“But this history of personalities is not complete. One of the greatest outbreaks is yet to come. “On the 22d June, 1854, my predecessor, Mr. Rockwell, presented a memorial, signed by three thousand citizens of Boston, asking for the immediate repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. That memorial was severely attacked, and Mr. Sumner rose to vindicate it. He was followed by the Senator from South Carolina, who made a succession of assaults and insinuations. “Among other things, he characterized Mr. Sumner’s speech as ‘a species of rhetoric which is intended to feed the fires of _fanaticism_ which he has helped to kindle in his own State,--a species of rhetoric which is not becoming the gravity of this body.’ “And again, on the same page, the Senator says: ‘When gentlemen rise and _flagrantly misrepresent_ history, as that gentleman has done, by a Fourth-of-July oration, by vapid rhetoric, by a species of rhetoric which, I am sorry to say, ought not to come from a scholar, a rhetoric with more fine color than real strength, I become impatient under it.’ “Here, it will be observed, is a direct charge that Mr. Sumner had _flagrantly misrepresented_ history, that his speech was ‘vapid rhetoric’ and ‘a Fourth-of-July oration.’ The Senator displays great sensibility because Mr. Sumner charges him, in guarded phrase, with a ‘deviation from truth, with so much of passion as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration.’ And yet, with unblushing assurance, he openly charges Mr. Sumner with _flagrant misrepresentation_, without any of that apology of passion which Mr. Sumner conceded to him. Nor is this the first or the last time in which the Senator did this. “Again, on the same page, he insinuates that Mr. Sumner was ‘a rhetorician playing a part.’ This is a favorite idea of the polite Senator. And yet again, on page 1517, first column, he breaks forth in insinuations against Mr. Sumner, as follows: ‘I do not want any of these flaming speeches here, calculated to excite merely, to feed a flame without seeing where it shall extend. No, Sir: do not let us involve the country in a contest to be decided by mobs infuriated by _the flaming speeches of servile orators_.’ “Then follows a passage which can be appreciated only by giving it at length.