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

[291] of Justice and Peace. There are the four caskets; and you are to determine which shall be opened by Senatorial votes.

There is the Remedy of Tyranny, which, like its complement, the Apology of Tyranny,—though espoused on this floor, especially by the Senator from Illinois,—proceeds from the President, and is embodied in a special message. It proposes enforced obedience to the existing laws of Kansas, ‘whether Federal or local,’ when, in fact, Kansas has no ‘local’ laws, except those imposed by the Usurpation from Missouri, and it calls for additional appropriations to complete this work of tyranny.

I shall not follow the President in his elaborate endeavor to prejudge the contested election now pending in the House of Representatives; for this whole matter belongs to the privileges of that body, and neither the President nor the Senate has a right to intermeddle therewith. I do not touch it. But now, while dismissing it, I should not pardon myself if I failed to add, that any person who founds his claim to a seat in Congress on the pretended votes of hirelings from another State, with no home on the soil of Kansas, plays the part of Anacharsis Clootz, who, at the bar of the French Convention, undertook to represent nations that knew him not, or, if they knew him, scorned him, with this difference, that in our American case the excessive farce of the transaction cannot cover its tragedy. But all this I put aside, to deal only with what is legitimately before the Senate. ...