SUMNER But this enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of wickedness which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it is understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine feud not only in this dis- tant Territory, but everywhere throughout the country. Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local but national. Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all the arches of the horizon threatening to darken the broad land which already yawns wdth the mut- terings of civil war; the fury of the propa- gandists of slavery, and the calm determination of their opponents, are now diffused from the distant Territory over widespread communities, and the whole country, in all its extent — mar- shaling hostile divisions, and foreshadowing a strife which, unless happily averted by the triumph of freedom, will become war — fratrici- dal, parricidal war — ^with an accumulated wicked- ness beyond the wickedness of any war in human annals, justly provoking the avenging judgment of providence and the avenging pen of history, and constituting a strife, in the language of the ancient writer, more than foreign, more than social, more than civile but something compound- ed of all these strifes, and in itself more than war; sed potius commune quoddam ex omnibus^ et plus quam helium. Such is the crime which you are to judge. But the criminal also must be dragged into day, that you may see and measure the power by 165
