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

X.

The literature of the land, such as then existed, agreed with the Nation, the Church, and the College. Franklin, in the last literary labor of his life; Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia; Barlow, in his measured verse; Rush, in a work which inspired the praise of Clarkson; the ingenious author of the Algerine Captive—the earliest American novel, and though now but little known, one of the earliest American books republished in London—were all moved by the contemplation of Slavery. ‘If our fellow-citizens of the Southern States are deaf to the pleadings of nature,’ the latter exclaims in his work, ‘I will conjure them, for the sake of consistency, to cease to deprive their fellow-creatures of freedom, which their writers, their orators, representatives and senators, and even their Constitution of Government, have declared to be the inalienable birthright of man.’ A female writer and poet, earliest in our country among the graceful throng, Sarah Wentworth Morton, at the very period of the National Convention [131] admired by the polite society in which she lived, poured forth her sympathies also. The generous labors of John Jay in behalf of the crushed African inspired her muse; and, in another poem, commemorating a slave, who fell while vindicating his freedom, she rendered a truthful homage to his inalienable rights, in words which I now quote as part of the testimony of the times:

Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right that Nature gave;
From the red scourge of bondage fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave.

Such, sir, at the adoption of the Constitution and at the first organization of the National Government, was the outspoken, unequivocal heart of the country. Slavery was abhorred. Like the slave trade, it was regarded as transitory; and, by many, it was supposed that they would both disappear together. As the oracles grew mute at the coming of Christ, and a voice was heard, crying to mariners at sea, ‘Great Pan is dead,’ so at this time Slavery became dumb, and its death seemed to be near. Voices of Freedom filled the air. The patriot, the Christian, the scholar, the writer, the poet, vied in loyalty to this cause. All were Abolitionists.