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MEMOIR AND LETTERS
OF
CHARLES SUMNER.
'
MEMOIR AND LETTERS
OP
CHARLES SUMNER
BY
EDWARD L. PIERCE
Period 1845—60
LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON AND COMPANY
LIMITED
St. Sunstan's Ifoouse FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.G.
1893
CONTENTS OF VOL. in.
Society in Boston
CHAPTER XXIX.
1845-1860.
Page 1
CHAPTER XXX.
1845-1850.
Addresses before Colleges and Lyceums. — Active Interest
in Reforms. — Friendships. — Personal Life 11
CHAPTER XXXI.
1846-1847. The Prison-Discipline Debates in Tremont Temple
79
CHAPTER XXXII.
1845-1847.
The Annexation of Texas. — The Mexican War. — Winthrop and Sumner
98
CHAPTER XXXIII.
1848-1849.
»
The National Election of 1848. — The Free Soil Party . . 158
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Compromise of 1850. — Mr. Webster .
189
IV CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER XXXV.
1850-1851.
Massachusetts and the Compromise. — Sumner chosen Sena- tor 204
CHAPTER XXXVI.
1851-1852.
First Session in Congress. — Welcome to Kossuth. — Public
Lands in the West. — The Fugitive Slave Law .... 258
CHAPTER XXXVII.
1852-1853.
The National Election op 1852. — The Massachusetts Constitutional Convention. — Final Defeat op the Coalition 312
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
1853-1854.
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. — Replies to Butler and Mason. — The Republican Party. — Address on Granville Sharp. — Friendly Correspondence 345
CHAPTER XXXIX.
1854-1855.
The Debate on Toucey's Bill. — Vindication of the Anti- slavery Enterprise. — First Visit to the West. — De- fence of Foreign-Born Citizens 409
CHAPTER XL.
1855-1856.
Outrages in Kansas. — Speech on Kansas. — The Brooks
Assault 425
CHAPTER XLI.
1857-1858.
Search for Health. — Journey to Europe. — Continued
Disability 525
CONTENTS OF VOL. HI. V
CHAPTER XLII.
1858-1859.
Page
Europe Again. — Heroic Remedies. — Health Restored . . 563
CHAPTER XLIII.
1859-1860.
Return to the Senate. — "The Barbarism of Slavery." —
Popular Welcomes. — Lincoln's Election 599
MEMOIR AND LETTERS
OF
CHARLES SUMNER
CHAPTER XXIX.
SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 1845-1860.
A VIEW of the society of Boston, — of the character and tendencies of its ruling class, — at the close of the first half of this century is essential to a just comprehension of the position of an agitator in such a community for moral and political reforms. The subject has only been touched casually in memoirs and books of travel, without an attempt to treat it comprehensively ; and a brief review of life in the city as it then was fitly opens the new period of Charles Sumner's career.1
The population of the city grew between 1845 and 1850 from 115,000 to 137,000, and five years later exceeded 160,000. Its territory was still confined to the peninsula, — Charlestown, Roxbury, and Dorchester being as yet suburban towns. Man- sions surrounded by gardens had disappeared, and had given place to blocks. Fort Hill, long a residential quarter of rich people, had been abandoned to tenement-houses. The Back Bay, now the seat of fine houses and noble churches, was still a waste, and mostly under the sea. Beacon Street ended in front of the site of the Public Garden. What is called " our best society " lived on streets looking on the Common, or on those lying near by, all within ten minutes walk of the State House. For its num- bers, no American city was so strong in capital. Its older wealth, created just before and just after the beginning of the century, had come from foreign commerce, from ships returning from distant seas ; its later had come from mills established on the
1 For a description of Boston in 1825, see ante, vol. i. p. 45. The characteristics of the people and society were much the same from 1820-1860. There are touches of Boston in 1860 in the "Life, Letters, and Journals " of Ticknor, vol. i. pp. 315, 316.
VOL. III. 1
2 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-60.
Merrimac. Its prosperous citizens were, in a certain proportion, born in the city, but many had come from the centre of the State, from Cape Cod, and from New Hampshire, — men of good stock, enterprising, self-poised, and large-minded. Some had a pedi- gree in which they took pride ; while others, who could not boast that distinction, fell easily into the fashion of the place. They educated their children in academies and colleges ; and when rare ability and ambition were combined in their sons, they sent them to foreign universities. They were careful in the train- ing of their daughters, placing them in the classical school of George B. Emerson, an accomplished teacher, whose devotion to his work for more than thirty years is gratefully remembered. Before steam navigation had been well developed, or even before it existed at all, they sought the advantages of foreign travel for themselves and their families. They had Harvard College near by, which has at all times diffused the academic spirit in the city and its suburbs, and raised up scholars and intellectual guides, through whom a humanizing influence has been diffused over the whole community. Their style of living was sober but generous, with furniture imported from France ; with specimens of art in original work or in copies, which had begun to come from foreign studios ; with cellars stocked with Madeira of various vintages, the favorite wine of the day, whose age and quality were the topic of much talk at the table. They dined at two o'clock, and took at seven or eight a bountiful supper, to which their friends came without ceremony. Many had country-seats in Brookline, Dorchester, Waltham, Medford, and Nahant, to which they drove in private carriages, sometimes in the one-horse chaise. They were as a class, in private and in business life, men of high in- tegrity, interested in public works, popular and scientific educa- tion, social and public libraries, hospitals, charities, and churches. They were honorable merchants, dealt fairly with customers, kept accurate accounts, and their trade-marks were symbols of good work.1 They were highly conservative ; took a harmless pride in their social standing ; received consideration from the masses something like that accorded to an English lord or squire ; were accustomed to have their own way, and to resent interference from those who had not by family or wealth reached the same
1 There is a tradition that William Wirt, who came to Boston in 1829 as counsel in a suit against Peter C. Brooks, expressed admiration at the accuracy and integrity of the mercan- tile books which he had occasion to examine.
SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 3
position as themselves. They were English in thought and habit as in blood. They were not wanting in patriotism, but as a class they had little faith in the republican polity, and small confidence in the good sense and steadiness of the people.1 They reverenced Alexander Hamilton, hated Jefferson, dis- trusted the Adamses, were more or less in sympathy with the Hartford Convention;2 and as soon as Daniel Webster showed his power and disposition to serve them, they rallied round him as the conservative leader, and followed as he led to the end of his career. Their typical man was Harrison Gray Otis,3 a silver- tongued orator, who bore a name honored in the colony, and who was a popular favorite, elected often to State and national offices, beginning life as a Federalist, and ending it with a pro- test against the antislavery cause ; 4 he sighed in his old age for a more aristocratic polity than ours, and fixed thirty years as the limit of our republican system. The predictions of his class as to the society of the future were equally dismal. Washington Allston, who grew to be less of a republican as he grew older, said that if things went on as they promised, " in eighty years there would not be a gentleman left in the country." 5
The Boston men of that day revealed their inner thought to foreigners more than to their own public. Tn 1841, at a din- ner where old lawyers and Ticknor were present, Lord Morpeth was struck with the desponding tone, almost amounting to trea- son to the Constitution, which they pronounced an utter failure, especially in respect to the election of fit men for President.6 Thackeray, whose visit was a few years later, found " a vast amount of toryism and donnishness everywhere." 7 Sumner, who was familiar with the talk at dinners and in drawing-rooms,
1 Ticknor, like the others, took the desponding view, — " Life," vol. ii. pp. 186, 235, 464, 479.
2 They called themselves "old Federalists," though the party had ceased to exist. "Life ""of Ticknor, vol. ii. p. 186.
3 1765-1848.
4 Boston Advertiser, April 3, 1848. He died Oct. 28, 1848. To his credit it should be remembered that he opposed the extension of slavery at the time of the Missouri Compromise.
5 " Richard Henry Dana, A Biography," bj' Charles Francis Adams, vol. i. p. 71.
6 Lord Morpeth's diary (MSS.). Dr. Channing and President Quincy were exceptions. The latter dissented, a day or two later, from the view taken at the dinner referred to; and the former was always full of faith and hope in democracy as a means of social im- provement, guided, as he did his be«t to guide it, by the ethical spirit. At a dinner for Morpeth at Abbott Lawrence's, Judge Story talked "high conservatism." Adams's "Biography " of Dana, vol. i. p. 30.
7 A Collection of Letters, 1847-1855, p. 165.
4 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-60.
wrote, in 1852, to his brother George, then in Europe : " There are beautiful and generous spirits in Boston, but the prevailing tone of its society is provincial toryism. Persons freshly re- turned from Europe, who have hearts, are at first disturbed by it, then straightway adopt it. Witness the C 's." 1
These people were naturally ill-affected toward the progress of republicanism in Europe, and were quite unanimous in their want of sympathy with the uprisings of 1848. They were as much perplexed with fear of change as kings or any privileged orders.2 Sumner wrote to his brother in 1852 : " You must not confound the opinion of Boston with that of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth is for Kossuth ; the city is against him. The line is broadly drawn. The same line is run between my political supporters and opponents. The city is bigoted, narrow, provincial, and selfish ; the country has more the spirit of the American Revolution.'"
One cannot but note a certain type in the portraits of the Bos- ton men of this period as they hang in private houses, libraries, and museums, where they appear like strong-featured, and, as Mr. Webster called them, " solid men." Their heads, as cut by artists in marble, if exhumed among the ruins of the buried city ages to come, would not be unworthy of a place with the busts which line the long hall of the Vatican.
The professions and journals, which direct the thought of a peo- ple, were at the time in a high degree conservative. Dr. James Walker, then professor at Cambridge, was easily the first preacher. King's Chapel, with Rev. Ephraim Peabody in the pulpit and worshippers of the best society in the pews, represented the churches. Channing, that finest product of New England, was no longer living, to temper with his moral enthusiasm social and commercial opinion, and to set forth in weekly ministrations his lofty ideal of humanity.3 Edward Everett and Rufus Choate were the first orators. Choate, C. G. Loring, and B. R. Curtis were the leaders of the bar. Lemuel Shaw, just, wise, and
1 Longfellow, referring to the proneness of some persons to find little good in their own country after returning from Europe, wrote in his diary, Oct. 17, 1847: "Sumner to dine. All Americans who return from Europe malcontent with their own country we call Frondeurs, from the faction in the days of the Reqence."
2 "Life" of Ticknor, vol. ii. pp. 230, 234, 236.
3 In two Unitarian pulpits, those of James Freeman Clarke and F. D. Huntington, the spirit of Channing survived; but in those of most of the Unitarian churches, as also in the Congregational (Trinitarian) and Episcopalian, there was little sympathy for moral reforms.
SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 5
serene, with never a sinister thought to affect the balance be- tween suitors, personified justice in the Supreme Court of the State, — a tribunal which then held and still holds the respect of jurists wherever the common law is administered.1 The repre- sentative newspaper was the " Daily Advertiser," long directed by a public-spirited citizen, Nathan Hale, assisted by his son, the junior of that name ; but as one turns its files, he can see at a glance how repugnant to its management were all novelties in the shape of moral and political reforms.2
There was but one society at that period to which admission was sought, and every one in it knew every one else who was in it. It was close and hard, consolidated, with a uniform stamp on all, and opinion running in grooves,3 — in politics, Whig; in faith, Unitarian and Episcopalian. Its members were closely connected by intermarriage ; and a personal difficulty with one was quickly taken up by the related families, — so that through connections by kin or friendship nearly all the society was likely to take a part.4 Sumner was for a time, at an earlier period, shut out from one house on Beacon Street merely for complimenting, in a lawyer's office, the editor of a magazine who had reviewed a domestic controversy already before the public in judicial proceedings. The head of the family, learning the circumstance from a relative who, unobserved, was within hearing, shortly after returned a subscription paper which Sum- ner had sent to him, with the reply that no papers would be received from one who had approved an attack on his family.5 The intervention of Prescott was necessary to restore good rela- tions, broken in consequence of an offhand and overheard re- mark. The prison-discipline controversy of 1845-1847, treated
1 Neither the chief-justice nor Peleg Sprague, another highly esteemed judge, showed to advantage in cases where the rights of alleged fugitive slaves were concerned, — the former wanting in courage, and the latter exhibiting a partisan zeal in supporting the Fugitive Slave Act. Adams's "Biography " of Dana, vol. i. pp. 186, 196.
2 The names of journals existing at present in Boston indicate no identity in manage- ment or views with those of former days, as there have been several transfers, with no attempt to preserve continuity in politics or otherwise.
3 E. P. Whipple described the social leaders of Boston at this time, in a conversation with the Author, as " fixed and limited in their ideas."
4 For instance, the Ticknor, Eliot, Dwight, Guild, and Norton families were con- nected by marriage; and Mr. Eliot was a near kinsman of the Curtis family. Similar ties by blood and marriage united the Sears, Mason, Warren, Parker, and Amory families, and also the Shaw, Sturgis, Parkman, and Perkins families. Another group was the Sturgis, Perkins, Cabot, Forbes, Cary, Gardiner, and Cushing families. The different groups were often connected by kin or close friendship.
5 Ante, vol. ii. pp. 254, 255.
6 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-60.
later in these pages, will show how family sympathies gave a personal direction to public controversies.
Bancroft, the historian, escaped from a community where a Democrat was regarded as little better than a Jacobin, and years after his removal assured a friend that it was a comfort to live in New York rather than in Boston. R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote to Sumner in 1851, " Boston oligarchy is confined to the pave- ments and Nahant." Prescott wrote to Sumner in 1851 of a former period in Salem similar in character : " Judge Story in his early days was exposed to much obloquy from the bitterness of party feeling, which becomes more intensified in proportion to the narrowness of the sphere where it is displayed. Boston is worse than New York in this respect."
The capitalists were greatly interested in a protective tariff, and its maintenance was the one end of their politics. Mr. Nathan Appleton and Mr. Abbott Lawrence were not only wise projectors of manufacturing schemes, but they were competent to defend in argument the protective system. Both had repre- sented Boston in Congress. It was all important to their inter- ests to keep the Whig party, north and south, united in support of the tariff ; and with reference to a market, to keep on good terms with the Southern people. A Southern slaveholder, or his son at Harvard, was more welcome in society than any guest, except a foreigner. Southern planters tarried for weeks at the Tremont House, then the favorite hostelry of the town, for the ocean air and suburban drives ; and from year to year were registered among its guests the well-known names of the Allstons, Hugers, Izards, and Rhetts. It is difficult to understand this deference to Southern planters now that the marvellous expansion of the West, during the second half of this century, has displaced the South as the principal consumer of New England products, as well as the dominant power in American politics.
These people had a keen sense of legality, sharpened at times by material interests. This made them faithful to law and gov- ernment ; but it also led them, at least once, to strain the Con- stitution for the protection of slave property, going beyond its letter as well as its spirit.1 When their representative in Con- gress, separating himself from his Northern associates, voted
1 Ticknor was firm in his convictions against antislavery agitation. '"Life," vol. ii. pp. 217, 218, 265, 272, 285, 286, 446.
SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 7
for the Fugitive Slave law in 1850, he suffered no reproach or loss of support from the mass of his party in the city ; and the willing agents in its execution lost no favor, social or political. Longfellow wrote at this time, Sept. 15, 1850. in his diary : —
" The day has been blackened to me by reading of the passage of the Fugi- tive Slave bill in the House, Eliot of Boston voting for it. This is a dark dis- grace to the city. If we should read in Dino Compagni that in the tenth century a citizen of Florence had given such a vote, we should see what an action he had done. But this the people of Boston cannot see in themselves ; they will uphold it."
Social pressure was freely brought to bear to enforce conform- ity in politics and arrest tendencies to radicalism, or to opinions or conduct which were contrary to the conventional standard. Men of courage who pushed moral principles into politics were stigmatized as fanatics and demagogues. A Frenchman visiting Boston in 1851 found that the mention of Sumner's name in social life made certain people shiver (frissonner^), because he was a Free Soiler, and suspected of abolitionism, though other- wise nothing ill was said of him.1 Later pages will show how this intolerant spirit went so far as to call for the withdrawal of patronage from offenders who were dependent on their earnings for the means to support their families.
There is a passage in a letter from Ticknor to Hillard relat- ing to the prison-discipline debates, of which, though curtailed in the printing, enough remains to show that the former justi- fied social exclusion as a penalty for holding unsound opinions and a means of enforcing conformity. The passage, doubtless referring to Sumner, is as follows : —
" I am sorry as you are for the effect these discussions produce upon society in Boston ; but the principles of that society are right, and its severity towards disorganizers and social democracy in all its forms is just and wise. It keeps our standard of public morals where it should be, and where you and I claim to have it, and is the circumstance which distinguishes us favorably from New York and the other large cities of the Union, where demagogues are permitted to rule by the weak tolerance of men who know better, and are stronger than they are. In a society where public opinion governs, unsound opinions must be rebuked ; and you can no more do that while you treat their apostles with
1 J. J. Ampere's " Promenade en Amerique," vol. ii. p. 36. Ampere, during his so- journ, was frequently at Ticknor's, which readily accounts for the chill which came on at the mention of Sumner's name.
8 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-60.
favor, than you can discourage bad books at the moment you are buying and circulating them." l
Social unity was assisted by old organizations and clubs. The Massachusetts Historical Society, founded in 1791, has long done good service in preserving the details of national and local his- tory,2 and its succession of presidents, distinguished by the names of Savage, Winthrop, and Ellis, are an assurance of genuine merit in investigation.3 The Wednesday Club, its members meeting at one another's houses, which in 1877 completed its first century, has at all times enrolled names honorably known in science, litera- ture, and public life.4 The Corps of Cadets, a militia company with a regimental organization older than the Revolution, has drilled young lawyers, doctors, and merchants in the positions of a soldier, some of whom fleshed their maiden swords on the battle- fields of the Civil War. Children were then taught dancing by the elder Papanti, as now by his son ; and his hall, now resorted to only by youths, was before 1850 often the scene of assemblies where one might see the wit, beauty, and fashion of the town.
The household life of Boston at this time was most attractive. Travellers have noted the " perfect politeness, courtesy, and good breeding " which prevailed in it. The Virginian,5 who had been taught that there was nothing good in Yankees, and the English- man,6 who was filled with equal prejudice against all Americans,
1 "Life" of Ticknor, vol. ii. p. 235. The social exclusion practised by Ticknor on Sumner and antislavery men is mentioned in Adams's " Biography " of Dana, vol. i. pp. 128, 176, 177. It will be seen that Judge William Kent, though as ill-affected toward anti- slavery agitation, thought the attempt of Ticknor, the Eliots, and others to ostracize Sumner, "unwise and unfair."
2 Its first centenary was commemorated Jan. 24, 1891, with an oration by T. W. Higginson, and addresses by Rev. George E. Ellis and Robert C. Winthrop; and the public exercises were followed by a reception at Mr. Winthrop's house.
3 Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Henry Wilson, the last an historian as well as Senator and Vice-President, were not admitted to the Society. Richard Hildreth's " History of the United States " did not bring him membership while he remained in Bos- ton, but after his removal to New York he was made a corresponding member. Sumner was not chosen a member till a few weeks before his death. James Freeman Clarke's membership came late in his life, though his knowledge of history was always wide and accurate. All these were antislavery agitators.
4 Mr. Winthrop on the occasion, May 9, 1877, described the distinguished membership at different periods. R. C. Winthrop's " Addresses and Speeches," vol. iii. p. 459. There has been also the Thursday Club, of which Mr. Everett was at one time President, and the Friday Club, to the latter of which Mr. Ticknor belonged. At the Thursday Club the cus- tom has been to read papers on scientific subjects.
5 An account of William Wirt's impressions during his sojourn in Boston in 1829 is given in his " Life " by J. P. Kennedy.
6 Dickens's "American Notes." The best description of the literary life of Boston at this period, given by any foreign visitor, is bjr John G. Kohl, a German, in his paper
SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 9
were alike charmed as soon as they crossed its threshold ; and both bore cordial tribute to the hospitality, heartiness, and refine- ment which they found wherever they went. The houses were rich in the appointments already noted. Host and hostess presided with dignity and grace ; and the young women, distinguished by intelligence, style, winsomeness, and often beauty, could play well their part in any society in the world. Foremost among these last were the daughters of Mr. Appleton, whose names have found a place in books of travel and fiction. Foreigners felt the charm of this circle, which remained in the memory for half a century as fresh as yesterday's feast.1
Such a society was like that of ancient Athens more than any other modern city can show, — intellectual, consolidated, des- potic over individual thought, insisting on uniformity of belief in matters which were related to its interests, and frowning upon novelties which struck at its prestige. It exists now only in tradition. The changes wrought by the Civil War and the great increase in numbers have made a new city, no longer provincial, less interesting than it was, but more tolerant, and with no one set to call itself " society." The families which once controlled city and State, which dictated opinion and put antislavery men in Coventry, have vanished. If they survive in a few names, they exercise no perceptible influence on the course of events. It is difficult, with the transformation which has come from devas- tating fires, from new or widened streets, and the conversion, in whole districts, of dwellings into warehouses, to find old landmarks ; but it is harder still to find traces of that society which had cast out Wendell Phillips, well blooded as the best, and which now laid its heavy hand on Sumner, Palfrey, and Dana.
