Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/319

Rh withdrawn. The only ally of Mr. Sumner was then gone; not a friend stood near him. Then the Southern "chivalry" gathered around, and Mr. Brooks came and assaulted him.

Now, do you know the seed whence came the bludgeon which struck that handsome and noble head? It was the "Acorn," in whose shell Boston carried back Thomas Sims in 1851; and on the 19th of April, on the seventy-sixth anniversary of the battle of Lexington, she took him out of that shell and put him in a gaol at Savannah, where he was scourged till a doctor said, "You will kill him if you strike him again!" and the master said, "Let him die!" That was the Acorn whence grew the bludgeon which struck Charles Sumner.

Here is a letter from him, written but a day before beginning his speech: "Alas! alas!" he says, "the tyranny over us is complete! Will the people submit? When you read this, I shall be saying in the Senate, they will not. I shall pronounce the most thorough Philippic [against Slavery] ever uttered in a legislative body." He kept his word; it was the most thorough Philippic against Slavery ever uttered in an American Parliament. Nay, Wilberforce and Brougham, and their famous peers, never surpassed it in the British House. The talent, the learning, the eloquence of Mr. Sumner never went further. The composure, the respectful dignity, of this man, who is a gentleman amongst gentlemen, was never more decorous and manly than at that time. He gave an argument: the South has answered it with a bludgeon cut from a tree whose seed was sown in Boston,—Mr. Pearson's Acorn. Two years before this assault. Judge Loring was kidnapping Mr. Burns. That very day, the Know-nothing Legislature, stimulated thereto by men well known, was attempting to re-establish kidnapping in Boston, by destroying the Personal Liberty Law. It was not my Boston that wanted such wickedness; it was the slave-hunter's Boston that wanted it,—a few men, idiotic in conscience, heart, and soul.

I keep the coat of Thomas Sims; it is rent to tatters. I wish I had also the bloody garment of Charles Sumner, that I might show it to you; and I would ask Boston,