As it was in the beginning so it hath ever been, the world needs light. The great want of the times was light. So Sumner believed. This speech of his was but a repetition in a world of wrong of the fiat: "Let there be light." With it light did indeed break on the national darkness, such light as a thunderbolt flashes, shrivelling and shivering the deep-rooted and ramified lie of the century. That speech struck a new note and a new hour on the slavery agitation in America. Never before in the Government had freedom touched so high a level. Heretofore the slave power had been arrogant and exacting. A keen observer might have then foreseen that freedom would also some day become exacting and aggressive. For its advancing billows had broken in the resounding periods and passion of its eloquent champion. The manner of the orator on this occasion, a manner which marked all of his utterances, was that of a man who defers to no one, prefers no one to himself--the imperious manner of a man, conscious of the possession of great powers and of ability to use them. Such a man the crisis demanded. God made one American statesman without moral joints when he made Charles Sumner. He could not bend the supple hinges of the knee to the slave power, for he had none to bend. He must needs stand erect, inflexible, uncompromising, an image of Puritan intolerance and Puritan grandeur. Against his granite-like character and convictions the insolence of the South flung itself in vain. Orator and oration revealed as in a magic mirror some things to the South, which before had seemed to it like "Birnam Wood" moving toward "high Dunsinane." But lo, a miracle had been performed, the unexpected had suddenly happened. The insurgent moral sense of a mudsill and shopkeeping North had at last found voice and vent. With what awakening terror must the South have listened to this formidable prophecy of Sumner: "The movement against slavery is from the Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces to be confessed everywhere. It may not yet be felt in the high places of office and power; but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread." This awakening terror of the South was not allayed by the admission of California and the mutinous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. The temper of that section the while grew in consequence more unreasonable and arrogant. Worsted as the South clearly was in the contest with her rival for political supremacy, she refused nevertheless to modify her pretentions to political supremacy. And as she had no longer anything to lose by giving loose reins to her arrogance and pretentions, her words and actions took on thenceforth an ominously defiant and reckless character. If finally driven to the wall there lay within easy reach, she calculated, secession and a southern confederacy.