Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 07 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 07 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The London _Herald of Peace_, in its opposition to the war,
took pains to insist that it was not Antislavery,--forgetting
that the North, even when failing to demand the abolition of
Slavery, sought its limitation, and that the new Government
openly declared Slavery its corner-stone. After setting forth
Mr. Sumner’s “proposal to use the War Power to proclaim at
once, as respects the Rebels, the emancipation of their
slaves,” and that “the speech was received with many
demonstrations of applause,” it dwells on the circumstances
favoring the effort: that it was in Massachusetts, of all
the States “the most forward in the Antislavery cause”; that
“the subject was presented by one whose judgment they were
most bound to honor, and whose lead they were most likely to
follow,” whom it describes.
“Mr. Sumner is a man of whom Massachusetts might well be
proud. His great abilities, his lofty spirit, his spotless
public life, mark him as a man standing apart, not to be
confounded with the crowd of selfish politicians that
besiege the avenues of power in America. He has stood
forward in evil days to encounter with an undaunted mien
the obloquy and the peril attaching to the avowal of
thorough Antislavery principles, and has been not the
champion merely, but the martyr of the cause.”
After this presentation, it goes on to ask, “Well, and what
was the reception which Mr. Sumner’s proposal met from the
Republican Convention of the State of Massachusetts?” It finds
an answer in the refusal to act on the resolutions of Mr.
Clarke, and then says:--
“After all this, we sincerely hope we shall hear no more
of this war as a war for the liberation of the slave, as a
‘sublime uprising’ of the men of the North for the cause of
Human Freedom.”
The London _Post_, which did not sympathize with the National
cause, said:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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