The believers in war felt somewhat hurt by Sumner's plainness of speech, but the city of Boston and the State of Massachusetts awoke to the knowledge of an eloquent man in their midst, who had doubtless a work before him. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote him: "How I did thank you for your noble and eloquent attack upon the absurd barbarism of war! It was worth living for to have done that, if you never do anything more. But the soul that could do that _will_ do more." Chancellor Kent wrote him, "I am very strongly in favor of the institution of a congress of nations or system of arbitration without going to war. Every effort ought to be made by treaty stipulation, remonstrance, and appeal to put a stop to the resort to brutal force to assert claims of right. The idea of war is horrible. I remember I was very much struck, even in my youth, by the observation (I think it was in Tom Paine's 'Crisis') that 'he who is the author of war lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.'" Seven thousand copies of this oration were distributed by the Peace Societies of England, and it had a wide reading in our own country. Sumner was now called upon to speak with Garrison, Phillips, and others, on the question of the annexation of Texas with her slave territory. He said, "God forbid that the votes and voices of the freemen of the North should help to bind anew the fetters of the slave! God forbid that the lash of the slave-dealer should be nerved by any sanction from New England! God forbid that the blood which spurts from the lacerated quivering flesh of the slave should soil the hem of the white garments of Massachusetts." The educated Boston lawyer, the friend of hosts of authors and jurists on both sides of the ocean, the accomplished and aristocratic scholar, Sumner had placed himself among the despised Abolitionists! Many of his friends stood aghast, even refusing to recognize him on the street. This act required great moral heroism, but he was equal to the occasion. The door had opened to fame and immortality, even though they came to him through contumely and well-nigh martyrdom. In 1846, Mr. Sumner spoke before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University: "We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient divinities of violence and wrong are retreating to their kindred darkness. The sun of our moral universe is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed by those images, Cancer, Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius, but beaming with the mild radiance of those heavenly signs, Faith, Hope, and Charity. "'There's a fount about to stream; There's a light about to beam; There's a warmth about to glow; There's a flower about to blow; There's a midnight blackness changing Into gray: Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way!'"