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CHARLES SITMNEB 
 
 .A. EULOGY, 
 
 o v 
 
 By GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE OP MASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 IN THE BOSTON MUSIC IIALL, ON THE 9tii OF JUNE, 1S74. 
 
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CHAELES STJMKEK. 
 
 The prayer is said — the dirge is sung; 
 from the Avaters of the Bay to the hills 
 of Berkshire the funeral hells of the Com- 
 monwealth have tolled ; the Congress of the 
 United States, of which he was the oldest 
 memher in continuous service, has in hoth 
 Houses spoken his praises — no voice more 
 eloquent than that of his opponents ; the 
 race to whose elevation his life was conse- 
 crated has hewailed him with filial grati- 
 tude ; this city, his hirth- place and his 
 home, has proudly mourned its illustrious 
 citizen ; the pulpit and the press every 
 where in the land have hlended sorrow and 
 admiration ; and now his native State, with 
 all its honored magistracy — the State which 
 gave him his great opportunity, clothing his 
 words with the majesty of Massachusetts, so 
 that when he spoke it was not the voice of 
 a man, hut of a commonwealth — lamenting 
 a son so beloved, a servant so faithful, a 
 friend so true, comes last of all to say 
 farewell, and to deliver the character and 
 career of Charles Sumner to history and the 
 judgment of mankind. I know how amply, 
 how eloquently, how tenderly, the story of 
 his life has been told. In this place you 
 heard it in words that spoke for the culture 
 and the conscience of the country — for the 
 prosperous and happy. And yonder in Fan- 
 euil Hall his eulogy fell from lips that must 
 •always glow when they mention him — lips 
 that spoke for the most wronged and most 
 unfortunate in the land, who never saw the 
 face of Sumner, hut whose children's chil- 
 dren will bless his name forever. I might 
 w r ell hesitate to stand here if I did not know 
 that, enriched by your sympathy, my words, 
 telling the same tale, will seem to your gen- 
 erous hearts to prolong for a moment the 
 requiem that you would not willingly let 
 die. 
 
 Nor think the threefold strain superflu- 
 ous. How well this universal eulogy — 
 these mingling voices of various nativity, 
 but all American — befits a man whose aims 
 and efforts were universal ; whom neither a 
 city, nor a State, nor a party, nor a nation, 
 nor a race bound with any local limitation ! 
 On a lofty hill overlooking the lake of Ca- 
 yuga, in New York, stands a noble tree, 
 in the grounds of the Cornell University, 
 under which an Oxford scholar, choosing 
 America for his home because America is 
 the home of Liberty, has placed a seat 
 upon which he has carved, "Above all na- 
 tions is Humanity." That is the legend which 
 
 Charles Sumner carved upon his heart, and 
 sought to write upon the hearts of his fel- 
 low-citizens and of the world. And if at this 
 moment my voice should suddenly sink into 
 silence, I can believe that this hall would 
 thriH and murmur with the last words he 
 ever publicly spoke in Massachusetts, stand- 
 ing on this very spot: "Nor would I have 
 my country forget at any time, in the dis- 
 charge of its transcendent duties, that, since 
 the rule of conduct and of honor is the same 
 for nations as for individuals, the greatest 
 nation is thatwhich does mostfor humanity." 
 
 Amidst the general sorrow Massachusetts 
 mourns him by the highest right, for with 
 all the grasp of his hope and his cosmopoli- 
 tan genius, perhaps for those very reasons, 
 he was essentially a Massachusetts man. 
 And here I touch the first great influence 
 that moulded your Senator. This is the 
 Puritan State, and the greatness of Sumner 
 was the greatness of the Puritan genius — 
 the greatness of moral power. Learning 
 and culture and accomplishment; aesthetic 
 taste and knowledge ; the grace of society ; 
 the scholar's rich resource in travel ; illus- 
 trious friendships in every land ; the urban- 
 ity and charm of a citizen of the world — all 
 these he had; all these you know; yet all 
 these were but the velvet in which the iron 
 Puritan hand was clad — the Puritau hand 
 which in other days had smitten kings and 
 dynasties hip and thigh; had saved, civil 
 and religious liberty in England ; had swept 
 the Mediterranean of pirates ; had avenged 
 the Lord's 
 
 " slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;" 
 
 the Puritan hand which, reaching out across 
 the sea, sterner than the icy sternness of the 
 New England shore, grasped a new conti- 
 nent, and wrought the amazing miracle of 
 America. 
 
 The Puritan spirit, in the larger sense, 
 enriched with many nationalities, broader, 
 more generous, more humane, is the mas- 
 ter influence of American civilization, and 
 among all our public men it has no type so 
 satisfactory and complete as Charles Sum- 
 ner. He was the son of Massachusetts. By 
 the fruit let the tree be judged. The State 
 to whose hard coast the Mayflower came, and 
 upon whose rocks it dropped its seed — the 
 State in which the mingled Puritan and 
 Pilgrim spirit has been most active — is to- 
 day the chief of commonwealths. It is the 
 community in which the average of well-be- 
 
mg is liiglier than in any state we know in 
 history. Puritan in origin though it be, it 
 
 is more truly liberal and free than any simi- 
 lar community in the world. The fig and the 
 pomegranate and the almond will not grow 
 there, nor the nightingale sing, but nobler 
 blossoms of the old human stock than its 
 most famous children the sun never shone 
 upon ; nor has the liberty-loving heart of 
 man heard sweeter music than the voices 
 of James Otis and Samuel Adams, of John 
 Adams and Joseph Warren, of Josiah Quiucy 
 and Charles Sumner. Surely I may say so, 
 born in the State that Roger Williams found- 
 ed — Roger Williams, the prophet whom Mas- 
 sachusetts stoned. 
 
 Into this State and these influences 
 Charles Sumner was born sixty-three years 
 ago, while as yet the traditions of colonial 
 New England were virtually unchanged. 
 Here were the town-meeting, the constable, 
 the common school, the training-day, the 
 general intelligence, the morality, the habit 
 of self-government, the homogeneity of pop- 
 ulation, the ample territory, the universal in- 
 stinct of law. Here was the full daily prac- 
 tice of what De Tocqueville afterward called 
 the two or three principal ideas which form 
 the basis of the social theory of the United 
 States, and which seemed to make a republic 
 possible, practicable, and wise. It was one 
 of the good fortunes of Sumner's life that, 
 born amidst these influences, he used to the 
 utmost the advantage of school and college. 
 To many men youth itself is so sweet a 
 siren that in hearing her song they forget 
 all but the pleasure of listening to it. But 
 the sibyl saved no scroll from Sumner; he 
 had the wisdom to seize them all. His 
 classmates, gayly returning late at night, 
 saw the studious light shining in his win- 
 dow. The boy was hard at work, already 
 in those plastic years storing his mind and 
 memory, which seemed indeed an •'inability 
 to forget," with the literature and historic 
 lore which gave his later discourse such am- 
 plitude and splendor of illustration that, like 
 a royal robe, it was stiff and cumbrous and 
 awkward with exaggerated richness of em- 
 broidery. He never lost this vast capacity 
 of work, and his life had no idle hours. Long 
 afterward, when he was in Paris, recovering 
 from the blow in the Senate, ordered not to 
 think or read, and daily, as his physician 
 lately tells us, undergoing a torture of treat- 
 ment which he refused to mitigate by anaes- 
 thetics, simply unable to do nothing, he de- 
 voted himself to the study and collection 
 of engravings, in which he became an ex- 
 pert. And I remember in the midsummer 
 of 1871, when he remained, as was his cus- 
 tom, in Washington, after the city was de- 
 serted by all but its local population, and 
 when I saw him daily, that he rose at seven 
 in the morning, and with but a slight break- 
 fast at nine, sat at his desk in the library 
 hard at work until five in tho afternoon. 
 It was his vacation : the weather was trop- 
 ical ; ai d lie was sixty years old. The re- 
 
 nowned Senator at his post was still tho 
 solitary midnight student of the college. 
 
 But other influences mingled in his edu- 
 cation, and helped to mould the man. While 
 his heart burned with the tale of Plutarch's 
 heroes, with the story of ancient states, and 
 the politics of Greece and Rome and modern 
 Europe, he lived in this historic city, and 
 was therefore familiar with many of the 
 most inspiring scenes of our American story. 
 I know not if the people of this neighbor- 
 hood are always conscious of the hallowed 
 ground upon which they daily tread. We 
 who come hither from other States, pil- 
 grims to the cradle of American independ- 
 ence, are moved by emotions such as we can 
 not elsewhere feel. Here is the " Old South" 
 Meeting-house — and here may it long re- 
 main ! — where, however changed, still in 
 imagination Sam Adams calls the Sons of 
 Liberty to their duty. There is the old 
 State-house where James Otis, with electric 
 eloquence, brings a continent to its feet. Be- 
 neath is the ground where Crispus Attucks 
 fell. Beyond is Faneuil Hall, the plainest 
 and most reverend political temple now 
 standing in the world, and upon the prin- 
 ciples which are its inseparable traditions 
 has been founded the most humane republic 
 in history. There is the Old North steeple, 
 on which Paul Revere's lantern lights the 
 land to independence. Below is the water 
 on which the scarlet troops of Percy and of 
 Howe glitter in the June sunshine of ninety- 
 nine years ago ; and lo ! memorial of a battle 
 lost and a cause won, the tall gray melan- 
 choly shaft on Bunker Hill rises — rises " till 
 it meets the sun in his coming, while the 
 earliest light of morning gilds it, and part- 
 ing day lingers and plays on its summit." 
 
