Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

by Unknown

  When the violent words stopped, violent actions soon followed. Shortly after his speech, Sumner was attacked in the Senate chamber by Congressman Preston Brooks, the nephew of Senator Butler. Brooks assaulted Sumner with a cane, whipping him repeatedly, and it took Sumner more than three years to recover from the brutal attack.

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  [SUMNER:] Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrongs. I mean the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler], and the senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder senator from his seat; but the cause, against which he has run atilt, with such activity of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course, he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed. The asserted rights of slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave states cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames equality under the Constitution—in other words, the full power in the national territories to compel fellow men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction block—then, sir, the chivalric senator will conduct the state of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!

  But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was “measured,” the senator, in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them “sectional and fanatical”; and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as “an uncalculating fanaticism.” To be sure, these charges lack all grace of originality, and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous senator does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, which now domineers over the Republic, and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position—unable to see himself as others see him—or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the government to its original policy, when freedom and not slavery was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will not do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that senator that it is to himself, and to the “organization” of which he is the “committed advocate,” that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them….

  As the Senator from South Carolina is the Don Quixote, the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] is the Squire of slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices….

  [DOUGLAS:] I shall not detain the Senate by a detailed reply to the speech of the senator from Massachusetts. Indeed, I should not deem it necessary to say one word, but for the personalities in which he has indulged, evincing a depth of malignity that issued from every sentence, making it a matter of self-respect with me to repel the assaults which have been made….

  The charge is made against the body of which we are members. It is not a charge made in the heat of debate. It is not made as a retort growing out of excited controversy. If it were of that nature, I could make much allowance for it. I can pay great deference to the frailties and the impulses of an honorable man, when indignant at what he considers to be a wrong. If the senator, betraying that he was susceptible of just indignation, had been goaded, provoked, and aggravated on the spur of the moment into the utterance of harsh things, and then had apologized for them in his cooler hours, I could respect him much more than if he had never made such a departure from the rules of the Senate, because it would show that he had a heart to appreciate what is due among brother senators and gentlemen. But, sir, it happens to be well known—it has been the subject of conversation for weeks, that the senator from Massachusetts has had his speech written, printed, committed to memory, practiced every night before the glass with a Negro boy to hold the candle and watch the gestures, and has been thus annoying boarders in adjoining rooms until they were forced to quit the house. It was rumored that he read parts of it to friends and they repeated in all the saloons and places of amusement in the city what he was going to say. The libels and gross insults we have heard today have been conned over, written with cool, deliberate malignity, repeated from night to night in order to catch the appropriate grace, and then he came here to spit forth that malignity upon men who differ from him—for that is their offense!…

  Why these attacks on individuals by name, and two-thirds of the Senate collectively? Is it the object to drive men here to dissolve social relations with political opponents? Is it to turn the Senate into a beer garden, where senators cannot associate on terms which ought to prevail between gentlemen? These attacks are heaped upon me by man after man. When I repel them, it is intimated that I show some feeling on the subject. Sir, God grant that when I denounce an act of infamy I shall do it with feeling, and do it under the sudden impulses of feeling, instead of sitting up at night writing out my denunciation of a man whom I hate, copying it, having it printed, punctuating the proof sheets, and repeating it before the glass, in order to give refinement to insult, which is only pardonable when it is the outburst of a just indignation….

  [SUMNER:] Mr. President, to the senator from Illinois, I should willingly leave the privilege of the common scold—the last word; but I will not leave to him, in any discussion with me, the last argument, or the last semblance of it. He has crowned the audacity of this debate by venturing to rise here and calumniate me. He said that I came here, took an oath to support the Constitution, and yet determined not to support a particular clause in that Constitution. To that statement I give, to his face, the flattest denial….

  The senator has gone on to infuse into his speech the venom which has been sweltering for months—aye, for years; and he has alleged facts that are entirely without foundation, in order to heap upon me some personal obloquy. I will not go into the details which have flowed out so naturally from his tongue. I only brand them to his face as false. I say also to that senator, and I wish him to bear it in mind, that no person with the upright form of man—[Here the speaker hesitated.]

  [DOUGLAS:] Say it!

  [SUMNER:] I will say it! No person with the upright form of man can be allowed without the violation of all decency to switch out from his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality. Sir, this is not a proper weapon of debate, at least, on this floor! The noisome, squat, and nameless animal to which I now refer is not a proper model for an American senator. Will the senator from Illinois take notice!

  [DOUGLAS:] I will, and therefore will not imitate you, sir.

  [SUMNER:] I did not hear the senator.

  [DOUGLAS:] I said, if that be the case, I would certainly never imitate you in that capacity, recognizing the force of the illustration.

  [SUMNER: ] Mr. President, again the senator has switched his tongue, and again he fills the chamber with its offensive odor.

  I pass from the senator from Illinois. There is still another, the senator from Virginia, who is now also in my eye. That senator said nothing of argument, and there is therefore nothing of that for response. I simp
ly say to him that hard words are not argument, frowns not reasons; nor do scowls belong to the proper arsenals of parliamentary debate. The senator has not forgotten that on a former occasion I did something to exhibit on this floor the plantation manners he displayed. I will not do any more now!

