Charles Sumner learned a great deal about himself from the Texas speech. For an intellectual who had previously expressed himself mainly through the written word, it taught him the full power of oratory and specifically the broad range of his own oratorical skills. For a rising talent whose name was known only to a few Boston political insiders, the Texas oration brought him national fame. For an attorney who had spent most of his early career huddled with dusty lawbooks, gloomy and unfulfilled professionally, the speech freed him from the constrictions of the legal profession, encouraged him
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