 These scenes, as well as his books and col- 
 lege, were the school of Sumner ; and as tho 
 tall and awkward youth, dreaming of Mar- 
 athon and Arbela, of Sempach and Morgarten, 
 walked on Bunker Hill, and his eyes wan- 
 dered over peaceful fields and happy towns 
 to Coucord and Lexington, doubt not that 
 the genius of his native land whispered to 
 him that all knowledge and the highest 
 training and the purest purpose were but 
 the necessary equipment of the ambition 
 that would serve in any way a country 
 whose cause in his own day, as in the day 
 of Bunker Hill, was the cause of human 
 nature. Charles Sumner was an educated 
 man, a college-bred man, as all the great 
 revolutionary leaders of Massachusetts were ; 
 and he knew, as every intelligent man knows, 
 that from the day when Themistocles led the 
 educated Athenians at Salamis to that when 
 Von Moltke marshaled the educated Germans 
 against France, the sure foundations of states 
 are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance, and 
 that every sneer at education, at cultivation, 
 at book-learning, which is the recorded wis- 
 dom of the experience of mankind, is the 
 demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, in- 
 viting national degeneration and ruin. 
 Sumner was soon at the Law School the 
 
favorite pupil of that accomplished magis- 
 trate Judge Story, the right-hand of Mar- 
 shall, to whom iu difficult momeuts the great 
 Webster turned for law. But the character 
 of his legal studies when, a little later, he 
 was lecturing at the Law School — for he 
 spoke chiefly of constitutional law and the 
 law of nations — showed even then the bent 
 of his feeling, the vague reaching out to- 
 ward the future, the first faint hints and 
 foreshowings of his own ultimate career. 
 Could it have been revealed to him in that 
 modest lecture-room at Cambridge as he was 
 unfolding to a few students the principles 
 of international law, which in its full glory 
 he believed to be nothing less than the sci- 
 ence of the moral relations of states to each 
 other, that one day in the Senate of the 
 United States, and in its chief and most 
 honorable place, he should plead for the 
 practical application of the principles which 
 he cherished, a recognized authority, and 
 himself one of the lawgivers whom he had 
 described as the reformers of nations and the 
 builders of human society, how well might 
 he have seen that culmination of his career 
 as the most secret hope of his heart fulfilled ! 
 But again, as he stood there, could he have 
 seen as in a vision that one day also he should 
 stand in that Senatorial arena in deadly con- 
 flict with crime against humanity — a con- 
 flict that shook the continent and arrested 
 the world — and as a general upon the bat- 
 tle-field marshals all his forces, holding his 
 swift and glittering lines in hand — his squad- 
 rons and regiments and artillery, his skir- 
 mishers and reserves, massing and dispers- 
 ing at his supreme will, and at last, snatch- 
 ing all his force, hurls it at the foe in one 
 blasting bolt of fire and victory — so he, in 
 that other and greater field, should gath- 
 er up all the accumulated resources of his 
 learning, all the training of the law, all the 
 deep instincts and convictions of his con- 
 science, and hurl them in one blazing and 
 resistless mass in the very forefront of that 
 mighty debate that flamed into civil war, 
 melting four millions of chains, and regen- 
 erating a nation — could all this have been re- 
 vealed to him, I doubt if he could have pre- 
 pared himself for the great part that he was 
 to play with more conscience or more care. 
 
 Then to the influences that made the man 
 was added a residence in Europe. He re- 
 turned a polished cosmopolitan ; a learned 
 youth who had sat upon the bench in West- 
 minster Hall, and taught the judges the rul- 
 ings of their own courts ; who had mingled 
 on equal terms in the bouts of lettered wit, 
 no longer at the Mermaid, but at Holland 
 House, and the breakfast-rooms of accom- 
 plished scholars in London and Paris and Ber- 
 lin and Koine. He returned knowing almost 
 every man and woman of renown in Europe, 
 and he brought back what he carried away 
 — a stainless purity of life and loftiness of 
 aim, the habit of incessant work, which was 
 the law of his being, and the tastes of a j urist, 
 but not those of a practicing lawyer. His 
 
 look, his walk, his dress, his manner, were 
 not those of the busy advocate, but of the 
 cultivated and brilliant man of society — the 
 Admirable C'richton of the saloons. He was 
 oftener seen in the refined circles of the city, 
 in the libraries and dining-rooms of Prescott 
 and Quincy, of Bancroft and Ticknor, than 
 in the courts of law. Distinguished foreign- 
 ers, constantly arriving, brought him letters, 
 and he took them to the galleries and the 
 college. But while he sauntered, he studied. 
 In his office he was diligently editing great 
 works of law ; not practicing at the bar, for, 
 indeed, he was not formed for a jury lawyer, 
 where the jury was less than a nation, or 
 mankind. The electric agility, the consum- 
 mate tact, the readiness for every resource, 
 the humor that brightens or withers, the 
 command of the opposite point of view, the 
 superficial ardor, the facility of simulation 
 that makes the worse appear the better rea- 
 son, the passionate gust and sweep of elo- 
 quent appeal — these were lacking, and want- 
 ing these, he did not seek the laurels of the 
 jury advocate. Sumner's legal mind at this 
 time, and throughout his life, was largely 
 moulded, trained to the contemplation of 
 great principles and to lofty research. As 
 one of his admiring comrades, himself a re- 
 nowned lawyer, says of him, "In sporting 
 terms, he had a good eye for country, but 
 no scent for a trail." The movement of his 
 mind was grand and comprehensive. He 
 spoke naturally, not in subtle and dextrous 
 pleas, but in stately and measured orations. 
 When he returned from Europe he was 
 thought to have been too much fascinated 
 by England, and throughout his life it was 
 sometimes said that he was still in thralled 
 by his admiration for that country. But 
 what is more natural to an American than 
 love of England ? Does not Hawthorne in- 
 stinctively call it "Our old Home?" The 
 Pilgrims came to plant a purer England, and 
 their children, the colonists, took up arms 
 to maintain a truer England, but an England 
 still. They became independent, but they 
 did not renounce their race nor their lan- 
 guage, and their victory left them the ad- 
 vanced outpost of English political progress 
 and civilization. The principles that wo 
 most proudly maintain to-day, those to 
 which Sumner's whole life was devoted, are 
 English traditions. The great muniments 
 of individual liberty in every degree de- 
 scended to us from our fathers. The Com- 
 monwealth, justice as the political corner- 
 stone, the rule of the constitutional majori- 
 ty, the habeas corpus, the trial by jury, free- 
 dom of speech and of the press — these are 
 English, and they are ours. I do not agree 
 with the melancholy Fisher Ames that " the 
 immortal spirit of the wood-nymph Liberty 
 dwells only in the English oak ;" but the 
 most patriotic American may well remember 
 that individual freedom sometimes seems 
 almost surer and sturdier in England than 
 here, and may wisely repair to drink at 
 those elder fountains. No Englisl man in 
 
this generation has more influenced the 
 thought of his country than John Stuart 
 Mill, and the truest American will find upon 
 his heroic pages gleams of a fairer and am- 
 pler America than ever in visiou even Sam- 
 uel Adams saw. No, uo. Plymouth Rock 
 was hut a stepping-stone from one continent 
 to another iu the great march of the same 
 historic development, and to-day, with elec- 
 tric touch, -we grasp the hand of England 
 under the sea that the tumult of the ocean 
 may not toss us further asunder, but throb 
 as the beating of one common heart. Is it 
 strange, then, that the young lawyer whose 
 deepest instinct was love of freedom, and 
 ■whose youth had been devoted to the study 
 of that uoble science whose highest purpose 
 is to defend individual right, after long resi- 
 dence in the land of John Selden, of Coke, 
 of Mansfield, of Blackstone, of Romilly, as 
 well as of Shakespeare and Bacon, of New- 
 ton and Jeremy Taylor — a laud which had 
 appealed in every way to his heart, his 
 mind, his imagination, whose history had 
 inspired, whose learning had armed him to 
 be a liberator of the oppressed — should al- 
 ways have, turned with admiration to the 
 country " where," as her laureate sings — 
 
 " Where freedom broadens slowly down 
 From precedent to precedent?" 
 
 Such were the general influences that 
 moulded the young Sumner. But to what 
 a situation iu his own country he returned! 
 — a situation neither understood nor sus- 
 pected by the fastidious and elegant circles 
 which received him. The man never lived 
 who enjoyed more or was more fitted to en- 
 joy the higher delights of human society 
 than Sumner, or who might have seemed to 
 those who scanned his habits and his tastes 
 so little adapted for the heroic part. Could 
 the scope and progress and culmination of 
 the great contest which had already begun 
 have been foreseen and measured, Charles 
 Sumner would probably have been selected 
 as the type of the cultivated and scholarly 
 gentleman who would recoil from the con- 
 flict as Sir Thomas Browne shunned the 
 stern tumult of the Great Rebellion. 
 
 In speaking of that conflict I shall speak 
 plainly ; I hope to speak truly. To turn to 
 Mr. Sumner's public career is to open a chap- 
 ter of our history written in fire and closed 
 iu blood, but which we must be willing to 
 recall if we would justly measure the man. 
 Trained in his own expectation for other 
 ends, framed for friendship, for gentleness, 
 for professional and social ease, and the plac- 
 id renown of letters, he was suddenly caught 
 up into the stormy cloud, and his life be- 
 came a strife that filled a generation. But 
 during all that tremendous time, on the one 
 hand enthusiastically trusted, on the other 
 contemptuously scorned and hated, his heart- 
 was that of a little child. He said no un- 
 worthy word, he did no unmanly deed; dis- 
 honor lied his face ; and to-day those who so 
 long and so naturally hue so wrongfully be- 
 
 lieved him their enemy strew rosemary for 
 remembrance upon his grave. 
 