George Ticknor's house, at the corner of Park and Beacon streets, facing the English elms on the Common, was the centre of the literary society of the time.2 He had retired from a pro-
entitled " The American Athens," contributed to Bentley's Miscellany, and reprinted in " Littell's Living Age," Jan. 18, 1862, and H. T. Tuckerman's "America and her Commen- tators," pp. 311-318. His visit was made in 1857.
1 A. Gallenga's "Episodes of my Second Life." Lord Morpeth enjoyed this society very much, as his diary in manuscript shows. Foreigners, however, who were charmed by the good manners and refinement, could not be expected to detect the features which most concern this narrative.
2 He began to live in this house in 1829. A picture of the library is given in the "Memorial History of Boston," vol. iii. p. 662, and in "Life" of Ticknor, vol. i. p. 388. As to visitors at the house, see " Life " of Ticknor, vol. i. p. 391; vol. ii. p. 482.
10 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-60.
fessor's chair at Harvard, had ample leisure at command, had collected a superb library, and he and his family spoke French and German as easily as English. He had, as his journals show, studied in the best of foreign schools, and had seen the best of foreign life. Both before and after he took his house on Park Street, his home was for more than a generation the resort of all that was most distinguished in the culture of the period ; and he was assisted in this refined hospitality by one who was his peer in accomplishments, and who graced the society of Boston and Cambridge from youth to age. There came foreigners of high rank or repute, who from time to time visited the city, — among them, in 1824, Lafayette, and four young Englishmen, Wortley, Stanley, Labouchere, and Denison ; and later, Tocque- ville, Morpeth, Dickens, Lyell, and Thackeray. There as a daily visitor was Hillard, almost the peer of the brilliant conversers of Holland and Lansdowne houses in their palmiest days, or of those who gathered round Samuel Rogers in St. James's Place. But with all this, and not overlooking his review of Spanish lit- erature, it is doing no injustice to Ticknor's rank in letters to say, that, unlike his contemporaries in Boston, — Bancroft, Prescott, Longfellow, and Holmes, — he has as an author left nothing of permanent interest to mankind. His social success abroad has been noted as a mystery, and referred, not to wit or warmth of heart, but rather to his acquaintance with good form, and a cer- tain skill as raconteur. He was cold by nature, unsympathetic with the masses, and without faith in the future of the republi- can system. He was no exception, however, in a class always distinguished for public spirit ; and he deserves honorable men- tion as a benefactor, by gifts and personal service, of the Public Library of Boston. To be admitted to such a house as Mr. Ticknor's was a test of culture and good breeding ; to be shut out from it was an exclusion from what was most coveted in a social way by scholars and gentlemen who combined the fruits of study and travel.
The features of Boston life which have been here indicated show something of the environment of a young man of Sumner's position and tastes when he took his place among reformers. Further proof and illustrations of what that life was will be given in the course of this narrative.
Mt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 11
CHAPTER XXX.
ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. — ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. — FRIENDSHIPS. — PERSONAL LIFE. — 1845-1850.
IN the midst of the applause and criticism which followed his Fourth of July oration, Sumner was called to mourn the death of his beloved teacher and friend, Judge Story. He prepared, in connection with Hillard, the resolutions which Mr. Webster presented at the meeting of the Suffolk bar, held in Boston, in recognition of the event,1 and was placed on the committee ap- pointed to consider and determine some proper tribute of respect to the deceased.2 He was present at the private funeral, which took place at the house of his friend, and joined with the kindred in following the remains to Mount Auburn. There he lingered, standing by the fresh grave, or by the graves of the Judge's and his own friends, till the evening bell gave warning that the gate was to be closed. Death had set its seal on a friendship in which neither had aught to regret or forgive. The same evening, as he returned from the cemetery, Sumner began his " Tribute of Friendship " to Judge Story, which he gave to the printer three days later.3 It is a noble commemoration of Story as judge, author, and teacher, tender in tone and fully appreciative of his character and labors. It was perhaps well that death should sever the relation at this point of time ; for Judge Story, with his conservative temperament and associations, could not be ex- pected to take kindly to the career now opening before his pupil, which was so unlike the promise of earlier years.
It had been Judge Story's desire that Sumner should take his place as professor in the Law School. This had been his thought
1 Law Reporter, Boston, vol. viii. pp. 256, 258.
2 Story's " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 625. Sumner's letter to Story's biographer states other works which Judge Story had in mind. Ibid., p. 573.
3 Works, vol. i. pp. 133-148. Boston " Advertiser," Sept. 16. 1845. Law Reporter, Octo- ber, 1845, vol. viii. pp. 246-254. The tribute was extensively republished in Europe. Law Reporter, December, 1845, vol. viii. p. 382. Sumner was accustomed to call, after the Judge's death, on Mrs. Story, who removed to a house in Rowe Place, Boston.
12 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
even so early as when their relation was that of teacher and pupil. Upon his death rumor connected Sumner's name with the suc- cession ; but there were circumstances which made his selection improbable. His Fourth of July oration had shown him to be too radical in opinions to suit the conservative sentiment which then governed the corporation of Harvard College. The place was not offered to him; and it is probable that, if offered, it would not have been accepted. He had already diverged from close attention to professional studies and toils, and was standing on the edge of absorbing public agitations. He had become con- scious of new powers, and was feeling new inspirations which were quite inconsistent with the calm and steady pursuit of juris- prudence. There is some evidence that he was not indifferent to the canvass of names for the professorship, and was disturbed to find himself less regarded than formerly in the college, but none that he was inclined to detach himself from the new inter- ests and activities into which he was passing. He wrote to his brother George, Sept. 30, 1845 : —
" I doubt if the place will be offered to me. I have so many idiosyncrasies of opinion that I shall be distrusted. I am too much of a reformer in law to be trusted in a post of such commanding influence as this has now become. But beyond all this, I have my doubts whether I should accept it even if it were offered to me. I feel that I can only act as I could wish in a private station. In office my opinions will be restrained, and I shall be no longer a free man."
He cordially welcomed to the place, which remained vacant for nearly a year, Judge William Kent, " a sterling character," as Sumner described him, son of the chancellor, and always main- tained with him a most friendly intercourse and correspondence. When Judge Kent resigned after only a year's service, he ex- pressed to Sumner, in a letter, the desire that he should have the professorship, and at the same time the regret that he had not kept aloof from politics and reforms.1
The fame of Sumner's Fourth of July oration was followed by various invitations to address literary bodies as well as Peace and Antislavery meetings. At this period the New England lyceum was in full vigor. It provided a course of lectures, usually
1 Judge William Kent died Jan. 4, 1861. He was extremely conservative, and instinct- ively averse to popular agitations of any kind. He was a candidate on the Bell-Everett electoral ticket, in 1860. He was very refined and scholarly, and thoroughly sincere and high-minded. Notwithstanding their differences of opinion, he and Sumner were in most cordial personal sympathy.
^t. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 13
ten, each from a different person, who during an hour was ex- pected to instruct and entertain an audience with some theme relating to history, biography, society, or the conduct of life, and who received for the service, besides expenses for the journey, a fee of ten dollars, — sometimes, though rarely, one of fifteen or twenty or twenty-five. Among speakers who were then in most request for such occasions were Henry Ward Beecher, E. H. Chapin, R. W. Emerson, E. P. Whipple, and Dr. 0. W. Holmes. Not only clergymen, and those who ranked distinctively as lite- rary men, but also lawyers and statesmen, were easily persuaded to appear with some favorite topic before sympathetic and in- telligent audiences. Of such were David Paul Brown, Rufus Choate, R. H. Dana, Jr., and even Daniel Webster. The patrons of the lyceums were of various religious and political beliefs, but the predominant sentiment among them was strongly opposed to slavery, and friendly to moral reforms.1 While the speaker was expected not to offend the sensibilities of any considerable part of his audience, he might in the general tone of his remarks, or in some indirect way, without any challenge of his right, help to spread ideas which lay near his heart. Of this incidental priv- ilege Sumner always availed himself in his discourses on such occasions. For five years he was one of the most welcome lec- turers in the towns and cities of Massachusetts, as well as in other places in New England. This service brought him into connection with the people of the State, and drew public atten- tion to him. The young of both sexes were greatly charmed with his style and presence. In his lectures and orations at this period he got a hold on " earnest, progressive clergymen and warm-hearted, cultivated women,"2 such as no public man has ever had ; and he kept it to the last. It remained with him, as will be seen hereafter, an unfailing source of power when men governed by partisanship and expediency failed him.
Sumner first appeared before lyceums in the winter of 1845- 1846, taking for his topic " The Employment of Time." The lecture is a graceful production, intended to prompt the young to a faithful husbandry of the hours of life, dwelling on the prodi-
1 Felton, while applauding Sumner's Fourth of July oration as "a noble and manly and heroic thing," besought him to be quiet on the Peace question, and to take another subject for his lecture, thinking the good blow he had struck would be weakened by an attempt to redouble it, and anxious that he should not be identified with "the Peace men," whom he regarded as "weaklings" and "one-idead enthusiasts."
2 E. P. Whipple's "Recollections of Eminent Men," p. 216.
14 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
gious industry of certain eminent persons, — Franklin, Gibbon, Cobbett, and Scott, — with biographical details as to Cobbett, and insisting upon liberal studies as the accompaniment of the pursuit by which a livelihood is gained, with here and there hints suggestive of the pending agitation concerning slavery. It was first delivered late in 1845, was repeated in the follow- ing February in the Federal Street Theatre before the Boston Lyceum, and was not finally laid aside till the author entered on his duties as senator.1
As showing the spirit of caste which then lingered in Massa- chusetts, it may be mentioned that the lyceum at New Bedford adopted a rule excluding colored persons from its privileges. Both Sumner and Emerson, when apprised of the exclusion, withdrew their names from the advertised list of lecturers. A correspondence led to the rescinding of the obnoxious rule, and Sumner gave his lecture in that city.2
Sumner wrote to Lieber, Nov. 19, 1845 : —
" . . . Two days ago the long suspense was ended, and Everett intimated that he would accept the post of President of Harvard College which had been informally tendered to him. This is most agreeable to the friends of the col- lege. If he had refused, it would have been difficult to find a person on whom the public sympathies would unite. By this acceptance it seems to me that Everett renounces two things, — politics, and the opportunity of executing an elaborate work of literature. The duties of his office will absorb the working portion of his time for the remainder of his life."
To George Sumner, November 30 : —
"I have just read ' Consuelo.' . . . Such a work cannot fail to accomplish great good ; it will awaken emotions in bosoms which could not be reached except by a pen of such commanding interest as George Sand's."
To Mittermaier, Jan. 12, 1846 : —
" I cannot forget your beautiful town and the pleasant days which I passed there, enriched by your society and friendship. Would that I could fly across the sea, and again ramble among those venerable ruins which hang over your house ! "
To Rev. R. C. Waterston, May 29, on receiving a gift of Sir Samuel Romilly's Life : —
i It is printed in his Works, vol. i. pp. 184-213. Sumner did not include this lecture in his two volumes published in 1850, and used it again in the winter of 1850-51 at different places in the State, — as at Newton, Stoughton, Greenfield, and Deerfield.
2 Works, vol. i. p. 160. Nineteen years later, for the same reason he refused to deliver a lecture at Albany. Works, vol. viii. p. 402.
^t. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 15
" Romilly has always seemed to me the model man in my profession. He was a great lawyer, without narrowness or pedantry ; he was one of the few who thoroughly understood the law, and have been willing to reform it ; he was a lover of learning and humanity."
To Theodore Parker, June 8 : —
" I call for the printing of the admirable discourse of yesterday,1 which I listened to with breathless interest. You gave a fresh turn to the great kaleidoscope, revealing new shapes and forms of the unutterable atrocity of war."
To William F. Ghanning, September 26 : — ■
" I am happy in your sympathy. I often think of your father's2 confidence and kindness to me, and regret now that he has gone that I did not see him more. . . . His tracts on the Duties of the Free States passed through the press under my eye."
To Lord Morpeth, October 1 : —
li This note comes so soon after my last, to announce the coming of Ban- croft as our minister. You know his genius, his brilliancy, and his eccen- tricity. With little or no favor in Boston among his neighbors, he has risen to one of the pinnacles of his party. His wife you will remember, though you did not know her much. She is refined, intelligent, good, — a pleasant example of American womanhood. I am anxious through you to commend her in such manner as may be proper to the kindness of the Duchess of Sutherland. I think she will be more attractive than any American lady who has ever been in England. Her worth of character will commend her to your sister more than her station or personal graces."
Sumner contributed to the Law Reporter in June, 1846,3 a biographical sketch of John Pickering, in which he dwelt upon the latter's studies in philology, and his union of professional and literary labors. The sketch is inspired by a strong personal regard, which was again shown in his eulogy on " The Scholar" pronounced a few months later. It is a beautiful tribute, and in its kind one of Sumner's best papers.
Sumner delivered the oration before the Phi Beta Kappa • Society of Harvard College at its anniversary, Aug. 27, 1846.4 It was a tribute to four eminent graduates of the college who had recently died, and was entitled, " The Scholar (John Pickering) ; the Jurist (Joseph Story) ; the Artist (Washington Allston) ; and the Philanthropist (William E. Channing)." The first two
1 On the Mexican War. 3 Vol. ix. pp. 49-66. Works, vol. i. pp. 214-240.
2 William Ellery Channing. 4 Works, vol. i. pp. 241-302.
16 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
he had already commemorated by his pen, and all were his per- sonal friends, though much older than himself. He had known Pickering at the bar and in private life ; he had made frequent visits to Allston's studio ; he had drawn moral inspiration from Channing ; and he had been Story's beloved pupil. To describe their characters and to set forth their works and relations to mankind was a grateful service ; and it was well performed. Among all Sumner's addresses on special occasions, this one is the most attractive to the reader ; and it commanded at the time, more than any other, the assent and favor of his audience. It is mellow in tone and lofty in sentiment, and less calculated in style and thought to provoke criticism and antagonism than some of his addresses and speeches. In no other effort of his life was his success so great in moving the hearts of aspiring young men. He was never able in such efforts to suspend altogether the treatment of his favorite topics ; and as he him- self afterwards wrote, "he took advantage of the occasion to express himself freely, especially on the two great questions of slavery and war. In the sensitive condition of public sentiment at that time, such an effort would have found small indulgence if he had not placed himself behind four such names. While commemorating the dead, he was able to uphold living truth."1
Sumner in his Fourth of July oration, and in other earlier addresses, had spoken to miscellaneous audiences ; but he was on this occasion to address one which represented the best cul- ture of the period. Scholars, writers, and professional men now heard his voice for the first time, and they were keen to observe whether the reputation he had won as a public speaker was de- served. The address was delivered in the First Church at Cam- bridge, the place where the college exercises were then held. The procession of members of the Society and other graduates, entering the church at noon, filled the platform and centre aisle and the pews on either side, while ladies and the general public crowded the other parts. Among those on the platform were Edward Everett, who had recently taken the office of President of the college ; his predecessor, Josiah Quincy, just leaving it ; John Quincy Adams, Robert C. Winthrop, Governor McDowell, of Virginia ; William Kent, recently appointed professor in the Law School ; and Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who was the poet of the occasion. The orator was never more attractive in
i Works, vol. i. p. 243.
JEt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 17
person than on this day. He wore, as was his custom at this period, a blue dress-coat with gilt buttons, buff waistcoat, white trousers and gaiters.1 He spoke with self-possession and a consciousness of power, and his delivery and voice, unfamiliar to many present, interested all. The oration was in his mind, and his memory was unaided by notes. His heart was in his theme, and he felt assured of the sympathy of his audience. Once in his earnestness he turned to the President, who was sitting behind him, and for some minutes kept on speaking with his back to the audience, whom he had for the time forgotten. It was observed that while he was describing the character and work of the four illustrious men, his thought was all the while on the causes of peace and freedom which he had espoused. One report says : " He spoke without notes, and with a clear and distinct elocution and easy manner, enchanting the attention of the audience for two hours. He was frequently interrupted by impassioned applause, and carried with him throughout the earnest attention and apparently the sympathy of the audience." 2 A large part of the audience were without seats, but their atten- tion was unwearied to the end. As he concluded, many gath- ered about him to give their congratulations, — among them the " venerable Ex-President Adams, who then attended the services of the Society for the last time.
This address affected materially the judgment of the educated class concerning Sumner. Many who, though familiar with his reputation as a public speaker, had hitherto distrusted his ability in other directions, now admitted his intellectual power. Rarely if ever has an academic address made so deep an impres- sion on the thoughts and aspirations of youth. On the evening of the same day Longfellow wrote in his journal : " Phi Beta Kappa. A grand, elevated, eloquent oration from Sumner. He spoke it with great ease and elegance ; and was from beginning to end triumphant." Rev. Edward Everett Hale wrote, Septem- ber 4, to Sumner : " You must have been delighted, when all was
1 Right Rev. F. D. Huntington said, in 1886, that Sumner looked then " Apollo-like, with the most distinguished presence of any one of his age in Massachusetts." He was described in 1850 as "wearing a dark -blue coat, a white vest, crossed by a broad, black watch- guard." In Warrington's "Pen Portraits," p. 200, it is said that " he was always pictur- esquely dressed."
2 Nathan Hale, Jr., in the Boston "Advertiser," Aug. 28, 1846. Boston "Atlas," August 28. E. P. Whipple, in the Boston " Courier," August 28, noted "the vitality " of the oration as pre-eminently deserving attention, and how " it came warm from the orator's own nature in the very language of thought and feeling."
VOL. III. 2
18 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
over, to remember how entirely you commanded and swayed your audience. But at the time I thought you were unconscious of everything but your subject." One of the class graduating in 1846, who heard the address, George F. Hoar, wrote in 1883 :
" There was a large audience in the church. Mr. Sumner delivered the whole address, which I think took nearly or quite three hours. I had not, of course, at twenty years of age, heard many of the great orations of great orators. But I had listened to Choate's Law School address and Everett's inaugural, and had been in the audience more than once when Webster had spoken. Sumner held and delighted his hearers to the close. His magnificent person was in the prime of its beauty. His deep voice had not then the huskiuess which it had in his later years, when a certain appearance of weariness was manifest. He never got back the old magnetism after Brooks's attack upon him. There were many passages in the discourse which, I think, I could repeat now if it had never been printed, and which I remember with his look and voice as he spoke them. I have read the address many times since; and many of its rounded periods and souorous seuteuces, especially the opening passage, the sentences, 'Lais and Phryne have fled,' etc.,1 and indeed the whole eulogy on Allstou, make me a boy again as I recall them."
The admiration of Sumner's person and eloquence was not confined to his own sex, but was even greater with the other. 'One young lady described forty years later her impressions as she listened to him : 2 —
" He seemed to me a new Demosthenes or Cicero, even like a Grecian god, as he stood on the platform. I thought him the handsomest and the finest looking man I had ever seen. His presence was superb, a trifle haughty per- haps ; but that only added to his grandeur. I remember the remark of a lady who was sitting beside me, that she was already in love with his hair. It was heavy, and fell over one side of his brow."
Other contemporary testimony shows the immediate effect produced. The public exercises at the church were followed by a dinner of the Society, where Ex-President Adams offered as a toast, " The memory of the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist; and not the memory, but the long life of the kindred spirit who has this day embalmed them all." Mr. Adams, while questioning Sumner's statement that Allston de- clined to paint " battle-pieces," commended warmly the oration a few days later in a letter, in which he forecast the orator's relations to existing and impending controversies : —
i "Works, vol. i. p. 282.
2 The lady's father, a Democrat of the Jackson school, and a solid citizen of Middlesex County, wrote in his journal a full description of the oration and the scene.
Mt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 19
" It is a gratification to me to have the opportunity to repeat the thanks which I so cordially gave you at the close of your oration of last Thursday, and of which the sentiment offered hy me at the dinner-table was but an additional pulsation from the same heart. I trust I may now congratulate you on the felicity, first of your selection of your subject, and secondly of its consummation in the delivery. . . . The pleasure with which I listened to your discourse was inspired far less by the success and all but universal acceptance and applause of the present moment than by the vista of the future which is opened to my view. Casting my eyes backward no further than the 4th of July of last year, when you set all the vipers of Alecto a-hissing by proclaim- ing the Christian law of universal peace and love, and then casting them for- ward, perhaps not much further, but beyond my own allotted time, I see you have a mission to perform. I look from Pisgah to the Promised Land ; you must enter upon it. To the motto on my seal [Alteri sceculi] add Delenda est servitus."
