And now the war raged deadlier, as came on the struggle for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, when the strokes of Sumner's battle axe, long and heavy, were heard above the din, and always with crushing execution. The speech on "The Crime against Kansas," wrought the furnace of wrath to a white heat. What was to be done with this man? Call him out and fight him? He was known to be on principle a non-resistant. Answer him? Indeed! who ever heard of such a proceeding? How could they? Had he not spoken the truth? What shall we do then? Plantation manners suggested an answer. "Come behind him at an unguarded moment, take him at a disadvantage, three to one, knock him down and kill him." So said--and but for his strong frame, wonderful in its recuperative power, and but for the unseen protection of a higher power,--it would have been so done. Everybody knows the brutal history of that coarse and cowardly assault, and how the poor bully who accomplished it was _fêted_ and caressed by Southern men and women in high places, who hastened by presents of canes, and snuff boxes, and plate, to show forth how well he had expressed the Southern idea of chivalry. Three or four years spent abroad, under medical treatment, were necessary to enable even Sumner's vigorous vitality to recover from an assault so deadly; but at last he came back to take his seat in the Senate. The poor cowardly bully who had assailed him, was dead--gone to a higher judgment seat; Butler was dead--and other accomplices of the foul deed were gone also. Under all these circumstances there is something thrilling in the idea of Sumner rising in the very seat where he had been stricken down, and pronouncing that searching speech to which his very presence there gave such force, "The Barbarism of Slavery." If he had wished revenge he might have had it, in the fact that he had the solemn right, as one raised from the dead, to stand there and give in his awful testimony. How solemn and dignified, in view of all these circumstances, seem the introductory words of his speech: