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Chapter 7:
- The Formation of the Free-soil party.
-- defection of the Whig party.
-- Mr. Sumner's speech announcing his Withdrawal from that party.
-- aggressions of the slaveholding power.
-- the duty of Massachusetts.
-- the commanding question.
-- Mr. Sumner's oration on “the Law of human progress.”
-- Greek and Roman civilization.
-- the power of the press.
-- signs of progress.
-- the course of the true reformer.
-- his speech at Faneuil Hall on the New party.
-- his leading ideas, freedom, truth, and justice.
-- opposition to his Views.
-- the unity of Aim and the advanced Standing of Mr. Sumner and Mr. Garrison.
He put to the hazard his ease, his interests, his friendship, even his darling popularity, for the benefit of a race of men he had never seen, who could not even give him thanks.
He hurt those who were able to requite a benefit or punish an injury.
He well knew the snares that might be spread about his feet by political intrigue, personal animosity, and possibly by popular delusion.
This is the path that all heroes have trod before him. He was traduced and maligned for his supposed motives.
He well knew, that, as in the Roman triumphal processions, so in public service, obloquy is an essential ingredient in the composition of all true glory. --Edmund Burke.
Early in 1848, a small company of reformers, among whom were
Henry Wilson,
Stephen C. Phillips,
John A. Andrew, and
Horace Mann, used to assemble frequently in the rooms of
Mr. Sumner in Court Street to discuss the encroachments
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of the slaveocracy, and the duties and delinquencies of the Whig party.
Here indeed was taken the first real political anti-slavery stand; and here, in view of the subserviency of prominent Whigs to Southern rule, was inaugurated the intrepid Free-soil party, whose leading policy was free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, and opposition to the extension of slavery and of the slaveholding power.
As the
South became more and more intent on domination, the Whig party yielded more and more to its arrogant demands, and, in the national convention held in
Philadelphia on the first day of June, united with the advocates of slavery in the nomination of
Zachary Taylor — a slaveholder, and known to be adverse to the
Wilmot Proviso — for the presidential chair.
Henry Wilson and
Charles Allen, delegates from this State, denounced the action of the body; and returning home held with their associates, in the city of
Worcester, on the 28th of June, a grand mass-meeting, over which
Charles Francis Adams presided.
Able speeches were made, calling for a union of men of all parties to resist the aggression of the slaveholding power.
Mr. Sumner here came forward, and, in a speech of signal force and earnestness, announced in these words his separation from the Whig party:
They [referring to Mr. Giddings and Mr. Adams, who
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had just spoken] have been Whigs; and I, too, have been a Whig, though “not an ultra Whig.”
I was so because I thought this party represented the moral sentiments of the country,--that it was the party of humanity.
It has ceased to sustain this character.
It does not represent the moral sentiments of the country.
It is not the party of humanity.
A party which renounces its sentiments must itself expect to be renounced.
For myself, in the coming contest, I wish it to be understood that I belong to the party of freedom,--to that party which plants itself on the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.
As I reflect upon the transactions in which we are now engaged, I am reminded of an incident in French history.
It was late in the night at Versailles that a courtier of Louis XVI., penetrating the bed-chamber of his master, and arousing him from his slumbers, communicated to him the intelligence — big with gigantic destinies — that the people of Paris, smarting under wrong and falsehood, had risen in their might, and, after a severe contest with hireling troops, destroyed the Bastile.
The unhappy monarch, turning upon his couch, said, “It is an insurrection.”
“No, sire,” was the reply of the honest courtier: “it is a revolution.”
And such is our movement to-day.
It is a revolution,
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not beginning with the destruction of a Bastile, but destined to end only with the overthrow of a tyranny differing little in hardship and audacity from that which sustained the Bastile of France: I mean the slave-power of the United States.
Let not people start at this similitude.
I intend no unkindness to individual slaveholders, many of whom are doubtless humane and honest.
And such was Louis XVI.; and yet he sustained the Bastile, with the untold horrors of its dungeons, where human beings were thrust into companionship with toads and rats.
“In the pursuit of its purposes,” he continued,
the slave-power has obtained the control of both the great political parties of the country.
Their recent nominations have been made with a view to serve its interests, to secure its supremacy, and especially to promote the extension of slavery.
The Whigs and Democrats — use the old names still — professing to represent conflicting sentiments, yet concur in being the representatives of the slavepower.
Gen. Cass, after openly registering his adhesion to it, was recognized as the candidate of the Democrats.
Gen. Taylor, who owns slaves on a large scale, though observing a studious silence on the subject of slavery, as on all other subjects, is not only a representative of the slave-power, but an
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important and constituent part of the power itself . . . And now the question occurs, What is the true line of duty with regard to these two candidates?
Mr. Van Buren (and I honor him for his trumpet-call to the North) sounded the true note when he said he could not vote for either of them.