Letters of warm and enthusiastic approval came from friends, including; W. H. Prescott and Chancellor Kent. Dr. Howe wrote : —
" I cannot say that I love you better than I did before I heard your tri- umphal discourse, but certainly I feel prouder of your friendship than ever. As I saw how you swayed and thrilled your audience, I did not feel, as I some- times do, Would that I could so lead a host of hearts ! but I rejoiced that no other but you was doing it. Your tone was excellent. I sat in the pew next the door, and heard every syllable distinctly from the first to the last. With the exception of one or two gesticulations, your manner was most beautiful. Mrs. Howe was completely surprised and carried away. She had no idea that you could do anythiug like it. For the first quarter of an hour she did not dare to look at you, dreading some mistake or failure ; but when she did look, she lost all fear for you. It was a most delightful day for me; and as I thought of the happiness and pride you were giving to me, I could re- alize what must be the emotions of your mother, sister, and the many dear friends who sat first with beating, anxious hearts, then with gratified and triumphant assurance that others would know something of that worth of which they know so much."
Mr. Everett wrote, September 5, thanking him for his " most magnificent address, — an effort certainly of unsurpassed felicity and power," though questioning its application of peace princi- ples. After receiving it in pamphlet he wrote : " I read it last evening with a renewal of the delight with which I heard it. Should you never do anything else, you have done enough for fame ; but you are — as far as these public efforts are concerned — at the commencement of a career destined, I trust, to last for long years of ever increasing usefulness and honor." Felton wrote : " Mr. Everett spoke of your oration in such a way that
20 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
I remember the very words. He said, ' It was an amazingly splendid affair. I never heard it surpassed ; I don't know that I ever heard it equalled.' Now, Charley, you may well be proud of having drawn forth from those stony lips such human tones of speech." Whittier wrote, November 3 : " I thank thee from my heart for thy P. B. K. oration ; it is a noble word for the right. God give thee strength and nerve and patience for the practical acting out of that word ! " Of the classics Sumner thus spoke : —
" The classics possess a peculiar charm as models, I might say masters, of composition and form. In the contemplation of these august teachers we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the early voice of the world, hetter remembered and more cherished than any intermediate voice, — as the language of childhood still haunts us, when the utterances of later years are effaced from the mind. But they show the rudeness of the world's childhood before passion yielded to the sway of reason and the affections ; they want purity, righteousness, and that highest charm which is found in love to God and man. Not in the frigid philosophy of the Porch and the Academy are we to seek these; not in the marvellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato ; not in the resounding Hue of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander pillowed his head ; not in the animated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at the Olympian games ; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance ; not in the fitful philosophy and boastful eloquence of Tully ; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. To these we give admiration ; but they cannot be our highest teachers. In none of these is the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these classics has been in constant contention with the Sermon on the Mount, and with those two sublime commandments on which ' hang all the law and the prophets.7 The strife is still pending, and who shall say when it will end ? Heathenism, which possessed itself of such Siren forms, is not yet exorcised. Even now it exerts a powerful sway, im- buing youth, coloring the thought of manhood, and haunting the meditation of age ; widening still in sphere, it embraces nations as well as individuals, until it seems to sit supreme.
"Our own productions, though yielding to the ancient in arrangement, method, beauty of form, and freshness of illustration, are superior in truth, delicacy, and elevation of sentiment, — above all, in the recognition of that peculiar revelation, the Brotherhood of Man. Vain are eloquence and poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth. Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the other all the lore of antiquity, with its accumulating glosses and commentaries, and the latter will be light in the balance. Greek poetry has been likened to the song of the nightingale, as she sits in the rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her thick-warbled notes ; but these notes will not compare in sweetness with those teachings of charity which belong to our Christian inheritance."
jEt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 21
His memories of Italy are recalled in his mention of Allston's visit to that country : —
" Tumiug his back upon Paris and the greatness of the Empire, he directed his steps towards Italy, the enchanted ground of literature, history, and art, — strewn with richest memorials of the past, filled with scenes memorable in the progress of man, teaching by the pages of philosophers and historians, vocal with the melody of poets, ringing with the music which St. Cecilia protects, glowing with the living marble and canvas; beneath a sky of heavenly purity and brightness, with the sunsets which Claude has painted; parted by the Apennines, early witnesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civilization; surrounded py the snow-capped Alps, and the blue, classic waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The deluge of war submerging Europe had subsided here, and our artist took up his peaceful abode iu Rome, the modern home of art. Strange vicissitude of condition ! Rome, sole surviving city of autiquity, once disdain- ing all that could be wrought by the cunning hand of sculpture, who has com- manded the world by her arms, her jurisprudence, her church, now sways it further by her arts. Pilgrims from afar, where her eagles, her praetors, her interdicts never reached, become willing subjects of this new empire ; and the Vatican, stored with the priceless remains of antiquity, and the touching creations of modern art, has succeeded to the Vatican whose thunders inter- mingled with the strifes of modern Europe."
Of Channing he said : —
" With a soul kindling intensely at every story of magnanimous virtue, at every deed of self-sacrifice in a righteous cause, his clear Christian judgment saw the mockery of what is called military glory, whether in ancient thunder- bolts of war or in the career of modern conquest. He saw that the fairest flowers cannot bloom in soil moistened by human blood ; that to overcome evil by bullets and bayonets is less great and glorious than to overcome it by good ; that the courage of the camp is inferior to this Christian fortitude found in patience, resignation, and forgiveness of evil, as the spirit which scourged and crucified the Saviour was less divine than that which mur- mured, ' Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' With fear- less pen he arraigned that giant criminal, Napoleon Bonaparte. Witnesses flocked from all his scenes of blood ; and the pyramids of Egypt, the coast of Palestine, the plains of Italy, the snows of Russia, the fields of Austria, Prussia, Spain, all Europe sent forth uncoffined hosts to bear testimony against the glory of their chief. Never before, in the name of humanity and freedom, was grand offender arraigned by such a voice. The sentence of degradation which Channing has passed, confirmed by coming generations, will darken the name of the warrior more than any defeat of his arms or com- pelled abdication of his power.
" These causes Channing upheld and commended with admirable elo- quence, both of tongue and pen. Though abounding in beauty of thought and expression, he will be judged less by single ]jassages, sentences, or phrases than by the continuous and harmonious treatment of his subject. And yet everywhere the same spirit is discerned. What he said was an effluence rather than a composition. His style was not formal or architectural in shape
22 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
or proportion, but natural and flowing. Others seem to construct, to build; he bears us forward on an unbroken stream. If we seek a parallel fur him as writer, we must turn our backs upon England, and repair to France. Medi- tating on the glowing thought of Pascal, the persuasive sweetness of Fenelon, the constant and comprehensive benevolence of the Abbe Saint Pierre, we may be reminded of Charming. . . . His eloquence had not the character and fashion of forensic effort or parliamentary debate ; it mounted above these, iuto an atmosphere unattempted by the applauded orators of the world. Whenever he spoke or wrote, it was with loftiest purpose, as his works attest, — not for public display, not to advance himself, not on any question of pecuniary interest, not under any worldly temptation, but to promote the love of God ami man. Here are untried founts of truest inspiration. Elo* quence has been called action ; but it is something more. It is that divine and ceaseless energy which saves aud helps mankind. It cannot assume its highest form in personal pursuit of dishonest guardians, or selfish contention for a crown, — not in defence of a murderer, or invective hurled at a conspira- tor. I would not overstep the proper modesty of this discussion, nor would I disparage the genius of the great masters; but all must join in admitting that no rhetorical skill or oratorical power can elevate these lower earthly things to the natural heights on which Channing stood, when he pleaded for freedom and peace."
His conclusion was as follows : —
" Thus have I attempted, humbly and affectionately, to bring before you the images of our departed brothers, while I dwelt on the great causes in which their lives were revealed. Servauts of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love, they have ascended to the great Source of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love. Though dead, they yet speak, informing the understanding, strength- ening the sense of justice, refining the tastes, enlarging the sympathies. The body dies ; but the page of the Scholar, the interpretation of the Jurist, the creation of the Artist, the beneficence of the Philanthropist cannot die.
" I have dwelt upon their lives and characters, less in grief for what we have lost than in gratitude for what we possessed so long, and still retain, in their precious example. Proudly recollecting her departed children, Alma Mater may well exclaim, in those touching words of parental grief, that she would not give her dead sons for any living sons in Christendom. Pickering, Story, Allston, Channing, — a grand quaternion ! Each in his peculiar sphere was foremost in his country. Each might have said, what the modesty of Demosthenes did not forbid him to boast, that through him his country had been crowned abroad. Their labors were wide as Scholarship, Jurispru- dence, Art, Humanity, and have found acceptance wherever these are recog- nized. Their lives, which overflow with instruction, teach one persuasive lesson to all alike, of every calling aud pursuit, — not to live for ourselves alone. They lived for Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love. Turning from the strifes of the world, the allurements of office, and the rage for gain, they con- secrated themselves to the pursuit of excellence, and each, in his own sphere, to beneficent labor. They "were all philanthropists; for the labors of all were directed to the welfare and happiness of man.
Mt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 23
" In their presence, how truly do we feel the insignificance of office and wealth, which men so hotly pursue ! What is office, and what is wealth"? — expressions and representatives of what is present and fleeting only, investing the possessor with a hrief and local regard. Let this not be exaggerated ; it must not he confounded with the serene fame which is the reflection of gener- ous labors in great causes. The street lights, within the circle of their nightly glimmer, seein to outshine the distant stars, observed of men in all lands and times; but gas-lamps are not to be mistaken for celestial luminaries. They who live for wealth and the things of this world follow shadows, neglecting realities eternal on earth and in heaven. After the perturbations of life, all its accumulated possessions must be resigned, except those only which have been devoted to God and mankind. What we do for ourselves perishes with this mortal dust ; what we do for others lives coeval with the benefaction. Worms may destroy the body, but they will not consume such a fame. Struggles of the selfish crowd, clamors of a false patriotism, suggestions of a sordid ambi- tion, cannot obscure that commanding duty which enjoins perpetual labor for the welfare of the whole human family, without distinction of country, color, or race. In this work, Knowledge, Jurisprudence, Art, Humanity, all are blessed ministers. More puissant than the sword, they will lead mankind from the bondage of error into that service which alone is freedom.
"The brothers we commemorate join in summons to this gladsome obe- dience. Their examples have voice. Go forth into the many mansions of the house of life. Scholar ! store them with learning. Jurist ! strengthen them with justice. Artist! adorn them with beauty. Philanthropist! fill them with love. Be servants of truth, each in his vocation, — sincere, pure, earnest, enthusiastic. A virtuous enthusiasm is self- forgetful and noble. It is the grand inspiration yet vouchsafed to man. Like Pickering, blend humility with learning. Like Story, ascend above the present, in place and time. Like Allston, regard fame only as the eternal shadow of excellence. Like Channing, plead for the good of man. Cultivate alike the wisdom of experi- ence and the wisdom of hope. Mindful of the future, do not neglect the past; awed by the majesty of antiquity, turn not with indifference from the new. True wisdom looks to the ages before, as well as behind. Like the Janus of the Capitol, one front regards the past, rich with experience, with memories, with priceless traditions of virtue; the other is directed to the All Hail Here- after, richer still with transcendent hopes and unfulfilled prophecies.
" We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient divinities of Violence and Wrong are retreating before the light of a better day. The sun is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed by those images of animal rage, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Sagit- tarius, but beaming with the mild radiance of those heavenly signs, Faith, Hope, and Charity. The age of Chivalry is gone ; an age of Humanity has come. The Horse, whose importance, more than human, gave its name to that early period of gallantry and war, now yields the foremost place to Man. In serving him, in studying his elevation, in helping his welfare, in doing him good, are fields of bloodless triumph, nobler far than any in which Bayard or Du Guesclin conquered. Here are spaces of labor wide as the world, lofty as heaven. Let me say, then, in the benison once bestowed upon the youthful knight, — Scholar! Jurist! Artist! Philanthropist! hero
24 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
of a Christian age, companion of a celestial knighthood, ' Go forth, be brave, loyal, and successful!7
" And may it be our office to light a fresh beacon-fire on the venerable walls of Harvard, sacred to Truth, to Christ, and to the Church, — to Truth Immortal, to Christ the Comforter, to the Holy Church Universal. Let the flame pass from steeple to steeple, from hill to hill, from island to island, from continent to continent, till the long lineage of fires illumines all the nations of the earth, animating them to the holy contests of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love."
Sumner on February 1847 delivered before the Mercantile Library Association a lecture on " White Slavery in the Barbary States," and afterwards repeated it before many lyceums in the State.1 It gives an account of the efforts of European govern- ments and our own to abolish Algerine slavery, of the expe- riences of captives, their heroic endeavors to escape, and the generous sympathies which their cause inspired in Christian na- tions. It abounds in references to authorities and extracts from them, of which many must have been omitted in delivery. The lecture, however, had another than a literary intent. It was in fact, without its purpose being expressly stated, intended as a parallel between the slavery of white people in Algiers and the slavery of the blacks in the United States ; and the object of the lecture was clear enough to the audience. The lyceums of the period were generally under the management of active and intelligent young men, who were themselves inclined to, or tolerant of, antislavery opinions. Other popular lecturers, like Beecher and Chapin, were accustomed, in the general tone of remark or an occasional allusion, to stimulate antislavery opin- ion ; but no one had ventured so far in this direction as Sumner now went in this lecture. He drew attention to the geographi- cal analogies between the African and the American slavehold- ing regions, and to the incidents of Algerine slavery, which none could fail to recognize as belonging also to American slavery. What was said of escapes from the former applied equally well to the fugitive slaves from the Southern States, in whose behalf there was at the time an intense interest. The various apologies for the extinct barbarism of northern Africa, which were urged centuries ago in its behalf, were precisely the same which were
1 Works, vol. i. pp. 385-485. Gerrit Smith was so much interested in the lecture that he sent fifty dollars to Joshua Leavitt, with a view to supplying a copy to every professional man in New England.
Mt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 25
being urged in behalf of American slavery at this time. Sumner wrote of the lecture many years after : " This was another at- tempt to expose slavery before a promiscuous audience, at a time when the subject was too delicate to be treated directly. . . . Professedly historical in character, and carefully avoiding any discussion of slavery in our country, it escaped censure, although jealous defenders of compromise were disturbed. Others were pleased to find their sentiments against slavery represented in the lecture room."1v Josiah Quincy wrote, May 15, 1847, after reading the lecture : " The perusal once commenced could not be remitted until it was closed, so interesting were the details, so just the reflections, so noble the spirit, and so happy its adapta- tion. It is alike honorable to the heart and head of its author." C. F. Adams wrote a notice of the address for his paper, " The Boston Whig." 2 Like others of Sumner's friends, he had dis- sented from some of the broadest affirmations of the latter's Fourth of July oration, and in this notice he remarked im- provement in the orator's style and method, which would make his appeals more persuasive with practical men. He said : " There is the same glow in the style and richness of illustration that has marked all his preceding performances, whilst with the same high moral tone is blended greater caution than formerly in the statement of propositions which may give rise to dispute." An illustrated edition of the " White Slavery " was published in March, 1853,3 at the instance of Mrs. Stowe, who had become interested in it while preparing her " Key " to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." She wrote, Nov. 7, 1852 : —
"Last evening I sat up and read with breathless interest your Algerine Slavery. It appears to me to he fitted to a high class of mind, just that class which it is exceedingly difficult to reach. Therefore I am certain that as an element of this struggle it should not be overlooked. I do not imagine that it will be popularly called for; its refined irony may not strike the unobservant eye of those, who, as Browne says, ' need something as visible as a tow string to connect an inference with a premise/ On this latter point alone I am in doubt,* but still think, in the scarcity of material to influence refined mind, we must lay hold of this. Brother Henry is going to send to New York for the match engravings representing African and Algerian slavery, and those re- duced will form admirable illustrations."
i Works, vol. i. p. 384.
2 January 3, 1848.
3 Published by John P. Jewett & Co., with original designs by Billings. The lecture was reviewed in the London " Athenaeum," April 16, 1853.
26 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Sumner wrote to Mrs. George Bancroft (her husband being then in England as United States minister), Jan. 1, 1847: —
"Mr. Everett seems very unhappy in his place. The duties press upon him, and he foregoes society and recreation of all kiuds. I fear that he has failed to make such an impression at Cambridge as will make it agreeable for him to stay."
To Lord Morpeth, January 31 : —
"Emerson lives at Concord, about twenty miles from Boston, passing a studious or rather sylvan life, walking much in the fields and woods, and pen- cilling thoughts that occur in his rambles. He is simple in his habits, pure in his character, most poetic and refined in his moods of thought. He is not a man of the world, and yet there are few who draw attention by the pen whose conversation and personal presence commend them more than his. His pub- lished essays were first read as lectures in Boston, and his silver-tongued de- livery charmed many who took little interest in what he said. He has many warm admirers hereabout, — not many, however, among those whom you saw in Boston. I have rarely met him in society, but occasionally receive a call from him, or encounter him in the street. He is a constant correspondent of Car- lyle. He has just published a little volume of poetry, which you will not fail to read. It is the most original, native, autochthonous poetry of America : ' Each and All ' is a marvel of language ; so is the first half of ' Threnody.' "
To Mrs. Bancroft, February 28 : —
" Your three little sheets were full of pleasant tidings. I was happy to hear from you under your own hand, as a token of friendship, and was right glad to know of your success in London. I followed you in imagination to those circles which you described so well, and which must have such a zest both for you and your husband. I once heard a queen's speech, and was much struck by her reading, which was exquisite in voice, emphasis, and intonation. What shall I send you across the sea ? Our little Boston can have very little to interest you. A few evenings ago, as I looked into the Howard Theatre to see for a few minutes the Vienna dancers (a delightful spectacle), 1 espied your two boys1 together in the pit, and most intent upou the scene. I desire to see them, and shall always be glad to converse with them, or do anything for them within my power. But what can I do ? I am a lone man, and am otherwise much cut off from spheres of influence. Other pens will doubtless tell you of society here ; mine cannot, for I see nothing of it. Fashion has set her seal upon Agassiz's lectures on the animal creation, and on glaciers. . . . William Story has published a volume 2 which would have seemed better if it had not appeared by the side of Emerson's. It has beauty, and is full of the spirit of humanity. He has also published a grave and valuable law book on the Law of Sales, while the bust of his father in marble has taken its place in the Library. Poet, jurist, sculptor, musician ! "
1 William, and Alexander Bliss. 2 Poems.
JEt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 27
To Dr. Lieber, March 22 : —
"HiHard's lectures on Milton are a triumph, greater than was ever before enjoyed in Boston.1 The large Tremont Temple is crammed with an audience of fashion and intelligence, charmed by his exquisite delivery and his clear and consecutive history of Milton's life and genius. Last evening he lifted his audience to a state of rapt attention and admiration as he sketched Miltou's condition at the time of the composition of ' Paradise Lost.' . . . Kent is most acceptable to pupils and to all the professors. Prescott's ' Peru ' is printed ; he is joyous, and even talks of a mission to London. He challenges me to join him. I might if I were independent in condition ; but I must drudge, drudge, drudge. I see nothing of Nathan der Weise.2 Politics have parted us ; much displeasure has been directed against me. I could have wished it otherwise, but cannot regret anything I have done."
To Rev. James W. Thompson, Salem, April 1 : —
" The science of comparative philology, of which we find the first full ex- position, I suppose, in Adelung,3 reveals relations and affinities between lan- guages which have not before been supposed. Leibnitz thought he might invent a universal language. . When we consider what the Arabic numerals and music accomplish, it does not seem extravagant to anticipate some great triumph hereafter, not unlike that which filled the visions of the all-conquer- ing Brunswicker. It is no answer to this suggestion that we cannot now com- prehend the possibility of such an invention. In the progress of intelligence the curtain will be lifted, behind which are whole worlds of mystery. But there are practical questions which our age can comprehend : one of these is universal peace. The last age could not comprehend it ; the time had not come. I hope that the American clergy, and particularly those in whose preach- ing I am most interested, will never lose an opportunity to commend it."
In the summer of 1847 Sumner delivered an oration at Am- herst College, and later at Brown University, on " Fame and Glory."4 In tone and sentiment it followed fitly his Fourth of July oration. It assails the common judgment of mankind which awards the highest fame to success in war, questions the love of applause as a motive of conduct except as directed by sentiments of justice and benevolence, and holds up before in- genuous youtli as exemplars of true glory such benefactors of mankind as Milton, Vincent de Paul, Howard, and Clarkson.
1 These lectures were not published, and it is possible that Sumner's friendly interest in the author may have led him to estimate too highly their value.
2 Nathan Appleton.
3 The German philologist, 1732-1806.
4 Works, vol. ii. pp. 1-54. Longfellow refers to the praise of the oration in his letter, Aug. 14, 1847, — "Life," vol. iii. p. 20. After hearing it as a lecture before the Cambridge Lyceum, he wrote in his journal, Oct. 21, 1847: "A crowded, attentive audience, and a very charming discourse. He [Sumner] passed the night with us ; and Felton came up."
