The Bangor _Jeffersonian_, also of Maine, said:--
“In the United States Senate, on Monday and Tuesday of last week, Mr. Sumner made a speech which will occupy a very conspicuous place in the history of the American Union, not so much for its advocacy of any merely formal plan or scheme of national legislation for Reconstruction as for its closer relations to the great fundamental principles which constitute the ideal of a truly republican government It goes to the very foundation of things.”
In a leading article of more than two columns, the New York _Herald_ said, in a different vein:--
“MR. SUMNER’S ORATION.--NEGRO SUFFRAGE THE WHOLE DUTY OF THE NATION, AND THE ONLY ESCAPE FROM OUR DIFFICULTIES.--Mr. Sumner, in his Senatorial pleading in the case of the negro, has given to the country an elaborate evidence of the utterly impracticable and visionary character of his political views. His oration is admirable in all purely literary respects, and indicates an abundant industry and research; but its theories of society, its interpretations of the Constitution, and its assumptions as to the history of the country and of the war are inadmissible, excepting only what is said of the Constitutional Amendment.…
“Those parts of the oration which claim suffrage for the negro, as a necessary policy of the nation, will require but little answer by argument; for the country and the world--all men outside the Radical Republican party--will completely deny the truth of the points from which they start.…
“We quite agree with Mr. Sumner in the grand fact that the Constitutional Amendment gives Congress full power to settle the position of the negro in the Southern States, and even to give him the suffrage. We are quite sure that this oration has not shown the necessity, the justice, or even the expediency of this gift. Still it may be expedient, necessary, and just.”
The speech attracted attention in Europe. In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of Paris, which is so comprehensive a representative of the French mind, a leading article by M. Forcade presents a parallel between Mr. Sumner’s speech and the famous speech of the time in the French Assembly by M. Thiers, where Liberty was the theme.