C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[235] guard the rights of her free colored citizens, assailed on arrival there by an inhospitable statute, so gross in its provisions that an eminent character of South Carolina, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States [Hon. William Johnson] had characterized it as ‘trampling on the Constitution,’ and ‘a direct attack upon the sovereignty of the United States.’ Massachusetts had read in the Constitution a clause closely associated with that touching ‘fugitives from service,’ to the following effect: ‘The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States,’ and supposed that this would yet be recognized by South Carolina. But she was mistaken. Her venerable representative, an unarmed old man, with hair as silver-white almost as that of the Senator before me, was beset in Charleston by a ‘respectable’ mob, prevented from entering upon his duties, and driven from the State; while the Legislature stepped in to sanction this shameless, lawless act, by placing on the statute book an order for his expulsion. And yet, sir, the excitable Senator from South Carolina is fired by the fancied delinquencies of Massachusetts towards Slave-hunters, and also by my own refusal to render them any aid or comfort; he shoots questions in volleys, assumes to measure our duties by his understanding, and ejaculates a lecture at Massachusetts and myself. Sir, before that venerable Senator again ventures thus, let him return to his own State, seamed all over with the scars of nullification, and first lecture there. Ay, sir, let him look into his own heart, and lecture to himself.

But enough for the present on the extent of my constitutional obligations to become a Slave-hunter. There are, however, yet other things in the assault of the venerable Senator, which, for the sake of truth, in just defence of Massachusetts, and in honor of Freedom, shall not be left unanswered. Alluding to those days when Massachusetts was illustrated by Otis, Hancock, and ‘the brace of Adamses;’ when Faneuil Hall sent forth echoes of liberty which resounded even to South Carolina, and the very stones in the streets of Boston rose in mutiny against tyranny, the Senator with the silver-white locks, in the very ecstasy of Slavery, broke forth in the ejaculation that Massachusetts was then ‘slaveholding;’ and he presumed to hail these patriots as representatives of ‘hardy, slaveholding Massachusetts.’ Sir, I repel the imputation. It is true that Massachusetts was ‘hardy;’ but she was not, in any just sense, ‘slaveholding.’ And had she been so, she could not have been ‘hardy.’ The two characteristics are inconsistent as weakness and strength, as sickness and health—I had almost said, as death and life.