28 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
The address abounds in literary and historical allusions. In stating the compensations of a life, with duty as its guide and aim, he may possibly have referred to some experiences of his own. " The world with ignorant or intolerant judgment may condemn, the countenance of companion may be averted, the heart of friend may grow cold ; but the consciousness of duty done will be sweeter than the applause of the world, than the countenance of companion or the heart of friend." x
When preparing or "conning" the address, he wrote Long- fellow as follows : ■ —
At your home, Sunday, Aug. 8, 1847. Dearly beloved Henry, — I came here yesterday morning, and am mon- arch of all I survey; my right there is none to dispute. I seize a moment in the lull of the griuding labor of committing my address to memory, to send you and Fanny a benediction. I wander through the open rooms of your house, and am touched by an indescribable feeling of tenderness at the sight of those two rooms where we have mused and mourned so often together. Joy has washed from your mind those memories, but they cling to me still. I looked at the place where stood the extempore cot bedstead. I hope that is preserved ; if I ever have a home of my own, I shall claim it as an interesting memorial. Then the places where we have sat and communed, and that window-seat, — all seemed to speak to me with soft voices. Most sacred is that room to me, — more so than any other haunt of my life.2 I remember all your books as they then looked upon me gently from the shelves. Have you forgotten the verses of Suckling which we once read together ? I leave for Amherst on Tuesday, and shall be back on Friday. Let me have a note from you or Fanny. I wish I were not quite so sad as I am disposed to be. Felton says my address is very fine. Howe says it will astonish by its practical character. It is more plain, less ornate, than the others. Its title is ' Fame and Glory.' I have said nothing, however, which your ' Psalm of Life ' does not embody. One touch upon your harp sounds louder and longer than all I can do.
Ever and ever thine, C. S.
Of the coming time when other and higher standards of char- acter should prevail, he said : —
tl Then will be cherished, not those who from accident of birth, or by selfish struggle, have succeeded in winning the attention of mankind ; not those who have commanded armies in barbarous war ; not those who have exercised power or swayed empire ; not those who have made the world tributary to their luxury and wealth ; not those who have cultivated knowledge, regardless of their fellow- men. Not present fame, nor war nor power nor wealth nor knowledge, alone,
1 The Springfield "Republican," and other newspapers in western Massachusetts, gave sympathetic notices of the address, dwelling upon the matter and style, and the effect on the audience. There is a review of the oration in Whittier's " Prose Works," vol. ii. p. 85.
2 Longfellow's "Life," vol. ii. p. 92. The poet in his reply, August 14, "regretted the dismantling of that consecrated chamber."
JEt. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 29
can secure an entrance to this true and noble Valhalla. Here will be gathered those only who have toiled, each in his vocation, for the welfare of the nice. Mankind will remember those only who have remembered mankind. Here, with the apostles, the prophets, and the martyrs, shall be joined the glori- ous company of the world's benefactors, — the goodly fellowship of truth and duty, — the noble army of statesmen, orators, poets, preachers, scholars, men in all walks of life, who have striven for the happiness of others. If the soldier finds a place in this sacred temple, it will be not because, but notwithstanding, he was a soldier."
After his tribute to the real benefactors of mankind, he closed thus : —
" Such are exemplars of true glory. Without rank, office, or the sword, they accomplished immortal good. While on earth, they labored for their fellow- men ; and now, sleeping in death, by example and works they continue the same sacred office. To all, in every sphere or condition, they teach the uni- versal lesson of magnanimous duty. From the heights of their virtue, they call upon us to cast out the lust of power, of office, of wealth, of praise, of a fleeting popular favor, which ' a breath can make, as a breath has made ; ' to subdue the constant, ever-present suggestions of self in disregard of neighbors, near or remote, whose welfare should never be forgotten; to check the mad- ness of party, which so often for the sake of success renounces the very objects of success ; and finally, to introduce into our lives those sentiments of con- science and charity which animated them to such labors. Nor should these be holiday virtues, marshalled on great occasions only. They must become part of us and of our existence; present on every occasion, small or great, — in those daily amenities which add so much to the charm of life, as also in those grander duties which require an ennobling self-sacrifice. The former are as flowers, whose odor is pleasant though fleeting; the latter are like the costly spikenard poured from the box of alabaster upon the head of the Lord.
To the supremacy of these principles let us all consecrate our best purposes and strength. So doing, we must reverse the very poles of worship in the past. Thus far men have bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden calves, graven images of ivory, ebony, or marble, often of cunning workman- ship, wrought with Phidian skill, but all false gods. Their worship in the future must be the true God, our Father, as he is in heaven, and in the benefi- cent labors of his children on earth. Then farewell to the Siren song of a worldly ambition ! farewell to the vain desire of mere literary success or ora- torical display ! farewell to the distempered longing for office ! farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of martial renown ! Fame and Glory may continue, as in times past, the reflection of public opinion, but of an opinion sure and steadfast, without change or fickleness, illumined by those two eternal suns of Christian truth, — love to God and love to man. All things will bear witness to the change, while the busy forms of wrong and outrage disappear like evil spirits at the dawn. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly have uncounted friends. The cause of those in prison shall find fresh voices, the education of the ignorant kindly supporters, the majesty of peace other vin- dicators, the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of sympathy.
30 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Then at last shall the Brotherhood of Man stand confessed, filling the souls of all with more generous life, prompting to deeds of beneficence, conquering the heathen prejudices of country, color, and race, guiding the judgment of the historian, animating the verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator, ennobling human thought and conduct, and inspiring those good works by which alone we attain the summits of true glory. Good works! — such even now is the heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary Humanity, on pillows of stone, slumbers heavily at its feet."
Prof. William S. Tyler wrote, in 1886, of Sumner's visit to Amherst : —
"Having heard the fame of the young Boston orator, the people came together with great expectations ; and they were not disappointed. Mr. Sum- ner's stately eloquence and his lofty moral and political sentiments were greatly admired, and called for the rounds of applause such as were not often given by Amherst audiences. The evening after the delivery of the oration he spent at my house, and his private conversation was as fascinating as his pub- lic eloquence. This visit to Amherst left an unusually deep impression. The orator and the college had from that day a heartfelt mutual liking. In 1850 he gave me his cordial co-operation in my effort to raise money in Boston for our library building, and himself made a valuable donation of books to its shelves." 1
Prof. T. C. Upham, holding the chair of mental and moral philosophy at Bowdoin College, wrote, Jan. 18, 1848 : —
" It is the sentiment, the moral doctrine of the work, still more than its literary execution, which increases the claim, already established by your pre- vious public efforts, to the approbation and the gratitude of the friends of truth and humanity. In my apprehension, you are doing a work which will last, because it is true. The truth can never die; and if beauty, as well as truth, is immortal, as I believe it is, your orations,, as it seems to me, have a twofold pledge of perpetuity."
Sumner delivered, July 25, 1848, an oration at Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., on " The Law of Human Progress." 2 His theme, as he treated it, had an obvious relation to the agita- tions of the period. He sought to encourage reformers with the hope of ultimate success, and to break the force of the con- servatism which then stood in the way of the movements against
1 Sumner's notice of Professor Tyler's edition of the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus, in 1847, was the beginning of their correspondence. In 1862, Sumner, as Professor Tyler writes, received him with cordiality, and assisted him to visit his son, then serving with the army of the Potomac ; and in 1869 he gave the professor a general letter of introduction to our ministers and consuls in Europe.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 89-138. He sought and received from his friend George W. Greene, then a professor in Brown University, suggestions as to historical statements concerning the topic of the address.
^Et. 34-39.] ADDRESSES BEFORE COLLEGES AND LYCEUMS. 31
war and slavery. His thought was that the human race is capa- ble of, and destined to, indefinite improvement ; and that, spite of apparent exceptions and reactions in certain periods and coun- tries, the progress of man is a fact of history not recognized till modern times, but now generally accepted. As usual with the author, there are frequent references to literature and biography. Like his other efforts at this period, this one was specially adapted to inspire educated young men with noble ideals of conduct and life. The style was finished, the tone subdued, and the perform- ance as a whole calculated to win the favor of a cultivated audi- ence. Sumner wrote at the time that it would be his last address of the kind, and so it proved to be ; but it served as a lecture for lyceums the next winter, and perhaps later. While getting the oration in mind so as to deliver it without notes, he again occupied Longfellow's house while the family were absent, "ranging," as he wrote, July 21, to his friend, "through its ample corridors, and making them vocal."
While en route to New York by boat, his pocket-book con- taining two hundred dollars was stolen from his stateroom, the door of which he had left, according to his custom, unlocked. " I never," said he, " locked a door in my life, not when sleeping in the wildest place." It was not a large sum, but it bore too considerable a proportion to his limited income. He wrote plaintively to Dr. Howe, " This little mishap has disconcerted me. I cannot afford the loss. My money does go as no other money seems to go. I verily believe, if I had a million it would slip through my open fingers." Similar mishaps befell him in later life, when he could better bear them.1 After delivering his address at Union College he visited Saratoga, where Dr. Howe joined him, and thence he made an excursion to Trenton Falls, Niagara, and Geneseo, at which last place he was a guest at the Wadsworths'. One who heard him at Union College wrote that he made an impression as " an orator in whom it is hard to say whether the gifts of nature or the accomplishments of art in its highest sense are most pre-eminent." 2 Sumner delivered this
1 He had another in 1859 on the train between Washington and Philadelphia, and still another about the same time at a station in Boston.
2 W. M. G. in the New York " Tribune," July 29. George Ripley replied, June 8, 1849, in the same journal, to some criticisms on the address, and received a note of thanks from Sumner. This was the beginning of their acquaintance. Frothingham's Life of Ripley, p. 214. John Bigelow recalls that his accpuaintance with Sumner began on this anniversary. It has been stated that Seward and John Van Buren were on the platform when the oration
32 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
oration as a lecture the next winter in various places.1 When published, in 1849, it was commended by E. P. Whipple, Rev. R. C. Waterston, Rev. John Weiss, and H. D. Gilpin.
Sumner's Fourth of July oration, his three college addresses, and his lecture on White Slavery in the Barbary States belong to the period of the Mexican War, including in that period its im- mediate causes and results. The reader, who a generation or more later would come into full sympathy with the orator and realize his power over his audiences, must keep in view the con- ditions of that period, — American slavery with a bolder front than ever, and a war for its extension in prospect or progress, or fresh retrospect. With slavery abolished, with our latest war a struggle for national unity and freedom, with the spirit and energy of the people directed in channels of peace and benefi- cence, his most effective passages, separated from the context of contemporary events, might now seem commonplace and without purpose, the display of an unreal sentiment. But for that period, with its great causes, there was no voice so potent as Sumner's in inspiring and guiding the hopes and aims of American youth. The hold which he then acquired on young men was far beyond that of any orator of the time ; it opened the way to his political career, and it remained through life one of the chief sources of his strength.2
Although Sumner had thus far appeared almost wholly be- fore audiences in New England, he had become well known by his printed addresses in the Middle and Western States, among antislavery people, and also among the Friends and others who were partisans of the Peace movement.3
Sumner published an article, in March, 1848, upon Henry
was delivered, and that they told Sumner at its conclusion that it was a Free Soil address in disguise. This is probable, though not verified by any record. Sumner remained to attend the Commencement exercises ; and it is remembered by Professor John Foster that his face lighted up with smiles when President Nott pleasantly reproved the audience, largely made up of young ladies, for disturbing the exercises by their audible talk, saying, " It is difficult for the speakers to be heard while the attention of the audience is occupied by sweeter and more attractive voices." Chester A. Arthur, afterwards President of the United States, was one of the graduating class.
1 It was the subject of controversy in the " Daily News," a local paper at Newport, R.I., after its delivery in that town, March 1, 1849 ; and the articles were republished as a pam- phlet. Rev. Charles T.Brooks replied in the "News" to Sumner's conservative critic. The phrase chiefly objected to by the critic does not appear in the address as printed, and the passage was probably misapprehended.
2 Wendell Phillips, in his sketch of Sumner in Johnson's Encyclopedia, states his remark- able fascination with young men.
3 G. W. Julian's "Political Recollections," pp. 100, 102.
JEt 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEKEST IN EEFOEMS. 33
Wheaton,1 then recently deceased, which set forth his services as a practical diplomatist and a writer on the Law of Nations. He became in his youth acquainted with Mr. Wheaton, but the acquaintance did not then ripen into intimacy. Such, however, was his great interest in that publicist's favorite topics that his tribute was appreciative and generous.
In 1848 Sumner prepared a report2 for a legislative commit- tee, to which was referred the subject of arranging a system for the organization and discipline of the militia. It treated at length the constitutional question involved, and affirmed as the conclusion that with Congress is the exclusive power to organize and discipline the national militia, while the State retains ample power to provide a local force, or internal police, for maintaining " order and the supremacy of the law." His draft at one time appeared lively to be accepted by the committee, but it was finally laid aside.3 Some of the points of his paper were used five years later in his speech in the Massachusetts Constitu- tional Convention.4
Among the matters aside from the slavery question and prison discipline in which Sumner was interested during the years 1845-1850, was the peaceful settlement of the Oregon question, in relation to which he corresponded with English friends and Mr. Winthrop ; the administration of Edward Everett, as Presi- dent of Harvard College, whose inauguration he attended April 30, 1846, and with whom he continued to exchange notes and courtesies ; Horace Mann's labors in behalf of popular educa- tion; the literary success of his friends, — of Prescott, who early in the summer of 1847 published his " Peru," and soon after began his "Philip II.;" of Emerson, who issued a volume of poems early in 1847, and delivered a course of lectures in Bos- ton which Sumner attended; of Agassiz and Hillard, to the lectures of both of whom in 1847 before the Lowell Institute he
1 Boston "Advertiser," March 16, 1818. Works, vol. ii. pp. 63-73. Sumner, when in Paris in 1836, entertained the purpose of competing for a prize on the history of the law of nations since the Peace of Westphalia, which had been offered by the French Academy of Moral and Political Science, but his plan of travel interfered with his entering the competition. Mr. Wheaton, then in Paris, whom he had consulted.as to his purpose, after- wards sent in a paper which became the basis of his "History of the Progress of the Law of Nations since the Peace of Westphalia." Letter of Sumner, Nov. 22, 1865, to S. A. Allibone, published in the latter's " Dictionary of Authors," title " Henry Wheaton," p. 2668.
2 In manuscript.
3 The committee's report and the minority's report are in House Doc, 1848, nos. 152, 176.
4 June 21 and 22, 1853. Works, vol. iii. pp. 216-220, 221-227.
VOL. III. 3
34 MEMOIR 03? CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
was a listener, — the former having natural history, and the latter John Milton, for his subject ; the readings of Mrs. Kemble, in whose troubled career he was still interested; the controversy of his friend Macready with Forrest, in which his sympathy and counsels were freely given to the former ; the fortunes of Dr. Lieber, whose appointment as professor at Harvard College he urged on President Everett ; the depressed circumstances of his old teacher, Mr. Sales, whom he aided by raising a subscrip- tion to the amount of $1200 ; the municipal election in Boston in 1847, when he spoke at Tremont Temple, in favor of the elec- tion of Josiah Quincy, Jr., as Mayor;1 the reform of the law, particularly in the abolition of the distinction between law and equity, a subject on which he was in correspondence with David Dudley Field.
He wrote to Longfellow, November, 1847 : —
" This morning comes your poem.2 I was reading it at my desk, putting aside grave calls, when your herald entered, and I write now while he ' stands and waits.' It is an exquisite poem ; it must be immortal. There is a balm in it, soothing to the soul. The spirit is equal to the melody."
To Mrs. Bancroft, December 15 : —
" I was happy to hear from you by that pleasant note under your own hand. From time to time, as I heard of your success, I have been tempted to say, ' I told you so,' for I prophesied all that has occurred. To you who had so long knoVn by conversation and books the men of England it must be most interesting to see them face to face, to listen to the gentle sallies of Rogers, and the marvellous flow of Macaulay. I hear very little from any of my London friends. Time is rolling its obscuring mists between us. This is natural. I was reminded of you several times when at Plymouth only three days ago, to lecture. I passed the night at Mr. Andrew Russell's, and in the evening saw your brother. Russells and Davises seemed to fill the place. My audience was most attentive ; but my visit was very brief. I left the Court House where I was engaged, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and was addressing the judge again at half-past nine o'clock the next morning."
To W. W. Story, Jan. 14, 1848 : —
" I was glad to hear of your pleasant voyage and happy arrival at superb Genoa. I doubt if there is any place so entirely calculated to charm and sub- due a voyager fresh from the commercial newness of America. . . . The January ' North American ' has a remarkable article by Franklin Dexter, on the recent book by an Oxford graduate.3 I have never seen anything from
1 Boston Atlas, Dec. 13, 1847.
2 Evangeline in manuscript.
3 Modern Painters.
^Et. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 35
him so cleverly done. Tidings come constantly of Emerson's success in Eng- land. An article in ' Blackwood/ and a very elaborate criticism in the ' Re- vue des Deux Mondes,' place him with Montaigne."
To Richard Cobden, February 12 : —
" Though personally unknown to you (for you have doubtless forgotten the dinner at Mr. Parkes's in London, where I had the happiness of meeting you), I cannot forbear sending you my ' God-speed ' in the noble work you have undertaken. Pardon me if I express a hope that nothing may be allowed to prevent you from persevering in this great cause, which is nothing less than that of universal peace ; your position of peculiar and commanding influence will enable you to render a service to it higher than has ever been rendered before. The soul aches in contemplating the annual wastes of Europe on armies and navies. Civilization demands the disarming of the nations. . . . Let me add that whatever you do or say is not merely for Euglaud, but for the civilized world, and that thousands of hearts which you know not will throb responsive to yours."
To George Sumner, February 12 : —
u On the 5th February I remembered your birthday, and felt that you as well as myself had passed from the lists of young men. I did long to see you bringing your noble gifts and attainments to bear directly upon mankind, not by incidental and occasional productions, but by constant and daily efforts. I longed to see you make a mark not merely in society, but on human thought and conduct. Society is a pleasant pastime, but an unsatisfactory employ- ment. The men of action in America are too indifferent to it, while in Europe, perhaps, it absorbs too much attention. But I find myself unconsciously running into a homily, all of which please set down to my interest in your happiness. • " Howe's report on idiots fills two hundred pages. He says that his studies of the cases in Massachusetts will enable him to present some curious general- izations. I doubt not his report will be a most important contribution to science. Prescott's heart seems to shrink before his vast stores of materials illustrating Philip II. With his waning sight, he fears that he cannot ac- complish the work, and he has thought of executing some fraction only, — as for instance, the siege of Malta, the expedition of Don Sebastian, or the Dutch war. If he takes a part only, I have exhorted him to present a view of the origin and establishment of Dutch independence. This would be an impor- tant theme with a proper unity."
To J. G. Palfrey, February 22 : —
"Let me recommend to you to procure a book, 'The Past, the Present, and the Future,' by H. C. Carey, a work of political economy and specula- tion. It makes for peace strongly, showing the true policy of peace. Though the writer is a free-trader, he is obliged to admit what he calls self-defensive tariffs ; but argues finally for ' direct taxes.' This is towards the close of the book. I think you will find much in it that will help some of your present
36 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
trains of thought. I am not sure that protection is not expedient now ; though I feel confident that the time cannot be far distant when it will cease to be. But that question I regard as strictly within the range of expediency; no sacred principle or right seems to control it."
To George Sumner, Paris, March 10 : —
" They all think you will never return, — that like Ulysses, having seen cities and men, you will continue among the lotus-eaters at Paris ; and they say that you would be unwise to return, that you must be happier there than you can be here. All this sounds well, if a person has put behind his back all the duties of life, and has become merely a seeker of pleasure ; this I know is not your case. Self-renuusiatiou is sometimes difficult ; but it is, I believe, a true rule of life, so far as one can follow it. I do not say that I can ; but I do strive in what I do to think as little as possible of what others may think of it, and of its influence on my personal affairs. In such a mood criticisms un- favorable or hostile, neglect and disfavor, lose something of their sting. What is it to an earnest laborer, whether one or ten societies recognize him by their parchment fraternization, or whether reviews frown or smile % And yet it cannot be disguised that praise from the worthy is most pleasant, and that all tokens of kindly recognition are valuable. But it is not for these that we live and labor. You inquire about our Historical Society. Mr. Savage holds the keys of that, nobody else ; and he is your friend. Come home, if you wish to enter it. It seems to me a small thing to desire. J. Q. Adams's death has caused a deep and wide sensation ; the magnitude of the demonstration in his honor is without precedent. Longfellow's ' Evangeline ' has a success such as has fallen to no poem of our country before."
Sumner welcomed the French Revolution of 1848. He did not overlook the perils which beset it, but he had faith that its results would be beneficent. His hopes were shared by few about him.1 In letters to his brother George, then in Europe, he quoted the adverse opinions which prevailed in Boston among merchants and in society. His friend William Kent was even in favor of the Austrian rule in Italy. Sumner in this as other things was above the spirit about him, and through life was steadfast in his sympathy for the cause of liberty and republican- ism in Europe.2
To George Sumner, April 4 : —
"We have all been filled with mingled anxiety, astonishment, and hope by the great news from France, — the greatest event perhaps ever accomplished in a similar space of time. The American sympathy is strongly in favor of this
i Mr. Adams, however, treated the revolution hopefully in the Boston "Whig," April 3, 1848.
