None has seemed so invariably to realize that a public wrong is a public danger, that injustice to the humblest and weakest is peril to the well-being of all.

Others have seemed to regard the recent developments of disunion and treason with surprise and alarm: he has esteemed them the bitter, but natural, fruit of the deadly tree we have so long been watering and cherishing.

By a vote of nearly six to one, Massachusetts again declares her confidence in her long-tried Senator, and, on an issue defined with unmistakable clearness, for the third time returns him to his seat.

This outrage, and the enthusiastic approval with which it was received throughout the South, were largely instrumental in rousing the North to a right estimate of the system and the political power which sought such means of defence.

Thus has Massachusetts nobly vindicated her name and fame as the foremost State of all the world in the cause of free institutions, and trampled beneath her feet the malignant aspersions cast upon the political reputation of her gifted…

Such enemies only serve to prove his personal worth and public usefulness, and their factious and profligate character.

Sumner’s reëlection the cause of Emancipation triumphed, and Massachusetts was fixed irrevocably on that side.

The Emancipation Proclamation of the President, on which you ask me to speak, is now the corner-stone of our national policy.

For the sake of our country, and in loyalty to our Government, it ought to have the best support of every patriot citizen, without hesitation or lukewarmness.

Since then I have been a traveller at home and abroad, but I know no similar scene of greater beauty.

Other places are richer in the associations of history; but you have enough already in what Nature has done, without waiting for any further illustration.

Where is there greater fertility? where is there truer liberty?

Besides illustrating the magnitude of our agricultural interests, they shed new light on the lofty pretensions that have been made for King Cotton.

There is no crown for hay, or wheat, or Indian corn, and yet two of these stand above cotton.

But the whole table testifies to the power of the farmer.

Out of seventeen hundred persons, the average life of farmers was forty-five years; of merchants, thirty-three years; of mechanics, twenty-nine years; and of laborers, twenty-seven years.

Thus length of days seems to be an agricultural product.

But agriculture is now not only an art, in a high degree of perfection, it is also a science, with its laws and rules, as much as navigation or astronomy.

Regarding agriculture in this light, we cannot fail to give the farmer a high standard of excellence.

But human character is elevated by the standard which is followed.

He thinks for himself, and acts for his country.

I do not venture to say that he is naturally a reformer, but I think the experience of our country attests that he does not set himself against the ideas of the age.

I rejoice to believe that there is no such hide-bound indifference to liberal ideas among our farmers.

But, just in proportion as these are numerous, intelligent, powerful, and liberal, do they constitute an arm of strength.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.