Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/328

Rh that they mean it was to establish Slavery. Against that I protest, here, now, and everywhere; and I tell the Supreme Court that these things are so impregnably fixed in the hearts of the people, on the page of history, in the recollections and traditions of men, that it will require mightier efforts than they have made or can make to overturn or to shake these settled convictions of the popular understanding and of the popular heart.

"Sir, you are now proposing to carry out this Dred Scott decision by forcing upon the people of Kansas a Constitution against which they have remonstrated, and to which there can be no shadow of doubt a very large portion of them are opposed. Will it succeed? I do not know; it is not for me to say ; but I will say this: if you force that—if yon persevere in that attempt—I think, I hope, the men of Kansas will fight. I hope they will resist to blood and to death the attempt to force them to a submission against which their fathers contended, and to which they never would have submitted. Let me tell you, sir, I stand not here to mse the language of intimidation or of menace; but you kindle the fires of civil war in that country by an attempt to force that Constitution on the necks of an unwilling people; and you will light a fire that all Democracy cannot quench— ay, sir, there will come up many another Peter the Hermit, that will go through the length and the breadth of this land, telling the story of your wrongs and your outrages; and they will stir the public heart; they will raise a feeling in this country such as has never yet been raised; and the men of this country will go forth, as they did of olden time, in another crusade; but it will not be a crusade to redeem the dead sepulchre where the body of the Crucified had lain from the profantion of the infidel, but to redeem this fair land, which God has given to be the abode of freemen, from the desecration of a despotism sought to be imposed upon them in the name of ’perfect freedom’ and ’popular sovereignty.’"

This is a little different from the speeches made in Congress last winter. There is nothing apologetic and deprecatory this time. Mr. Seward said, long ago, "The time for compromises has passed by."

Mr. Sumner's chair is vacant still—and yet it speaks with more power than any senator can bring to defend Slavery with. In the long line of men Massachusetts has sent to do service in the halls of Congress, there has been none nobler than Charles Sumner, none more faithful. I know how dangerous it is to praise a living man, especially a politician; to-morrow may undo the work of half a century. But here I feel safe; for, of all the men I have known in political life, he is the only one who has thereby grown stronger in the noblest qualities of a man. Already his integrity has been tried in the severest ordeal; I think hereafter it will stand any test. Massachusetts has had three great Adamses—Samuel, John, John Quincy. In their graves, they are to her what "the three Tells" are