 Down to the year ld30 the moral agita- 
 tion against slavery in this country smoul- 
 dered. But in that year Benjamin Lundy 
 touched with fire the soul of William Lloyd 
 Garrison, and that agitation burst out again 
 i rre] ii essibly. You remember — who can for- 
 get f — the passionate onset of the Aboli- 
 tionists. It was conscience rising in insur- 
 rection. They made their great appeal with 
 the ardor of martyrs and the zeal of primi- 
 tive Christians. Fifth-monarchy men, rant- 
 ers, Anabaptists, were never more repugnant 
 to their times than they, and they became 
 the prey of the worst and most disorderly 
 passions. The abolition missionaries were 
 mobbed, imprisoned, maimed, murdered, but 
 still, as in the bitter days of Puritan perse- 
 cution in Scotland the undaunted voices of 
 the Covenanters were heard singing hymns 
 that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak 
 of the barren mountains until the great 
 dumb wilderness was vocal with praise, so 
 the solemn appeal of the Abolitionists to 
 the Golden Rule and the Declaration of In- 
 dependence echoed from solitary heart to 
 heart until the land rang with the litany of 
 liberty. In politics the discussion had been 
 stamped out like a threatening fire upon the 
 prairie whenever it arose. But soon after 
 Mr. Sumner's return from Europe this, too, 
 flamed out afresh iu the attempted annexa- 
 tion of Texas. Early in 1845 the plan was 
 consummated. Mr. Sumner was a Whig, but 
 then and always he was above all a man. 
 He was too well versed in the history of free- 
 dom not to know that the great victories 
 over despotism and slavery in every form 
 had been won by uuited action, and he knew 
 that united action implies organization and 
 a party. But while great political results 
 are to be gained by means of great parties, 
 he knew that a party which is too blind to 
 see or too cowardly to acknowledge the real 
 issue, which pursues its ends, however noble, 
 by ignoble means, which tolerates corrup- 
 tion, which trusts unworthy men, which suf- 
 fers the public service to be prostituted to per- 
 sonal ends, defies reason and conscience, and 
 summons all honest men to oppose it. When 
 conscience goes, all goes ; and whercA'er con- 
 science went, Charles Sumner followed. It 
 took him out of those delightful drawing- 
 rooms and tranquil libraries; it drew him 
 away from old companions and cherished 
 friends ; it exposed him to their suspicion, 
 their hostility, their scorn ; it forbade him 
 the peaceful future of his dreams and ex- 
 pectations; it placed him at the fiery heart 
 of the fiercest conflict of the century; it 
 hedged his life with insults and threats and 
 plots of assassination ; it bared his head to 
 the dreadful blow that struck him seuseless 
 to the Senate floor, and sent him a tortured 
 wanderer beyond the sea; later it separated 
 him from the co-operation of colleagues, and 
 severed him from his party; and at last it 
 exposed him, sick in body and in mind, to 
 
the blow that wounded his soul, the censure 
 of his beloved Massachusetts. But he did 
 not quail ; he did not falter ; he showed 
 himself still to be her worthy son. Wherever 
 conscience went, Charles Sumner followed. 
 " God help me !" cried Martin Luther, " I can 
 no other." "God help me!" said Charles 
 Sumner, " I must do my duty." 
 
 The Whigs are, or ought to be, he said, in 
 1845, the party of freedom. But when they 
 refused to recognize the real contest in the 
 country by rejecting in their National Con- 
 vention of 1848 the Wilmot Proviso, Mr. Sum- 
 ner went with the other Conscience Whigs 
 to Worcester, and organized the Free-soil 
 party ; and when, in the winter of 1850-51, 
 the Legislature of Massachusetts was to elect 
 the successor of Daniel Webster in the Sen- 
 ate of the United State, the Free-soil chiefs, 
 as upright, able, and patriotic a body of po- 
 litical leaders as ever Massachusetts had, 
 deliberately selected Mr. Sumner as their 
 candidate — a selection which showed the es- 
 timate of the man by those who knew him 
 most intimately, and who most thoroughly 
 understood the times. He was young, strong, 
 learned, variously accomplished, a miracle 
 of industry, zealous, pure, of indomitable 
 courage, and of supreme moral energy. But 
 he had little political ambition, and in 1846 
 had peremptorily declined to be a candidate 
 for Congress. He was not a member of either 
 of the great parties. He would not make 
 any pledge of any kind, or move his tongue, 
 or wink his eye, to secure success. He was 
 pledged then and always and only to his 
 sense of right. He stood for no partisan end 
 whatever, but simply and solely for uncom- 
 promising resistance to slavery. The con- 
 test of the election was long ; it lasted for 
 three months, and on the 24th of April, 1851, 
 he was elected. " I accept," he said, " as the 
 servant of Massachusetts, mindful of the sen- 
 timents uttered by her successive Legisla- 
 tures, of the genius which inspires her his- 
 tory, and of the men, her perpetual pride 
 and ornament, who breathed into her that 
 breath of liberty which early made her an 
 example to her sister States." How these 
 lofty words lift us out of the grossness of pub- 
 lic corruption and incapacity into the air of 
 ideal states and public men ! What a state- 
 ly summons are they to his beloved Massa- 
 chusetts once more to take the lead, and 
 again to guide her sister States to greater 
 political purity and the ancient standards 
 of public character and service ! 
 
 The hour in which Mr. Sumner wrote 
 those words, the hour of his entrance upon 
 public life, was the darkest of our history. 
 But if his mind had turned regretfully to 
 that tranquil career of his earlier anticipa- 
 tion, how well might his good genius have 
 whispered to him what the flower of En- 
 glish gentlemen and scholars had written 
 three hundred years before, " To what pur- 
 pose should our thoughts be directed to va- 
 rious kinds of knowledge unless room be af- 
 forded for putting it into practice, so that 
 
 public advantage may be the result ?" Or 
 that other strain, full of the music of a con- 
 secrated soul, in which Philip Sidney writes 
 to his father-in-law, Walsingham, " I think a 
 wise and constant man ought never to grieve 
 while he doth play, as a man may say, his 
 own part truly." 
 
 What, then, was the political situation 
 when Mr. Sumner entered the Senate ? 
 Slavery had apparently subdued the coun- 
 try. Grand Juries in the Northern States 
 presented citizens who in time of peace 
 wished to discuss vital public questions as 
 guilty of sedition. The Legislatures were 
 summoned to make their speeches indicta- 
 ble offenses. In the Legislature of Rhode 
 Island such a bill was reported. The Gov- 
 ernor of New York favored such a law. The 
 Governor of Ohio delivered a citizen of that 
 State to the authorities of another to be tried 
 for helping a slave to escape. The Governor 
 of Massachusetts said that all discussion of 
 the subject which tended to incite insurrec- 
 tion had been held to be indictable. Every 
 great national office was then, and long had 
 been, held by the ministers of slavery. The 
 American embassadors in Europe were every 
 where silent, or smoothly apologized. Every 
 committee in Congress was the servant of 
 slavery, and when the Vice-President left 
 his seat in the Senate it was filled by another 
 like himself. All the attendants who stood 
 around him, the door-keej)ers, messengers, 
 sergeants-at-arms, down to the very pages 
 who noiselessly skimmed the floor, were se- 
 lected by its agents. Beyond the superb walls 
 of the Capitol, which Senator Benton had 
 long solemnly warned the country was built 
 by permission of that Supreme Power which 
 would seize and occupy it when the time 
 came, the whole vast system of national of- 
 fices was within the patronage of slavery. 
 Every little post-office, every custom-house 
 clerkship, was a bribe to silence, while the 
 Postmaster- General of the United States 
 robbed the mails at its bidding. When Sum- 
 ner entered the Senate the most absolute sub- 
 serviency to slavery was decreed as the test of 
 nationality, and that power did not hesitate 
 to declare that any serious effort, however 
 lawfully made, to change its policy would 
 strike the tocsin of civil war. Meanwhile, at 
 the very moment of his election, the horrors of 
 the Fugitive Slave Law had burst upon thou- 
 sands of inuocent homes. Mothers snatched 
 their children and fled, they knew not whith- 
 er. Brave men, long safe in recovered lib- 
 erty, were seized for no crime but misfor- 
 tune, and hurried to their doom. Young 
 men and girls who had been always free, 
 always residents of their own States, were 
 kidnaped and sold. The auguish, the sub- 
 lime heroism, of this ghastly persecution fills 
 one of the most tragical and most inspiring 
 epochs of our story. Even those who pub- 
 licly sustained the law from a sense of duty 
 secretly helped the flying fugitives upon their 
 way. The human heart is stronger than 
 sophistry. The man who impatiently ex- 
 
claimed that of course the law was hard, 
 but it was the law, and must be obeyed, siid- 
 denly felt the quivering, panting fugitive 
 clinging to his knees, guilty of no crime, 
 and begging only the succor which no hon- 
 est heart would refuse a dog cowering upon 
 his threshold ; and as he heard the dread 
 power thundering at the door, "I am the 
 Law, give me my prey !" in the same mo- 
 ment he heard God knocking at his heart, 
 " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least 
 of these my little ones, ye have done it unto 
 me!" 
 
 Those days are passed. That fearful con- 
 flict is over; and the flowers just strewn all 
 through these sorrowing States, indiscrimi- 
 nately upon the graves of the blue and the 
 gray, show how truly it is ended. Heaven 
 knows I speak of it with no willingness, 
 with no bitterness ; but how can I show you 
 Charles Sumner if I do not show you the 
 time that made him what he was ? This 
 was the political and moral situation of the 
 country when he took the oath as Senator, 
 on the 1st of December, 1851. The famous 
 political triumvirate of the former genera- 
 tion was gone. Mr. Calhoun, the master-will 
 of the three, had died in the previous year. 
 Mr. Webster was Secretary of State ; and 
 Henry Clay, with fading eye aud bowed frame 
 and trembling voice — Henry Clay, Compro- 
 mise incarnate — feebly tottered out of the 
 chamber as Charles Sumner, Conscience in- 
 carnate, came in. As he took the oath the 
 new triumvirate was complete, for Mr. Sew- 
 ard aud Mr. Chase had taken their seats two 
 years before. For some months Mr. Sumner 
 did not speak upon the great topic, and many 
 of his frieuds at home thought him keeping 
 silence too long, half fearing that he too had 
 been enchanted by the woful Circe of the 
 South. They did not know how carefully 
 slavery prevented him from finding an op- 
 portunity. A month before he could get 
 the floor for his purpose, Theodore Parker 
 said, in a public speech, " I wish he had 
 
 spoken long ago But it is for him to 
 
 decide, not for us. 'A fool's bolt is soon 
 shot,' while a wise man often reserves his 
 fire." At leugth, on the 26th of August, 
 1852, after many efforts to be heard, Mr. 
 Sumner obtained the floor, saying as he 
 arose, "The subject is at last broadly be- 
 fore the Senate, and by the blessing of God 
 it shall be discussed." 
 
