Mr. Sumner's Great Speech. (1863)

Source: The Friend. Honolulu: December 1, 1863.

On the 10th of September, Mr. Senator Sumner delivered a speech before an immense audience convened at Cooper Institute, New York. His subject was : 'Our Foreign Relations." He fully discussed the Law of Intervention, with its applicability to France and England. The ability of the speech may be inferred from the fact that it attracted the attention of the British Ministry as soon as it was published in England. We have read this speech with great pleasure, and recommend its perusal to our readers. It is worth more than a great battle terminating victoriously!  The following paragraph will show that he handles slavery and the rebellion "without mittens" : 

The rebellion is slavery in arms ; slavery on horseback; slavery on foot; slavery raging on the battlefield ; slavery raging on the quarter-deck, robbing, destroying, burning, killing, in order to uphold this candidate power. Its legislation is simply slavery In statutes; slavery in chapters;  slavery In sections —with an enacting clause. Its diplomacy is slavery in pretended embassadors; slavery in cunning letters ; slavery in cozening promises; slavery in persistent negotiations—all to secure for the candidate power its much desired welcome. Say what you will; try to avoid it If you can; you are compelled to admit that the candidate power Is nothing else than organized slavery, which now in its madness—surrounded by its criminal clan, and led by its felon chieftains—braves the civilization of the age. Therefore any recognition of this power will be a recognition of slavery itself, with welcome and benediction, imparting to it new consideration and respectability, and worse still, securing to It new opportunity and foothold for the supremacy which it openly proclaims. 

Vain is it to urge the practice of nations in its behalf. Never before in history has such a candidacy been put forward in the name of slavery; and the terrible outrage Is aggravated by the Christian light which surrounds it. This Is not the age of darkness. But even in the Dark Age, when the slave mongers of Algiers "had reduced themselves to a government or state," the renowned Louis IX, "treated them as a nest of wasps."