“The opinion embodied in the writing which I am about to analyze, and which is a mixture of sympathetic words and of severe counsels for France, is not that of one or many assemblies, of one or many popular meetings, of one group or of many groups of journals; it is that of one man. But this man is one of the most distinguished citizens of his country; he has exercised a supreme influence in the events of which the great Republic has been the theatre since the moment when, in 1861, the South declared that it broke the Union, and at the mouth of the cannon seized Fort Sumter, situated in the harbor of Charleston. Mr. Charles Sumner has not figured on the battle-field; he was elsewhere, in the Senate of the United States, from which place, it can be said, he was the political director of the conflict.… But the thought of extirpating Slavery, of obliging the Slave States to modify their internal system so as to render impossible the reëstablishment of servitude under another name, the idea of assimilating by law the black and mulatto with the white,--assimilation to which until then their habits were as repugnant as their laws,--these have belonged to Mr. Charles Sumner more than to any other person, and were the basis of a plan which has triumphed by the indomitable will and the ever-ready eloquence of this statesman. It can therefore be said of Mr. Charles Sumner, that he is in himself a public opinion.”[201] CORRESPONDENCE. As after the speech on the Barbarism of Slavery, so now, letters came with volunteer testimony. Beyond their interest as tokens of strong and wide-spread sympathy with Mr. Sumner, they have historic value as illustrations of the intense Antislavery sentiment destined so soon to triumph. Sometimes they are directly responsive to the press, especially in the severity of its criticism on the speech. Here, as before, Abolitionists took the lead. Wendell Phillips thus earnestly placed himself by the side of his friend:-- “I both thank and congratulate you most heartily on your great speech, for some reasons the _boldest_ even you ever made,--the first statesmanlike word worthy of the hour from any one in a high civil position,--fit response from Statesmanship to War,--showing the people the reasons and purpose of Fremont’s proclamation, and giving it more breadth and a nobler basis. “All agree it was a most decided success,--taking the Convention wholly off its feet with enthusiasm; and we absent ones may measure the strength of the blow from the rebound,--witness _Post_, _Courier_, _Journal_, and, basest of all, _Advertiser_, of course.…