I have never, my dear friend, ceased one moment to trust you. Passing over the whole State this winter, lecturing sometimes four nights in the week, I have been asked scores of tines by Free Soilers as well as our folks, “Do you put entire trust in C. S.?” Theodore Parker tells me he has met the same questioning many times. My answer has always been the expression, the frank, cordial expression, of most entire confidence in you. I have then dwelt on the expediency of getting acquainted with your audience before speaking; obtaining a point d'appui by showing a knowledge of, and interest in, other questions, etc.,—adding that I knew you were acting in concert with, and by advice of, all the prominent friends of antislavery in Washington. This I learned from your letters, but did not say so, as they were marked “confidential,” and I did not wish to compromise you. Last week there was a
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Senate, by Warren,1 a very conservative Whig, in a public speech, to which Wilson, the president, leaving the chair, replied that the senator would speak at the proper time.2 The taunt was repeated in the Whig journal3 at intervals, and by Mr. Winthrop in an appendix to a volume of his speeches.4 The Free Soilers were particularly annoyed by the reproaches of the non-voting Abolitionists.
Mr. Garrison, at a meeting of the Norfolk County Antislavery Society, held at Dedham, April 22, introduced a resolution condemning the senator's silence for four months on the slavery question, and his omission for two months to present the petition for the relief of Drayton and Sayres.5 The resolution was opposed by William I. Bowditch6 and Wendell Phillips.
The latter in a letter to Sumner, April 27, said:—
1 February 20. Charles H. Warren, at one time a judge, was a clever lawyer, ready in wit, apt in sarcasm, and sharp in finding an adversary's vulnerable points. He was a person without serious aims and with much levity of character, convivial in habits, and in full communion with the society and capital of Boston at this period.
2 February 24. Wilson's speech, which contains a review of the politics of the period, appeared in full in the ‘Commonwealth,’ March 1.>
3 Boston Courier, may 28.
4 Published late in May. John A. Andrew wrote, June 2, of Winthrop's reference to Sumner's silence: ‘This retreating arrow from Winthrop can do you no harm, and it needs no attention.’ Winthrop's sharp reflections at this time were prompted by Sumner's including in a recent edition of his ‘Orations and Addresses’ his letter to Winthrop, Oct. 25, 1846.(Ante, p. 134.) It should be said, however, that Sumner included the letter as a historical paper, with no purpose to revive a controversy.
5 Mr. Garrison renewed his criticisms on both points at different times in the ‘Liberator,’ April 23; June 4, 11, 18; August 6,13. Another non-voting Abolitionist, Edmund Quincy, also repeated them in letters to the ‘Antislavery Standard,’ which were copied by the ‘Liberator’ in August, and in the Boston Courier, August 14.
6 Mr. Bowditch, in a note to Sumner with reference to Mr. Garrison's course at the meeting, said: ‘Much as I honor and love him, Mr. Garrison's passion sometimes seems to be to attack single individuals rather than the system of slavery; and it frequently happens that his attacks fall on those who sympathize very fully, though not entirely, in his views.’
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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