Volume 7 — DUTY AND STRENGTH OF THE COMING ADMINISTRATION.

From Notes of undelivered Speech on the various Propositions of Compromise, February, 1861.

Mr. Sumner contemplated a speech reviewing the various propositions of Compromise, but he never made it. The following passages are given, as proposed at the time.

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I would not say a word except of kindness and respect for the Senator of Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden]. But that Senator must pardon me, if I insist that he is entirely unreasonable in pressing his impracticable and unconstitutional propositions so persistently in the way of most important public business. Yesterday it hindered a great measure of Internal Improvement. To-day it blocks the admission of a State into this Union, being none other than Kansas, which has earned a better hospitality.

The Senator makes his appeal in the name of the Union. But I must remind him that he takes a poor way of showing that attachment to the Union which he avers. He turns round and lectures us who are devoted to the Union, when his lecture should be addressed to the avowed and open Disunionists in this Chamber. Nay, more, he actually sides with the Disunionists in their claims. Imagine Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Jay, Andrew Jackson, or Henry Clay, in the place of the venerable Senator. They would not wheel towards the known friends of the Union, and ask an impossible surrender of sacred principles, but rather face to face address the Disunionists frankly, plainly, austerely, calling upon them to renounce their evil schemes; to acknowledge the National Constitution, and especially in this age of light to make no new demands for Slavery.

In reply to the Senator, who so constantly lectures us, I say, look to the good examples of our history; take counsel of the Spirit of Nationalism, rather than Sectionalism, and be willing to defend the Constitution as it is, rather than patch it over with propositions which our fathers would have disowned.

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Putting aside all question of concession or compromise, the single question remains, How shall we treat the seceding States? And this is the question which the new Administration will be called to meet. I see well that it will naturally bear much and forbear long,—that it will be moved by principle, and not by passion,—and that it will adopt the harsh instrumentalities of power only when all other things have failed. And I see well the powerful allies which will be enlisted on its side. There will be the civilization of the Christian world, speaking with the innumerable voices of the press, and constituting a Public Opinion of irresistible energy. There will be the great contemporary example of Italy, after a slumber of centuries aroused to assertion of her rights,—and of Russia also, now completing that memorable act of Emancipation by which Freedom is assured to twenty millions of serfs. There will be also the concurring action of European powers, which, turning with disgust from a new confederacy founded on Human Slavery, will refuse to recognize it in the Family of Nations. There will be also the essential weakness of Slavery with the perils of servile insurrection, which, under the influence of this discussion, must become more and more manifest in every respect. There will be also the essential strength of Freedom, as a principle, carrying victory in its right hand. And there will be Time, which is at once Reformer and Pacificator. Such are some of the allies sure to be on the side of the Administration.