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Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career., Chapter 10: (search)
ors, John P. Hale excepted, had yielded to the administration, favoring the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, and to the plan of what was termed the squatter sovereignty of Mr. Douglas. Before the confederated host, two or three senators only stood up fearless and unterrified for the defence of freedom. This was a day that tried men's souls; and seldom has a public body witnessed a scene of more sublimity than when Charles Sumner rose, almost single-handed and alone, on the twenty-first day of February, to pronounce, in front of a solid mass of frowning and malignant senators, his masterly defence of human right. Undaunted by the fearful odds against him, or by the menace of assassination, he, like an old hero of Thermopylae, sent home blow after blow into the dark columns bearing down upon him, and set up on that day a landmark of freedom that will serve to guide the coming generations. In clear, concise, and trenchant diction he depicted the wrongs of slavery, and with most