Excerpt from The Sumner Outrage: A Full Report of the Speeches at the Meeting of Citizens in Cambridge, June 2, 1856, in Reference to the Assault on Senator Sumner, in the Senate Chamber at Washington

Fer myself, sir, I have hope. A strong enduring hope; al though I see as plainly as I ever saw a storm grow in the sky and darken the earth, I see that great dangers are near us. I am as sure as I can be of anything, that the destiny of this coun try, and of the world, so far as that is bound up in this, is all compressed and locked up in the question, can the people of this country, will the people of this country, acknowledge, and respect, and' preserve, and insist upon the preservation of the Constitution and the Law, as their own work, and as the best expression of truth and justice which they can make. For if men do not respect the law and acknowledge its author ity, what else is there in a republic but passion and impulse and the will of the individual, however foolish, however sel fish. One man, or a hundred, or athousand, may say, not, we object to the Constitution and the law, and will do our utmost to make it better, but, we will disregard the Constitution and the law, for we are wiser and better than they. But it is plain that if one man, or any man, have the right to say and do this, every man has, and therefore no man has. It is certain there fore - certain and obvious as the sun in heaven, which only the blind do not see or they who turn their eyes away, it is certain that will, mere will, mere force, becomes our sovereign the mo ment that law is dethroned. For if the will of the community, deliberately expressed as law by the means and in the manner distinctly determined on by the whole, containing, however imperfect or faulty it may be, whatever of wisdom or of good ness the community can bring to the mode of making its law.

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