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this afternoon, on the twenty-sixth ballot, by a vote of 193, being the exact number necessary in concurrence with the choice of the Senate, made in January last.
This will be a sore disappointment to the Whig Party, who have a plurality of some 20,000 votes in the State; but the fates have so decreed, and so it must be. The die is cast, and the Whigs and the indomitable Democracy have lost the game.
We are not prepared to proclaim the country ruined in consequence of this event.
Mr. Sumner is a forcible and eloquent speaker, an apt scholar, a man of superior abilities, of polished address and extensive acquaintance with the men and events of his times, and he may become a statesman of mark in the political arena.
He will probably act and work with the Whig Party on all questions but one, a vital and momentous one, it is true, as he will find when he gets to Washington.
Mr. Sumner will find, on reaching the Capital, that Massachusetts, and even New England, is but a fraction of the United States; that there are interests besides hers to be looked after; that, under his oath of office, he is bound to legislate for the whole country, not a sectional part; that the constitutional rights of others must be respected; and all this his good sense will soon teach him, if he needs to be taught.
Again, we say, we do not yet despair of the Union.
Massachusetts might have seated in the Senate a man far more objectionable than Charles Sumner!
Vive la Republique!
The next day after the election, the
Daily Advertiser, then under the control of the well-known journalist,
Mr. Nathan Hale, used the following severe language, which referred, however, to the coalition in the Legislature by which the election was secured, and having no reference to the personal fitness of
Mr. Sumner for the position:
It is the grossest outrage upon the feelings of the majority of the people of the State, by a combination between two minorities, which we have known to be perpetrated in any of the States of the Union.
We regard the event as a most unfortunate one for the reputation of the State, and one which must paralyze its influence in the councils of the Union, and in sustaining a course of legislation tending to harmonize the dissensions which have so long disturbed the quiet of the country.
