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as in other addresses to the horrors and expense of war, and assailed ‘military glory.’
The address recognized the propriety of using force in self-defence, in upholding governments, enforcing justice, and resisting outrage and oppression.
1
Elihu Burritt,
Amasa Walker,
John Jay, and other friends of Peace urged
Sumner to attend the Peace Congress which was to meet in
Paris in the summer of 1849, but he was unable to do so.
Prof. W. S. Tyler, of Amherst, expressed a strong desire that he should undertake a general canvass of the
West, where the war spirit was prevalent, in behalf of the cause of Peace.
Of his recent address,
Professor Tyler wrote July 10, 1849:
With the affluence of diction, the pertinence and copiousness of illustration, and the classic purity, dignity, and repose which mark all your public addresses, it combines a definite purpose, a practical aim, a cogency of reasoning, and a fervor of appeal which hardly belong to any efforts of mere demonstrative eloquence.
Similar commendation came from
William H. Seward,
John A. Kasson,
Rev. Convers Francis, and
E. P. Whipple.
Dr. Palfrey wrote July 1, 1849:—
I have read your address on Peace with the most critical care and the highest delight.
You have removed everything extrinsic from your argument, have guarded it against every objection, and in every view have instanced it triumphantly.
Such words cannot sink into the ground.
The day you predict will surely come, and you will be remembered forever among the best of those who brought its blessings.
In February, 1850,
Sumner prepared, as chairman of the Peace Congress committee for this country, a brief address to the people of the
United States, stating the result of the International Peace Congress at
Paris, and recommending methods to be pursued by the friends of the movement.
2 Shortly after, he was elected one of the two delegates of the
Massachusetts Peace Society to a similar Congress, which was to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main in the August following; but he was unable to attend.
Sumner's active connection with the Peace movement ended with this address.
He still held to the ideal of his youth, but other interests intervened.
Incidentally at times he reprobated
