nificance of Sumner's work was not felt. He found no sympathy in that Senate. Somewhere Carlyle alludes incidentally, as it were, to Sterling's early, kindly words about his (Carlyle's) books, adding in an ejaculatory way, "Ah! human recognition!" But on this day, in that Senate Chamber, Sumner had no human recognition. His eye met no friendly greeting. If it fell upon the President, it met cold indifference; if he looked before him, it met the jackal glance of Wigfall, whose hands, even then, were red with human blood; if he turned to his left, ear and eye were greeted with gibe and leer and grimace and ribald jest, mingling with the noises of ringing bar-room glasses in the very threshold of the sanctuary of the Senate. If he turned his eye to the right, there was the more chilling, deprecatory look of his Republican brethren. The galleries were empty. Sympathy nowhere. Surrounded by his brother Senators, he was alone it was isolation profound, oppressive. He felt it. He read as if rehearsing his speech alone, his voice assuming the deep tones of the ritualist, befitting the gravity of the moment. He seldom raised his eyes from the paper before him; but when he did, they instinctively turned heavenward. Bravely, thoroughly, his task was done, to the end.

For making, four years before, such a speech as this, he had been stricken down at his place in the Senate chamber. To-day no hand was raised against him. Armed friends attended him; they were not needed.

There was even no reply. Chesnut, of South Carolina, spit out some bitter words; that, and nothing more. All felt, when Sumner closed, that the time for speech had passed. The knot could not be untied-it must be cut.

The beginnings of strife are noisy; but when the death-grapple comes, the voice is still. Henceforth there was no angry discussion in Congress. From that moment the South began to arm-to beat the pruning-hook into the spear. Soon the tramp of armed men was heard from the Rio Grande to the Potomac. But the "Quintuple Barbarism" perished in the throes of a mighty convulsion.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE GREEK REVOLUTION

One of the principles early enunciated by the government of the United States, and which has grown into a political axiom, is the avoidance of "entangling alliances" with foreign powers. The wisdom of this principle on the part of a nation politically and geographically constituted as is our own has been frequently illustrated when its violation would have entailed complications that might have endangered, if they had not indeed destroyed, that perfect independence of self-government which is the basis and strength of our political system.

The firm maintenance of this principle has at times been severely tried when the struggles and appeals of distant and oppressed nationalities have stirred the American heart until the national government has been forced -while restraining its hands from action—to give official utterance to the sentiments of the people at large. It is impossible for a young and successful nation like the United States-herself the child of revolution-not to feel acutely-and to give expression to that feeling-the hardships of other nationalities which, under the galling yoke of alien oppression, seek to establish a similar self-government to that which we established, under less trying circumstances, by rebellion and the sword.

Greece, Poland, and Hungary present cases in point; and in the two latter instances the scenes are fresh in the memory of those whose hearts and hands and voices went forth in no inconsiderable degree to cheer and aid the revolutionists. The Greek revolution which broke out in 1821, and continued for a series of years, is more remote, but no less thrilling, particularly in the inequality of the struggle, the marvelous pertinacity of the Greeks in continuing a revolt against enormous odds, and in the instances of heroism, by land and by sea, which scarcely find a counterpart in modern history. It will be remembered that after four centuries of Turkish rule, or rather misrule, Greece had sunk to so low a level that she excited no interest abroad beyond the pitiful belief that the Hellenic spirit had expired in dust and ashes, affording no hope of future resurrection. That one pregnant and popular line of Lord Byron-written after visiting the country-fully expresses the opinion which then prevailed. She was "Greece, but living Greece no more." Byron, however, was not aware, any more than the rest of the world, that under the ashes of centuries, desolation, and the worst form of political and social oppression, there was

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an undercurrent of hope and determination moving slowly but surely onward among the leading Greeks in the official employment of the Ottoman government, and destined before many years to break forth into popular demonstration. The secret preparation for this may be said to have had its commencement as far back as the early years of the eighteenth century, and it was principally due to the cohesion of the Greek nationality; for, in spite of the demoralizing effects upon the Greeks of the Moslem yoke, their barbarian oppressors dared not awaken the resentment of Christian Europe by any open interference with the religion of their conquered subjects. This subtle and impregnable bond preserved alike their language, manners, and customs; and the superior intelligence and mental activity of the Greeks to that of the ignorance and brutal ferocity of their conquerors afforded channels for the interchange of ideas, among themselves, which kept alive the glorious anticipation of future regeneration. As a Greek historian puts it, their "priests whispered of hope and freedom in the pauses of their prayers;" and although a generation died before any material effort was practicable on their part, the moment came at last when a small body of revolutionists boldly asserted their purpose to shake off the detested yoke or to perish in the attempt. Greece proper then contained less than a million of Greeks, the bulk of the nation, at least three times. that in numbers, being an integral portion of the Turkish population, while many of their leading men held official employment in Constantinople and the adjacent provinces. These latter were unable to take an active part in the rebellion, or even to show their hands, but silently and by intrigue fed the flame and encouraged their brethren-in-arms.

