The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1860-06-27
From the Philadelphia Mercury, a neutral pape
Charles Summers Case.

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Charles Summers Case.
When Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts,,
was first elected to a seat in the Senate of the
United States, he was generally regarded as a
mild, studious and accomplished gentleman,
whose good nature had led him into the adop-
ton of impracticable ideas. 1t was fondly
hoped by those who admired the talents of the
Senator, that the experience to be gained at
the national capital, would teach him the diff
ference between theories formed in the seclu-
sion of a New England library and the reali-
ties of social and political relations. The ora
ton upon the "Crime Against Kansas" show
ed that its author was bound to enlist for the
anti slavery crusade. But this was nothing
more than was expected of a Senator from
Massachusetts, and we have little doubt that if
this demonstration had been permitted to pass
among the rest of Congressional declamations,
Mr.. Sumner would gradually have gained con-
troll of the fiery and ~fanatical hobby. But
Preston S. Brooks was goaded into making a
brutal and bloody assault upon the orator, who
was Immediately exalted to the rank of a mar
tyr. -Four years seem to have been required
to restore the nervous health of the beaten
Senator. In the interval, Mr.. Summers fanati-
cism was conirmed-it became a chronic dis
ease, and we shall be compelled to endure it's
fearful manifestations during the remainder of
his life.
We call the recent speech of the Senator a
clear evidence of a mind diseased-not because
he views the institution of slavery as an evil,
and desires to prevent its extension-blt be-
| cause the speech proves that his gaze has been
fixed so long and so intensely upon one spot,
that the said spot has become his map of the
world; he czn see-nothipg beyond. The orr
GIN OF sIavefySthe CONTRAST Between the ne
gro in Africa and the negro in this republic
+bo ,nouactiopob1 IL aIvoD+oooa 90 :.-I-J
government to a race naturally indolent-the
Intervening of slavery with the social life of
mauy millions Of our people-and the absence
of a remedy even if the evil were conceded to
be as enormous as represented-all these
things, which would be taken into considera-
ton by a sound and practical mind, are utterly
ignored. Mr. Sumner sees only a dark and
hideous agglomeration of women whipping,
baby selling, and man burning. A negro is
treated like a brute because he is a slave; and
his owner is a vulgar, tyrannical %rufian, just
because he is a slave owner. The South has
no Christianity, no commerce, no wealth, no
literature, no civilization because it has slave
ry. There is Mr.. Summers case. The black
spot overshadows his mind. The wound in
dieted by Brooks has poisoned the whole ma
ture of the Senator.
That there are passages in Mr.. Summers
speech. marked by learning, logic and elo-
quence, we cannot question. But Wendell
Phillips is his superior in the display of these
qualities, and we have not found it necessary
to review or eontroyertt the arguments of either.
No man of sense need be told that slavery has
elevated the negro from The savage level of
his life in Africa, that the great majority of
the slaves are treated as kindly as any other
laborers in the world are treated; that whip
ping women, selling babies, and hunting,
branding and burning negroes are not uniyer-
sal occupations in the South; that all slave
holders do not carry deadly weapons and fight
duels every mornings; that the South has ex-
%tensive commerce., immense wealth, refined
society, and a tolerable sprinkling of authors.
But there is one point which people afflicted
with the abolition disease ought to be brought
to consider. Concede that the institution of
slavery is all that they represent it to be, and
what remedy have these doctors to propose?
Here are four millions of negroes, nearly all
Of whom have been bred to agricultural pur-
suits, and with a sense of their dependence
upon their owners. They represent property
to the value of a thousand million of dollars, /
at least, and produce the cotton crop that sup
plies the world. The institution cannot be
abolished without sacrificing all that property
and nearly all the crop hat feeds and clothes
millions of whites on both side of the Atlantic.
But leaving the value of property and the
cotton out of view, would it not be positively
inhuman to cast four millions of ignorant ne
groes upon the world, without any provision for
their support? Were the schemes of the. Abo-
litionists carried out, were the ends of the ia
natics answered in full, would there not be a
universal clamor that the remedy is worse than
the disease? When we can make up our
minds to take the blacks to our bosoms as
equals-when we have provided homes,
schools and occupations for four millions of
negroes-when we have concluded to stop
wearing cotton goods-when we have the
money to spare to compensate slave owners for
the loss of a thousand millions of dollars-it
will be a good season to commence to talk
about the expediency of abolishing the system
of servitude now prevailing in fifteen States of
the Union. Until that millennium of the hui
manitarian arrives, Sumner speeches can be
nothing more than evidences of mental diseases
and rabid dispositions. sT. q a