth their sons, covered with prayers and
blessings, to combat for human rights, did nothing of self-sacrifice
truer than did these women on this occasion. Were the whole history of
South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to
the day of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this
floor, civilization might lose--I do not say how little; but surely
less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant
struggle against oppression, and in the development of a new science
of emigration. Already, in Lawrence alone, there are newspapers and
schools, including a High School, and throughout this infant Territory
there is more mature scholarship far, in proportion to its inhabitants,
than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Senator that Kansas,
welcomed as a free State, will be a "ministering angel" to the Republic,
when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, "lies
howling."

The Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) naturally joins the Senator from
South Carolina in this warfare, and gives to it the superior intensity
of his nature. He thinks that the National Government has not completely
proved its power, as it has never hanged a traitor; but, if the occasion
requires, he hopes there will be no hesitation; and this threat is
directed at Kansas, and even at the friends of Kansas throughout the
country. Again occurs the parallel with the struggle of our fathers,
and I borrow the language of Patrick Henry, when, to the cry from the
Senator, of "treason," "treason," I reply, "if this be treason, make
the most of it." Sir, it is easy to call names; but I beg to tell the
Senator that if the word "traitor" is in any way applicable to those
who refuse submission to a Tyrannical Usurpation, whether in Kansas or
elsewhere, then must some new word, of deeper color, be invented, to
designate those mad spirits who could endanger and degrade the Republic,
while they betray all the cherished sentiments of the fathers and the
spirit of the Constitution, in order to give new spread to Slavery. Let
the Senator proceed. It will not be the first time in history, that a
scaffold erected for punishment has become a pedestal of honor. Out of
death comes life, and the "traitor" whom he blindly executes will live
immortal in the cause.

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