  [MASON:] Manners of which the senator is unconscious.

  [DOUGLAS:] I am not going to pursue this subject further. I will only say that a man who has been branded by me in the Senate, and convicted by the Senate of falsehood, cannot use language requiring reply, and therefore I have nothing more to say.

  Senator Stephen Douglas Differs with Lincoln on the “Popular Sovereignty” Decision on Slavery

  “LEAVE the people free to do as they please….”

  Seeking reelection as senator from Illinois in 1858, Stephen Douglas—“the Little Giant,” five feet tall and barrel-chested—accepted Abraham Lincoln’s challenge to a series of debates. The intellectual and rhetorical clash that followed is unmatched in American political history for its force, length, undiminished focus of audience attention, and ultimate significance. Douglas won the gerrymandered senatorial campaign but alienated enough southern Democratic voters to undermine his presidential hopes in 1860; Lincoln, in winning a popular majority but losing the legislative vote for the Senate, made himself known nationally, positioning himself to win the Republican nomination and the presidency.

  Douglas’s program was “popular sovereignty,” a phrase now expressed as “local option,” which in his Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 divided northern Democrats and helped lead to the formation of the Republican party. On the slavery issue, “pop sov” meant allowing the residents of territories to express their wishes on slavery before those territories became states of the Union. Lincoln took the contrary position, opposing the extension of slavery, which did not evolve to one in favor of its abolition until 1862.

  This extract from their joint debate at Freeport, Illinois, on June 17, 1858, gives a flavor of Douglas’s style, which includes the use of homely metaphor within a forensic structure. His criticism of Frederick Douglass as a Lincoln supporter was a racist effort to appeal to southern Democrats who thought Douglas was not proslavery enough.

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  …CAN THE PEOPLE of the territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska Bill on that principle all over the state in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point….

  The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is “If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a state of this Union cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it?” I am amazed that Lincoln should ask such a question. “A schoolboy knows better.” Yes, a schoolboy does know better. Mr. Lincoln’s object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the Washington Union, in an article published on the seventeenth of last December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the floor of the Senate in a speech which Mr. Lincoln now pretends was against the president. The Union had claimed that slavery had a right to go into the free states, and that any provisions in the Constitution or laws of the free states to the contrary were null and void. I denounced it in the Senate, as I said before, and I was the first man who did. Lincoln’s friends Trumbull and Seward and Hale and Wilson and the whole black Republican side of the Senate were silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And what was the reply made to me on that occasion? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and undertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemed the article worthy of notice and ought not to have replied to it; that there was not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in any slave state, who did not repudiate any such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this question. He might as well ask me, “Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, would you sanction it?” and it would be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. He casts an imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United States by supposing that they would violate the Constitution of the United States. I tell him that such a thing is not possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln himself would never in his partisan feelings so far forget what was right as to be guilty of such an act.

  The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is “Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard as to how such acquisition may affect the Union on the slavery question?” This question is very ingeniously and cunningly put.

  The black Republican creed lays it down expressly, that under no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unless slavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he is in favor of that proposition. Are you [addressing Mr. Lincoln] opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery is prohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party he turns, Yankee fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I am in favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect the Union on the slavery question. I answer that whenever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, that I am in favor of it, without reference to the question of slavery; and when we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer….

  I tell you, increase and multiply and expand is the law of this nation’s existence. You cannot limit this great Republic by mere boundary lines, saying, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no further.” Any one of you gentlemen might as well say to a son twelve years old that he is big enough, and must not grow any larger, and in order to prevent his growth put a hoop around him to keep him to his present size. What would be the result? Either the hoop must burst and be rent asunder, or the child must die. So it would be with this great nation. With our natural increase, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other part of the globe, with the tide of emigration that is fleeing from despotism in the Old World to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouring into this country that requires more land, more territory upon which to settle; and just as fast as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the North, in the South, or on the islands of the ocean, I am for it, and when we acquire it, will leave the people, according to the Nebraska Bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery and every other question.

  I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem himself answered on hi
s four points. He racked his brain so much in devising these four questions that he exhausted himself, and had not strength enough to invent the others. As soon as he is able to hold a council with his advisers Lovejoy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglass, he will frame and propound others. You black Republicans who say good, I have no doubt, think that they are all good men. I have reason to recollect that some people in this country think that Fred Douglass is a very good man. The last time I came here to make a speech, while talking from the stand to you, people of Freeport, as I am doing today, I saw a carriage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position on the outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was sitting on the box seat, whilst Fred Douglass and her mother reclined inside and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your own town. All I have to say of it is this, that if you black Republicans think that the Negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of Fred Douglass’s kinsmen, another rich black Negro, is now traveling in this part of the state making speeches for his friend Lincoln as the champion of black men. All I have to say on that subject is that those of you who believe that the Negro is your equal and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically, and legally have a right to entertain these opinions and, of course, will vote for Mr. Lincoln.

  John Cabell Breckinridge Disputes Colonel E. D. Baker’s Charge of Treason

  “I infinitely prefer to see a peaceful separation of these states, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public liberty and personal freedom.”