Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[186] “Let Sumner and his infamous gang,” said “The star,” an official paper at Washington, “feel that he cannot outrage the fame of his country, counsel treason to its laws, incite the ignorant to bloodshed and murder, and still receive the support and countenance of the society of this city, which he has done so much to vilify.” The obnoxious speech of the “fanatical abolitionist” was not, however, read in Boston until the day after the émeute, and the death of James Batchelder; and this the partisans of slavery well knew. “Put a ball through his head!” cried the infuriated slaveholders of Alexandria. “A strenuous and systematized effort is making here and in Alexandria,” wrote a correspondent, May 31, to “The New-York times,” “to raise a mob against Senator Sumner, in retaliation for the Boston difficulty.” But, though menaced on every hand, and once threatened and insulted at a restaurant; though counselled by his friends to leave Washington,--Mr. Sumner continued to walk unattended and unarmed, as usual, through the streets. He knew no fear. “Let the minions of the administration and of the slaveocracy harm one hair of your head,” wrote to him his friend George Livermore of Cambridge, “and they will raise a whirlwind that will sweep them to destruction.”

This word was verified.