The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-02-02

territories, that the domestic slave
trade be restrained, especially on the
high seas under the national flag, and
that the national government should go
TO the limit of it's constitutional power
to relieve itself from all responsibility
for slavery. This was, substantially,
the free soil platform. The conservative
character Of Summers speech is seen
In the fact that in his constitutional
argument against the fugitive slave bill
he fell back On the compact theory of
the constitution in that he held that
the fugitive slave clause of that dOcu-
merit was not q, pOwer-C comforting clause
but merely a compact agreement among
the states. It's enforcement must be
left to state comfy.
50 Slavery as he said on a former
occasion, where we are parties to it,
wherever we are responsible for it,
everywhere within our jurisdiction,
must be opposed by every instrument
Of the political power 1t is a mistake
to charge that we seek to interfere
through congress with slavery in the
states. Our political aims as we'll as
our political duties are coextensive only
with our political responsibilities.
Such was the message that Sumner
gave the senate and the nation in 1852,
and such was his constant Uncompro-
missing platform in the great anti-slav-
cry conflict.
Summers Inhexible and Uncompro-
missing Character.
In 1854 Sumner made a plea against
the Douglas repeal Of the Missouri
compromise, calling the repeating bill
''at the same time the worst and the
best bill in the annals of congress" for
while it broke down an historic barrier
against slavery it at the same time
placed the great antagonists, Freedom
and Slavery, face to face and bade them
grapple He was denounced and buff
feted and badgered in the senate as a
fanatic, a traitor and a perjured vio-
laItOr Of his oath, on account Of his
public utterance against returning the
fugitive slave. 'Is thy servant a dog
he answered in the words of the pro-
phet, that he should do this thing?''
Against his assailants Butler Of South
Carolina, Mason of Virginia, Douglas
of Illinois, Petit of Indiana and others
he defended the principles Of the Dec
laratiOn Of Independence. and facing
as Jackson faced. an adverse supreme
court decision, he quoted Jackson and
Buchanan as good democratic author
ity for the position that when a public
official sWears to support the constftu-
ton he sWears to support it as he IN
derstandS it, not as it is understood by
others
on May 10, 1856. Sumner delivered
his celebrated speech in the senate on
THE Crime Against Kansas the
speech for which he was assaulted by
Brooks. Summers speeches were very
offensive to his opponents. When he
assailed slavery it's advocates felt
themselves to be personally insuIted
The passage in this speech to which
exception was taken was certainly in
bad taste, and it shows personal Of
fensiveness, II not eOarseness. Mr..
Rhodes, the historian of the period,
finds no apology for Summers bitter
personal attack on Senator Butler. But
Sumner did not transgress the bounds
of parliamentary decorum, and he was
not called to order by the president of
the senate or by any senator. In Sum-
ner the uncompromising southerner met
aggression, bOldness. defiance, denun-
citation. equal to his own-forms of
speech to which he had not been ac-
customed. Brooks bludgeon merely re-
vealed the spirit and weakness of slav-
cry.
For twenty years Sumner was absent
from his seat in the senate, under fned-
zeal treatment in Europe He returned
to his seat in 1850, and In the notable
SCGSiOAt u Acnt-A liz was d SltbDS OppO-
nent Of any form Of compromise: ne
held that the slavery question did not
admit of compromise; 1t did not come
within the domain Of expediencv. ITO
be wrong on this 5 to be wholly wrong.
On this question there is 10 other side
In this conviction, therefore, when, at
the opening Of the war, as Miss Marti-
neau relates, every public man in the
country with whom she talked agreed
that silence upon slavery was the sole
condition Of preserving the Union
when in this crisis Sumner was appeal
promise and save the country from
war, he answered: "I must do my duty;
/ can vote for no concession TO human
slavery" In this ne spoke more as thes
!