326 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



for him almost without a struggle. On the 4th of July, 1845, at the 

 request of the authorities of the city of Boston, he delivered the ora- 

 tion customarily given upon that anniversary. The topic which he 

 selected was the preservation of peace as the true policy of all nations, 

 — a tolerably well-beaten subject, but handled on this occasion with so 

 much power of illustration and such vigorous oratory that it produced 

 an effect upon the auditory fi,ir exceeding that of any similar produc- 

 tion of late years. Then it was that Mr. Sumner probably discovered 

 the true nature of his vocation. From that moment his career was 

 marked out for him. 



This production, to which he affixed the title of " The True Grandeur 

 of Nations," gave the key-note to all the later efforts of his life. It 

 disclosed an impetuosity of enthusiasm well adapted to awaken sym- 

 pathy in the popular heart, and it cast a glow over reasoning and 

 imagery which dazzled, if it did not altogether convince more scrutmiz- 

 ing minds. A reader who would now set himself to a calm analysis of 

 the argument, by the light of the experience of the world, especially 

 including that of the United States in the course of the thirty years 

 since elapsed, could not fail to note its chief defect, — an extreme of 

 speculative optimism, and a corresponding failure in the adaptation 

 of unquestioned general principles to the easy attainment of really 

 useful ends. 



The brilliant success of this first effort in favor of universal peace 

 happened just at a moment when another agitation was in process of 

 inception, equally founded upon a great principle of morals, and far 

 more susceptible of application to the existing condition of things, 

 whilst it called for precisely the same kind of ability indicated on that 

 occasion. The country had been shaken to its centre nearly thirty 

 years before by the first confiict of power sj^ringing from the rapid 

 spread of the slave element over a vast space of its territory, — a con- 

 flict which was then only postponed by a compromise suddenly patched 

 up between the two parties in Congress that time. Although the paci- 

 fication appeared for a while to have been founded upon almost uni- 

 versal popular consent and a fixed determination to countenance no 

 effort to revive the topic, and though the entire movement of the 

 government of the country was regulated in that sense, yet so danger- 

 ous to all sound doctrines of freedom was the progress of the power 

 visibly concentrating by the rapid development of this adverse ele- 

 Uient on which it rested, that it could not fail sooner or later to rouse 

 attention and create alarm among close observers of the phenom- 

 ena as they presented themselves. The violent measures at first 



