regarded as governments, should come to a distinct understanding as to our respective views, in order to ascertain whether the great questions at issue can be settled or not. If you who represent the stronger portion cannot agree to settle them on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the states we both represent agree to separate and part in peace. If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so; and we shall know what to do when you reduce the question to submission or resistance. If you remain silent, you will compel us to infer by your acts what you intend. In that case California will become the test question. If you admit her under all the difficulties that oppose her admission, you compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from the whole of the acquired territories, with the intention of destroying irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sections.1 We should be blind not to perceive in that case that your real objects are power and aggrandizement, and infatuated, not to act accordingly. I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully, freely, and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing so I have been governed by the motives which have governed me in all the stages of the agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it, with the intention of saving the Union if it could be done; and if it could not, to save the section where it has pleased Providence to cast my lot, and which I sincerely believe has justice and the Constitu 1 Meaning, of course, the North and the South. tion on its side. Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the Union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the consolation, let what will come that I am free from all responsibility. FREE KANSAS 1 CHARLES SUMNER (1856) CHARLES SUMNER (1811-1874), statesman, was born at Boston, Massachusetts. He was educated at Harvard College, studied law, and was admitted to the Bar. His first public appearance of note was made in Boston, July 4, 1845, and from that time on he was an active opponent of slavery. His election to the United States Senate, free from any pledges, he regarded as "an imposition of new duties and labors in a field which I never selected and to which I do not in the least incline." Yet in that field he won such fame as is permitted few men to enjoy. The assault made on him by Preston Brooks, a representative from South Carolina, caused profound agitation in the North, and did much to crystallize the slowly growing sentiment in favor of war. It is against the people of Kansas that the sensibilities of the senator 2 are particularly aroused. Coming, as he announces, "from a State," -aye, sir, from South 1 From a speech delivered in the United States Senate in 1856. This speech provoked the assault by Preston S. Brooks. 2 Senator Butler of South Carolina, uncle of Mr. Brooks. 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 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.1 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, rushed forward in the very ecstasy of madness, to expose it by provoking a comparison with Kansas. South Carolina is old; Kansas is young.2 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 anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic spirit in a heroic cause as 1 See the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Sections 2 and 9. 2 The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed in 1854. By this bill the question of slavery was to be settled by vote of the citizens of each territory. 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 defense, the wives of Prussia, who, with delicate fingers, clothed their defenders against French invasion,1- 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 loseI 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 "2 to the republic when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, "lies howling." 3 1 In the Napoleonic wars. 2 Scott's "Marmion," Canto VI, stanza 30. THE ASSAULT ON SUMNER1 ANSON BURLINGAME (1856) ANSON BURLINGAME (1820-1870) was born at New Berlin, New York. He was educated at the University of Michigan, and studied law at the Harvard Law School. He was elected a member of Congress from Massachusetts for three terms. Later he was appointed Minister to Austria by President Lincoln, but that country refused to accept him, because of opinions expressed by him regarding the politics of Austria. Subsequently he was sent as Minister to China, where his diplomacy greatly benefited the United States. The Chinese Prime Minister, appreciating Mr. Burlingame's services, on his return home in 1867, requested him to act as Special Envoy to the United States and the leading European powers to establish treaties with them on behalf of China. He was instrumental in making treaties with the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Prussia, Holland, and Denmark. While in St. Petersburg, negotiating with Russia, he was stricken with pneumonia, and died. On the 22d day of May, when the Senate and the House had clothed themselves in mourning for a brother fallen in the battle of life in the distant state of Missouri, the senator from Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate chamber, engaged in the employments appertaining to his office, when a member from this House who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother. One blow was enough; but it did not satiate the wrath of that spirit which had pursued him through 1 Delivered in the House of Representatives. On May 22, 1856, Charles Sumner, senator for Massachusetts, was assaulted in the Senate chamber by Representative Brooks of South Carolina. |