Xxxvi.
Having been invited by the leaders of the Republican party in Boston to address them on the great issues of the times, Mr. Sumner delivered in Faneuil Hall—November 2, 1855—one of his powerful speeches upon the usurpations of the Slave Oligarchy, which constitutes a fine introduction to the grandest, perhaps, of all his speeches, so soon to be delivered in the Senate, on the Crime against Kansas. He began by addressing these words to the vast multitude that packed the old hall: ‘Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? “Under which King, Bezonian, speak or die!” Are you for Freedom, with its priceless blessings, or are you for Slavery, with its countless wrongs and woes? Are you [203] for God, or are you for the Devil?’ After the wild shouts and screams of the assembly had subsided, he said:Fellow-citizens, I speak plainly; nor can words exhibiting the enormity of Slavery be too plain, whether it be regarded simply in the legislative and judicial decisions by which it is upheld, or in the unquestionable facts by which its character is revealed. It has been my fortune latterly to see Slavery face to face in its own home, in the Slave States; and I take this early opportunity to offer my testimony to the open barbarism which it sanctions. I have seen a human being knocked off at auction on the steps of a court-house, and as the sale went on, compelled to open his mouth and show his teeth, like a horse; I have been detained in a stage-coach, that our driver might, in the phrase of the country, ‘help lick a nigger;’ and I have been constrained, at a public table, to witnesss the revolting spectacle of a poor slave, yet a child, almost felled to the floor by a blow on the head from a clinched fist. Such incidents were not calculated to shake my original convictions. The distant slave-holder, who, in generous solicitude for that truth which makes for freedom, feared that, like a certain Doctor of Divinity, I might, under the influence of personal kindness, be hastily swayed from these convictions, may be assured that I saw nothing to change them in one tittle, but to confirm them; while I was entirely satisfied that here in Massachusetts, where all read, the true character of Slavery is better known than in the Slave States themselves, where ignorance and prejudice close the avenues of knowledge.And now, grateful for the attention with which you honor me, I venture to hope that you are assembled honestly to hear the truth; not to gratify prejudice, to appease personal antipathies, or to indulge a morbid appetite for excitement; but with candor and your best discrimination, to weigh facts and arguments in order to determine the course of duty. I address myself particularly to the friends of Freedom—the Republicans—on whose invitation I appear to-night, but I make bold to ask you of other parties, who now listen, to divest yourselves for the time, of partisan constraint—to forget for the moment that you are Whigs or Democrats, or how you are called, and to remember only that you are men, with hearts to feel, with heads to understand, and with consciences to guide. Then only will you be in a condition to receive the truth. ‘If men are not aware of the probable bias of party over [204] them, then they are so much the more likely to be blindly governed by it.’ Such is the wise remark of Wilberforce; and I fear that among us there are too many who are unconsciously governed by such bias. There are men, who, while professing candor, yet show that the bitterness of party has entered into their whole character and lives, as the bitterness of the soil in Sardinia is said to appear even in its honey.
At this election we do not choose a President of the United States, or member of Congress; but a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Attorney-General, and other State officers. To a superficial observer, the occasion seems to be rather local than national; it seems to belong to State affairs rather than Federal—to Massachusetts rather than to the Union. And yet, such are our relations to the Union—such is the solidarity of these confederate States—so are we all knit together as a Plural Unit, that the great question which now disturbs and overshadows the whole country, becomes at once national and local, addressing itself alike to the whole Republic and to each constituent part. Freedom in Kansas, and our own Freedom here at home, are both assailed. They must be defended. There are honorable responsibilities belonging to Massachusetts, as an early and constant vindicator of Freedom, which she cannot renounce. ‘If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?’ The distant Emigrant—the whole country—awaits the voice of our beloved Commonwealth in answer to the question, Are you for Freedom or are you for Slavery? So transcendent, so exclusive, so all-absorbing at the present juncture is this question, that it is vain to speak of the position of candidates on other things. To be doubtful on this is to be wrong; and to be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. Passing strange it is that here in Massachusetts, in this nineteenth century, we should be constrained to put this question. Passing strange, that when it is put, there should be any hesitation to answer it, by voice and vote, in such way as to speak the loudest for Freedom.
