LATE in the evening of Friday, March 29, 1867, Mr. Sumner, on reaching home, found this note from Mr. Seward awaiting him: "Can you come to my house this evening? I have a matter of public business in regard to which it is desirable that I should confer with you at once." Without delay he hurried to the house of the Secretary of State, only to find that the latter had left for the Department. His son, the Assistant Secretary, was at home, and he was soon joined by Mr. de Stoeckl, the Russian Minister. From the two Mr. Sumner learned for the first time that a treaty was about to be signed for the cession of Russian America to the United States. With a map in his hand, the Minister, who had just returned from St. Petersburg, explained the proposed boundary, according to verbal instructions from the Archduke Constantine. After a brief conversation, when Mr. Sumner inquired and listened without expressing any opinion, they left together, the Minister on his way to the Department, where the treaty was copying. The clock was striking midnight as they parted, the Minister saying with interest, "You will not fail us." The treaty was signed about four o'clock in the morning of March 30th, being the last day of the current session of Congress, and on the same day transmitted to the Senate, and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

April 1st, the Senate was convened in Executive session by the proclamation of the President of the United States, and the Committee proceeded to the consideration of the treaty. The Committee at the time was Messrs. Sumner (Chairman), Fessenden, of Maine, Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Harlan, of Iowa, Morton, of Indiana, Patterson, of New Hampshire, and Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. Carefully and anxiously they considered the question, and meanwhile it was discussed outside. Among friendly influences was a strong pressure from Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, the acknowledged leader of the other House, who, though without constitutional voice on the ratification of a treaty, could not restrain his earnest testimony. Mr. Sumner was controlled less by desire for more territory than by a sense of the amity of Russia, manifested especially during our recent troubles, and by an unwillingness to miss the opportunity of dismissing another European sovereign from our continent, predestined, as he believed, to become the broad, undivided home of the American people; and these he developed in his remarks before the Senate.

April 8th, the treaty was reported by Mr. Sumner without amendment, and with the recommendation that the Senate advise and consent thereto. The next day it was considered, when Mr. Sumner spoke on the negotiation, its origin, and the character of the ceded possessions. A motion by Mr. Fessenden to postpone its further consideration was voted down, Yeas 12, Nays 29. After further debate, the final question of ratification was put and carried on the same day by a vote of Yeas 37, Nays 2, - the Nays being Mr. Fessenden, and Mr. Morrill, of Vermont. The ratifications were exchanged June 20th, and the same day the treaty was proclaimed.

The debate was in Executive session, and no reporters were present. Senators interested in the question invited Mr. Sumner to write out his remarks and give them to the public. For some time he hesitated, but, taking advantage of the vacation, he applied himself to the work, following precisely in order and subdivision the notes of a single page from which he spoke.

The speech was noticed at home and abroad. At home, the Boston Journal, which published it at length, remarked:

"This speech, it will be remembered, coming from the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and abounding in a mass of pertinent information not otherwise accessible to Senators, exerted a most marked, if not decisive, effect in favor of the ratification of the treaty. Since then, the rumors of Mr. Sumner's exhaustive treatment of the subject, together with the increasing popular interest in our new territory, have stimulated a general desire for the publication of the speech, which we are now enabled to supply. As might be expected, the speech is a monument of comprehensive research, and of skill in the collection and arrangement of facts. It probably comprises about all the information that is extant concerning our new Pacific possessions, and will prove equally interesting to the student of history, the politician, and the man of business."

A Russian translation, by Mr. Buynitzky, appeared at St. Petersburg, with an introduction, whose complimentary character is manifest in its opening:—

"Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, appears, since the election of Lincoln, as one of the most eloquent and conspicuous representatives of the Republican party. His name stands in the first rank of the zealous propagators of Abolitionism, and all his political activity is directed toward one object, the completion of the glorious act of enfranchisement of five millions of citizens by a series of laws calculated to secure to freedmen the actual possession of civil and political rights. As Chairman of the Senate Committee upon Foreign Relations, Mr. Sumner

attentively watches the march of affairs in Europe generally; but, in the course of the present decade, his particular attention was attracted by the reforms which took place in Russia. The emancipation of the peasants in our country was viewed with the liveliest sympathy by the American statesman, and this sympathy expressed itself eloquently in his speeches, delivered on various occasions, as well in Congress as in the State conventions of Massachusetts."

A French writer, M. Cochin, whose work on Slavery is an important contribution to the literature of Emancipation, in a later work thus characterizes this speech:

"All that is known on Russian America has just been presented in a speech, abundant, erudite, eloquent, poetic, pronounced before the Congress of the United States by the great orator, Charles Sumner."1

On the appearance of the speech, May 24th, Professor Baird, the accomplished naturalist of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote, expressing the hope that some Boston or New York publisher would reprint what he called the "Essay" in a "book-form," adding: “It deserves some more permanent dress than that of a speech from the Globe office." This is done for the first time in the present publication.

These few notices, taken from many, are enough to show the contemporary reception of the speech.

1 Conférences Américaines, p. 143.

SPEECH.

R. PRESIDENT,

MR.

You have just listened to the reading of the treaty by which Russia cedes to the United States all her possessions on the North American continent and the adjacent islands in consideration of $7,200,000 to be paid by the United States. On the one side is the cession of a vast country, with its jurisdiction and resources of all kinds; on the other side is the purchase-money. Such is the transaction on its face.

BOUNDARIES AND CONFIGURATION.

IN endeavoring to estimate its character, I am glad to begin with what is clear and beyond question. I refer to the boundaries fixed by the treaty. Commencing at the parallel of 54° 40′ north latitude, so famous in our history, the line ascends Portland Canal to the mountains, which it follows on their summits to the point of intersection with the meridian of 141° west longitude, which it ascends to the Frozen Ocean, or, if you please, to the north pole. This is the eastern boundary, separating the region from the British possessions, and it is borrowed from the treaty between Russia and Great Britain in 1825, establishing the relations between these two powers on this continent. It is seen that this boundary is old; the rest is new. Starting from the Frozen Ocean, the western boundary descends Behring

Strait, midway between the two islands of Krusenstern and Ratmanoff, to the parallel of 65° 30′, just below where the continents of America and Asia approach each other the nearest; and from this point it proceeds in a course nearly southwest through Behring Strait, midway between the island of St. Lawrence and Cape Chukotski, to the meridian of 172° west longitude, and thence, in a southwesterly direction, traversing Behring Sea, midway between the island of Attoo on the east and Copper Island on the west, to the meridian of 193° west longitude, leaving the prolonged group of the Aleutian Islands in the possessions transferred to the United States, and making the western boundary of our country the dividing line which separates Asia from America.

Look at the map and observe the configuration of this extensive region, whose estimated area is more than five hundred and seventy thousand square miles. I speak by authority of our own Coast Survey. Including the Sitkan Archipelago at the south, it takes a margin of the main-land fronting on the ocean thirty miles broad and five hundred miles long to Mount St. Elias, the highest peak of the continent, when it turns with an elbow to the west, and along Behring Strait northerly, then rounding to the east along the Frozen Ocean. Here are upwards of four thousand statute miles of coast, indented by capacious bays and commodious harbors without number, embracing the peninsula of Alaska, one of the most remarkable in the world, twenty-five miles in breadth and three hundred miles in length; piled with mountains, many volcanic and some still smoking; penetrated by navigable rivers, one of which is among the largest of the world; studded