depicting the sufferings of India, scarcely surpassed Sumner's speech on
the devastation of Kansas by outlaws and guerrillas. Commenting upon the
fact that a company of armed slave owners had crossed the borders at
night, and destroyed the homes of a group of Northern settlers, Sumner
said: "Border incursions, which in barbarous lands fretted and harried
an exposed people, are here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our
border robbers do not simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle,
they do not seize a few persons and sweep them away into captivity, like
the African slave-traders whom we brand as tyrants, but they commit a
succession of deeds in which border sorrows and African wrongs are
revived together on American soil, while the whole territory is
enslaved. I do not dwell on the anxieties of families exposed to sudden
assault, and lying down to rest with the alarms of war ringing in the
ears, not knowing that another day may be spared them. Throughout this
bitter winter, with the thermometer thirty degrees below zero, the
citizens of Lawrence have slept under arms, with sentinels pacing. In
vain do we condemn the cruelties of another age--the refinement of
torture, the rack and thumbscrew of the Inquisition; for kindred
outrages disgrace these borders. Murder stalks, assassination skulks in
the tall grass; where a candidate for the Legislature was gashed with
knives and hatchets, and after weltering in blood on the snow-clad
earth, trundled along with gaping wounds to fall dead before the face of
his wife."

With speeches like these, Sumner attacked slavery. The edge of his
argument was keen, but his blows had also the power of sledgehammers.
The Southern leaders were in a frenzy of anger. Harriet Martineau said
of the situation that from 1830 to 1850, by general agreement, men in
Congress referred to slavery under their breath, believing that only by
silence could the Union be preserved. Now came a man who believed that