Frederick Douglass Charles Sumner, June 9, 1860
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER
Rochester[,] N.Y. 9 June 1860.
Hon: CHAS SUMNER.
My DEAR SIR.
I wish I could tell you how deeply grateful I am to you, and to God, for the speech you have now been able to make in the Uni States Senate. You Spoke to the Senate and the nation, but you have a nother and a mightier audience. The civilized world will hear you, and rejoice in the tremendous exposure of the meanness, brutality, blood guiltiness, hell black iniquity and barbarism of American Slavery. As one who has felt the horrors of this stupendous violation of all human rights—I venture thus far to tresspass upon your time and attention. My heart is full Sir—and I could pour
out my feelings at length—but I know how precious is your time—I shall print every word of your Speech1Douglass devoted almost an entire issue of his Monthly to reprinting Charles Sumner’s lengthy Senate speech of 4 June 1860, favoring the admission of Kansas as a free state. This was Sumner’s first speech on the Senate floor since his caning by Preston Brooks on 22 May 1856. In an editorial note, Douglass called the speech “the utterance of an honest man, the work of a ripe scholar, the production of a lofty statesman, who, in the face of a blood-thirsty oligarchy, and against the temporizing, time-serving, cringing, and trimming policy of his own party, has dared, with unfaltering step, to follow out the great principles of eternal justice and liberty to their logical results.” DM, 3:289-304 (July 1860).—
Yours with most grateful regards
FREDK DOUGLASS—
ALS: Charles Sumner Correspondence, MHH.