"I feel that I should be doing injustice to my own feelings, and injustice to my friend, the Senator from Massachusetts, if I were to fail at this time to express the very great gratification with which I listened to his speech. In saying that, I do not mean to pass by entirely the honorable Senator from North Carolina [Mr. BADGER], for I listened to him, as I always do, with great pleasure; but justice compels me to say that by far the best part of his speech was the extract which he read from a former speech of the honorable Senator from Massachusetts. [_Laughter._] I listened to them both with great pleasure; but, Sir, I feel bound to say to-day, that it is my deliberate conviction that the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, if he were actuated by as corrupt and selfish motives as can possibly be attributed to him, has, so far as his own personal fame and reputation are concerned, done enough by the effort he has made here to-day to place himself side by side with the first orators of antiquity, and as far ahead of any living American orator as Freedom is ahead of Slavery. I believe that he has formed to-day a new era in the history of the politics and of the eloquence of the country, and that in future generations the young men of this nation will be stimulated to effort by the record of what an American Senator has this day done, to which all the appeals drawn from ancient history would be entirely inadequate. Yes, Sir, he has to-day made a draft upon the gratitude of the friends of humanity and of liberty that will not be paid through many generations, and the memory of which shall endure as long as the English language is spoken, or the history of this Republic forms a part of the annals of the world. That, Sir, is what I believe; and if I had one other feeling, or could indulge in it, in reference to that effort, it would be a feeling of envy, that it was not in me to tread even at an humble distance in the path which he has so nobly and eloquently illustrated."
Mr. Chase adopted the argument of Mr. Sumner against the Fugitive Slave Bill, and vindicated him personally.
"The argument which my friend from Massachusetts has addressed to us to-day was not an assault upon the Constitution. It was a noble vindication of that great charter of government from the perversions of the advocates of the Fugitive Slave Act.... What has the Senator from Massachusetts asserted? That the fugitive servant clause of the Constitution is a clause of compact between the States, and confers no legislative power upon Congress. He has arrayed history and reason in support of this proposition; and I avow my conviction, now and here, that, logically and historically, his argument is impregnable, entirely impregnable....