2 W. S. Robinson noted Sumner's solicitude for the spread and permanency of republi- canism in Europe. Warrington's " Pen Portraits," p. 522. Sumner testified his sympathy for the same cause in a speech before a club in Boston during the last autumn of his life.
Mt. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS.. 37
prodigious movement, but I need not tell you that there are many here who are much disturbed by it. The rich and the commercial classes feel that property is rendered insecure, and with many of these the pocket is the chief sensorium. Mr. Webster, I am told, condemns this revolution, saying it is a movement of communists and socialists. . . . Lamartine's position is one of incalculable influence, not only over the destinies of France, but the progress of civilization. I trust he may feel, as I believe he does, how important it is that the triumphs of freedom should be joined with the triumphs of peace. His letter to the Foreign Minister, which I read after midnight, alone quite lifted me from my seat. . . . The National Assembly has an important task, which will require more calmness than is generally supposed to belong to the French character. Its vast size will enhance the difliculty. I wonder the provisional government did not think of the saying of Cardinal de Retz, that every assembly of more than one hundred becomes a mob. ... It is obvi- ously impossible to establish a property qualification ; but may not France set the example of founding her republic on intelligence, by requiring that every voter shall read and write ? . . . Have you considered whether the president or chief of the nation should be eligible for more than a single term ? It is not always safe to argue from the state of things in our country ; but I have sometimes thought that it would be better for us if our President was not eligible for more than a single term.1 If this were the case, it seems to me that his selfish aspirations would all be quieted, and he would be left to act, not to secure a re-election, but to promote the true welfare of his country. If he were confined to a single term, I should extend it to a Roman lus- trum, — perhaps to seven or eight years.
" April 14. The feeling in Boston is counter to the revolution. This movement is in advance of the sentiment here. The commercial interest is disturbed by the shock that property has received. John E. Thayer, the rich broker, who has risen since your day, tells me that he regards France as a ' wreck.' I suspect that he speaks the opinions of his class. Mr. Cabot 2 told me that I was the first person he had seen who had hope in the future of France. I do not disguise my anxiety. France has fearful trials in store, the necessary incident of a transition state. She is moving from one house to an- other. Indeed, it is more than this, — she is fleeing from a burning house ; so doing, she must feel present discomfort, but I do not doubt the future of that great country. ... I trust that the patronage of the new government will be given directly to the people in their localities. It should not centre at Paris. If the whole apparatus is there and all the secret springs, then a mob may at any time overturn it ; but if the prefects and officers of the provinces are all chosen by the people where they live, then the central power will be shorn of that peculiar influence which it has thus far exerted.
" April 18. Our anxiety for tidings is very great. We look to the next packet with a thrilling interest. The people who dominate in Boston are all anti-revolutionists; they have no hope. To them the future of France is full of guillotines, battles, and blood. I do not fear them, though I know there must be much trial and struggle.
1 Sumner as a senator adhered to this view, — Works, vol. xi. pp. 98-101, xiv. pp. 320- 326; xv. pp. 157-161, 220. 2 Henn' Cabot.
38 MEMOIK OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
'' May 16. I was much pleased with what you said of Louis Blanc. Judging him by his writings I admire him much. I have now read the first volume of his history of the uld Revolution. It is a masterly work. . . . And yet the future which he seeks cannot be forced. Fraternity cannot be im- posed on mankind. It will come with the elevation of the moral and intellec- tual nature of man, when the social atmosphere is changed to a more genial temperature by gradual but incessant influence. To expect it now is to expect a full-blown rose in a northern winter."
Sumner delivered May 28, 1849, an address before the Ameri- can Peace Society, at its anniversary meeting in Park Street Church, Boston, taking for his subject the immediate aim of the Society, — " the abolition of the institution of war, and of the whole war system as an established arbiter of justice in the Com- monwealth of Nations ; " 2 and advocating as a substitute a Con- gress of Nations, with a high court of judicature, or arbitration established by treaties between nations. His argument was that as tribunals of peace have taken the place of force in disputes between individuals, towns, counties, and the States of our own country as well as between States under certain historic leagues, such a tribunal should succeed to force in controversies between nations. He illustrated his thought by the tendency of man- kind to unity which has associated individuals, families, tribes, States into a nation, excluding all resort to force between them, and contended that the same principle of attraction should at the next stage associate nations to the extent of the submis- sion of all questions between them to the decision of a com- mon tribunal established by their consent. He suggested for the preservation of domestic peace a constabulary force in place of the militia, and the retention of the navy " so far as neces- sary in arrest of pirates, of traffickers in human flesh, and gen- erally in preserving the police of the sea." He traced the idea of universal peace among nations, or of some method of adjust- ing their controversies without resort to arms, as developed in writers of different periods, and in the peace movements of modern times. This elaborate review extended the address to a great length, and in a measure diminished its effect as an argument ; but always no labor was so congenial to Sumner as to trace a thought or sentiment through the literature of differ- ent ages and countries, and he could not refrain from it even though it expanded his discourse beyond proper limits. He re-
i Works, vol. ii. pp. 171-277.
JEt. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 39
curred as in other addresses to the horrors and expense of war, and assailed " military glory." The address recognized the pro- priety of using force in self-defence, in upholding governments, enforcing justice, and resisting outrage and oppression.1
Elihu Burritt, Amasa Walker, John Jay, and other friends of Peace urs-ed Sumner to attend the Peace Congress which was to meet in Paris in the summer of 1849, but he was unable to do so. Prof. W. S. Tyler, of Amherst, expressed a strong desire that he should undertake a general canvass of the West, where the war spirit was prevalent, in behalf of the cause of Peace.
Of his recent address, Professor Tyler wrote July 10, 1849 :
" With the affluence of diction, the pertinence and copiousness of illustra- tion, and the classic purity, dignity, and repose which mark all your public addresses, it combines a definite purpose, a practical aim, a cogency of rea- soning, and a fervor of appeal which hardly belong to any efforts of mere demonstrative eloquence."
Similar commendation came from William H. Seward, John A. Kasson, Rev. Convers Francis, and E. P. Whipple. Dr. Palfrey wrote July 1, 1849 : —
" I have read your address on Peace with the most critical care and the highest delight. You have removed everything extrinsic from your argu- ment, have guarded it against every objection, and in every view have in- stanced it triumphantly. Such words cannot sink into the ground. The day you predict will surely come, and you will be remembered forever among the best of those who brought its blessings."
In February, 1850, Sumner prepared, as chairman of the Peace Congress committee for this country, a brief address to the people of the United States, stating the result of the Inter- national Peace Congress at Paris, and recommending methods to be pursued by the friends of the movement.2 Shortly after, he was elected one of the two delegates of the Massachusetts Peace Society to a similar Congress, which was to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main in the August following ; but he was unable to attend.
Sumner's active connection with the Peace movement ended with this address. He still held to the ideal of his youth, but other interests intervened. Incidentally at times he reprobated
1 Works, vol. ii. pp. 185, 206. Some of these qualifications and admissions were not well received by extreme Peace men. They were sharply criticised by Thomas Drew, Jr., in Burritt's "Christian Citizen," and were not quite satisfactory to Amasa Walker.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 393-397.
40 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
the war system and " the duel between nations ; " 2 he proposed in the Senate arbitration as a substitute for war ; 2 later in life he sent his congratulations to Henry Richard 3 on the success of the latter's motion in Parliament for international arbitration ; and showed to the very last his interest in the question by the provision in his will for its perpetual discussion by the students of Harvard College.4
The school committee of the city of Boston, acting under its general power over the public or common schools of the city, established separate schools for the children of colored people. This distinction involved an inconvenience to those who were obliged to attend the separate schools, often more distant from their homes than those provided for white children, and also affixed the stigma of caste upon colored children. An effort was made to discontinue the separate schools ; but the com- mittee, although its members were divided in opinion, adhered to them. The question was taken to the Supreme Court of the State, where Sumner, being engaged as counsel, argued at length, Dec. 4, 1849, that the committee had no legal power to exclude colored children from any of the schools.5 His main contention was that the exclusion was contrary to the principle of " equal- ity before the law," which is the basis of our republican polity, and upheld a system of caste, which is alien to the spirit of re- publican institutions and condemned by Christianity. He traced the principle of equality of rights as affirmed in France and the United States, and especially in the Constitution of Massachu- setts, and maintained that before that principle no distinctions of birth, race, or color could stand. The argument was a pro- test against civil discriminations founded on physical conditions, or on any conditions which are independent of character or attainment, and was eloquent in its appeal to the higher senti- ments. It introduced into the discussions of the period the term " equality before the law," taken from the French, and then unfamiliar to the English language. It marks the beginning of Sumner's warfare on caste, and of his persistent advocacy of equal civil and political rights for all, irrespective of condition and race, which continued through his life. Its general thought
1 Works, vol. xiv. pp. 64-85.
2 May 31, 1872. Works, vol. xv. p. 80 ; also Resolution, Dec. 1, 1873.
3 Works, vol. xv. p. 273.
4 Ante, vol. ii. p. 382.
5 Works, vol. ii. pp. 327-376.
^Et. 34^39.] ACTIVE INTEREST EN REFORMS. 41
as well as some of its points and authorities appeared often in his prolonged contention in the Senate for the rights of the col- ored people. Chief-Justice Shaw gave the opinion of the court adversely to Sumner ; 1 but the Legislature a few years later, in 1855, prohibited such separation of the races into different schools. Both races at once mingled in the same class-rooms without disturbance or inconvenience. To Sumner belongs the honor of leading the way in the contest with the spirit of caste. Dr. Palfrey wrote to him concerning his argument, " You have done few things among your worthy acts to be remembered by yourself hereafter more to your satisfaction, or by posterity to your praise." Many years afterwards, in 1870, Sumner's argu- ment was again printed, and then widely distributed with the view of affecting public opinion in certain Northern as well as Southern States, where colored children were still excluded from the schools attended by white children.
During the years 1846-1850 Sumner contributed a large num- ber of articles to newspapers, chiefly controversial and relating to the political contest against slavery. Joseph T. Buckingham admitted some of them to his journal, the Boston " Courier," disclaiming, however, any responsibility for them ; but oppressed by the hostile sentiments of his patrons, he declined others on grounds of expediency. Mr. Adams was always pleased to admit what Sumner wrote into the Boston " Whig." 2
1 Roberts v. City of Boston. Cushing's Reports, vol. v. p. 206.
2 The following, being those not referred to elsewhere, are identified as Sumner's: "J. M. Clayton on the Mexican War,-' a criticism of that senator, who while condemning the war (it being offensive and not defensive) supported measures for its prosecution, Boston "Courier," Jan. 6. 18-47; "Guns and Plumes in a Christian Church," disapprov- ing the wearing of military uniforms in the Old South Church on Election day, Bos- ton " Chronotype," Jan. 14, 1847; "The Boston Atlas and Southern Influence," setting forth the pro-slavery tone of that journal, especially in its Washington correspondence, Boston " Whig," Jan. 5 and 19, 1847; "The Next Presidency," insisting on a candidate of well-defined antislavery position, "Courier," Jan. 22, 1847; D. P. King's speech in Congress, "Whig," March 16, 1847; Rev. George Putnam's sermon on the Mexican War, a criticism on the sermon which brought about a correspondence between the preacher and the critic, ending however in a good understanding, "Courier," May 8, 1847; "Thanks to General Taylor," denying the propriety of such a testimony to victories obtained in an unjust war, "Courier," April 17, 1847; "The Position of Massachusetts," viewed in the light of the division m the Whig party on the slavery question, and the importance of union against the Mexican War and against slavery, "Courier," May 13, 1847; "The Fourth of July," suggesting the antagonism between the Declaration of American Independence and American Slavery, "Courier," July 3, 1847; Rev. R. C. Waterston's sermon on "The true position of the Church in relation to the Age," a testimony to the preacher's humane and independent spirit, "Courier," Dec. 18, 1847; "Regular nominations," justifying the election of E. L. Keyes, an antislavery leader, as member of the Governor's Council, against the opposition of conservative Whigs, "Courier,"
42 .MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
His contributions at this period to journals and magazines on literary or legal topics were few and brief, chiefly notices of books which were prompted by a personal interest in the au- thors.1 The founders of "the Massachusetts Quarterly," the first number of which appeared in December 1847,2 agreed upon Sumner as the managing editor, but he declined the post. Theodore Parker strenuously urged his acceptance, and it was also Emerson's desire that he should undertake the work.3
Sumner wrote to Richard Cobden, May 2, 1849 : —
" I cannot allow the steamer to sail without offering you my thanks for your steadfast advocacy of those great principles of peace by the triumph of which not England alone, hut all nations shall he gainers. It seems to me now that we may see ' the beginning of the end ; ' with so good a corps of supporters in Parliament, and with so strong a popular opinion out of Parliament as you possess you must succeed. Besides, the cause carries its own earnest of suc- cess. ... I suppose the Canadian news of to-day will vex Parliament and Lord John Russell. The direct consequence of the Montreal riot cannot yet be foreseen, but I cannot doubt that it will in the end contribute to that inevi- table consummation of annexation to the United States. There are natural laws at work which no individual and no parliament can control, aud it seems to me that by these Canada is destined to be swept into the wide orbit of her neighbor. Canadians may say that this will not be, but nevertheless it will be.4 . . . Meanwhile our people continue quite indifferent to Canadian affairs except as their startling character furnishes news under the telegraph head in the newspapers. The slaveholders would be, of course, against annexation, and the Northern States have not yet entertained the question. But Canada
Jan. 17, 1848 ; Palfrey's first speech in Congress as a treatment of the slavery question, the second article being a rejoinder to the "Atlas," "Courier," Feb. 1 and 15, 1848.
1 The following are identified: Reviews of M. B. Sampson's "Rationale of Crime," Law Reporter, Boston, Dec. 1846, vol. ix. pp. 377, 378; of "Sedgwick on Damages," Ibid. April, 1847, p. 550; of J. G. Marvin's " Legal Bibliography," Ibid. p. 552; of S. P. Chase's argument in Jones v. Van Zandt, Ibid. p. 553; of W. S. Tyler's " Germania and Agricola of Tacitus," Boston " Whig," Aug. 23, 1847.
2 The last number appeared three years later.
3 From various quarters during the years 1845-1851 he was solicited for addresses, arti- cles, and editorial service, which he declined on account of the pressure of other work; namely, a paper on Webster for the American Whig Review, requested by W. M. Evarts in April, 1846; a temperance speech urged by Moses Grant; a eulogy on John Quincy Adams before the American and Foreign Antislavery Society, soon after that statesman's death in 1848; the preparation of a law digest, in making which Mr. Gilchrist of New Hampshire desired his co-operation; a lecture before the Normal School at West Newton in 1846; the annual address in 1848 before the New England Society at Cincinnati, re- quested by Timothy Walker; the annual oration at Dartmouth College in 1849; and at Bowdoin College and Middletown College in 1850; an address before the American Unita- rian Association, 1847, pressed by Rev. F. D. Huntington; an address before the New York Prison Association in 1848; and an article on slavery for the Christian Examiner, edited by Rev. E. S. Gannett.
4 The omitted paragraph is a quotation from Turgot given in Sumner's Works, vol. xii. p. 45.
JEt. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 43
must make the advance. I cannot doubt that if Canada were admitted into our Union, her apparently incongruous races would be fused, as in Louisiana and Pennsylvania, by the potent though quiet action of our political system." 1
To John A. Kasson, New Bedford, July 12 : —
"When I tell you that your article on law reform2 expounds views which I have long entertained, and which I have urged in conversation and in corre- spondence if not in published writiugs, you will understand the feelings of satisfaction with which I read it. I admired the vivid style, the facility of practical illustration, and the complete mastery of the subject which it showed. You have done good service to jurisprudence, and helped discharge the debt which Lord Bacon tells us we owe to our profession, by this able exposition of a vicious system. I trust that our Commonwealth will have the wisdom to adopt your suggestions. My own attention was directed to the subject shortly after I came to the bar, when in editing Duulap's Admiralty Practice I found myself called upon to prepare a series of forms in admiralty. Those which are now in general use in the country were, I believe, the result of my labors at that time. While engaged upon these, I was induced to inquire if such forms are apt for the administration of justice in admiralty, why are they not equally apt for the administration of justice at common law ? The conclu- sions which I then adopted have been strengthened by subsequent reflection and observation, particularly on the continent of Europe. In these conclu- sions I went against the prejudices of a rigorous professional education and of special black-letter studies. I doubt if there are many persons in our coun- try who have explored with more ardor than myself all the most inaccessible subtleties of special pleading, penetrating the barricades of Norman French, and the peculiar abbreviations of Rastell and the Year Books.3 When in Ger- many I knew well the two great masters of the question of codification, — Savigny, the renowned head of the historical school ; and Thibaut, who was the chief of the didactic school. The latter is now dead, leaving a name of great honor in the jurisprudence of his country. I cannot forget a long conversation I once had with him on the subject of law reform and codification. He was then venerable in years, and his words seemed like those of an unerring teacher. He concluded our conversation by saying that in order to conduct these reforms to a successful conclusion, 'Nothing was waited but the will , — the will.' These words made a strong impression on my mind, and I now commend them to you. I trust that our Commonwealth will exhibit the will to reform its jurisprudence. To you will belong the honor of contributing to strengthen and determine that will."
1 Cobden in his reply, Nov. 7, 1849, agreed with Sumner as to the future union of Canada with the United States. Sumner's Works, vol. xii. pp. 172-175. Such a union was a favorite idea with Sumner through life. Works, vol. xiii. pp, 127-1-30. North American Review, July- August, 1878; pp. 78-80: "A Senator's Fidelity Vindicated," by E. L. Pierce.
2 Law Reporter, Boston, June, 1849, pp. 61-80.
3 Sumner thought the distinction between law and equity, then rigidly enforced equally without reason, " an anomaly in our jurisprudence and also in that of England, unworthy of an age when the law is treated as a science." Letter to Professor Mitterniaier, Feb. 1, 1848 (MSS.).
44 MEMOIR OJT CHAELES SUMNER. [1845-50.
To Dr. Lieber, July 17 : —
" What a sacrilegious piece of piracy this French expedition against Rome is ! George writes me from London (where he is trying to induce Palmerston to acknowledge the independence of Hungary) that he has a letter from Mad- ame de Tocqueville, in which she abjures for her husband all connection or sympathy with the Roman expedition. And yet he is Minister of Foreign Affairs ! »
To George Sumner, July 17 : —
" . . . Most clearly do I see that this cause [Peace] is destined to a tri- umph much earlier than many imagine. It is so necessary to meet the finan- cial embarrassments of Europe and the humane aspirations of the age, that it must succeed. Let it be presented carefully and clearly; let the incalculable good it has in store be unfolded, and people must feel its practicability. No person can do this better than yourself. I have often said to my socialist friends (you know there is a school here) that I had full faith in a coming era of fraternity; but I believe it is to be brought about by removing existing evils, by cutting off excrescences, by education, and especially by removing the great evil and expense of war preparations, — or, as I call them, the war system. If the friends of progress in Europe would aim at the armies aud navies, direct all their energies at these monster evils, all else that can rea- sonably be desired will soon follow. It is the armies and navies that are the stays and props of arbitrary power, of unjust decrees, of martial law. Why not sound the idea in the ears of Europe?
"July 31. Coolidge 1 brought me yesterday Madame de Tocqueville's note to you. It is very pleasant, curious, and instructive. I was glad to read that disavowal of the Roman expedition, and that sympathy with Hungary. Poor Hungary! I fear by this time her case has been decided; aud with her falls the whole revolutionary movement of the present time. With railroads and liberty of the Press, in ten years from now they will be ready for another en- deavor.2 Meanwhile, the Peace movement will have an open course. The people will unite in the call for disarming; and when the time of trial comes again, the princes will be shorn of much of their physical strength. Revolu- tions, it is said, are not made with rose-water; this will be less true here- after than now. M*r. Amasa Walker, whom you remember in your childhood, a devoted advocate of Peace and Free Soil, has resolved suddenly to leave in this steamer to attend the Peace Congress. He is an admirer of you in advance. I hope he may be able to see you. He will tell you something of our Free Soil movement. . . . Little has been said lately of the Administration. It is not denied that it has treated offices as the ' spoils' of party more openly than any preceding one. I recently heard of a private letter from Mr. Webster in which he declined to interfere in favor of a person, because he had never done auything for the party. . . . " 3
1 Joseph Coolidge.
2 Another revolt was averted by the adoption of a liberal policy towards Hungary by Austria, under the law of Dec. 21, 1867.
