Charles Sumner

The approaching anniversary of Independence in Boston should be something more than a show and expense.

Pleasure would take me home among congenial souls, but duty keeps me here.

I think more hearts in the Free States will glory in your courageous and overwhelming reply to these plantation Senators than in any public effort of your life.

It was the best, bravest thing done in the Senate this many a year.

And now I want to thank you with my whole heart for your grand and brave rejoinder to Butler and Mason.

It was just such a flagellation as the slavocrats deserved, and such a one as they never received before in the Senate.

He was an attentive reader of the debates of the Senate, and he had seen that every step you had taken was a step upward, and that they who had affected to contemn were at length driven into a tacit acknowledgment of their very great error.

So will it ever be, when the Truth is bold; though it is rare for a young or old hero in politics to produce effect so rapidly.

He has made an historical era for the North; for at least one among us has dared to confront the insolent.

Let me say seriously, frankly, your reputation as a fearless, brave, and true man is firmly established,--confidence also in your discretion and good judgment, as shown in this last debate and in the management of this whole affair.

I rejoice that Massachusetts has found a defender who will, without fear or favor, tell the whole truth, when she is assailed.

Multitudes, formerly your enemies and revilers, are not merely willing to tolerate you, not merely willing to be satisfied with you, but have become actually proud of you, as their representative, and the champion of Massachusetts and the…

But the mere suggestion of such an outrage roused many men who had never been your political friends; for everybody felt that to attempt such an act would be an indignity to the State not to be tolerated.

In a word, you have taught these orators how much more effective is a caustic civility of reply than coarse, intemperate reviling.

You have punished them in a most exemplary manner, without descending to their vulgar level.

It is grand, gentlemanly, cool, pointed, well aimed, and true metal.

I am delighted beyond measure by your reply to the Southern chivalry.

But it is a matter of just pride that the friends of Freedom there are gentlemen, and always win upon the field of argument.

It is a shame that you should be obliged to meet so much that is disgusting to the taste and shocking to the moral sense in the American Senate.

I may be mistaken, but, from all I have learned of your position in the Senate, things look as if those Southern men, after trying to steal your sting away by all sorts of courtliness and courtesy, and trying in vain, have turned upon you…

I can dimly surmise how much it costs you to stand there; but I doubt not the experience you are having testifies that it will pay the cost, and a great deal more.

I think you should thank God for placing you, in his wise Providence, in a position which, utterly hateful as it must be to you (fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus), proves to furnish occasion for the heroic element.

You showed what is the real backbone of a gentleman, considered in the higher moral or philosophical point of view, by far superior to what your assailers conceive or are able to imagine in their vulgar or low conceptions.

We have hitherto admired your forbearance, but your reply is as dignified and noble as your forbearance, while it is strong, rich, and Saxon.

I have read all your speeches in the Senate with instruction and gratification; but this has warmed me so that I cannot withhold my thanks, though I trespass on your time.