Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/183

 SUMNER leaguered town of Lawrence, where even the women gave their effective efforts to freedom. The matrons of Rome, who poured their jewels into the Treasury for the public defense — the wives of Prussia who, with delicate fingers, clothed their defenders against French invasion — the mothers of our own Revolution, who sent forth their sons, covered with prayers and blessings, to combat for human rights, did nothing of self-sacrifice truer than did these women on this occasion. Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose — I do not say how little, but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas in its valiant struggle against oppression, and in the develop- ment of a new science of emigration. Already, in Lawrence alone, there are newspapers and schools, including a high school, and through- out this infant Territory there is more mature scholarship far, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the senator that Kansas, welcomed as a free State, will be a "ministering angel" to the Republic when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, "lies howling." 173