was profound and the excitement intense. Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, presented on the 12th of March an elaborate report on the condition of Kansas. A minority report, full, fair, and able, was made by Mr. Collamer. Of these two reports Mr. Sumner at once said: "The whole subject is presented characteristically on both sides. In the report of the majority the true issue is smothered; in that of the minority the true issue stands forth as a pillar of fire to guide the country." On the 17th of March, Mr. Douglas reported a bill authorizing the people of Kansas to form a constitution preparatory to their admission into the Union when they have the requisite population. A substitute was proposed by Mr. Seward providing for its immediate admission. The debates went on from day to day. The friends of freedom, though few in numbers, were earnest and courageous. They watched vigilantly the course of events. Though hopeless of carrying through the measures they would gladly have seen adopted, they determined that the legislation actually effected should be as little damaging as possible to the interests they had in charge. On the other hand, the forces of oppression, confident in the power which their large majority gave them, not only moved on with unyielding determination and an inexorable persistence to the accomplishment of their ruling purpose to make Kansas a slave State, but they supported, Northern and Southern members alike, with little seeming reluctance, or at least they refused to condemn, even the most audacious measures of the assailants and the most wicked of the pretended laws, born of the border-ruffian policy. CHAPTER XXXVI. Feverish state of feeling. Douglas. Excitement Republican Senators. pointed by both houses. challenged by Brooks. - Reports. - - Statements of Senators. -Committees ap - Mr. Wilson Challenge declined. - Action of the House. - Mr. Brooks's speech and resignation. Southern demonstrations. - Indorsed by Southern members. Burlingame's speech. - Comins's speech. - Challenge of Brooks. - Burlingame's Challenge accepted. Brooks refuses to fight. reception in Boston. - Speech. - Meeting in Faneuil Hall. - Speeches of Chandler and Everett. THE spring of 1856 had opened gloomily. The KansasNebraska legislation was bringing forth its legitimate fruits. Emboldened by their success, the slavery propagandists pressed on with vigor, resolved that no obstacles should prevent the realization of their cherished purposes. In Kansas the friends of freedom found that the pretended proffer of popular sovereignty was a delusion, and they were at once precipitated into a hand-to-hand conflict. Treason was on many lips, and the cry of secession not only rung in the halls of Congress, but resounded throughout the South. Distrusting, too, their ability to meet their opponents in the fair field of debate, the advocates of slavery resolved to resort to something more potent than words. If they could not rebut the speech, they could intimidate and overpower the speaker, and the bludgeon be made to accomplish what fair argument could not effect. The border-ruffian policy, which was filling Kansas with alarm and bloodshed, had its representatives in Washington, walking its streets, hanging around its hotels. and stalking through the capitol. To the extreme arrogance of imbittered and aggressive words were added the menace and actual infliction of personal violence. Indeed, the course of these men assumed the form of a reckless and relentless audacity never before exhibited. Members of Congress went armed in the streets, and sat with loaded revolvers in their desks. It was in this state of popular feeling and during the debate on Kansas affairs that Mr. Sumner delivered, on the 19th and 20th of May, his speech on "The Crime against Kansas." It was marked by the usual characteristics of his more elaborate efforts, exhibiting great affluence of learning, faithful research, and great rhetorical finish and force. It was, in the words of the poet Whittier, "a grand and terrible philippic, worthy of the great occasion; the severe and awful truth, which the sharp agony of the national crisis demanded." The speech bore the marks of a determined purpose to make it exhaustive and complete; as impregnable in argument and cogent in rhetoric as it could be made by the materials at his command, and by the author's acknowledged ability to use them. He summoned largely to his aid the power of language, and his "words" became "things." He divided his subject into "three different heads: THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS in its origin and extent; THE APOLOGIES FOR THE CRIME; and THE TRUE REMEDY." Concerning the crime itself, he adduced the most incontrovertible proofs of its existence, and closed by comparing Kansas to a "gallant ship, voyaging on a pleasant summer sea, assailed by a pirate crew." "Even now," he said, "the black flag of the land. pirates of