 This first great speech upon the repeal of 
 the Fugitive Slave Law was the most signif- 
 icant event in the Senate since Mr. Webster's 
 reply to Hayne, and an epitome of Mr. Sum- 
 ner's whole public career. It was one of the 
 words that are events, and from which his- 
 torical epochs take their departure. These 
 are strong words. See if they are justified. 
 The slavery debate was certainly the most 
 momentous that had ever occurred in the 
 country, and brave words had been already 
 uttered for freedom. The subtle and san- 
 guine and sagacious Seward had spoken oft- 
 en and wisely. The passionless Chase, with 
 
 massive and Websterian logic, had pressed 
 his solid reasoning home ; and the gay hu- 
 mor of Hale had irradiated his earnest and 
 strenuous appeals. But all of these men 
 were known to their colleagues as members 
 of parties, as politicians, as men of political 
 ambition. With such elements and meu 
 slavery was accustomed to deal. Carefully 
 studying the Senator from New York, it saw, 
 with the utmost purity of character, trained 
 ability, acute political instinct, and partisan 
 habit, the intellectual optimist who grasped 
 the situation with his brain rather than with 
 his heart and conscience. It tested him by 
 its own terrible earnestness. It weighed 
 him iu the balance of its own unquailiug 
 and uncompromising resolution, and found 
 him wanting. Do not misunderstand me. 
 Mr. Seward was the only political leader 
 for whom I have ever felt the admiring loy- 
 alty which older men felt for Webster aud 
 Calhoun and Clay. His career has been no- 
 bly set forth by your own distinguished cit- 
 izen, Mr. Adams, in his discourse before the 
 Legislature of New York. And as he went 
 to Albany to say what he believed to be the 
 truth, so have I come hither. Slavery knew 
 Mr. Seward to be accustomed to political 
 considerations, to party necessities, to the 
 claims of compromise. It knew the scope 
 of his political philosophy, the brightness 
 of his hope of American glory under the 
 Union, the steady certainty of his trust that 
 all would be well. Even if, like Webster 
 and Calhoun and Clay, he saw the gath- 
 ering storm, he thought — and he did not 
 conceal his thought — that he had the confi- 
 dence of his opponents, and could avert or 
 control the tempest. Slavery knew that he 
 could not. If he proudly declared the high- 
 er law, slavery kuew that he did it, as Plato 
 announced the Golden Rule, as a thinker, 
 not as an actor; as a philosopher, not as 
 the founder of a religion ready to be sealed 
 with fire and blood. But this was the very 
 spirit of slavery, and it did not see it to be 
 his. 
 
 In the midst of a speech which logically 
 cut the ground from beneath the slave in- 
 terest, and calmly foretold the blessing of 
 the emancipation that was unavoidable, Mr. 
 Seward would sometimes turn and hold out 
 his fingers for a pinch of suuff toward some 
 Southern Senator, who, turning away his 
 face, offered him the box. When the Senate 
 adjourned, Mr. Seward would perhaps join 
 the same colleague to stroll home along the 
 Avenue as if they had been country lawyers 
 coming from a court where they had been 
 arguing a dry point of law. It showed how 
 imperfectly ho felt or how inadequately he 
 measured the sullen intensity and relentless 
 purpose of the spirit which dominated our 
 politics, and would pause at nothing in its 
 course. In a word, that spirit was essen- 
 tially revolutionary, and Mr. Seward had 
 not a revolutionary fibre in his being. Long 
 afterward, when the movement of secession 
 had begun, as he walked with a fellow-Sen- 
 
ator to the Capitol on the morning of Wash- 
 ington's birthday, he saw on all sides the 
 national flags fluttering in the sun, and ex- 
 claimed to his companion, with triumphant 
 incredulity, " Look there ! see those flags ! 
 and yet they talk of disunion !" 
 
 Up to the moment of Mr. Sumner's appear- 
 ance in the Senate Mr. Seward had been the 
 foremost antislavery leader in public life. 
 But slavery, carefully studying him, be- 
 lieved, as I think, that he would compro- 
 mise. That was the test. If he would com- 
 promise, he might annoy, but he was not 
 to be feared. If he would compromise, he 
 might melodiously sing the glory of the 
 Union at his pleasure. If he would com- 
 promise, he would yield. If he were not as 
 invincibly resolute as slavery, he was al- 
 ready conquered ; and he was the leader of 
 the North. There sat Seward in the Senate 
 — yes, and there Webster had sat, there Clay 
 had sat, with all their great and memorable 
 service ; there in its presiding chair Millard 
 Fillmore had sat ; and over them all slavery 
 had stalked straight on in its remorseless 
 imperial career. And if, as Mr. Seward's 
 most able eulogist mournfully remarks, he 
 was permitted at last to leave public life 
 " with fewer marks of recognition of his 
 brilliant career than he would have had if 
 he had been the most insignificant of our 
 Presidents," may it not be that, without ques- 
 tioning his generous character, his lofty abil- 
 ity, and his illustrious service, there was a 
 general feeling that in the last administra- 
 tion under which he served he had seemed 
 in some degree to justify the instinct of 
 slavery, that his will was not as sternly in- 
 exorable as its own ? 
 
 I do not, of course, forget that compromise 
 makes government possible, and that the 
 Union was based upon it. "All govern- 
 ment," says Burke, "is founded upon com- 
 promise and barter But," he adds, "in 
 
 all fair dealing the thing bought must bear 
 some proportion to the purchase paid. None 
 will barter away the immediate jewel of the 
 soul." So Sir James Mackintosh said of 
 Lord Somers, whom he described as the per- 
 fect model of a wise statesman in a free 
 community, that " to be useful he submitted 
 to compromise with the evil that he could 
 not extirpate." But it is the instinct of the 
 highest statesmanship to know when the 
 jewel of which Burke speaks is demanded, 
 and to resolve that at any cost it shall not 
 be sold. John Pym had it when he carried 
 lip to the Lords the impeachment of Straf- 
 ford. John Adams had it when he lifted 
 the Continental Congress in his arms and 
 hurled it over the irrevocable line of inde- 
 pendence. Charles Sumner had it when, at 
 the close of his first great speech in the Sen- 
 ate, he exclaimed, in the face of slavery in 
 its highest seat, " By the Constitution which 
 I have sworn to support, I am bound to dis- 
 obey this act." Until that moment slavery 
 had not seen in public life the man whom it 
 truly feared. But now, amazed, incredulous, 
 
 appalled, it felt that it had met its master. 
 Here was a spirit as resolute and haughty 
 as its own, with resources infinitely richer. 
 Here at last was the North, the American 
 conscience, the American will — the heir of 
 the traditions of English Magna Charta, and, 
 far beyond them, of the old Swiss cantons 
 high on the heaven-kissing Alps — the spirit 
 that would not wince, nor compromise, nor 
 bend, but which, like a cliff of adamant, said 
 to the furious sea, "Here shall thy proud 
 waves be stayed." 
 
 Ten years afterward, when States were 
 seceding and preparing to secede — when the 
 reluctant mind of the North began to see 
 that war was possible — when even many of 
 Mr. Sumner's and Mr. Seward's party friends 
 trembled in dismay, Mr. Seward ended his 
 last speech in the Senate, a guarded plea for 
 the Union, by concessions which amazed 
 many of his most earnest friends. I know 
 that he thought it the part of a wise states- 
 manship that he who was to be the head of 
 the new administration should retain if pos- 
 sible the support of the opposition of the 
 North by shunning every thing like menace, 
 and by speaking in the most temperate and 
 conciliatory tone. But his mournful con- 
 cluding words, "I learned early from Jeffer- 
 son that in political affairs we can not al- 
 ways do what seems to us absolutely best," 
 sounded at that time and under those cir- 
 cumstances like a mortal cry of defeat aud 
 surrender. And at the very time that Mr. 
 Seward was speaking those words, Mr. Sum- 
 ner was one evening surprised by a visit in 
 Washington from a large number of the 
 most conspicuous citizens of Boston, all of 
 whom had been among his strongest and 
 most positive political opponents. He wel- 
 comed them gravely, seeing that their pur- 
 pose was very serious, and after a few mo- 
 ments the most distinguished member of the 
 party made an impassioned appeal to the 
 Senator. " You know us all," he said, " as 
 fellow-citizens of yours who have always 
 and most strongly regretted and opposed 
 your political course. But at this awful 
 moment, when the country hangs upon the 
 edge of civil war — and what civil war means 
 you know — we believe that there is one man 
 only who can avert the threatening calam- 
 ity, one man whom the North really trusts, 
 and by whoso counsels it will be guided. 
 We believe that you are that man. The 
 North will listen to you and to no other, and 
 we are here in the name of humanity and 
 civilization to implore yon to save your 
 country." The speaker was greatly affect- 
 ed, and after a moment Mr. Sumner said : 
 "Sir, I am surprised that you attribute to 
 me such influence. I will, however, assume 
 it. Bo it so. What, then, is it that ydu 
 would have me do?" "We implore you, 
 Mr. Sumner, as you love your country and 
 your God, to vote for the Crittenden compro- 
 mise." " Sir," said Charles Sumner, rising 
 to his lofty height, and never more Charles 
 Sumner than in that moment, " if what you 
 
10 
 
 say is indeed true, and if at this moment the 
 North trusts me, as you think, heyond all 
 others, it is hecause the North knows that 
 under no circumstances -whatever would I 
 
 compromise. 
 