Though nominated by different parties, they represent, as I have said, substantially the same interest,--the slave-power.
The election of either would be a triumph of the slave-power, and entail upon the country, in all probability, the sin of extending slavery.
How, then, shall they be encountered?
It seems to me in a very plain way. The lovers of freedom, of all parties, and irrespective of all party association, must unite, and, by a new combination congenial with the constitution, oppose both candidates.
This will be the freedom power, whose single object shall be to resist the slave power.
We will put them face to face, and let them grapple.
Who can doubt the result? . . .
But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our opposition will fail.
Fail, sir!
No honest, earnest effort in a good cause ever fails.
It may not be crowned with the applause of man; it may not seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end and aim of so much of life: but still it is not lost.
It helps to strengthen the
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weak with new virtue, to arm the irresolute with proper energy, to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers all. Fail!
Did the martyrs fail when with their precious blood they sowed the seed of the Church?
Did the discomfited champions of freedom fail, who have left those names in history which can never die?
Did the three hundred Spartans fail when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the sun?
No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an example which is greater far than any victory.
And this is the least we can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter.
It will not be the first time in history that the hosts of slavery have outnumbered the champions of freedom.
But where is it written that slavery finally prevailed?
“Let
Massachusetts, then,” he says,--“nurse of the men and principles which made our earliest revolution,--vow herself anew to her early faith.
Let her elevate once more the torch which she first held aloft.
Let us, if need be, pluck some fresh coals from the living altars of
France.
Let us, too, proclaim, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity!’ --liberty to the captive, equality between the master and his slave, fraternity with all men, the whole comprehended
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in that sublime revelation of Christianity,--the brotherhood of mankind.”
By the treaty of peace with
Mexico, proclaimed July 4, 1848, that vast extent of territory north of the
Rio Grande, together with
New Mexico and
California, embracing more than 500,000 square miles, was relinquished to the
United States; and over these immense regions the slave propagandists sought to extend their abominable system.
The stake in the political game between them and the friends of freedom was a virgin territory more than four times as large as the
British Isles, and more than twice as large as
France and
Switzerland.
Shall it be opened to free or servile labor?
Shall peace and plenty, or bondage and poverty, reign therein?
Life or death?--this was the commanding question of the day. The new organization saw the magnitude of the issue, and said, “Life!”
The old party, bending to the arrogant dictation of the
South, said, “Death!”
Daniel Webster doubtless drank his brandy with his eye turned toward the
North, then towards the
South, then towards the
White House, and said, “Death!”
And this was his finality!
Although hard names, forbidding frowns, and gibe and jest and social ostracism, were to be accepted by the men who dared to leave the dominant
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party,
Mr. Sumner and his compeers had a grand idea; they had a sentiment of humanity, deepseated in the heart of the people, to sustain them: and they thus went boldly forward, turning neither to the right nor left, to the accomplishment of one of the most transcendently beneficent political undertakings of these modern times.
In a hopeful and well-written oration on the
Law of human progress, pronounced before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society of Union College,
Schenectady, on the 25th day of July, 1848,
Mr. Sumner, sweeping with an eagle eye over the various social systems of the past, indicates their points of weakness, but still acknowledges the steady march of civilization; and, under the benignant influences of Christianity and the
printing-press, ardently anticipates a brighter day for science, art, literature, freedom, and humanity.
Of the anomaly of
Greek and Roman civilization, he thus eloquently discourses:--
There are revolutions in history which may seem, on a superficial view, inconsistent with this law. Our attention, from early childhood, is directed to Greece and Rome; and we are sometimes taught that these two states reached heights which subsequent nations cannot hope to equal, much less surpass.
Let me not disparage the triumphs of the ancient mind.
The eloquence, the poetry, the philosophy,
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the art, of Athens still survive, and bear no mean sway upon the earth.
Rome, too, yet lives in her jurisprudence, which, next after Christianity, has exerted a paramount influence over the laws of modern states.
But, exalted as these productions may be, it is impossible not to perceive that something of their present importance is derived from the peculiar method in which they appeared; something from the habit of unquestioning the high-flown admiration with regard to them, which has been transmitted through successive generations; and something also from the disposition, still prevalent, blindly to elevate antiquity at the expense of subsequent ages.
Without here undertaking to decide the question of the supremacy of Greek or Roman genius, as displayed in individual minds, it would be easy to show that the ancient standard of civilization never reached the heights of many modern states.
The people were ignorant, vicious, and poor, or degraded to abject slavery,--slavery itself, the sum of all injustice and all vice.
And even the most illustrious characters, whose names still shine from that distant night with stellar brightness, were little more than splendid barbarians.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, and vases of exquisite perfection, attested their appreciation of the beauty of form; but they were
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strangers to the useful arts, as well as to the comforts and virtues of home.