Missouri waves at the masthead; in their laws you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife; while, incredible to relate, the President, gathering the Slave Power at his back, testifies a pirate sympathy." He said the apologies were four in number: the apology "tyrannical," the apology" imbecile," the apology "absurd," and the apology" infamous." "This is all," he said. "Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy all unite to dance, like the weird sisters, about this crime." Concerning the remedies, he said they, too, were "fourfold": the remedy of "tyranny," of folly," of "injustice and civil war," of "justice and peace." "These are the four caskets," he said, "and you are to determine which shall be opened by Senatorial votes." Having 66 discussed these points with great fulness and cogency, he thus closed: "The contest, which, beginning in Kansas, reaches us, will be transferred soon from Congress to that broader stage where every citizen is not only spectator, but actor; and to their judgment I confidently turn. . . . . In the name of the Constitution outraged, of the laws trampled down, of humanity degraded, of peace destroyed, of freedom crushed to earth, and in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect freedom, I make this last appeal." Portraying the crime, he referred to the criminal, fitly spoke of the tyrant power who inspired it, and of the more prominent agents in its commission. Alluding to a fable of Northern mythology, he said: "Even so the creature whose paws are fastened upon Kansas, whatever it may seem to be, constitutes in reality part of the Slave Power, which, with loathsome folds, is now coiled about the whole land." Of several of the agents of this power he had more than general reasons to speak severely. Among them were Mr. Butler and Mr. Douglas, who had singled him out for special attack. In this speech, therefore, he took occasion to repay them for their assaults, and proposed to say "something in reference 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, and the Senator from Illinois, who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth in the same adventure." Of the former he spoke as "one applying opprobrious epithets to those who differ from him on this floor, calling them'sectional' and 'fanatical,' and their opposition to the usurpations in Kansas' an uncalculating fanaticism!'" Of the latter he said: "The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open threat; but his conduct implies it. How little that Senator knows himself, or the strength of the cause he persecutes! He is but a mortal man; but against him is an immortal principle. With finite strength he wrestles with the infinite, and he must fail; against him are stronger battalions than any marshalled by mortal arm, the inborn, ineradicable, and invincible senti ments of the human heart; against him is Nature in all its subtle forces; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these." A speech so bold and unsparing in its utterances, so thorough and fundamental in its logic, in which things were called by their right names, and which applied the tests of Republican and Christian principles so severely to the vexed question, while, at the same time, it administered to some of the haughty and dogmatic leaders that severe rebuke their insolence deserved, could not fail, in the excited state of the public mind, to produce a profound impression. Men whose course had been subjected to this terrible arraignment were excited to madness; and summary vengeance was agreed upon as the only remedy that would meet the exigency of the hour. Preston S. Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, either volunteered or was selected as the agent for its infliction. After the adjournment of the Senate on the 22d of May, Mr. Sumner remained at his desk, engaged in writing. While so engaged, Brooks, whom he did not know, approached him, and said: "I have read your speech twice over, carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." While these words were passing from his lips, he commenced a series of blows with a bludgeon upon the Senator's head, by which the latter was stunned, disabled, and smitten down, bleeding and insensible, on the floor of the chamber. From that floor he was taken by friends, borne to the anteroom, where his wounds were dressed, and then he was carried by Mr. Wilson, assisted by Representative Buffinton, of the House, faint and bleeding, to his lodgings. The injuries of Mr. Sumner were serious, and became the occasion of constant anxiety to his friends. He was first treated at Washington, afterward successively at Philadelphia, Boston, and Paris, making two voyages to Europe, where he submitted himself to treatment at the hands of Dr. BrownSéquard. It was four years before he was pronounced convalescent, during the most of which time his vacant chair in the Senate Chamber proclaimed, with a more pregnant |