 It was precisely hecause slavery recognized 
 this when he made his first important speech, 
 and felt for the first time the immense force 
 behind his words, that I call that speech 
 so significant an event. I do not claim for 
 Sumner deeper convictions or a sterner will 
 than those of many of his associates. But 
 the Abolitionists, however devoted and elo- 
 quent, were only private citizens and agita- 
 tors who abjured political methods. They 
 seemed to the supreme influence in the gov- 
 ernment a band of pestilent fanatics. But 
 Charles Surnuer in the Senate, Charles Sum- 
 ner in the seat of Daniel Webster, saying 
 that the Constitution forbade him to obey 
 the Fugitive Slave Law, was not an indi- 
 vidual; he was a representative man. No 
 meeting of enthusiastic men and women in 
 a school-house had sent him to the Senate, 
 but the Legislature of a State. Nor that 
 alone, for that Legislature had not sent him 
 as the representative of a party, but of an 
 idea — an idea which had been powerful 
 enough to hold its friends close together 
 through a contest of three months, and at 
 last defeating the influences which had so 
 long controlled unquestioned the politics of 
 the State, had lifted into the Senate a man 
 pledged only to cry Delenda est Carthago, and 
 who, by the law of his mental and moral 
 structure, could no more compromise the 
 principle at stake than he could tell a lie. 
 Still further, slavery heard the young Sena- 
 tor proudly assert that the Constitution 
 did not recognize slavery, except in the 
 slave-trade clause, whose force was long 
 since spent ; that the clause upon which the 
 Fugitive Law was grounded was a mere com- 
 pact conferring no power, and that every 
 detail of the process provided was flagrantly 
 and palpably unconstitutional. Slavery, he 
 insisted, was sectional, liberty was nation- 
 al ; and throwing this popular cry to the 
 country, he irradiated his position with so 
 splendid an illumination of illustration, 
 precedent, argument, appeal, that it shone 
 all over the land. How like a sunrise it 
 strengthened and stimulated and inspired 
 the North! It furnished the quiver of a 
 thousand orators and newspapers, and was 
 an exhaustless treasury of resources for the 
 debate. Above all, it satisfied men bred in 
 reverence of law that their duty as citizens 
 was coincident with the dictates of their 
 consciences, and that the Constitution justi- 
 fied them in withstanding the statute which 
 their souls loathed. 
 
 This was the very service that the coun- 
 try needed at that time; and that no dra- 
 matic effect should be wanting, as Henry 
 Clay had left the Senate for the last time on 
 the day that Mr. Sumner was sworn in, so, as 
 he was making his first great plea for justice 
 under the Constitution, his predecessor, Dan- 
 
 iel Webster, then Secretary of State, came 
 into the Chamber, and also for the last time. 
 I know no more impressive scene. There 
 is the old Senator, then the chief figure in 
 America, who, a year before, on the 7th of 
 March, had made his last speech supporting 
 the policy of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and 
 against the Wilmot Proviso. Worn, wasted, 
 sad, with powers so great and public serv- 
 ice so renowned, the Olympian man who 
 had sought so long, so ably, so vainly, to pla- 
 cate the implacable, his seventy years end- 
 ing in baffled hopes and bitter disappoint- 
 ment and a broken heart, gazed with those 
 eyes of depthless melancholy upon his suc- 
 cessor. And here stands that successor, with 
 the light of spotless youth upon his face, 
 towering, dauntless, radiant ; the indomita- 
 ble Puritan, speaking as a lawyer, a states- 
 man, and a man, not for his State alone, nor 
 for his country only, but for human rights 
 every where and always, forecasting the fu- 
 ture, heralding the new America. As Web- 
 ster looked and listened, did he recall the 
 words of that younger man seven years be- 
 fore in Faneuil Hall, when he prayed the 
 party that Webster led to declare for eman- 
 cipation ? Did he remember the impassion- 
 ed appeal to himself, that as he had justly 
 earned the title of Defender of the Constitu- 
 tion, so now he should devote his marvelous 
 powers to the overthrow of slavery, and 
 thereby win a nobler name ? Alas ! it was 
 demanding dawn of the sunset! It was be- 
 seeching yesterday to return to-morrow. It 
 was imploring Daniel Webster to be Charles 
 Sumner. No, fellow-citizens, in that appeal 
 Sumner forecast his own glory. " Assume, 
 then," cried he, " these unperformed duties. 
 The aged shall bear witness to you ; the 
 young shall kindle with rapture as they re- 
 peat the name of Webster ; the large com- 
 pany of the ransomed shall teach their chil- 
 dren and their children's children to the 
 latest generation to call you blessed, and 
 you shall have yet another title, never to be 
 forgotten on earth or in heaven, Defender of 
 Humanity." 
 
 I dwell upon this first great speech of Mr. 
 Sumner's in the Senate, because it illustrates 
 his own public qualities and character, his 
 aims and his methods. He began to take 
 an official part in affairs when all questions 
 were determined by a single interest, a sin- 
 gle policy, aud all issues grew out of that. 
 His nature was so transparent and simple, 
 and the character of his relation to his time 
 so evident, that there is but one story to tell. 
 All his greater speeches upon domestic top- 
 ics after that of August, 1852, were but am- 
 plifications of the theme. The power that 
 he had defied did not relax, but redoubled 
 its efforts to subdue the country to its will, 
 and every new attempt found Sumner with 
 more practiced powers, with more compre- 
 hensive resources, ready and eager for the 
 battle. For the whole of his active career, 
 before, during, and after the war, his work 
 was substantially the same. He was essen- 
 
11 
 
 tially art orator and a moral reformer, and 
 with unsurpassed earnestness of appeal, em- 
 phasized from first to last by the incalcu- 
 lable weight of his commanding character, 
 his work was to rouse and kindle and in- 
 spire the public opinion of the country to 
 his own uncompromising hostility to slavery. 
 In this crusade he traversed the land, as it 
 were, by his speeches, a new Peter the Her- 
 mit, and by his sincerity, his uuconquerable 
 zeal, his affluent learning, making history 
 and literature and art tributary to his pur- 
 pose, he entered the houses and hearts and 
 minds of the people of the Northern States, 
 and fanned the flame of a holy hatred of 
 the intolerable and audacious wrong. It was 
 indispensable to this work tbat he should 
 not be able to admit any qualification of its 
 absorbing necessity or any abatement of the 
 urgency with which it must be pursued. 
 Once in later days, when I argued with him 
 that opponents might be sincere, and that 
 there was some reason on the other side, he 
 thundered in reply, " Upon such a question 
 there is no other side !" The time required 
 such a leader — a man who did not believe 
 that there was another side to the question, 
 who would treat difference of opinion almost 
 as moral delinquency; and the hour found 
 the man in Sumner. 
 
 For see what the leadership of opinion in 
 this country then demanded. In the first 
 place, and for the reasons I have mention- 
 ed — the instinct, traditions, and habits of 
 the dominant race in our civilization — such 
 a leader must be a man who showed that 
 the great principles of liberty, but of liberty 
 under law, of what we call regulated lib- 
 erty, were on his side ; whose familiarity 
 with the Constitution and with constitu- 
 tional interpretation, and whose standing 
 among lawyers who dealt with the compre- 
 hensive spirit and purpose of the law, was 
 recognized and commanding, so that, in- 
 structed by him, the farmer in the field, the 
 mechanic in the shop, the traveler by the 
 way — all law-loving Americans every where, 
 could maintain the contest with their neigh- 
 bors point by point upon the letter of the 
 Constitution, and show, or think they show- 
 ed, that the supreme law in its intention, in 
 the purpose of its authors, by the unquestion- 
 able witness of the time, demanded an in- 
 terpretation and a statute in favor of liberty. 
 Then, in the second place, this leader must 
 be identified with a political party, for the 
 same instinct which seeks the law and leans 
 upon precedent acts through the organiza- 
 tion of parties. The Free -soil sentiment 
 that sent Sumner to the Senate was the real 
 creative force in our politics at that time. 
 It had a distinct organization in several 
 States. It had nominated Presidential can- 
 didates at Buffalo; and although the Whig 
 and Democratic were still the great parties, 
 the Free-soil principle was necessarily the 
 nucleus around which a new and truly na- 
 tional party must presently gather. In 1852 
 the common enemy silenced the Whig party, 
 
 which almost instantly dissolved as a pow- 
 erful element in politics, and the Republican 
 party arose. No man had done more to form 
 the opinion and deepen the conviction from 
 which it sprang than Sumner ; no man ac- 
 cepted its aid with more alacrity, or saw 
 more clearly its immense opportunity. As 
 early as September, 1854, he declared in the 
 State Convention of his political friends, 
 "As Republicans we go forth to encounter 
 f he oligarchs of slavery ;" and eighteen years 
 afterward, in warning the party against 
 what he thought to be a fatal course, ho 
 said that he had been one of the straitest 
 of the sect, who had never failed to sustain 
 its candidates or to advance its principles. 
 He was indeed one of its fathers. No cit- 
 izen who has acted with that party will 
 question the greatness of his service to it ; 
 no citizen who opposed that party will deny 
 it. The personal assault upon him in the 
 Senate, following his prodigious defense of 
 the Republican position and policy, and soon 
 after the first national nominations of the 
 party, made him throughout the inspiring 
 summer of 1856, to the imagination of the 
 twelve hundred thousand men who voted 
 for its candidates, the very type and illus- 
 tration of their hope and purpose. Nothing 
 less thau such humanity in the national pol- 
 icy ami such lofty character in public life 
 as were expressed by the name of Charles 
 Sumner was the aim of the great political 
 awakening of that time. The rank and file 
 of the party, to borrow a military phrase, 
 dressed upon Sumner ; and long afterward, 
 when party differences had arisen, I am sure 
 that I spoke for the great body of his polit- 
 ical associates when I said to one who in- 
 dignantly regretted his course, that while 
 at that time and under those circumstances 
 we could not approve his judgment, jet 
 there were thousands and thousands of men 
 who would be startled aud confused to find 
 themselves marching in a political campaign 
 out of step with Charles Sumner. Thus he 
 satisfied the second imperative condition of 
 leadership of which I speak as a conspicuous 
 and decided party chief. 
 
