This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter
30
: addresses before colleges and lyceums.—active interest in reforms.—friendships.—personal life.—
1845
-
1850
.
Chapter
36
:
first
session in Congress.—welcome to
Kossuth
.—public lands in the
West
.—the
Fugitive Slave Law
.—
1851
-
1852
.
Chapter
37
: the national election of
1852
.—the
Massachusetts
constitutional convention
.—final defeat of the coalition.—
1852
-
1853
.
Chapter
38
: repeal of the
Missouri Compromise
.—reply to
Butler
and
Mason
.—the
Republican Party
.—address on Granville Sharp.—friendly correspondence.—
1853
-
1854
.
Chapter
39
: the debate on
Toucey
's bill.—vindication of the antislavery enterprise.—
first
visit to the
West
.—defence of foreign-born citizens.—
1854
-
1855
.
[618]
he had been in confidential relations both as antislavery men and lawyers at No. 4 Court Street.
He addressed two mass meetings in the open air,—one, September 18, at Myrick's station, in the southern part of the State, where he considered briefly the traditions of Massachusetts as devoted to education and freedom, closing with a warm tribute to Mr. Andrew;1 an another, October 11, at Framingham,2 where he treated the successive threats of disunion which had come from the slave States whenever their purposes were opposed,—maintaining that the people should stand firmly by the cause of freedom against such menaces, whether uttered at the South or repeated at the North.
In October, from their home, illuminated for the occasion, he witnessed, with his mother beside him, a. long procession of Republican ‘Wide-Awakes,’3 which, as it passed down Hancock Street, saluted them with repeated cheers.
Later in the campaign he delivered in Fitchburg, and repeated in Worcester, a speech on the ‘popular sovereignty’ dogma,—a doctrine which admitted the right of the settlers of a territory to establish slavery in it, and showed how such a doctrine, if adopted early in our history, would have largely increased the number of slave States.4 Started by Cass and Douglas as a device for evading the issue in Congress between freedom and slavery, it had been substantially adopted by Eli Thayer, the Republican member of Congress for the Worcester District, now seeking a re-election as an independent candidate against Mr. Bailey, who had been nominated by the Republicans.
The contest promised to be a close one, and Sumner's speech was thought by those most intimately concerned to have insured Mr. Thayer's defeat.
One journal in Boston printed an edition of twelve thousand copies for distribution in the district.
Sumner received grateful notes from Mr. Bailey, and also from Mr. Dawes, who was to be his successor in the Senate.
R. H. Dana, Jr., thought the speech ‘excellent, temperate in personam, and strong in rem.’
On the Saturday before the election he spoke briefly at Salem for the re-election of John B. Alley to Congress;5 and on the evening before the election he took the chair at Faneuil Hall, where in a brief speech he recognized in a Republican victory a radical change
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