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Chapter 16: events at home.—Letters of friends.—December, 1837, to March, 1839.—Age 26-28.
Sixteen months passed between
Sumner's parting with his friends in
Boston and his leaving
England for the Continent; and a reference to matters of public and personal interest occurring at home may be fitly included in this narrative.
At a meeting held in Faneuil Hall, on the day he sailed,
Dr. Channing,
Hillard, and
George Bond denounced the murder of
Lovejoy, the anti-slavery editor; and
Wendell Phillips began his career as an orator by his reply to
James T. Austin, a defender of the deed.
Pennsylvania Hall, then recently erected by the abolitionists in
Philadelphia, was burned by a pro-slavery mob.
Dr. Channing was replying to
Henry Clay's defence of slavery.
1 The
Graves-
Cilley duel, between a Southern and a Northern member of Congress, was fought.
The North-eastern boundary dispute was waxing warm, and there was much wild talk, particularly in the
State of Maine, of ‘war with
England.’
A graver difficulty had arisen at another point on our frontier.
The burning of the ‘Caroline’ on the
American shore by the
British authorities—her offence being that she had been freshly used for hostile purposes by
Canadian insurgents— inflamed public feeling against
Great Britain, and raised vexed questions concerning the inviolability of national territory, and the jurisdiction of courts over acts assumed by a foreign government.
The restriction or prohibition of the sale of ardent spirits —a controversy which forty years of agitation have not settled —was for the first time disturbing politicians.
Richard Fletcher 
