Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/52

26 indeed, as represented or professed by any party, but according to its real significance, as transfigured in the Declaration of Independence, and in the injunctions of Christianity. In this idea I see no narrow advantage merely for individuals or classes, but the sovereignty of the people, and the greatest happiness of all secured by equal laws.

A vast array of historical research and of legal argument was then called up to prove the sectionalism of slavery, the nationalism of freedom, and the unconstitutionality of the fugitive-slave act, followed by this bold declaration: “By the Supreme Law, which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian Law of Brotherhood, by the Constitution I have sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this law.” And the speech closed with this solemn quotation: “Beware of the groans of wounded souls, since the inward sore will at length break out. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart; for a solitary sigh has power to overturn a whole world.”

The amendment to the appropriation bill moved by Mr. Sumner received only four votes of fifty-one. But every hearer had been struck by the words spoken as something different from the tone of other anti-slavery speeches delivered in those halls. Southern Senators, startled at the peculiarity of the speech, called it, in reply, the most extraordinary language they had ever listened to. Mr. Chase, supporting Sumner in debate, spoke of it, “as marking a new era in American history, when the anti-slavery idea ceased to stand on the defensive and was boldly advancing to the attack.”

Indeed, it had that significance. There stood up in the Senate a man who was no politician; but who, on the highest field of politics, with a concentrated intensity of feeling and purpose never before witnessed there, gave expression to a moral impulse, which, although sleeping perhaps for a time, certainly existed in the popular con-