 But there were certain modifications of 
 these conditions essential to the position, 
 and these also were found in Sumner. Such 
 was the felicity of his career that even his 
 defects of constitution served to equip him 
 more fully for his task. Thus, while it was 
 indispensable under the circumstances that 
 he should be a constitutional and interna- 
 tional lawyer, it was no less essential that 
 his mind should deal more with principles 
 than with details, and with the spirit rather 
 than the letter. He saw so clearly the great 
 end to be achieved that he seemed sometimes 
 almost to assume the means. Like an Alpine 
 guide leading his company of travelers to- 
 ward the pure and awful heights, with his 
 eye fixed upon their celestial beauty, and his 
 soul breathing an 
 
 " Ampler ether, a diviner air," 
 he moved straight on, disdaining obstacles 
 
12 
 
 that would have perplexed a guide less ab- 
 solutely absorbed, and who by moments of 
 doubt and hesitation would have imperiled 
 every thing. 
 
 Thus his legal mind, in the pursuit of a 
 moral eud, had sometimes what I may call a 
 happy lack of logic. Sure of his end, and 
 that every thing ought to make for it, he 
 felt that every thing did make for it. For 
 instance, his first great public oration, upon 
 the "True Grandeur of Nations," -was a most 
 powerful presentation of the glory and beau- 
 ty of peace, and a mighty denunciation of 
 the horrors and wrongs of war. It was an 
 intrepid and impressive discourse, and its 
 influence will be deep and lasting. But it 
 overstated its own case. It exposed the cit- 
 izen soldier not only to ridicule, but to mor- 
 al aversion. Aud yet the young men who sat 
 in martial array before the orator had not 
 submitted to military discipline merely for 
 the splendor of a parade, but that in the sol- 
 emn and exigent hour they might the more 
 effectively defend the public safety and pri- 
 vate honor, the school and the hospital, and 
 social order itself, the only guarantee of 
 peace, and all this not at the arbitrary com- 
 mand of their own will, but by the lawful 
 and considered word of the civil power. 
 What is military force which he derided 
 but, in the last resort, the law which he re- 
 vered, in execution ? As a friend asked him, 
 are the judgments of Story and of Shaw ad- 
 vice merely ? Do they not, if need be, com- 
 mand every bayonet in the State ? Is force 
 wrong, and must the policeman not only be 
 prohibited from carrying a pistol or a club, 
 but must he be forbidden to lay his hand 
 upon the thief in the act to compel him to 
 the station ? The young citizen soldiers who 
 sat before the orator were simply the ulti- 
 mate police. To decry to them with resound- 
 ing and affluent power the practice which 
 covered war with a false lustre was a noble 
 service, but to do it in a way that would 
 forbid the just and lawful punishment of a 
 murderer disclosed a defective logic. Thus 
 Sumner sometimes used arguments that were 
 two-edged swords, apt to wound the wielder 
 as well as the enemy. And so he sometimes 
 adopted propositions of constitutional or in- 
 ternational law which led straight to his 
 moral end, but which would hardly have en- 
 dured the legal microscope. Yet he main- 
 tained them with such fervor of conviction, 
 such an array of precedent, such amplitude 
 of illustration, that to the great popular 
 mind, morally exalted like his own, his 
 statements had the majesty and the conclu- 
 siveness of demonstrations. 
 
 And this, again, was what the time need- 
 ed. The debate was essentially, although 
 under the forms of law, revolutionary. It 
 aimed at the displacement not only of an ad- 
 ministration, but of a theory of the govern- 
 ment and of traditional usage that did not 
 mean to yield without a struggle. It re- 
 quired, therefore, not the judicially logical 
 mind, nor the fine touch of casuistry that 
 
 splits and halts and defers until the cause 
 is lost, but the mind so absolutely alive with 
 the idea and fixed upon the end that it com- 
 pels the means. John Pym was resolved 
 that Strafford should be impeached, aud he 
 found the law for it. Charles Sumner was 
 resolved that slavery should fall, and he 
 found the Constitution for it. When the 
 great debate ended, and there was the mo- 
 ment of dread silence before the outburst 
 of civil war, the legal casuistry which had 
 found the terrors of the Fugitive Slave Law 
 constitutional could see no power in the 
 Constitution to coerce States, Charles Sum- 
 ner, who had found in the Constitution no 
 authority for slave-hunting, answered the 
 furious cauuonade at Fort Sumter by de- 
 claring that slavery had legally destroyed 
 itself, and by demanding immediate eman- 
 cipation. 
 
 Aud as the crisis in which Sumner lived 
 required that in a leader the qualities of a 
 lawyer should be modified by those of the 
 patriot and the moralist, so it demanded 
 that the party man should be more than a 
 partisan. He never forgot that a party is a 
 means, not an end. He knew the joy and 
 the power of association — no mau better. He 
 knew the history of parties every where — in 
 Greece and Rome, in England and France, 
 and in our own earlier day ; and he knew 
 how insensibly a party comes to resemble 
 an army, and an army to stand for the coun- 
 try and cause which it has defended. But 
 he knew above all that parties are kept pure 
 and useful only by the resolute independ- 
 ence of their members, and that those lead- 
 ers whom, from their lofty principle and un- 
 compromising qualities, parties do not care 
 to nominate are the very leaders who make 
 parties able to elect their candidates. The 
 Republican party was organized to with- 
 stand slavery when slavery dared all. It 
 needed, therefore, one great leader at least 
 who was not merely a partisan, who did not 
 work for party ends, but for the ends of the 
 party. It needed a man absorbed and mas- 
 tered by hostility to slavery; a man of one 
 idea, like Columbus, with his whole soul 
 trembling ever to the west, wearying courts 
 and kings and councils with his single in- 
 cessant and importunate plea, until he sail- 
 ed over the horizon, and gave a New World 
 to the Old ; a man of one idea, like Luther, 
 pleading his private conscience against the 
 ancient hierarchy, and giving both worlds 
 religious liberty. Yes, a mau of one idea. 
 This was what the time demanded in public 
 and party life, and this it found in Charles 
 Sumner; not an antislavery man only, but 
 a man in whose soul for thirty years the sigh 
 of the slave never ceased, and whose dying 
 words were a prayer to save the bill that 
 made that slave wholly an equal citizen. 
 
 Wheu the Republican party came into 
 power it was forced to conduct a war in 
 which the very same qualities were demand- 
 ed. The public mind needed constantly to 
 be roused and sustained by the trumpet note 
 
 / 
 
13 
 
 of an ever higher endeavor, and from no lead- 
 er did it hear that tone more steadily and 
 clearly than from Sumuer. When the most 
 radical, which in such a moment is the wis- 
 est, policy came to he discussed in detailed 
 measures, he had already rohhed it of its ter- 
 rors hy making it familiar. While Congress 
 declared hy a vote almost unanimous that 
 emancipation was not a purpose or an ele- 
 ment of the war, Sumner proclaimed to the 
 couutry that slavery was perpetual war, and 
 that emancipation only was peace. Like 
 Nelson in the hattle of the Baltic — when the 
 admiral signaled to stop fighting he put the 
 glass to his hlind eye and shouted, " I don't 
 see the admiral's signal; nail my own colors 
 to the mast for closer hattle!" As hefore 
 the war, so while it raged, he felt the impe- 
 rial necessity of the conclusion so strongly 
 that he made all arguments serve, and forced 
 all facts into line. He was alive with the 
 truth that Dryden nohly expresses : " I have 
 heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who 
 have ended unfortunately, hut never of any 
 virtuous nation. Providence is engaged too 
 deeply when the cause hecomes so general." 
 Mr. Lincoln, who was a natural diplomatist, 
 fortunately understood Mr. Sumuer. The 
 President knew as well as the Senator that 
 the war sprang from slavery. He had al- 
 ready said that the house of the Union di- 
 vided against itself could not stand. He 
 knew as well as Sumner that slavery must 
 he smitten. But he knew also that in his 
 position he could not smite until puhlic 
 opinion lifted his arm. To stimulate that 
 opinion, therefore, was the most precious 
 service to the President, to the country, and 
 the world. Thus it was not the appeal to 
 Lincoln, it was the appeal to puhlic opinion 
 that was demanded. It was not Sumner's 
 direct hut his reflected light that was so 
 useful. And when the President at last 
 raised his arm — -for he pulled no unripe 
 fruit, and he did nothing until he thought 
 the time had fully come — he kuew that the 
 couutry was ready, and that no man more 
 than Sumner had made it so. When the 
 Assistant Secretary of State carried the en- 
 grossed copy of the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion to Mr. Lincoln to sign, he had heen 
 shaking hands all the morning, so that his 
 writing was unsteady. He looked at it for 
 a moment with his sadly humorous smile, 
 and then said, " When jieople see that shaky 
 signature they will say, ' See how uncertain 
 he was.' But I was never surer of any thing 
 in my life." 
 