3 Sumner wrote to his brother, July 17: "The offices in Massachusetts have all gone most rigorously according to party service and party caste. Even Hawthorne, who never
JRt. 34-39.] FRIENDSHIPS. 45
To Edward L. Pierce, Dorchester, December 19 : —
" I thank you much for your kind words of sympathy. They make me forget many of the hard things which it is my lot to encounter. I have read with interest your article on ' the Independence of the Judiciary,' * embodying as it does views in which I was educated, and which I cherished for years. If I hesitate to subscribe to them now, it is because ever open to conviction, and always ready to welcome truth, I have been so much impressed by the recent experience of New York, where the judges are chosen by the people. If the system adopted there should continue to work well, we shall be obliged to re- nounce the opinions founded on the experience of the other system. The character of Sir Thomas More is of surpassing interest, and I shall be glad to see it treated by your pen.2 I hope you will give me an opportunity of becom- ing acquainted with you personally." 3
To George Sumner, December 25 : —
" Our community is still agitated to the extreme by the Webster4 tragedy, though I think it is now subsiding into the conviction of his guilt. He sent for ine a few days ago, and I went into his cell. I had never before visited him in my life. He seemed worn in body and crushed in spirit. He called him- self the ' victim of circumstances.' "
Sumner, though not connected with Theodore Parker's re- ligious society or attending his preaching regularly, admired his character, and counted him among his most valued friends. Their personal relations began in the autumn of 1845. They had correspondence during this period on the questions of war and slavery, and each sought from the other assistance in pro- curing books and authorities on the topics of their addresses. It is perhaps worthy of note that it was in Felton's house that Sumner and Parker first met ; and when Sumner and Felton parted, in 1850, one point of difference was that Felton, in a note to Sumner, had expressed " his profound disgust with the bad taste, worse temper, and atrocious disregard of truth mani- fested by Theodore Parker in his libel upon Mr. Webster," — a reference to Parker's speech on Mr. Webster in Faneuil Hall, March 25, 1850.
Sumner's interest in Crawford was unabated. He sought com- missions for him in Boston, commended his works in news- attended a political meeting or wrote a political article, has been ejected from his small retreat in the Salem custom house."
1 Democratic Review, July, 1848.
2 Article in Democratic Review, March and April, 1850.
3 The interview which followed a few days later at No. 4 Court Street between Sumner and the young man of twenty years, to whom the letter was addressed, was the beginning of their acquaintance.
4 Professor John W. Webster.
46 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
paper notices, and intervened with public men in Washington : and with his old acquaintance Conrad Robinson, to advance his claims in the competition for the statue of Washington, to be erected by the State of Virginia in Richmond. Crawford came to the country in the winter of 1849-1850, and passed some time at Richmond and Washington for the purpose of securing the commission. He was fortunate in his errand ; and to none was he so grateful as to Sumner, whom he thanked for his " unceas- ing attention to everything concerning his success." Sumner wrote to Crawford, Feb. 9, 1850 : —
" I give you joy in your great success. This engagement will advertise you to the whole country. It will occupy your time honorably, and draw business to you. Fortune has at last perched on your head. From this time forward there will be for you constant triumph."2
He wrote to George Sumner, February 18 : —
" This order definitely fixes Crawford's position in art. He had become uneasy, fretful, discontented, irresolute, and almost Ishmaelitish. He seemed to feel that he had been neglected, and was soured. All will be changed now. His genius is original and prolific, more so than that of any other American sculptor. . . . Our Atheneeum is now lodged in a new building, yet unfin- ished, while we are left in debt, and have not the meaus to finish it. My desire is that it shall be made a public library, on condition that the city shall finish the building and secure to it a permanent income for the purchase of books." 3
Sumner was interested in improving the fortunes of Haw- thorne, who was cultivating literature on narrow means, and in 1846 wrote to Mr. Bancroft, then Secretary of the Navy, urging his appointment to some federal office. The Salem cus- tom house was all that was then assigned to the author of " The Scarlet Letter ; " 4 but Sumner, as senator, had the satisfaction, a few years later, of voting for his confirmation as consul at Liverpool, and writing him on the spot a note of congratulation •k that fairly shouted as with a silver trumpet, it was so cordial and strong in joy." 5
1 He wrote Mr. Wintbrop, M. C, March 15, 1846, at length in favor of including Craw- ford's name in a resolution of Congress ordering an equestrian statue of Washington.
2 Sumner wrote a notice of the award of the commission to Crawford, which was pub- lished in the Boston "Transcript," I<Vb. 11. 1850.
3 During his life Sumner relied chiefly on this library for books when he was in Boston. It was not converted into a public library.
4 Hawthorne, though a Democrat, rejoiced at Sumner's election as senator. Letter to Longfellow, May 18, 1851. Longfellow's " Life," vol. ii. p. 195.
5 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. By Julian Hawthorne. Vol. ii. p. 12.
Mt. 34-39.] FRIENDSHIPS. 47
Sumner came into personal relations with John Quincy Adams in 1845, and from that year met him from time to time at his home in Quincy, or at his son's house in Boston. The Ex-Presi- dent was far from being " a Peace man ; " but he was attracted by the boldness of Sumner's Fourth of July oration, and by its elevation of thought. His tribute to Sumner's Phi Beta Kappa address, and his participation, at Sumner's request, in the meet- ing at Faneuil Hall, summoned in September, 1846, in conse- quence of the abduction of a negro, are elsewhere mentioned. He was obliged by the attack of paralysis, which came a few months later, to postpone his return to Washington till the next February,1 and in the mean time Sumner continued his visits to him. Sumner's admiration of the veteran statesman has been referred to in an earlier volume ; but it was qualified at this time by the latter's eccentric course on the Oregon boundary question, in which he insisted that no territory should be yielded below the highest parallel claimed. At the time of Mr. Adams's death, in February, 1848, when his body was being borne to Massachusetts, Sumner wrote to Dr. Palfrey : " That lifeless body, wherever it is carried, will preach for freedom. It will preach patience, firmness, and the unconquerable will." His son, Charles Francis, gave Sumner a silver writing-ring with the initials of the Ex-President engraved upon it, which he had used in later years to correct his tremulousness of hand ; and Sumner continued through life to wear it on his watch-chain. The son, in sending the ring, wrote : " With this I send you a little trifle, which takes all its value from its being a memorial of my father. During the latter part of his life you knew him, and appreciated the moral grandeur of his character. I there- fore take pleasure in the reflection that this little personal me- mento goes into the hands of one who will in his own life and conversation understand of what it is the symbol."
Sumner's visits to John Quincy Adams in 1845-1846 brought him into relations with his son, Charles Francis. They were associated in the struggle against the admission of Texas as a slave State, in the autumn of 1845 ;2 but their intimacy began
1 In his speech in the Senate, May 31, 1872 (Works, vol. xv, p. 121), Sumner mentions a conversation with Mr. Adams at his son's house in Boston, just before he left for Wash- ington, when "in a voice trembling with age and with emotion he said that no public man could take gifts without peril."
2 Mr. Adams's first note to Sumner is a friendly one, dated Feb. 18, 1846.
48 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
when Mr. Adams undertook the editorship of the " Whig," in 1846. For the next two years they appear to have been almost in daily conference. From that time until the winter of 1860- 1861 they were in very friendly relations of social and political intercourse. Sumner often dined at Mr. Adams's in Mt. Vernon Street, or took supper with him on Saturday or Sunday even- ings, and also visited him at Quincy. Their association in the early period from 1846 to 1848 had, it is fair to presume, a salu- tary influence on Sumner, giving a more practical direction to his aims, and tempering his disposition to overlook, in his zeal for noble causes, the limitations imposed by existing opinions and prejudices, which the reformer, if he would succeed, must take into account.
With Edward Everett, Sumner had a pleasant association and correspondence from his youth till Mr. Everett's death.1 Differ- ing in elements of character and in political action, their rela- tions were always cordial, and at times confidential. They had points of sympathy in common English friends, and interchanged the letters received from them, and transmitted books as pres- ents to them in the same parcels. Sumner welcomed Mr. Ever- ett's accession to the Presidency of Harvard College, and warmly approved his inaugural address ; and Mr. Everett offered Sumner the use of his house for the day of the latter's Phi Beta Kappa ad- dress. The interests of the college were a subject of correspond- ence between them. Mr. Everett confided to Sumner his distaste for his duties at Cambridge almost as soon as he undertook them, comparing himself to " a constable " and " a justice of a police court," although nominally the head of a great literary insti- tution. Mr. Everett gave unstinted praise to the spirit and gen- eral character of Sumner's college and lyceum addresses, while using a friend's privilege to state, from his conservative point of view, a dissent from Sumner's treatment of the great political question of the time. Receiving the gift of Sumner's two vol- umes of orations, in 1850, he answered : " Their contents, most of which were well known to me already, are among the most finished productions of their class in our language, — in any lan- guage. I am sure they will be read and admired as long as any- thing English or American is remembered." When colleagues in the Senate, in 1854, though divided politically, they were in
1 Mr. Everett, when Governor, had been kindly and considerate in his treatment of Sumner's father. Ante, vol. i. pp. 21, 29.
JEt. 34-39.] FRIENDSHIPS. 49
friendly relations ; and during the Civil War Sumner advised President Lincoln to appoint Mr. Everett minister to France.
Antagonisms growing out of the antislavery agitation severed Sumner's relations with society in Boston in the period 1846- 1850, as will be explained elsewhere, but his visits to Longfellow were kept up with the same frequency as before. The latter's poems and prose works were read to him in manuscript or proof. It was rare that on Sundays he did not visit the Craigie house at Cambridge, going thither by the omnibus from the morning service at King's Chapel. The poet wrote in his journal, Dec. 23, 1847, " Sunday is Sumner's day, and he came as usual ; " : and on March 9, 1851, he wrote, "A Sunday without a Sumner is an odd thing, — Domenica senza domine, — but to-day we have had one." There he often met Felton, and also William Kent, who during his brief term as professor was one of the group. Hil- lard was casting in his lot with the stolid conservatism of Bos- ton, and though friendly relations were continued, the strength of the old ties was being weakened. The " Five of Clubs " — one member lost by death and the others (except one) married — was now hardly more than a tradition. Dr. Howe, with the cares of his family and of the Blind Asylum, could rarely meet with them. Felton, in a note to Sumner written early in 1846, mourns even then that the club is dissolving, as its meetings are so infrequent, and begs Sumner and Howe to come to Cambridge and join Long- fellow and himself in keeping it alive. Between Dr. Howe and Sumner there was now a close alliance in the causes of freedom and prison reform, where often the brunt of the conflict fell on them. Sumner's visits to his friend at the " Institution for the Blind" at South Boston were constant.2 Dr. Howe's rooms were at the time the resort of many who were interested in the moral agitations of the period,3 and who found there not only ethical inspiration, but also, in the society of both sexes, wit, culture, and the love of art and music.
1 Some, but not all, of these visits are recorded in Longfellow's journal. "Life," vol. ii. pp. 95, 101, 112, 115, 127, 130, 131, 133, 136, 146, 149, 150, 153, 158, 160, 162, 174, 175, 180, 186, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199, 202, 204, 205, 206. The citations are from the first edition, "Final Memorials" being cited as the third volume.
2 He was one of its trustees.
3 Palfrey's diary, Dec. 11, 1846, records his going to Dr. Howe's in the evening to meet John C. Vaughan, of Kentucky, where also were Sumner, Richard Hildreth, C. F. Adams, J. A. Andrew, and John W. Browne. Longfellow wrote in his diary, Nov. 16, 1849 : " Dined at Howe's. Avery pleasant dinner. Palfrey, Adams, Sumner, young Dana, all and several Free Soilers. I, a singer, came into the camp as Alfred among the Danes."
VOL. III. 4
50 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington, now Bishop of Central New York, wrote, in 1886 : —
" Everything that calls up the image or reviews the life of Charles Sumner to me is a satisfaction, — a good image and a superb life ! My first remem- bered impression of him, deep and vivid, distinctly recalled, was received as he sat and talked one evening at the Asylum for the Blind with Dr. Howe, Professor Felton, and a few others. After that I lost no opportunity of meet- ing him, putting myself within reach of his force, or hearing him speak. It is not easy to say whether it was sympathy with his intense moral convictions and public courage, or the inspiration of his personal power, learning, and accomplishments, that made up the larger elements in this rare attraction."
Sumner always found a welcome with the family of W. H. Pres- cott,1 who had removed, in 1845, from the family home in Bed- ford Street to a house which he had purchased in Beacon Street. He also made visits to the historian at his country home at Pepperell. To Longfellow and Prescott Sumner always brought foreign visitors who came to him with letters of introduction. Agassiz came to this country in the autumn of 1846, bearing let- ters to Sumner from two English friends. This was the begin- ning of Sumner's intimacy with the celebrated naturalist, which in time became as dear to him as the earlier friendships.
Sumner's friendship with his early partner was kept up, and their law offices were still connected,2 but the bond between them was sorely strained. Hillard, who really loved him, had come under the fascination of the Ticknors ; and no family in Boston was so antipathetic to the antislavery cause as this one. As a young man he had allied himself with the advanced opponents of slavery ; but genuine as he was in friendship, he had not in him the stuff of which reformers are made. More and more he lapsed into the society about him, accepting its tone and opin- ions ; and it became evident in 1846-1847 that the two friends, pursuing divergent paths, could not long maintain their intimate fellowship. There was, however, no scene or open breach ; and as Hillard left for Europe in 1847, he confided to his old friend his will and papers, and Sumner gave him letters to English
1 Longfellow in his diary, May 20, 1846, gives an account of one of the dinners at Pres- cott's where Sumner was present. Sumner was at this time calling at Ticknor's, where Lyell was then a guest; but this was about the end of his connection with that house.
2 George Griggs took Hillard's office, the outer one, when the latter left for Europe, and afterwards shared it with Henry T. Parker, for many years residing in London, where he died in 1890. Hillard on his return took another room in the same building, No. 4 Court Street.
Mr. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 51
friends, — a favor which he was chary in bestowing. Both, though their lives were dividing, were still under the spell of by-gone days. In a note explanatory and apologetic, Hillard as he left thus revealed his inner thought : —
"We have sometimes differed of late years; but our differences have been such as flowed inevitably from diversity of organization and tempera- ment. I have never loved you the less. If there has ever been anything in my manner from which a different inference might have been drawn (I dou't say that you have drawn it), forgive it and forget it ; look upon it as a cloud bred of my infirmities, and not myself. You do not, cannot, know how sorely I have been tried in all sorts of ways. You have seen where I have yielded, but not known how much I have resisted.1 Do not allude to these things in our correspondence. I write these words for you to think upon in case we should never meet again."
When Sumner, in the early part of 1850, deprecated Hillard's opposition in the Legislature to certain antislavery resolutions, the latter in his reply claimed for himself the same candid and friendly judgment which he had always extended to his friend's course and motives, and insisted that " true friendship rests upon mutual respect for the moral and intellectual rights of others." Late in the same year, in acknowledging the gift of Sumner's two volumes of orations, while declining to assent to all they contained, Hillard recognized the purity of motive and sincerity of conviction which inspired them.
Sumner went occasionally to parties, and attended some of the assemblies at Papanti's Hall, — then a centre of social life, and frequented by many whose dancing days had passed ; but after the controversy with Winthrop, he could not enter miscellaneous society without meeting persons who either cut him directly or had become unamiable in look or word, and he more and more kept aloof from it. To those whom he admitted to his inner- most life he was accustomed, as some years before, to speak sadly of his loneliness. Some of them, Felton and Howe, bade him marry, telling him it was time for him to act on the inter- esting subject on which he had already talked too long, — a chaffing which he seemed to invite rather than repel. Indeed, there was much of seriousness in his recurrence to the old theme ; and well there might be when he saw his contempora- ries rejoicing in wife and children, and himself still solitary and passing from youth. He had confided his thoughts to Dr.
1 An allusion to the influence of the Ticknors.
52 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Howe in 1844, just after his severe illness, from which he had not cared to recover ; and later in 1846-1847, when shut out from homes where he had been welcome, and a sense of loneli- ness oppressed him, he gave passionate expression to his dis- content. To Longfellow he wrote April 15, 1846, after Felton's engagement for his second marriage : " I do feel the desolation of my solitude. And Corny has left me ; I am more desolate than ever."
Sumner was nearly forty when he began to enjoy music ; and he seemed, as he said, to have then acquired a new sense. His sister Julia (Mrs. Hastings) wrote in 1875 : —
" He was very indifferent to music until the season that the fine opera troupe from Havana visited us, in May, 1850, — the troupe that comprised Steffanone, Bosio, Salvi, Badiali, and Marini. One evening we persuaded Charles to go. He went and was charmed. Tt was a sudden awakening to the delights of music, and he went many evenings thereafter while that com- pany continued to sing. Marini, the grand basso, gave him especial delight. When Jenny Liud gave concerts in Boston, iu October, 1850, he enjoyed her very much, and kindly took me three evenings to hear her."
Sumner attended on Sundays the morning service at King's Chapel, sitting at the head of the family pew ; but it was not congenial to him. The pastor, Rev. Ephraim Peabody,1 did not conceal even in his pulpit his distaste for the causes which were dear to Sumner, or his sympathy on public questions with Samuel A. Eliot and other highly conservative members of the parish.2
Notwithstanding his recklessness in keeping late hours, Sum- ner's health was excellent. Horace Mann wrote of him to Howe in 1852, what was true of him always : " He yields obedience to all God's laws of morality, but thinks he is exempt from any obligation to obey His laws of physiology." After 1844 he had only slight and temporary illnesses.
At the end of March, 1846, Prescott was obliged by an affec- tion of the eye to suspend his studies, and he desired Sumner to join him in a vacation. They passed nearly a week in Wash- ington, a week in New York, where their time was divided be- tween society and visits to an oculist (Sumner writing from New
1 To be distinguished from Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, who held an open antislavery position.
2 After he went to Washington as senator Sumner seldom attended church services. He was sometimes in the audience when a personal friend was to preach. Life of W. H. Channing, by O. B. Frothingham, p. 264.
^Et. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE 53
York as the historian's amanuensis), and some days in Balti- more, with other pauses on the journey.1 At Washington they dined with Mr. Webster,2 Mr. Bancroft, then Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Pakenham, the British minister, and received atten- tions from Mr. Winthrop. Sumner was not in Washington again till after his election as senator.
In the late summer or early autumn, Sumner made usually what he called his " annual sally," — a journey of two or three weeks. In September, 1845, he visited Chancellor Kent; and the same autumn, when inspecting the prison at Philadelphia, dined with his friend J. R. Ingersoll. The next autumn he was the guest of Mr. Maillard, recently married to Miss Annie Ward, of New York, then occupying at Bordentown, N. J., the mansion of the late Joseph Bonaparte,3 where he went over its treasures of art, and took rides on horseback through the spacious grounds. Each summer he passed some time with his brother Albert, at Newport. He was often with Longfel- low at Nahant as well as at the Craigie House in Cambridge. He enjoyed visits to New York city, where William Kent, B. D. Silliman, John Jay, and George Bancroft4 cordially re- ceived him. The last named wrote in December, 1850 : " We shall always have a plate for you at five o'clock, and we will add the stalled ox to our dinner of herbs, and have no strife." He visited William Jay at Bedford. Other visits were to his classmate Henry Winthrop Sargent at Fishkill-on-the- Hudson, to the Grangers at Canandaigua, the Wads worths at Geneseo, and the Porters at Niagara. Occasionally he visited Saratoga. Sometimes he extended his journey to Canada. He had friends there, — among them Lord Elgin,5 the governor-
i Ticknor's " Life of W. H. Prescott," p. 246. " I was," said Mr. Prescott, in his jour- nal, " provided with a ver}' agreeable fellow-traveller, in my excellent friend Mr. Sumner."
2 Sumner, in an interview with Mr Webster during this visit, asked him which of his (Mr. W.'s) writings and speeches he thought to be the best, and was surprised when Mr. Webster answered " the Creole " letter. See ante, vol. li. p. 193.
3 He described the place in the Boston " Whig," Oct. 12, 1846.
4 To Mrs. Bancroft, for whom he had a great liking, he wrote April 23, 1845. when the historian had become Secretary of the Navy: "I have a presentiment that we shall never again be dwellers in the same neighborhood, so that I shall not enjoy more the free social converse under your roof which has been one of the solaces of a bachelor. Your fates will keep you in high places far from mine." In 1874 Mr. Bancroft had arranged for a winter home in Washington, and counted as one of the attractions of his new home a renewal of familiar intercourse with Sumner, which the Senator's death prevented.
5 Lord Elgin was the brother of Sir Frederick Bruce, afterwards minister to the United States, and of Lady Augusta Stanley. Lady Elgin was the daughter of the first Earl of Durham. Sumner's meeting her m 1839 is referred to, ante, vol. ii. p. 40.
