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

[238] I confront it at once. This is not the first time, during my brief service here, that this Senator has sought on this floor to provoke a comparison between slaveholding communities and the free States.

The Senator is strangely oblivious of the statistical contrasts.

For myself, sir, I understand the sensibilities of Senators from slaveholding communities, and would not wound them by a superfluous word. Of Slavery I speak strongly, as I must; but thus far, even at the expense of my argument, I have avoided the contrasts, founded on details of figures and facts, which are so obvious between the free States and ‘slaveholding communities;’ especially have I shunned all allusion to South Carolina. But the venerable Senator, to whose discretion that State has intrusted its interests here, will not allow me to be still.

God forbid that I should do injustice to South Carolina. I know well the gallantry of many of her sons. I know the response which she made to the appeal of Boston for union against the Stamp Act—the Fugitive Slave Act of that day—by the pen of Christopher Gadsden. And I remember with sorrow that this patriot was obliged to confess, at the time, her ‘weakness in having such a number of slaves,’ though it is to his credit that he recognized Slavery as a ‘crime.’ I have no pleasure in dwelling on the humiliations of South Carolina; I do not desire to expose her sores; I would not lay bare her nakedness. But the Senator, in his vaunt for ‘slaveholding communities,’ has made a claim for Slavery which is so inconsistent with history, and so derogatory to Freedom, that I cannot allow it to pass unanswered.