 But while Sumner righteously stimulated 
 puhlic opinion during the war, not less on 
 one memorahle occasion did he righteously 
 moderate it. I once ventured to ask Mr. 
 Seward what in his judgment was the dark- 
 est hour of the war. He answered instant- 
 ly, "The time that elapsed hetween my in- 
 formally sending to Lord Lyons a draft of 
 my reply in the T)-ent case and my hearing 
 from him that it would he satisfactory." 
 He thought it the darkest hour, hecause he 
 
 knew that in that reply he had made the 
 utmost concession that puhlic opinion would 
 tolerate, and if it were not satisfactory, noth- 
 ing remained hut war with England — a war 
 which, Mr. Adams tells us, he thinks that 
 the British government expected, and for 
 which it had already issued naval instruc- 
 tions. Mr. Sumuer, who was most friendly 
 with Mr. Seward, was chairman of the Sen- 
 ate Committee of Foreign Relations, and, 
 next to his constant and inspiring conscious- 
 ness that he was a Senator of Massachusetts, 
 his position as the head of that committee 
 was the pride and glory of his official life. 
 Few men in the country have ever heen so 
 amply fitted for it as he. From his youth 
 he had heen a student of international law. 
 He was master of its history and literature. 
 It was his hope— surely a nohle amhition — 
 to contribute to it something that might 
 still further humanize the comity of nations. 
 He was familiar with the current politics 
 of the world, and he personally knew most 
 of the distinguished foreign statesmen of his 
 time. Ahove all, he hrought to his chair the 
 lofty conviction expressed hy another master 
 of international law, that "the same rules 
 of morality which hold together men in fam- 
 ilies, and which form families into common- 
 wealths, also link together those common- 
 wealths as memhers of the great society of 
 mankind." He was very proud of that chair- 
 manship ; and when, in the spring of 1871, 
 upon the annual renewal of the committees 
 of the Senate, his Repuhlican colleagues de- 
 cided not to restore him to his chair, he felt 
 degraded and humiliated hefore the country 
 aud foreign powers. He had held it for ten 
 years. His party was still in the ascendant. 
 His qualifications were undeniahle. And he 
 felt that the refusal to restore him implied 
 some deep distrust or dissatisfaction, for 
 which, whatever good reasons existed, none 
 hut the pleasure of the Senate has yet been 
 given to the country. 
 
 While he was still chairman, and at a crit- 
 ical moment, the seizure of the Trent was 
 hailed with frantic applause. Nothing seem- 
 ed less likely than that an administration 
 could stand which should restore the prison- 
 ers, and Mr. Seward's letter was one of the 
 ahlest and most skillful that he ever wrote. 
 Mr. Adams says frankly that in his judg- 
 ment it saved the unity of the nation. But 
 the impressive fact of the moment was the 
 acquiescence of the country in the surren- 
 der, and that in great degree was due to the 
 conclusive demonstration made hy Mr. Sum- 
 ner that fidelity to our own principles re- 
 quired the surrender. It was precisely one 
 of the occasions when his value as a public 
 man was plainly evident. From the crowd- 
 ed diplomatic gallery in the Senate attent- 
 ive Europe looked and listened. His words 
 were weighed one by one by men whom 
 sympathy with his cause did not seduce, nor 
 a too susceptible imagination betray, and 
 who acknowledged when he ended not only 
 that the nation had escaped war, and that 
 
 \ 
 
14 
 
 the action of the administration had been 
 vindicated, Imt that the renown of the conn- 
 try had been raised by the clear and lumi- 
 nous statement of its humane and peaceful 
 traditions of neutrality. "Until to-day," 
 said one of the most accomplished of those 
 diplomatists, ''I have considered Mr. Sum- 
 ner a doctrinaire ; henceforth I recognize 
 him as a statesman." He had silenced En- 
 gland by her historic self. He had justi- 
 fied America by her own honorable prece- 
 dent. The country knew that he spoke from 
 the fullest knowledge, and with the loftiest 
 American and humane purpose, and his serv- 
 ice in promoting national acquiescence in 
 the surrender of the captives was as char- 
 acteristic as in nerving the public mind to 
 demand emancipation. 
 
 But while Mr. Simmer's public career was 
 chiefly a relentless warfare with slavery, it 
 was only because slavery was the present 
 and palpable form of that injustice with 
 which his nature was at war. The spring 
 of his public life was that overpowering 
 love of peace and justice and equality which 
 spoke equally in his early Prison Discipline 
 debates ; in the Fourth of July oration in 
 Boston; in his literary addresses; in the 
 powerful ant isla very speeches in the Sen- 
 ate ; in his advocacy of emancipation as the 
 true policy of the war, and of equal civil and 
 political rights as the guarantee of its re- 
 sults; in his Senatorial efforts to establish 
 arbitration ; in his condemnation of priva- 
 teering, prize-money, and letters of marque ; 
 in his arraignment of Great Britain for a pol- 
 icy which favored slavery; in his unflinch- 
 ing persistence for the Civil Eights Bill; in 
 his last great protest against the annexa- 
 tion of San Domingo, and his denunciation 
 of what he thought a cruel and un-American 
 hostility to the republic of Hayti. He was 
 a born warrior with public injustice. 
 
 Many public men permit their hostility to 
 a wrong to be modified in its expression by 
 personal feeling, and to reflect that good 
 men, from the influence of birth and train- 
 ing, may sometimes support a wrong sys- 
 tem. But Sumner saw in his opponents not 
 persons, but a cause, and, like Socrates, in the 
 battle he smote to the death, but with no per- 
 sonal hostility. In turn he was so identifled 
 with his own cause that he seemed to his op- 
 ponents to be the very spirit with which they 
 contended, visible, aggressive, arrogant. His 
 tone in debate when he arraigned slavery, 
 although he arraigned slavery alone, was so 
 unsparing that all its supporters felt them- 
 selves to be personally insulted. After the 
 war began I heard his speech in the Senate 
 for the expulsion of Mr. Bright, of Indiana, 
 for commerce with the enemy. It was a 
 lash of scorpions. Mr. Bright sat in his 
 place pale and livid by turns, and gazing at 
 Mr. Sumner as if he could scarce restrain 
 himself from springing at his throat. Yet 
 when the orator shook his lifted linger at 
 his colleague, and hurled at him his scath- 
 ing sentences, it was not the man that he 
 
 saw before him : he saw only the rebellion, 
 only slavery in arms, with Catilinian au- 
 dacity proudly thrusting itself into the Cap- 
 itol, and daring to sit in the very Senate- 
 chamber. But Mr. Sumner's attitude and 
 tone that day, with a vast majority at his 
 side, with a friendly army in the city, were 
 no bolder, no more resolutely defiant, than 
 when he stood in the same chamber de- 
 manding the expulsion of slavery from the 
 statute-book, while the majority of his col- 
 leagues would fain have silenced him, and 
 the city was a camp of his enemies. 
 
 It was often said that it was impossible 
 he should know the peril of his position. 
 It was not that. He did know it. But he 
 saw and feared a greater peril — that of not 
 doing his duty. He often stood practically 
 alone among responsible public men. The 
 spirit which begged Abraham Lincoln to 
 strike out of his Springfield speech in 1858 
 the words "a house divided against itself 
 can not stand," a request which Mr. Lincoln 
 said that he would carefully consider, and 
 having considered, spoke the words, and 
 went straight on to the Presidency and a 
 glorious renown — this spirit censured Sum- 
 ner's fanaticism, his devotion to oue idea ; 
 derided his rhetoric, his false taste, his want 
 of logic ; ridiculed his want of tact, his ig- 
 norance of men, his visionary views, his im- 
 practicability. Indeed, there were times 
 when it ahnost seemed that friends joined 
 with foes to shear Samson's flowing hair 
 while Samson was smiting the Philistines. 
 If friends remonstrated, he replied, "I am a 
 public servant. I am a sentinel of my coun- 
 try. I must cry ' halt,' though it be only a 
 shadow that passes, and not bring my piece 
 to a rest until I know who goes there." It 
 was an ideal vigilance, an ideal sense of 
 duty. I grant it. He was an ideal charac- 
 ter. He loved duty more than friendship, 
 and he had that supreme quality of man- 
 hood, the power to go alone. I am not anx- 
 ious to call him a statesman, but he seems 
 to have measured more accurately than oth- 
 ers the real forces of his time. Miss Marti- 
 neau, in the remarkable paper published at 
 the beginning of the war, says that every 
 public man iu the country with whom she 
 talked agreed that silence upon slavery was 
 the sole condition of preserving the Union. 
 Sumner was the man who saw that silence 
 would make the Union only the stately tomb 
 of liberty ; and that speech, constant, un- 
 sparing, unshrinking — speech ringing oyer 
 a cowering land like an alarm-bell at mid- 
 night — was the only salvation of the Union 
 as the home of freedom. 
 
 If now for a moment we turn to survey 
 that public career, extending over the thir- 
 ty stormiest years of our history, the one 
 clear, conspicuous fact that appears in it, 
 after the single devotion to one end, is that 
 Mr. Sumner lived to see that end accom- 
 plished. He began by urging the Whig 
 party to raise the antislavery standard. It 
 refused. He left the party, and presently it 
 
15 
 
 perished. He entered the Senate denoun- 
 cing slavery in a manner that roused and 
 strengthened the public mind for the contest 
 that soon began. "With the first gun of the 
 war he demanded emancipation as the way 
 of victory ; and •when victory with emanci- 
 pation came, he advocated equal suffrage as 
 the security of liberty. What public man 
 has seen more glorious fulfillments of his 
 aims and efforts ? He did not, indeed, orig- 
 inate the laws that enacted the results, but 
 he developed the spirit and the conviction 
 that made the results possible. William the 
 Third won few battles, but he gained his 
 cause ; Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declara- 
 tion, but John Adams is the hero of Amer- 
 ican independence. Sumner was more a 
 moral reformer than a statesman, and to a 
 surprising degree events were his allies. 
 But no man of our first great period, not 
 Otis or Patrick Henry, nor Jefferson or 
 Adams, nor Hamilton or Jay, is surer of his 
 place than in the second great period Charles 
 Sumner is sure of his. 
 
