Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 10 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
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Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 10 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
“To me it seems bursting with new and most inspiring ideas.
But even when you deal with ideas which are not new, but
old and familiar, you present them in words so marvellously
chosen that they are themselves giant forces.…
“No single man has ever so grandly struggled against the
barbaric tendencies of a frightfully debauched generation.
I cannot certainly foresee the future; you may be worsted
in this encounter; but I know the world will be the better
for it.”
Hon. Henry B. Anthony, Senator of the United States, wrote from
Providence:--
“I suppose you are tired of compliments about your great
speech. Everybody says it is one of the best things that
even you have done. It must have a large and beneficial
effect, not only here, but in Europe, where your reputation
will secure for it the consideration of those who control
public affairs and mould public opinion.”
Hon. Samuel S. Blair, a Representative in Congress from
Pennsylvania, wrote:--
“I have just read your New York speech on our Foreign
Relations, and most cordially thank you for a statement
of our cause which ought to give us the verdict of the
civilized world.”
Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, for so many years eminent as
Antislavery champion in Congress, and then Consul-General at
Montreal, wrote:--
“I have just read your lecture at Cooper Institute. That
production excites in my heart the deepest gratitude and
the highest pleasure.”
Hon. Simon Cameron, who had recently returned from Russia,
where he had been Minister, wrote:--
“It is a masterly production of a master mind, and if you
had never made a single mental effort before, or if you
should cease from this moment to enjoy the power of speech,
it would stand as a monument unrivalled among the many
great productions of American and British statesmen. It is
unanswerable. Its influence, like all great ideas founded
on truth, may be comparatively slow, but it is already
acting over the world, and in a brief period it will be
so potent that men and nations will be ashamed to avow a
belief in any other code of morals.”
Rev. William H. Furness, the accomplished Unitarian preacher of
Philadelphia, wrote:--
“I have no words to express my sense of the large
familiarity with human affairs, and of the conscientious
fidelity which it shows. If you had done nothing else for
the past year but prepare that, I should hold you to be
a miracle of work. It is impossible it should not tell.
It indicates a statesmanship fitting the grandeur of our
unequalled cause.”
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, of Boston, eminent in the medical
profession and as an Abolitionist, wrote:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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