Like them, sir, I do not hesitate to protest here against the bill yet pending before the Senate, as a great moral wrong, as a breach of public faith; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even existence of our Union. And, sir, believing in God as I profoundly do, I cannot doubt that the opening of an immense region to so great an enormity as slavery is calculated to draw down upon our country his righteous judgments. “In the name of Almighty God, and in his presence,” these remonstrants protest against the Nebraska Bill. In this solemn
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“but I must say in all sincerity that there is no orator or statesman living in this country or in Europe, whose fame is so great as not to derive additional lustre from such a speech.
It will live the full life of American history.”
Prof. C. S. Henry characterized it as “in every quality of nobleness transcendently noble;” and Pierre Soule said, in a letter to the senator, “Que je profite de cette occasion pour vous dire combien j'ai éte heureux du succes, et pour mieux dire, du triomphe éclatant que vous avez obtenu à l'occasion de votre discours sur le Nebraska Bill.
Courage! Sic itur ad astra.”
On the night of the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, May 25, 1854, Mr. Sumner presented, in addition to memorials from the Society of Friends and other bodies, twenty-five separate remonstrances from clergymen of every Protestant denomination in the six New-England States, and said with solemn earnestness:--
B. B. Russell, 1874.
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