 As his career drew to an end, events oc- 
 curred without which his life would not 
 have been wholly complete, and the most 
 signal illustration of the power of personal 
 character in politics would have been lost. 
 He was, as I have said, a party man. Al- 
 though always in advance, and by his gen- 
 ius a moral leader, he had yet always work- 
 ed with and by his party. But as the main 
 objects of his political activity were virtu- 
 ally accomplished, he came to believe that 
 his party, reckless in absolute triumph, was 
 ceasing to represent that high and generous 
 patriotism to which his life was consecrated, 
 that its moral tone was sensibly declining, 
 that it defended policies hostile to public 
 faith and human rights, trusting leaders 
 who should not be trusted, and tolerating 
 practices that honest men should spurn. 
 Believing that his party was forfeiting the 
 confidence of the country, he reasoned with 
 it and appealed to it, as more than twenty 
 years before he had reasoned with the Whig 
 party in Faneuil Hall. His hope was by 
 his speeches on the San Domingo treaty and 
 the French arms and the Presidential nomi- 
 nation to shake what he thought to be the 
 fatal apathy of the party, and to stimulate 
 it once more to resume its leadership of the 
 conscience and the patriotism of the coun- 
 try. It was my fortune to see him con- 
 stantly and intimately during those days, to 
 know the persuasions and flatteries lavished 
 upon him to induce him to declare openly 
 against the party, and his resolution not to 
 leave it until he had exhausted every argu- 
 ment and prayer, and conscience forbade 
 him to remain. That summons came, in his 
 judgment, when a nomination was made 
 which seemed to him the conclusive proof of 
 a fatal party infatuation. "Any thing else," 
 he said to me, vehemently, a hundred times 
 — " any other candidacy I can support, and 
 it would save the party and the country." 
 The nomination was made. He did not hes- 
 
 itate. He was sixty years old ; smitten with 
 sorrows that were not known ; suffering at 
 times acute agony from the disease of which 
 he died; his heart heavy with the fierce 
 strife of a generation, and longing for re- 
 pose. But the familiar challenge of duty 
 found him alert and watchful at his post, 
 and he advanced without a doubt or a fear 
 to what was undoubtedly the greatest trial 
 of his life. 
 
 The antislavery contest, indeed, had closed 
 many a door and many a heart against him ; 
 it had exposed him to the sneer, the hate, 
 ; the ridicule, of opposition ; it had threaten- 
 ed his life and assailed his person. But the 
 great issue was clearly drawn; his whole 
 being was stirred to its depths ; he was iu 
 the bloom of youth, the pride of strength ; 
 | history and reason, the human heart and the 
 human conscience, were his immortal allies, 
 and around him were the vast, increasing 
 I hosts of liberty ; the men whose counsels he 
 approved ; the friends of his heart ; the mul- 
 ! titude that thought him only too eager for 
 ! unquestionable right ; the prayer of free men 
 and women sustaining, inspiring, blessing 
 him. But here was another scene, a far 
 fiercer trial. His old companions in the Free- 
 ' soil days, the great abolition leaders, most 
 of his warmest personal friends, the great 
 I body of the party whom his words had in- 
 spired, looked at him with sorrowful sur- 
 , prise. Ah ! no one who did not know that 
 proud and tender heart, trusting, simple, al- 
 [ most credulous as that of a boy, could know 
 how sore the trial was. He stood, among 
 his oldest friends, virtually alone; with in- 
 j expressible pain they parted, each to his own 
 duty. " Are you willing," I said to him one 
 j day, when he had passionately implored me 
 i to agree with him — and I should have been 
 unworthy his friendship had I been silent — 
 " is Charles Sumner willing at this time, 
 and in the circumstances of to-day, to in- 
 | trust the colored race in this country, with 
 all their rights, their liberty newly won and 
 ' yet flexile and nascent, to a party, however 
 fair its profession, which comprises all who 
 have hated and despised the negro ? The 
 slave of yesterday in Alabama, in Carolina, 
 in Mississippi, will his heart leap with joy 
 or droop dismayed when he knows that 
 Charles Sumner has given his great name 
 as a club to smite the party that gave him 
 and his children their liberty ?" The tears 
 started to his eyes, that good gray head bow- 
 ed down, but he answered, sadly, " I must do 
 my duty." And he did it. He saw the proud, 
 triumphant party that he had led so often, 
 men and women whom his heart loved, the 
 trusted Mends of a life, the sympathy and 
 confidence and admiration upon which, on 
 his great days and after his resounding words, 
 he had been joyfully accustomed to lean — 
 he saw all these depart, and he turned to 
 go alone and do his duty. 
 
 Yet, great as was his sorrow, still greater, 
 as I believe, was his content in doing that 
 duty. His State, indeed, could not follow 
 
16 
 
 him. For the first time iu his life, he -went 
 one way, and Massachusetts went the oth- 
 er. But Massachusetts was as true to her 
 convictions of duty in that hour as he was 
 to his own. It was her profound belief 
 that the result he sought would he perilous 
 if not fatal to the welfare of the country. 
 But the inspiring moral of these events is 
 this, that while deploring his judgment in 
 this single case, and while, later, the Legis- 
 lature, misconceiving his noble and humane 
 purpose, censured him for the resolutions 
 which the people of the State did not under- 
 stand, and which they believed, most un- 
 justly to him, to be somehow a wrong to 
 the precious dead, the flower of a thousand 
 homes — yet, despite all this, the great heart 
 of Massachusetts never swerved from Charles 
 Sumner. It was grieved and amazed, and 
 could not forego its own duty because he 
 saw another. But I know that when in that 
 year I spoke in rural Massachusetts, wheth- 
 er in public or in private, to those who, with 
 me, could not follow him, nothing that I said 
 was heard with more sympathy and applause 
 than my declaration of undying honor and 
 gratitude to him. "I seem to lean on the 
 great heart of Massachusetts," he said, in the 
 bitterest hour of the conflict of his life. And 
 it never betrayed him. In that heart not 
 the least suspicion of a mean or selfish mo- 
 tive ever clouded his image — not a doubt 
 of his absolute fidelity to his conscience dis- 
 turbed its faith; and had he died a year 
 ago, while yet the censure of the Legislature 
 was unrepealed, his body would have been 
 received by you with the same affectionate 
 reverence ; here, and in Faneuil Hall, and 
 at the State-house, all honor that boundless 
 gratitude and admiration could lavish would 
 have been poured forth, and yonder iu 
 Mount Auburn he would have been laid to 
 rest with the same immense tenderness of 
 sorrow. 
 
 This is the great victory, the great lesson, 
 the great legacy of his life, that the fidelity 
 of a public man to conscience, not to party, 
 is rewarded with the sincerest popular love 
 and confidence. What an inspiration to 
 every youth louging with generous ambition 
 to enter the great arena of the state, that he 
 must heed first and always the divine voice 
 in his own soul, if he would be sure of the 
 sweet voices of good fame! Living, how 
 Sumner served us! and dying, at this mo- 
 ment how he serves us still ! In a time when 
 politics seem peculiarly mean and selfish and 
 corrupt, when there is a general vague appre- 
 hension that the very moral foundations of 
 the national character are loosened, when 
 
 good men are painfully anxious to know 
 whether the heart of the people is hardened, 
 Charles Sumner dies; and the universality 
 and sincerity of sorrow, such as the death of 
 no man left living among us could awaken, 
 show how true, how sound, how generous, is 
 still the heart of the American people. This is 
 the dying service of Charles Sumner, a reve- 
 lation which inspires every American to bind 
 his shiniug example as a frontlet between 
 the eyes, and never again to despair of the 
 higher and more glorious destiny of his coun- 
 try. 
 
 And of that destiny what a foreshowing 
 was he ! In that beautiful home at the sun- 
 ny and leafy corner of the national city, 
 where he lived among books and pictures 
 and noble friendships and lofty thoughts — 
 the home to which he returned at the close 
 of each day in the Senate, and to which the 
 wise and good from every land naturally 
 came — how the stately and gracious and all- 
 accomplished man seemed the very persojii- 
 fication of that new union for which he had 
 so manfully striven, and whose coming his 
 dying eyes beheld — the union of ever wider 
 liberty and juster law, the America of com- 
 prehensive intelligence, and of moral pow- 
 er! For that he stands ; up to tbat his im- 
 perishable memory, like the words of his 
 living lips, forever lifts us — lifts us to his 
 own great faith in America and in man. 
 Suddenly from his strong baud — my father, 
 my father, the chariot of Israel, and the 
 horsemen thereof! — the banner falls. Be it 
 ours to grasp it, and carry it still forward, 
 still higher! Our work is not his work, 
 but it can be well done only in his spirit. 
 And as in the heroic legend of your western 
 valley the men of Hadley, faltering in the 
 fierce shock of Indian battle, suddenly saw 
 at their head the lofty form of an unknown 
 captain, with white hair streaming on the 
 wind, by his triumphant mien strengthen- 
 ing their hearts and leading them to victo- 
 ry, so, men and women of Massachusetts, of 
 America, if in that national conflict already 
 begun, as vast and vital as the struggle of 
 his life, the contest which is beyond that of 
 any party, or policy, or measure — the con- 
 test for conscience, intelligence, and moral- 
 ity as the supreme power in our politics and 
 the sole salvation of America — you should 
 falter or fail, suddenly your hearts shall see 
 once more the towering form, shall hear 
 again the inspiring voice, shall be exalted 
 with the moral energy and faith of Charles 
 Sumner, and the victories of his immortal 
 example shall transcend the triumphs of his 
 life. 
 

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