54 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
general, and Lady Elgin, whom he had met at her father's house in England.1
Mr. Sargent wrote after Sumner's death .- —
" A great characteristic of Sumner was the extraordinary way in which his mind absorbed an idea until he had exhausted everything connected with it. On the subject of laces, camel's-hair shawls, furs, etc., he was as thoroughly posted up as if his whole life had been devoted to each one of these as a spe- cialite. I should doubt if there was any lady in the country who was so familiar with the different varieties and value of these articles as he was ; and this is equally true of engravings, china, and to a great extent of paintings and other works of art. In his many visits to my place at Fishkill his mind would become entirely horticultural. I had a very large collection of evergreens, nearly two hundred varieties, all botanically labelled. He was very fond of going out by himself, and studying the various distinctions and characteristics of this large and interesting family, and generally at the end of the fourth or fifth lesson he would know a large proportion of them, so that upon his next visit, at an interval of a year, he would say, ' I must go out and see how many of my friends, the evergreens, I can remember ; ' and it was quite remarkable how many he knew. Upon his last visit here he became very much interested in a new French method of cultivating asparagus, so much so that a dozen times a day he returned to this (to him peculiarly interesting) subject, ask- ing me who had tried it ; why did not this or that one try it ; and finally departing from me to go to Governor Fish's he said, and perhaps these were his last words, ' I must make Fish try this new way of growing asparagus. He has,' he said, 'great respect for my horticultural knowledge.' In all my frequent intercourse with Sumner for fifty years, I can truly say I never found a person so uniformly genial and amiable, and who so readily adopted the tastes and occupations of his friends while with them."
Sumner's active participation in popular agitations interfered seriously with professional success. It repelled clients who disagreed with him on exciting topics, or who if agreeing pre- ferred a lawyer exclusively devoted to the courts and his office. He had many callers among politicians, philanthropists, and literary men, with whom he was always ready for a talk, and he consumed a good deal of time in correspondence on public affairs as well as upon his addresses and lectures. Still, what- ever might be his distractions, he attended faithfully to the busi-
1 Lord Elgin, in his speech in Boston at the public dinner given in connection with tha Railroad Jubilee, Sept. 15, 1851, mentioned Sumner as one of the distinguished men of the city, to the chagrin of the conservatives who had charge of the entertainment. Richard H. Dana, Jr., taking in 1853 Sumner's letters of introduction to England, wrote gratefully, Sept. 9, 1853 : " Lord Elgin received me very kindly, and spoke of you with great interest and affection. ... In fact, by the stroke of your pen earls and countesses, admiralty judges, attornej-s-general, M. P.' s, nuncios, archbishops, priests and deacons, the glorious company of apostles, cloistered nuns, and stoled friars are set in motion."
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 55
ness he undertook, and guarded well the interests confided to him. He was regularly at his office by 9 o'clock in the morning, left it at 2 in the afternoon for dinner, and was back again at 4 to remain an hour or two. It was a short walk of five minutes from No. 4 Court Street, through Pemberton Square and Ash- burton Place, to 20 Hancock Street. He continued to serve as commissioner of the United States Circuit Court. Once he was counsel in some insurance cases before Judge Williams, a referee. He had charge of several patent causes, — one already referred to concerning friction matches, on which he was still employed in the summer of 1851 ; 1 one concerning a rotary-power stock- ing loom ; and another concerning a contrivance for grinding the knives or blades of a straw-cutting machine. This last patent cause was on trial for a week, and ended in a disagreement of the jury. B. F. Hallett was associated with Sumner as plain- tiff's counsel, and Henry B. Stanton and Horace E. Smith were for the defence. According to Mr. Stanton, Sumner " shone in the hard fight." This is his only known case before a jury at this period. His last appearance in court was when he argued in the Supreme Court of the State in behalf of a trus- tee's answer in a trustee process.2 He appeared for his friend, F. W. Bird, before a legislative committee in relation to the route of the Norfolk County Railroad. He had a fair share of office business ; and among clients to whom he rendered such service were C. F. Adams and A. McPhail. His briefs in the patent cases, still preserved, show careful preparation both as to the law and the facts, and a capacity to deal with this difficult and subtle branch of the law beyond what could be expected of one who was so strongly drawn to comprehensive discussions relating to human society. His briefs in the insurance cases show the same completeness of preparation. He annotated new editions of Story's Works on Equity Pleading, Equity Jurispru- dence, and Partnership.
Sumner's professional earnings, which are thought to have been not more than one or two thousand dollars a year, his compensation for editing Story's Works, and his fees for lec- tures before lyceums were, although he lived without charge at his mother's, only sufficient to pay his personal expenses, which were on a moderate scale, — covering the rent of his law office,
i Ante, vol. ii. p. 292.
2 Rice v. Brown, 9 Cushing Reports, vol. ix. p. 308.
56 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
offerings of charity, an excursion in the summer, an occasional drive in the suburbs, and clothes, in which he provided for himself somewhat generously. He laid by nothing; and when pressed to go to Europe to attend a Prison or Peace Congress, want of funds was one of the reasons he gave for not going. From time to time he borrowed small sums of Howe and Long- fellow, which were promptly repaid. He had then as always a dread of being in debt ; and was for some time quite unhappy about a note he had improvidently given for the benefit of a State Normal School, where others equally interested failed to meet his expectations in sharing the burden.1
Sumner's " Orations and Speeches," in two volumes, were published in November, 1850, by Messrs. W. D. Ticknor and Co.,2 and were going through the press during the spring and summer of that year. He made very many changes and corrections, not only of the orations and speeches as originally printed sepa- rately, but in the different proofs. The changes in the proofs, even in the third, were so many that the publishers wrote him that they could not endure the expense, and that he must sub- mit his copy complete in the first instance ; his erasures, ad- ditions, and transfers were carrying the cost of printing to ten dollars for each volume, while the publisher was to receive only about one. An excess in revision was characteristic of him. He continued the alterations in every successive edition, filling the margins with pen or pencil marks. No matter how thorough was the preceding revision, he was always discovering a con- struction or a word to improve. Horace Mann wrote to a young man in whom he had been interested as a boy, — George E. Baker,3 just elected a member of the legislature of New York, —
" Purchase and read arid study two volumes just published of Charles Sumner's ' Orations and Speeches.' You will find them full of the most noble views and inspiring sentiments. I could ask a young man just entering polit- ical life to do nothing better than to form his conduct after the high models here presented."
Josiah Quincy, acknowledging the present to him of the two volumes, wrote Nov. 28, 1850 : —
1 Ante, vol. ii. p. 328.
2 The publication was talked over with Longfellow a year before. Longfellow's " Life," vol. ii. p. 136. These volumes did not include his lecture on " The Employment of Time." A third volume, entitled " Recent Speeches and Addresses," was published in 1856, a sec- ond edition of which contained Sumner's speech on "The Crime against Kansas."
3 Editor of W. H. Seward's Works.
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 57
My dear Friend, — I received and appreciated, with a heart in the right place and strung as you would wish, the volumes you have done me the honor to ask my acceptance of. I have before read most of their contents with a just estimate of the motive, the talent, and the independence they dis- play. It gratifies me to possess them in so acceptable a form, and one thus facilitating recurrence and quickening what is dear to me, the remembrance of the author. Do not complain or be discouraged, or " abate one jot of heart or hope" because they occasion " coldness" in some, or are met with a politic indifference by others.
"Truth would you teach and save a sinking land, Most shun, none aid you, and few understand."
He who takes a stand in morals, in an atmosphere somewhat more elevated and ethereal than that in which live the multitude, whose eyes are always on the earth, who dread all tracks which are not beaten, and who never feel safe but when in herd, must expect not to be valued according to his worth or his aims; and he who crosses prevailing interests, passions, or prejudices must not be surprised or shaken by attempts to frown down what cannot be pulled down, and to deter by petty annoyance and neglect the self-sustained tran- quillity of a mind whose action they would limit or suspend. I can only say to you in the language of the Sibyl, —
" Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito, Qua tua te Fortuna sinet. Via prima salutis, Quod minime reris — pandetur."
Truly and respectfully yours, No. 1 Beacon Hill, Nov. 28, 1850.
Palfrey wrote : —
Josiah Quincy.
" You have built a monument more durable than brass : not a lasting memo- rial of yourself merely, but what you will care for more, — an influence which in a metempsychosis from mind to mind will be immortal for the welfare of future times. May you have many years in store in which to build the great fabric higher yet ! "
Sumner's friends often submitted their manuscripts or first proofs to him, and they came back so changed that the authors could hardly identify their own compositions.1 Those much younger than himself submitted to this rough handling ; others rose in insurrection against his severe canons of criticism. He cut to pieces a lecture which Horace Mann sent him for revision, and an impartial and competent journalist who happened to see it covered with his pencil marks says that every change was an improvement. Mr. Mann wrote with power and eloquence, but there was a want of chasteness and finish in his style. He adopted in this instance many of Sumner's suggestions, but
1 He read, in 1853, the proofs to Mrs. Stowe's "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin."
58 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
rebelled against some of his rules, contending in a letter of self- vindication that they were begotten of fastidiousness, particu- larly in excluding words which were technical and half tech- nical, or of Latin origin, and new words formed by the writer according to the analogies of the language. Sumner often revised Dr. Howe's writings, and only regretted that with reference to their full and permanent effect the Doctor did not take more care in matters of style and arrangement. He wrote concerning one of them : " I have read your manuscript carefully. It is full of beautiful thoughts, often beautifully expressed. The truths you seek to impress must prevail ; but I am sure that they will sooner prevail if you will revise your copy before sending it to the printer. . . . Your reports are classical documents. If I regarded them only as commonplace documents I should be less sensitive to any defects of manner." Dr. Howe wrote as to one of his reports as superintendent of the Blind Asylum, which Sumner had revised : " I want you to point out to me every fault, even to be more severe than you have ever been ; for I am conscious that if I ever attain to any merit of composition, it will be through a perseverance on your part in the friendly criticisms you have already vouchsafed to me." l But even the Doctor, while gratefully acknowledging his service as critic, thought him wanting in the mirthful faculty, and in danger of " turning purity of style into purism."
Sumner was in 1849-1850 a visitor at the Harvard Law School, the scene of his early studies. On behalf of the visitors he made the report in which he stated the methods, advantages, endow- ments, and history of the School, and the unexampled services of Judge Story as teacher and author, — in gratitude for which a new professorship, to be called " The Story Professorship of Commercial Law and the Law of Nations," was recommended.2 His letter of July 15, 1851, to the Story Association,3 in which he recalls his loved teacher, as also two friends whom he had made in Europe, — Thibaut and Mittermaier, — marks the period of the end of his legal studies and his final withdrawal from the
1 The writer of this Memoir several times had returned to him papers and addresses of his own already in print, which he had sent to Sumner, and was appalled to find them cov- ered with corrections, — his " intrusive pencil marks " as he called them.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 377-392. It was the first formal visitation of the School, and Presi- dent Sparks suggested to Sumner that a report of the kind be made.
3 Works, vol. ii. pp. 442, 443. Sumner would not attend the oration or the dinner, being advised that Choate was to defend the Fugitive Slave Act. Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. p. 199.
^Et. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 59
profession. He was in 1847-1848 one of the committee to pass upon essays offered at Harvard College for the Bowdoin prize, — a prize which he had himself taken as a student. In 1850 he served as one of the trustees of the State Library.
Sumner's correspondence at the period of 1845-1850 was, as always, large. He wrote to his brother George, still in Europe, more than to any one, covering personal and family affairs, as well as public questions at home and abroad, and begging him to come home and devote himself to some earnest work in litera- ture or philanthropy. He corresponded with George P. Marsh, Dr. George W. Bethune, George W. Greene, and Brantz Mayer on literary subjects ; with Lieber on historical questions ; with Vaux, Parrish, and Foulke, all of Philadelphia, on prison disci- pline ; with William and John Jay on measures against war and slavery ; with Giddings, Palfrey, and Mann on issues in Congress and the antislavery movement ; 1 with Whittier, Charles Allen, S. C. Phillips, and many others on political resistance in Massa- chusetts to slavery ; with David Dudley Field on the reform and codification of the law ; with B. D. Silliman and William Kent, who wrote on professional topics and social amenities, both tak- ing the liberty of friendship to chaff him for his philanthropic and political vagaries, — the former calling him a " prematurist." Friendly notes came often from Howe, Felton, and Longfellow. Death and change of interests eliminated from time to time from the list several between whom and himself many letters had passed. One from Mr. Daveis, of Portland, in 1847, broke a long interval, urging Sumner to attend that year the dinner of the Society of the Cincinnati in Boston, with whom he had last met in 1844.
It is perhaps worthy of note that Alexander H. Everett,2 as appears by a letter to Sumner just before leaving the country for his mission to China, where he died a year later, named Sumner without his knowledge to Mr. Buchanan, then Secretary of State, for the post of chief clerk in his department, which it was expected would soon be made that of Assistant Secretary of State. The circumstance shows Mr. Everett's appreciation of Sumner's character and attainments.
Sumner had friendly relations with Henry C. Carey,3 of Phila- delphia, and in 1847 read the proofs of the latter's book, entitled
1 He was also in familiar relations at this time with S. P. Chase.
2 1792-1847. 3 1793-1879.
60 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
"The Past, the Present, and the Future." He induced the author to modify some of his propositions on slavery,1 though unable to convert him from the notion that the institution should be left to the working of natural causes, and not be interfered with by agitation or prohibitory legislation.2 They were, how- ever, in accord as to the folly of war and its inconsistency with civilization.8
William Kent, while unable to comprehend Sumner's depar- ture from conservative teachings and associations, showed a tender and unfailing interest in his welfare. His letters are instructive as revealing how Sumner was regarded by one who was repelled by what seemed to Kent his delusions on politics and moral reforms, and yet who had come near enough to him to feel his worth and the charm of his personal qualities. He wrote, Sept. 24, 1847, soon after resigning the law professorship at Cambridge : —
"You ought to succeed me, Sumner. The place was yours by hereditary right, and it required incessant efforts on your part to divest yourself of this right. You have chosen a lot more brilliant perhaps, more exciting certainly. You have troops of friends and enthusiastic applause ; and you think you are doing good, and you are certainly generous in your aspirations and aims. I regret however, deeply regret, your course. You ought to have been a great lawyer, adding to the fields of jurisprudence, extending the domains of judi- cial truth, teaching us what are the maxims of justice between man and man, and nation and nation, and how conflicting claims shall be adjusted. I wish you had been liable to censure, similar to that of Goldsmith on Burke, and that you had given to the profession what you now conceive is meant for mankind. I think you are in error, and I am your friend so sincerely that I risk your displeasure by plainly telling you so. Strike, but hear! "
Again, July 11, 1848 : —
11 1 am sorry that you have left us Whigs. . . . But I do not mean that political distinctions shall in any degree affect my personal friendships. Two clocks never agree. ... So too with you, my warm-hearted but, politically considered, most erring friend. I mean to love you on to the end. ... I sigh over you, whose early studies and generous aspirations and English connec- tions and Judge Story's example had, I fondly hoped, confirmed in conserva- tive bonds and good old Whig tendencies and opinions."
And again, November 24 : —
" I have no doubt but that you are influenced, in the main, by generous and noble motives ; and if there is a tinge of earth about you, I sincerely be-
1 See chapter on "Man and his Fellow Man."
2 See chapter on '• Colonization," pp. 366-371.
8 On p. 449 Mr. Carey evidently refers to Sumner's Fourth of July oration.
Mr. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 61
lieve you are not conscious of it. ... In the mean time I will do you the jus- tice to say that in your future career (which may be a very triumphant one, for you have very many of the elements of popular enthusiasm and democratic energy with you) you will never do anything mean or cowardly ur cruel. You will be a Barnave or a Vergniaud, and not a Robespierre. You will do much injury that is inseparable from your cause, but will never cease to be the object of the affection, if you excite the deep regret, of your friends. Never forget that in the opposing party — for I shall be steadily and sternly opposed to you — there is one whose heart beats warmly for his early friend."
He wrote Jan. 19, 1849, regretting that Sumner had been hurt by his comments on the latter's relation to reforms : —
" Rightly considered, what I wrote was proof of esteem, like Parson Thwackens's birching of Tom Jones. Had you been an ordinary philanthro- pist, a common abolitionist, a mere ranting patriot like some of your friends, I should never have troubled myself about you. It was the pupil of Story whom I lamented over, the ardent apprentice of the law, the admirer of Eng- lish jurisprudence, the friend of Morpeth, —
' whose youthful name Was pure, and radiant in unsullied fame ! '
Now, my dear Charley, believe that you have a most affectionate friend in me. I will fret and carp no more. Ride your hobbies all over the cote gauche. I will get out of the way when the fit is on you, and always be
Yours truly and faithfully."
Again, August 31 : —
"Well, what are you doing? What eloquent speech are you writing; on what charitable work intent1? I have recently talked a great deal with your collaborateur, John Van Buren. He is a very able man. I think he is destined to rule our fierce Democracy in New York. His cool, human, sar- castic oratory cuts like a Damask sabre. But he is very different from you. I do not perceive in him the slightest real sympathy with human nature and its struggles and progress. All is hard and selfish. Yet his success will not be the less on this account. He can use the vernacular of the patriots and lead them ; rise by them, while he is only pugnacious and wilful and self-interested. You mean what you say, for though I never agree with you, I always admire you; and then I like to tease you a little with friendly criticism and ' affectionate carping.' "
Again, in September, 1849 : —
" I envy your euthusiasm and warm-heartedness. I envy even its errors, and almost wish for the generous illusion which in your case, as in Titania and Nick Bottom, leads you to invest American and European patriots with quali- ties the very reverse of those apparent to common-sense. God bless you ! "
62 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Sumner's old teacher, Edward T. Charming, the well and gratefully remembered Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Col- lege, wrote Aug. 25, 1819 : —
" My dear Charles, — You will remember, I hope, that I am justified in addressing you thus familiarly by the mistake you made at P. B. K. of suppos- ing that I took the same liberty there. Moreover, I was glad to see that you would uot have been displeased if your construction had been correct. ... I am pleased to see a man stand up with your zeal and courage for what I hold to be the right upon some of the gravest questions that agitate our own time, and concern the coming ages beyond your calculation or mine. I am glad to see so much information touching these questions brought near to very many who are waiting for day; so perpetual and urgent insisting upon their reli- gious and moral aspects and bearing; so earnest appeals to men to ftel that they all can and should do something to put down mischief, set right error, and substitute long-concealed or oppressed truth and justice. Burke was ready ' to pardon something to the spirit of Liberty.' Certainly I may do as much to your spirit of benevolence, when I meet with passages or even a whole paper with opinions or reasous which I cannot adopt, or a tone with which I cannot sympathize. Professionally I might allude to your style; and I must confess that true to my calling, in reading the Union College oration, I more than once turned theme-corrector. ' Nineteen zodiacs' have gone round since I was occupied in that most exhilarating office in your behalf; and I assure you, my dear sir, that I rejoice in a supposed fault, now and then, which reminds me of those days and of you.''
Rev. Andrew P. Peabody wrote from Portsmouth, Sept. 29, 1816 : —
" Permit me to express with my thanks for the copy of your address [at Phi Beta Kappa anniversary] my intense personal gratification in its perusal, and my deep sense of the services which you are reuderiug to the one great cause of peace, freedom, and progress. Upon that cause you have concen- trated the memories and influence of the illustrious men commemorated in your address (I was going to say with consummate art, but it is not so) with a naturalness and spontaneity which shows under what associations all subjects of thought must habitually group themselves in your mind. You are acquir- ing an influence inconceivably higher and more enduring than could possibly accrue from the more direct and beaten track to professional fame or political elevation ; while I trust that the time is not far distant when these goals will be more surely reached by the route which you have taken than by the grov- elling path on which they are wont to be sought."
Rev. Convers Francis wrote Sept. 26, 1846: —
" In common with the scholars and good men of our community, I thank you most heartily for this powerful exhibition of noble and beautiful truths, with which society among us has abundant need to be quickened and purified.1
1 The Phi Beta Kappa oration.
Mt. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 63
Those words I am sure cannot be lost ; they are words which the young minds among us at least ' will not willingly let die.' My best thanks also are due for your speech at the Whig State convention,1 which I had before read with delight. I hope that party will understand and appreciate, as they ought, your eloquent admonition to rally round the principles of humanity, freedom, and right, as a standard compared with which all other things shall be held poor and subordinate. . . . Your appeal to the great Senator of Massachusetts gave me a thrill of delight. Would God he could feel it as he ought ! "
Rev. N. L. Frothingham wrote May 14, 1847 : —
" You will not think me, I hope, transgressing the bounds of a proper re- serve if I say that I enjoy everything you write, for its generous spirit, its deep love of humanity, its learned research, and its splendid diction."
Rev. Leonard Woods, D.D., wrote June 17, 1847 : —
"Let me say, then, there are few young men who come forward into the world with a mind so active and powerful, and furnished with knowledge so extensive and so various, as the mind which you possess; and there are fewer young men still who with such a mind unite the various social and moral qualities which constitute anything like a character of complete excellence. At this day, especially in a public sphere of action, there are so many ad- verse influences at work that the formation of such a character is difficult and rare. My sincere and devout wish is that the son of my beloved classmate may attain to such a character in the highest degree; that he may be adorned with every virtue ; that he may rise to eminence in reputation, in goodness, and in usefulness."