Abounding in what to us are luxuries of life, they had not what to us are its necessaries.
Without knowledge there can be no sure progress.
Vice and barbarism are the inseparable companions of ignorance.
Nor is it too much to say, that, except in rare instances, the highest virtue is attained only through intelligence.
And this is natural; for, in order to do right, we must first understand what is right.
But the people of Greece and Rome, even in the brilliant days of Pericles and Augustus, were unable to arrive at this knowledge.
The sublime teachings of Plato and Socrates — calculated in many respects to promote the best interests of the race — were restrained in their influence to the small company of listeners, or to the few who could obtain a copy of the costly manuscript in which they were preserved.
Thus the knowledge and virtue acquired by individuals failed to be diffused in their own age, or secured to posterity.
But now at last, through an agency all unknown to antiquity, knowledge of every kind has become general and permanent.
it can no longer be confined to a select circle.
It cannot be crushed by tyranny, or lost by neglect.
It is immortal as the soul from which it proceeds.
This alone renders all
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relapse into barbarism impossible, while it affords unquestionable distinction between ancient and modern times.
The press, watchful with more than the hundred eyes of Argus, strong with more than the hundred arms of Briareus, not only guards all the conquests of civilization, but leads the way to future triumphs.
Through its untiring energies, the meditations of the closet or the utterances of the human voice, which else would die away within the precincts of a narrow room, are prolonged to the most distant nations and times, with winged words circling the globe.
We admire the genius of Demosthenes, of Sophocles, of Plato, and of Phidias; but the printing-press is a higher gift to man than the eloquence, the drama, the philosophy, and the art of Greece.
The power even of the rudest people to advance in civilization under the law of progress, and the auspicious influences to this end conspiring, are well set forth in this hopeful passage:--
Look at the cradles of the nations and races which have risen to grandeur; and learn from the barbarous wretchedness by which they were originally surrounded, that no lot can be removed from the influence of the law of progress.
The Feejee Islander, the Bushman, the Hottentot, the Congo
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negro, cannot be too low for its care.
No term of imagined “finality” can arrest it. The polished Briton, whose civilization we now admire, is a descendant, perhaps, of one of those painted barbarians whose degradation still lives in the pages of Julius Caesar.
Slowly and by degrees he has reached the position where he now stands; but he cannot be stayed here.
The improvement of the past is the earnest of still further improvement in the long ages of the future.
And who can doubt, that, in the lapse of time, as the Christian law is gradually fulfilled, the elevation which the Briton may attain will be shared by all his fellow-men?
The signs of improvement may appear at a special period, in a limited circle only, among the people, favored of God, who have enjoyed the peculiar benefits of commerce and of Christianity; but the blessed influence cannot be restrained to any time, to any place, or to any people.
Every victory over evil rebounds to the benefit of all. Every discovery, every humane thought, every truth, when declared, is a conquest of which the whole human family are partakers.
It extends by so much their dominion, while it lessens by so much the sphere of their future struggles and trials.
Thus it is, while nature is always the same, the power of man is ever increasing.
Each day gives him some new advantage.
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The mountains have not grown in size; but man has broken through their passes.
The winds and waves are capricious ever, as when they first beat upon the ancient Silurian rocks; but the steamboat Against the wind, against the tide,
Now steadies on with upright keel.
The distance between two places upon the surface of the globe is the same to-day as when the continents were first heaved from their ocean-bed; but the inhabitants can now, by the art of man, commune together.
Much still remains to be done; but the Creator did not speak in vain when he blessed his earliest children, and bade them “to multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”
But there shall be nobler triumphs than any over inanimate nature.
Man himself shall be subdued,--subdued to abhorrence of vice, of injustice, of violence; subdued to the sweet charities of life; subdued to all the requirements of duty and religion; subdued, according to the law of human progress, to the recognition of that gospel law by the side of which the first is as the scaffolding upon the sacred temple,--the law of human brotherhood.
To labor for this end was man sent forth into the world; not in the listlessness of idle perfections, but endowed
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with infinite capacities, inspired by infinite desires, and commanded to strive perpetually after excellence, amidst the encouragements of hope, the promises of final success, and the inexpressible delights which spring from its pursuit.
Thus does the law of human progress Assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men,
by showing evil no longer as a gloomy mystery, binding the world into everlasting thrall, but as an accident, destined, under the laws of God, to be slowly subdued by the works of men as they press on to the promised goal of happiness.
In
Mr. Sumner's closing words on future progress, its certainty, and the means of making it, may be seen his lofty ideal of humanity, the leading motive of his life, which was the liberation of the captive, the upraising of the masses; and also his idea of a true reformer:
Be it, then, our duty and our encouragement to live and to labor ever mindful of the future; but let us not forget the past.
