“Sir, the Senator from South Carolina has undertaken to assure the Senate and the country to-day that he is not the aggressor. Here and now I tell him that Mr. Sumner was not the aggressor,--that the Senator from South Carolina was the aggressor. I will prove this declaration to be true beyond all question. Mr. Sumner is not a man who desires to be aggressive towards any one. He came into the Senate ‘a representative man.’ His opinions were known to the country. He came here knowing that there were but few in this body who could sympathize with him. He was reserved and cautious. For eight months here he made no speeches upon any question that could excite the animadversion even of the sensitive Senator from South Carolina. He made a brief speech in favor of the system of granting lands for constructing railways in the new States, which the people of those States justly applauded; and I will undertake to say that he stated the whole question briefly, fully, and powerfully. He also made a brief speech welcoming Kossuth to the United States. But, beyond the presentation of a petition, he took no steps to press his earnest convictions upon the Senate; nor did he say anything which could by possibility disturb the most excitable Senator.
“On the 28th day of July, 1852, after being in this body eight months, Mr. Sumner introduced a proposition to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. Mr. Sumner and his constituents believed that act to be not only a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and a violation of all the safeguards of the Common Law which have been garnered up for centuries to protect the rights of the people, but at war with Christianity, humanity, and human nature,--an enactment that is bringing upon this Republic the indignant scorn of the Christian and civilized world. With these convictions, he proposed to repeal that act, as he had a right to propose. He had made no speech. He rose and asked the Senate to give him the privilege of making a speech. ‘Strike, but hear,’ said he, using a quotation. I do not know that he gave the authority for it. Perhaps the Senator from South Carolina will criticise it as a plagiarism, as he has criticised another application of a classical passage. Mr. Sumner asked the privilege of addressing the Senate. The Senator from South Carolina, who now tells us that he had been his friend, an old and veteran Senator here, instead of feeling that Mr. Sumner was a member standing almost alone, with only the Senator from New York [Mr. SEWARD], the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HALE], and Governor Chase, of Ohio, in sympathy with him, objected to his being heard. He asked Mr. Sumner, tauntingly, if he wished to make an ‘oratorical display’? and talked about ‘playing the orator’ and ‘the part of a parliamentary rhetorician.’ These words, in their scope and in their character, were calculated to wound the sensibilities of a new member, and perhaps bring upon him what is often brought on a member who maintains here the great doctrines of Liberty and Christianity,--the sneer and the laugh under which men sometimes shrink.