Charles Sumner

And when that voice is really heard, whether in martyr cries, or in earthquake tones of civil convulsion, or in the calmness of ordinary speech, such as I now employ, or in that still, small utterance inaudible to the common ear, then is…

At first persecuted, gagged, silenced, crucified, she cries out from the prison, the rack, the stake, the cross, until at last her voice is heard.

And this, I say, is the first stage of victory,--herald of the transcendent future.

Slavery, in all its many-sided wrong, still continues; but here in this metropolis--ay, Sir, and throughout the whole North--freedom of discussion is at length secured.

Here is a great change, worthy of notice and memory, for it attests the first stage of victory.

The press, too, with untold power, exerted itself in this behalf, while pulpit, politician, and merchant conspired to stifle discussion, until the voice of Freedom was hushed to a whisper, “alas! almost afraid to know itself.

What lawless violence failed to accomplish was urged next through forms of law.

The stone that the builders rejected is made head of the corner.

The martyr of to-day is gratefully enshrined on the morrow.

From defeat and disparagement, enterprises are borne on to recognition and triumph.

From weakness and humility, men ascend to power and place.

I was near to cry.… But you have thrown the gauntlet once more to the ‘gentlemen from the South,’ bravely, decidedly, and pitilessly.

But that an Antislavery lecture should be repeated night after night to successive multitudes, each more enthusiastic than the last, marks the epoch of a revolution in popular feeling; it is an era in the history of Liberty.

That a lecture on Antislavery should be repeated in New York, even before a few despised ‘fanatics,’ is an unparalleled occurrence.

It lost faith in its traitors, and not in Liberty.

It was because the North lost faith in her recreant children.

I am to introduce to you a statesman who follows a long train of representatives and statesmen who were false to the North, false to Liberty; and then they made a complaint that there was no North!

It is not for his learning and eloquence that I commend him to your respectful attention; for learning, eloquence, and even theology itself, have been prostituted in the service of an institution well described by John Wesley as the sum of…

But pause not then,--beyond the western wave, Go, view the captive bartered as a slave!

Tell, if thou canst, the sum of sorrows there; Mark the fixed gaze, the wild and frenzied glare, The racks of thought, and freezings of despair!

You have among you many a purchased slave, Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them.

The tone of Senator Butler on this occasion shows the intolerable spirit of Slavery, which would not endure Mr.

The Senator asks me a question, and I answer, frankly, that no temptation, no inducement, would draw me in any way to sanction the return of any man to slavery.

Then I ask you honestly now, whether, all laws of Congress being put out of the question, you would recommend to Massachusetts to pass a law to deliver up fugitives from slavery?

And now, almost while I speak, comes the solemn judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, delivered after elaborate argument, on successive occasions, before a single judge, and then before the whole bench, declaring this Act a violation…