It cannot be doubted that the success of the American Revolution, followed by that of the French Revolution, stimulated the Greeks largely to attempt the recovery of their freedom. America was a far-off land, and to the uneducated peasantry of Greece but vaguely comprehended; but the astounding fact that three millions of people had maintained for seven years an unequal contest with the army of England and her foreign allies, and had achieved their independence, illumined with fresh hopes the little band of Greek patriots and strengthened the determination of their illorganized and insufficiently armed soldiery to stand the hazard of the die.

One of the first acts of the Greek "senate" at Calamata was a resolution which declared, "that having deliberately resolved to live or die for freedom, they were drawn by an irresistible sympathy to the people of the United States." The Greek appeal to us for sympathy and material aid was not unheeded, so far as private individuals and associations were concerned. By these, arms and vessels were forwarded to the combatants, and

some few volunteers went to Greece to offer their personal services to the chiefs; but the fact must not be withheld that pecuniary speculation, both in America and other countries where such aid was afforded, formed in many instances the chief incentive. Ships and ammunition were sold to the Greeks both by Englishmen and Americans at "war prices," and in some cases were fraudulent transactions. These were chiefly paid for by a loan contracted by the Greeks in England at such onerous rates that only about forty per cent. of the nominal amount ever reached the Greeks. At the close of the war, the half-starved and moneyless freemen found them. selves saddled with an overpowering foreign debt which had been contracted under the belief that three or four millions of Greeks would constitute the inhabitants of "free Greece," and that the territory recovered from Turkey would be three times in extent to that which was finally determined upon by the arbitration of the Great Powers.

But if at first the sympathy of our people for the struggling Greeks was less pronounced, it was owing to their imperfect information as to the progress of the revolution. Many, too, believed with Europe that the attempt of a comparative handful of inexperienced soldiers to cope with the disciplined phalanxes of Turkey would be futile, and although the spirit of the Greeks was highly applauded, a general impression-chiefly derived from European sources-prevailed that the affair would end, as other risings in Europe had ended, in disgrace and failure, leaving the exhausted insurgents in a more oppressed and hopeless condition than before.

As the news reached the United States of the continued persistence of the Greek troops, together with instances of brilliant valor and self-devotion little expected from a race downtrodden for centuries, the interest increased; and when the news of the Turkish massacre at Scio, in March, 1822, reached the civilized world, the people of the United States were excited to a degree of sympathy which ran through the nation like an electric shock.

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In retaliation for the rising of the peasantry of that island and the shutting up by them of the Turkish garrison in the citadel, the Turkish fleet landed fifteen thousand men upon the island, and a massacre of the Christian inhabitants commenced such as the annals of warfare seldom record. Men, women, and children were tortured and then put to death. Some fled to the mountains and hid themselves in caverns; others succeeded in getting on board the foreign ships lying in the harbor; others made their escape to the neighboring islands; while more than forty thousand were slain in the course of a month, and thousands of the most refined and cultivated were carried off and sold into slavery in the bazaars

of Smyrna and Constantinople. Many were bought by Turks for the pleasure of torturing them and putting them to death, and many were redeemed by Europeans residing in Smyrna, who sacrificed their wealth in this work of Christian charity. The population of Syra was reduced from more than a hundred thousand, before the revolution, to sixteen thousand, in one year."

The American press nobly responded to the universal sentiment of horror that pervaded the people at large when this event was known, and so universal was it, that Turkish atrocities and Greek valor became the topic of the time, both in public and in private intercourse. The writer of this paper, in looking over a file of old family correspondence, dated during that period, is struck by the frequent and fervent reference to events in Greece, and to the sufferings of the revolutionists at the hands of their inhuman enemy.

From that time forward the course of the war for Greek independence was eagerly watched by our countrymen, whose hopes and fears increased or diminished with the varying vicissitudes of the struggle. Thus Greece became known to the people of the United States through her aims and sacrifices, and the names of her heroes were as familiar as household words. Mavromichales, Mavrocordatos, Tricovpi, Ypselanti among statesmen; Marco Bozzaris, Costi, and Nothi among soldiers; and Canares and Miaovles among naval commanders, are names incorporated among the saviors of Greece, and are not forgotten by those who take any interest in modern Greek history. Admiration of the valor of the revolutionists increased with the later accounts of Greek vengeance upon the authors of the massacre at Scio, when Andreas Miaovles encountered the Turkish armament between Scio and the coast of Asia Minor and gave them battle; and when Canares, the dauntless Hydriote, conducting his fire ships with secrecy and alertness within the lines of the enemy's fleet, set the Turkish flag-ship on fire, which was destroyed, with two thousand men, including the captainpacha, who perished on the very scene of his inhuman cruelties to the inhabitants of Scio. The gallant deed of Marco Bozzaris and his band of five hundred Suliotes, when he surprised the Turkish camp at Carpenesion, by which eight hundred Turks were slain, with a loss of only fifty of the Greeks -but in which he himself perished-is embalmed in the memory of every American schoolboy by Halleck's spirited and touching poem.*

The following letter, dated in 1869, from Col. D. M. Bozzaris, son of the famous chieftain to the writer, who was then in Greece-may not be without interest in this connection. The souvenir referred to is now deposited in the collection of the New York Historical Society:

46* * * In asking me so earnestly for some small object, as a souvenir, which once belonged