Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/179

SUMNER States can not enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Eepublic, he misnames equality under the Constitution — in other words, the full power in the national Territories to compel fellow men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction block — then, sir, the chivalric sena- tor will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus ! But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was *' measured," the senator, in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them *' sectional and fanatical"; and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as *'an uncalculating fanaticism." To be sure these charges lack all grace of origin- ality, and all sentiment of truth ; but the adven- turous senator does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism which now domineers over the Republic, and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position — ^unable to see himself as others see him — or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the government to its original 169