Xxviii.
Shortly after the delivery of his last speech,
Mr. Sumner presented a petition of citizens of
Massachusetts of
African descent, praying the Senate to suspend the labors of the
Select Committee which had been appointed to investigate the late invasion and seizure of property at
Harper's Ferry, and that all persons now in custody under the proceedings of such committee, be discharged.
[
342]
This was referred to the
Select Committee, June 5th.
On the 15th of the month,
Mr. Mason reported from that Committee, a resolution, ‘that the paper purporting to be a petition from citizens of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts of
African descent, presented to the Senate by
Charles Sumner, a Senator of
Massachusetts, be returned by the
Secretary to the
Senator who presented it.’
Supposing that this resolution would be called up,
Mr. Sumner prepared some notes of a speech he intended to deliver on the subject, in which the following paragraph occurred:
There is a saying of antiquity, which has the confirming voice of all intervening time, that “ Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
And now, sir, while humbled for my country that such a proposition should be introduced into the Senate, I accept it as an omen of that madness which precedes the fall of its authors.
But the resolution never was called up, and no other resolution of such tyrannical hardihood and shameless insult, was ever renewed in that Senate house, for the great struggle was at hand, in which
Abraham Lincoln was to be triumphantly elected
President of the
United States.
