Lviii.
Public meetings, too, were held in the Northern States, at which resolutions were adopted and speeches were made by their ablest and most distinguished men. Faneuil Hall did not remain silent. At a large and deeply excited meeting, held without distinction of sect or party, Peleg W. Chandler, a leading politician, after alluding to the fact that he was Mr. Sumner's personal friend but ‘political opponent,’ said: ‘It is precisely because I have been and am now his personal friend, and it is precisely because I have been and now am his political opponent, that I am here to-night. * * * Yet personal feelings are of little or no consequence in this outrage. It is a blow not merely at Massachusetts, a blow not merely at the name and fame of our common country, it is a blow at constitutional liberty all the world over, it is a stab at the cause of universal freedom. Whatever may be done in this matter, however, one thing is certain, one thing is sure. The blood of this Northern man now stains the Senate floor, and let me tell you that not all the water of the Potomac can wash it out. Forever, forever, and aye, that stain will plead in silence for liberty wherever man is enslaved, for humanity all over the world, for truth and for justice, now and forever.’ [260] Edward Everett, too, whose name and influence had always been associated with what was termed the ‘conservative’ side of the great question at issue, spoke strongly of ‘the act of lawless violence, of which,’ he said, ‘I know no parallel in the history of constitutional government;’ adding that ‘for the good name, the peace, the safety of the country, for the cause of free institutions throughout the world, it were worth all the gold of California to blot from our history the record of the past week.’ Cambridge, too, spoke from the lips of her distinguished jurists, professors, and literary men; Brown University in the strong, terse words of its President; and New York in the eloquent and forceful utterances of some of its most distinguished lawyers and clergymen. Indignation at the cowardly assault, sympathy for the sufferer, and alarm for the future mingled largely in the sentiments uttered in the burning words which thus found expression and response. Besides, it entered largely into the Presidental campaign that soon commenced, and became one of the battle-cries of freedom and of the new party that then appealed for the first time for the suffrages of the nation.
