Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

After all, Sumner, as it proved, was wiser in his instincts than others in their political craft. No good cause ever suffers from courage in its defence. He who makes it grander in the eyes of men does more for it than the most dexterous management can accomplish. The gathering hosts of freemen craved inspiration, and they found it in Sumner's leadership. His prophet-like voice was needed to steady a movement which was in no small danger of shipwreck. Six months had hardly passed before certain Republican leaders became compromisers with slavery; and it was not their steadfastness or wisdom, but the madness of the South, which saved the country from the calamity of an antislavery triumph being converted into a new surrender to the slave-power.

Immediately after his speech Sumner accepted the invitation of the Young Men's Republican Union of the city of New York, given some months before, to deliver an address at Cooper Institute. He had withheld an answer until he should have tested his strength in the Senate. He lingered after the close of the session (June 28) a few days at Washington, and on his way homeward delivered the address July 11, taking for his topic ‘The Origin, Necessity, and Permanence of the Republican Party.’¹ His last previous appearance before a popular audience was in 1855, when he spoke on a kindred topic, ‘The Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity of the Antislavery Enterprise.’ The address, opening with a contrast between John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams as historical representatives of opposite principles and policies, was in the line of his recent speech in the Senate, and reaffirmed the same positions in more popular form, with less amplification and citation of authorities and statistics. It was already in type before delivery, and so well fixed in his memory that he had no occasion to recur to the manuscript. There was a prodigious desire to hear him. Since he had last spoken in the city, he had become associated with an extraordinary event in the history of American slavery; and recent criticisms of his speech in the Senate had intensified the popular interest. Cooper Institute was crowded with all that was best in the life