All ages have lived and labored for us. From one has come art, from another jurisprudence, from another the compass, from another the printing-press: from all have proceeded priceless lessons of truth and virtue.
The earliest and most distant times are not without a
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present influence on our daily lives.
The mighty stream of progress, though fed by many tributary waters and hidden springs, derives something of its force from the earlier currents which leap and sparkle in the distant mountain-recesses, over precipices, among rapids, and beneath the shade of the primeval forest.
Nor should we be too impatient to witness the fulfilment of our aspirations.
The daily increasing rapidity of discovery and improvement, and the daily multiplying efforts of beneficence, in later years outstripping the imaginations of the most sanguine, furnish well-grounded assurance that the advance of man will be with a constantly accelerating speed.
The extending intercourse among the nations of the earth, and among all the children of the human family, gives new promises of the complete diffusion of truth, penetrating the most distant places, chasing away the darkness of night, and exposing the hideous forms of slavery, of war, of wrong, which must be hated as soon as they are clearly seen.
And yet, while confident of the future, and surrounded by heralds of certain triumph, let us learn to moderate our anticipations.
nor imitate those children of the crusaders, who, in their long journey from Western Europe,--To seek
In Golgotha Him dead, who lives in heaven,
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hailed each city and castle which they approached as the Jerusalem that was to be the end of their wanderings.
No: the goal is distant, and ever advancing; but the march is none the less certain.
As well attempt to make the sun stand still in his course, or to restrain the sweet influence of the Pleiades, as to arrest the incessant, irresistible movement which is the appointed destiny of man.
Cultivate, then, a just moderation: learn to reconcile order with change, stability with progress.
This is a wise conservatism: this is a wise reform.
Rightly understanding these terms, who would not be a conservative?
who would not be a reformer?--a conservative of all that is good, a reformer of all that is evil; a conservative of knowledge, a reformer of ignorance; a conservative of truths and principles, whose seat is the bosom of God; a reformer of laws and institutions, which are but the wicked or imperfect work of man: a conservative of that divine order which is found only in movement; a reformer of those earthly wrongs and abuses which spring from a violation of the great law of human progress.
Blending these two characters in one, let us seek to be at the same time Reforming Conservatives, and Conservative Reformers.
Martin Van Buren having been nominated as a
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presidential candidate by the Free-soil party at the
Buffalo Convention, a meeting to ratify the same was held at Faneuil Hall on the twenty-second day of August, when
Mr. Sumner said,
It is no longer banks and tariffs which are to occupy the foremost place in our discussions, and to give their tone, sounding always with the chink of dollars and cents, to the policy of the country.
Henceforward protection to man shall be the true American system. . . . The old and ill-compacted party organizations are broken: from their ruins is now formed a new party,--The Party of Freedom. There are good men who longed for this, and have died without the sight.
John Quincy Adams longed for it. William Ellery Channing longed for it. Their spirits hover over us, and urge us to persevere.
Let us be true to the moral grandeur of our cause.
Have faith in truth, and in God who giveth the victory.
Oh! a fair cause stands firm and will abide:
Legions of angels fight upon its side.
It is said that we have but one idea.
This I deny; but, admitting that it is so, are we not, with our one idea, better than a party with no ideas at all?
And what is our one idea?
It is the idea which combined our fathers on the heights of Bunker Hill.
It
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is the idea which carried Washington through a seven-years war; which inspired Lafayette; which touched with coals of fire the lips of Adams, Otis, and Patrick Henry.
Ours is an idea which is at least noble and elevating: it is an idea which draws in its train virtue, goodness, and all the charities of life, all that makes earth a home of improvement and happiness.
Her path, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursues, and generous shame,
The unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame.
We found now a new party.
Its corner-stone is freedom.
Its broad, all-sustaining arches are truth, justice, and humanity.
Like the ancient Roman Capitol, at once a temple and a citadel, it shall be the fit shrine of the genius of American institutions.
“He is radical, an agitator, a rabid abolitionist, scattering fire-brands and death amongst us,” said the old conservatives who were indirectly storing their magazines of merchandise with the gains derived from the unceasing toil of those in bondage: “he must be silenced, or bought up for our conciliatory purposes.”
They mistook their man. They set political power and money-making above principle.
Mr. Sumner had come up abreast of the progressive spirit of the age. He saw that a
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grand question, touching the interests of more than three million human beings in the chains of servitude, was to be met; that it could be done on constitutional grounds; and while
Mr. Garrison, aiming grandly at the same result, and fighting manfully on a moral basis, was dealing out gigantic blows for freedom,
Mr. Sumner came up with equal vigor to the political arena, and determined to meet the issue under the aegis of the constitution.
Both were battling for the same victory; and the strong blows of both alike were needed.
Buy cotton, buy men intent on office, the old
regime with gold could do:
Mr. Sumner and
Mr. Garrison had ascended to a plane above the reach of gold.