In a later letter, dated July 10, in which he approves Sumner's efforts for peace, Dr. Woods enjoins his young friend " to peruse and re-peruse the best works on ethics and theology," — as those of Bishop Butler, Robert Hall, and Robert Boyle.
Joshua R. Giddings in his first letter to Sumner, Dec. 13, 1846, wrote of the Phi Beta Kappa oration : —
" I feel constrained to express to you my thanks for that able production. It is calculated to make men better, to raise the standard of virtue, and to excite an exalted love of virtue. The approval of your own conscience, the respect of good men, and the blessings of Heaven will reward such efforts."
William H. Seward wrote Dec. 16, 1846 (his first letter to Sumner), of the same oration and the speech at the Whig convention, - —
" They have been read with care; and I beg to assure you that I have been surprised, delighted, and instructed, especially by your glowing eulogium on Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. The principles and sentiments
i In Faneuil Hall, Sept. 23, 1846.
64 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
illustrated with such singular felicity in that work, as well as in the speech at Faneuil Hall, seem to me destined to regenerate society in this country and ultimately throughout Europe and the world. I rejoice that they have found au advocate so learned and so eloquent in New England. Be assured, my dear sir, that, although a stranger, I have carefully observed your actions for several years, and have constantly cherished the hope that you were destined to a life of great honor and usefulness."
A letter from Mr. Seward in May, 1848, shows his estimate of Sumner at that time. Sumner had made some suggestions as to the revision of Seward's oration on John Quincy Adams. Mr. Seward replied : —
"You will perhaps wonder at the deference I pay you; hut I pray you to believe that it comes from a profound respect for your judgment as a scholar and as a moralist. If you knew me better, you would know that I am but occasionally and incidentally engaged in either the one or the other. My life is one of action, not of speculation. I pray you accept assurances, which never- theless I hope are unnecessary, of decided respect and cordial friendship."
Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the " National Era," Washing- ton, D. C, in writing to Sumner, May 31, 1848, upon various political matters, added : " Do let me say that there is no one in New England whose productions I have read with so much unalloyed pleasure."
William W. Story had now established his home in Italy ; but in 1851 he was in Boston carrying his Life of his father through the press, — a work in which Sumner naturally took a great in- terest. During his last days in the country he took a crayon likeness of Sumner, intended for the Earl of Carlisle, who had requested him to sit for a portrait. Story wrote to Sumner, October 12, the day before sailing on his return to Italy, —
•' I leave no one in this country with more regret than you ; and now that I am sayiug ' Farewell ' for years, let me express to you the feelings of gratitude and affection which well up in my heart towards you. You have always been to me more a brother than a friend, ever solicitous for my well being and well doing, ever ready to do me kindnesses, ever true and warm and noble. I cannot go without thanking you specially for your interest in my work during the last six months while I have been engaged on this Life of my father. I feel that it would not have had half its merit had it not been for your watch- fulness and your real assistance."
The next day when sailing, he wrote on board the barque, —
" Dear Sumner, — I would that you were to go with us. But you have tasks noble indeed, but heavy to perform. How many look to you to carry out great principles into legislation, to speak stirring words into the dull ear of
^Et. 34^39.] FRIENDSHIPS. 65
apathy, aud to create a soul under the ribs of slavery ! God speed you in your course ! You have always my best aud warmest wishes ; and whatever you do 1 shall know is done with sincerity and high purposes."
During the period of 1845-1851 Sumner was well remembered by his English and other foreign friends.1 Their letters, though written at perhaps longer intervals than before, were warm with testimonies of friendship and of interest in his career, ending with a vivid recollection of his former visit and the earnest desire that he would come again. They lamented with him the death of Story, adding their tributes to the memory of the jurist to whom some of them — Morpeth, Macready, and Falconer — had been introduced by him. They followed his career as a re- former in the public addresses which he sent them, and observed with satisfaction the good work he was doing, — some of them throwing in the caution that he must not expect an early real- ization of his hopes. When he was chosen to the Senate they congratulated him on the deserved honor, and recognized in the event the good fortune of his country. William Rathbone, of Liverpool, always a devoted friend from their first acquaintance, wrote to him often and at length upon the causes of peace, prison discipline, and the abolition of capital punishment, and sent him books and pamphlets, which were used in public dis- cussions in Boston. Lord Morpeth, who became Earl of Carlisle in 1848, being averse to letter-writing, wrote seldom, but always, whenever he wrote, with the old affection. Monckton Milnes kept him informed of social interests and the doings of literary men.3 John Kenyon wrote of the same topics as Milnes, ex- pressing also his affectionate regard and his admiration for what Sumner had done, which he valued for its intellectual and still more for its moral bearing. Robert Ingham's letters showed the same tenderness as in personal intercourse, and related what was interesting in English politics and the circles of lawyers and judges. Joseph Parkes, who retired in 1850 from active pro- fessional work, wrote also of politics and the Oregon boundary question, — the latter being a topic which Thomas Falconer, who had carefully investigated it, also treated in his letters. Other friends recurred to this international dispute, which promised at
1 Our three successive ministers to England — Everett, Bancroft, and Lawrence — assured him in letters of the kind remembrance which was expressed of him there.
2 Sumner in 1845 persuaded a Boston publisher to issue an edition of Milnes' poems, which came out late in that year.
VOL. III. 5
66 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
one time to lead to a serious difficulty between the two countries ; and they as well as Sumner rejoiced at its peaceful issue in 1846. Professor Whewell, master of Trinity College, acknowledged the gift from him of American books, particularly on morals, and re- called Sumner's visit to the University. Lord Cran worth (Baron Parke) sent him an engraving of himself. Earls Wharncliffe and Fitzwilliam, as well as Mr. Parkes and William Marshall, each commended to him their sons, who were to visit Boston. Occasional letters came from H. Bellenden Ker, of Lincoln's Inn, Charles R. Vaughan, living at All Souls, Oxford, and R. J. Mackintosh,1 son of Sir James, and now Governor of Antigua. Macready, grateful for Sumner's good offices, wrote with great friendliness and confidence, both from England and during his visits to the United States ; and with praiseworthy intent, but without success, undertook, as a mutual friend, to bring about a good understanding between Sumner and a well-known Boston lawyer, — a conservative of the hardest type, sincerely hostile to the antislavery and all liberal causes, who was all the more anti- pathetic to Sumner personally because of the good offices he and his family had received from him. Mrs. Montague kept up the same motherly interest she had conceived for him when they first met. Eight years after he left England she sent her bene- diction as follows : —
" I am very thankful for your kind recollection of us, thankful that we have such a friend, and still more that the age has so true a philosopher and so good a man. You have shown what true glory is, in your admirable lecture ; and hard must that heart have been which remained untouched and unimproved by your labor of love. ... I must not weary you any longer. I am so far on my way to the ' silent land ' that I have little chance of ever seeing you again ; but the heart that so readily acknowledged your worth must be quite cold before I cease to remember you. Grod bless and reward you for all your efforts for His glory and the benefit of your fellow- men ! "
Two letters from Richard Cobden, dated March 9, 1848, and Nov. 7, 1849, both relating chiefly to the reduction of arma- ments in time of war, and the later one containing a remark- able prediction that Canada and the United States would yet become one,2 mark the beginning of a free and confidential cor- respondence between these two men, — who though differing in intellectual characteristics were kindred in aims, — which was occasionally suspended, to be renewed whenever important pub-
1 He married a daughter of Nathan Appleton. 2 Works, vol. xiii. p. 129.
Mr. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 67
lie interests required. From time to time came letters from Mittermaier concerning prison discipline, capital punishment, penal jurisprudence and administration, codification, and crim- inal procedure, all topics in which that publicist was deeply- interested. They showed that time had not weakened the inter- est he had taken in the young lawyer whom Story had com- mended to him. He was anxious to keep familiar with all American publications on these topics, and Sumner faithfully supplied him with them. Dr. Julius, of Berlin, was in full agreement with Sumner's views of prison discipline, and wrote to him at length on the European phases of the question.
Sumner received frequent letters of introduction from foreign friends ; and rarely did an Englishman, well considered at home, come to Boston without bringing one to him.1 These oppor- tunities to talk over English society were very agreeable to him ; and though it was not often convenient to entertain guests at his mother's house, he could show them Boston, drive with them to the suburbs, and take them to Prescott's and Longfellow's. He had pleasant meetings in Boston with other foreigners than Englishmen, — with Frederika Bremer in the winter of 1849- 1850,2 with Edmond de Lafayette, grandson of the General, in August, 1850, and Jean J. Ampere,3 friend of Tocqueville, in September, 1851, all of whom he took pleasure in escorting to places of interest.
In a letter written in April, 1848, Sumner explained his early interest in certain reforms. It was a reply to a correspondent, a well-known clergyman of Boston,4 who, while disclaiming his own belief in the justice of the imputation, stated that unfriendly critics had ascribed his connection with them to ambition for notoriety and place. Sumner felt hurt at the undeserved re- flection on his motives, and gave this account, in the nature of autobiography, of the way in which he was led to prominence in the discussion of those questions : —
"It is with reluctance and hesitation that I allude to anything in my own personal history. If in doiug so I shall expose myself to the suggestion of
1 Among those who called on him were sons of Wharncliffe, Fitzwilliam, Sir Robert Peel, and Joseph Parkes. He went in 1849 with Lady Einmeline Stuart Wortley to Pres- cott's, at Nahant.
2 See Miss Bremer's "Homes of the New World."
3 Ampere's "Promenade en Amerique," vol. li. p. 36. "Revue des deux Mondes," 1853, p. 20.
4 Rev. George Putnam, D. D.
68 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
egotism, I shall at least show myself not insensible to your good opinion, while I strive to disabuse your mind of any prejudice which may have arisen on account of the course to which you have referred. My name is connected somewhat with two questions, which may be described succinctly as those of peace and slavery. To these may be added prison-discipline. Tn thus re- straining it to these, I would not be understood as expressing indifference to any matter by which the welfare of our race is advanced. Let me recount briefly the manner of my connection with these questions.
" That which earliest interested me, and which has always occupied much of my thoughts, is the peace question. When scarcely nine years old, it was my fortune to listen to President Quincy's address before the Peace Society, delivered in the Old South Church. It made a deep and lasting impression on my mind ; and though, as a boy and youth, I surrendered myself to the illusions of battles and wars, still as I came to maturity I felt too keenly their wickedness and woe. A lecture which I heard from Mr. Lack!,1 in the old court house at Cambridge, shortly after I left college, confirmed these im- pressions. My ripened convictions were known to my friends, and were often the subject of conversation. Nor did I confine the expression of them to my own country. When in Europe, it so happened that on more than one occa- sion, in conversation and otherwise, in France, Germany, and England, I dwelt upon this subject. Let me relate an incident. In Paris, M. Victor Foucher, Procureur-General du Roi, being engaged upon a treatise on the law of nations, did me the honor, in the winter of 1838 (more than ten years ago) to ask me to read a portion of his manuscript, inviting my criticism. On studying it, I observed that he had adopted in his prolegomena, among the fundamental principles of the law of nations, that war was recognized as the necessary arbit- rament or mode of determining justice between nations, thus giviug to it the character of a legal institution. In returning his manuscript, I ventured to call his attention to this dogma ; and while admitting that it was received by every publicist from Alberius Gentilis to the present day, suggested to him to be the first to brand it as unchristian and barbarous, and to declare that the institution of war, defined, sanctioned, and upheld by the law of nations as a mode of determining justice between them, was but another form of the ordeal by battle, which was once regarded as a proper mode of determining justice between individuals. This view, which you will perceive does not in any way interfere with the right of self-defence or the stability of government or the sword of the magistrate, I developed at some length at a later day in an ora- tion to which I shall refer. I relate this experience in Paris that you may see that I early expressed my opinions on this subject, and did not shrink from so doing in places where they might naturally find little favor. After an absence of two years and a half in Europe, I returned to Boston, and was at once re- ceived, not without consideration. In the very month of my arrival (May, 1840), seeing a notice in the papers of the meeting of the American Peace Society, I attended it. The Rev. Henry Ware was in the chair. I think there were not more than twelve persons present. We met in a small room under the Marlboro' Chapel. On motion of Dr. Gannett, I was placed upon the executive committee, and from that time was in the habit of at-
1 William Ladd, 1778-1841 ; he lived at Minot, Me.
JEt. 34-39.] ACTIVE INTEREST IN REFORMS. 69
tending its meetings. If you know anything of the course of this Society, you must be aware that its condition at this period was humble. I doubt if it could be considered an attractive sphere to a person bent on self-aggrandize- ment. Several years passed, during which I had constantly declined oppor- tunities, more or less conspicuous, of addressing the public, when in 1845 I was invited to deliver the municipal oration on the 4th of July. This invita- tion I peremptorily declined, and was then addressed a second time by the committee of arrangements, with strong personal appeals, suggesting among other things that I had kept aloof from public affairs in an unbecoming man- ner. I yielded at last to the pressure, saying that I should decline the invita- tion as an honor, but would accept it as a duty, undertaking to discharge it in such manner as should seem to me most fit. I dwell upon these particu- lars because this oration was my first public connection with the peace ques- tion. The position taken by me on this occasion has drawn upon me not a little criticism, — perhaps I might use a stronger expression. Convinced of its intrinsic propriety and importance, I have been drawn, on subsequent occasions, by an inevitable necessity, to sustain and fortify it. I hope that I shall always be willing to maintain it. Thus much for my connection with the peace question.
" One word on the slavery question. Shortly after my admission to the bar, say in 1835, I became interested in this. The earliest newspaper that I remember to have subscribed for was the ' Liberator.' This was at a time when my schoolmate and fellow-student in college and the law school, Wen- dell Phillips, was still indifferent to the cause which has since occupied so much of his time. My views on this subject were known to all my friends. I have ever entertained a strong attachment to the Constitution and the Union. I am a Constitutionalist and a Unionist, but have felt it to be our duty at the North, according to the words of Franklin, to step to the ' very verge of the Constitution in discouraging every species of traffic in our fellow-men.' I think you will join me in this opinion. In the autumn of 1845, when the question arose of the annexation of Texas with a slaveholding constitution, I spoke at a meeting called in Faneuil Hall to oppose it. This was the first political meeting in which I had ever taken any part ; nor had I ever before sought to express in public my opposition to slavery. In short, there had never before been any occasion in which I was disposed to participate. I had no relish for the strife of politics, nor did I coincide in views with those who conducted the antislavery movement. This is my connection with this ques- tion. The opposition which I then made to the annexation of Texas has been directed since against the war, which was one of its hateful consequences.
"I will not trouble you with any details touching my connection with the prison question. It will be sufficient if I say that it was most unexpectedly, and I might almost say accidentally, that I found myself in the position which I have occupied there.
" I may well ask, after this review, whether there is anything in my course to justify the suggestion that I have ' taken my position on reform questions in order to get a notoriety and prominence greater than I could get otherwise so soon, and get earlier into power than I could by other tracks, which are occu- pied by older men ? ' There might, possibly, be some small ground for this imputation if I had sought occasion for display, and also if I were in any re-
70 MEMOIR OP CHARLES SUMNER, [1845-50.
spect a disappointed pursuer of office or rauk ; though the question might well be asked, whether, if solicitous of these tilings, I should not rather he tempted to regular and inoffensive service in party. I shrink again from dwelling upon myself; but I am tempted still further to say, that, at the time my ' position was taken on the reform questions,' few persons of my age in this community could behold wider openings for himself than I could, and few had declined more various opportunities. I was connected by relations of amity and confidence with those whose influence would have been most important to one seeking personal advancement. I might go still further. I am not aware that I have ever visited any considerable place in our own country or abroad, where I have not been the mark of undeserved kindness and regard. At home I had often been solicited to take part in public affairs, and by members of different political parties. I had been thought of as a proper person for offices, — academic, professional, judicial, and diplo- matic. The University, by its President, had invited me to two different professorships, one of which is now occupied by Dr. Walker. Overtures had been made to me to accept an eminent professional position under a Democratic national Administration. I had been proposed by Judge Story, as he told me, without my knowledge, as the person whom he preferred as the successor to the late Judge Davis on the bench. A respectable place in the diplomatic service of the country had been open to me. But none of these had any lure for me. Surely, if mine were the ambition that has been suggested, I should not have neglected these advantages ; most certainly I should not have re- nounced them in pursuit of a vulgar notoriety. I have little sympathy with office-seekers, — I might add with self-seekers in any way. My own fixed pur- pose has always been to lead a life without office. This has been a cherished idea. I would teach, if I might so aspire, by example, that a useful and re- spectable career may be spent without dependence upon popular favor, and without the possession of what you have called ' power.' Iu the expression of my opinions I have hoped to show a proper regard for those from whom I differ. Well aware that where freedom of thought exists, differences must ensue, I have always desired that these should be tempered by mutual kind- ness and forbearance, so that we might all at least ' agree to disagree.' In this spirit, while willingly leaving to others to determine their course towards me, I have endeavored, on my part, to allow no debates of opinion to interfere with any pleasant personal relations ; and though sometimes condemning or criticising the public conduct of men, I trust that I have never failed to do homage to their unquestioned virtues."
Sumner had a quality and habit which may as well be taken into account here as later. The reader has gone far enough in this narrative to observe that he delighted to talk of the noted persons he had met, of the attentions he had received, and the good things said of him.1 When after his triumphs as an orator applause poured in on him, it delighted his ears ; and he could not refrain from communicating it to others, not always his intimate friends. It pleased him to know the effect of his
1 Ante, vol. ii. p. 151.
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 71
orations, and to let others know it also. This habit, which de- veloped when he took the platform in Boston, remained with him to the end. There was always in it, as well in middle life as in youth, something spontaneous, artless, childlike, the natural ex- pression of a frank nature, with no purpose to exalt himself or depreciate others. Tact would have imposed greater reserve, for the habit repelled many, particularly those who had the ambition without the power to do what he could do. People who are clever, without breadth or strength, are disposed to harp upon such a limitation, overlooking altogether the talents and service which may accompany it.
Vanity, egotism, self-consciousness, self-esteem, self-poise, are terms synonymous in common use, expressing what in some degrees is a frailty or defect, and in others a source of power. They designate a quality or habit which is often associated with greatness, indeed is rarely absent from it, and which has often distinguished or disfigured men who have done immortal work in letters or served mankind in eminent statesmanship ; and even warriors, exclusively men of action, have not been exempt from it.1 This is known to schoolboys who have translated the Exegi monumentiim, and the orations against Catiline. Nelson, in his single interview with Wellington, whom he did not at the time know, talked of himself in so vain a style, even like a charlatan, as almost to disgust the latter, but a few moments later seemed a different man, when learning who his companion was he talked like an officer and statesman ; 2 and yet Nelson had fought at Santa Cruz and Aboukir, and was to die at Trafalgar. John Adams's vanity was proverbial. To him praise was always sweet incense ; and yet so sterling was his patriotism that no flattery in a foreign court or at home could swerve him a hair's- breadth from devotion to his country.3 When power exists in a man, he will rarely fail to know it. Merit and modesty, it has been wittily said, have nothing in common but the initial letter ;4 and a German thinker has written that no one can be blind to his own merit any more than to his height.5 A reviewer of
i Atlantic Monthly (Nov. 1887), vol. lx. p. 718. A. W. Ward's "Chaucer" (English Men of Letters), p. 147. Those curious in such matters may find a collection of self-esti- mates by famous people in Justin S. Morrill's " Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons."
2 The Croker Papers, vol. li. p. 233. Oct. 1, 1834.
3 The historian, Bancroft, in a conversation with the writer, made a comment on John Adams, which in substance corresponds with the text.
4 Atlantic Monthly (Nov. 1887), vol lx. p. 718.
5 Schopenhauer.
72 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
Macaulay,1 who was also accused of an inordinate estimate of himself, has tersely said of vanity that it is " a defect rather than a vice ; never admitted into the septenary catalogue of the mortal sins of Dante and the Church ; often lodged by the side of high and strict virtue, often allied with an amiable and play- ful innocence, — a token of imperfection, a deduction from great- ness, and no more."
This quality or habit of Sumner, whatever he had of it, was harmless. It led him to no distorted view of men and things, to no underestimate of other men's powers, to no disparage- ment of their work, and no disregard of their opinions and coun- sels. Jealousy and envy were no part of his nature. He praised generously, even lavishly, not only those younger than himself or inferior in position, but those also who were his peers in office or his rivals for fame. He recognized intellectual power and beneficent service in public men who were separated from him by party lines, and in those of his own party with whom his relations were strained. In his long service on the com- mittee on foreign relations, charged with subjects which he had studied far more than his associates, on which he might fairly think his own opinion the best, he was always considerate of their views ; and when at the time of his final removal those who promoted it were seeking to find grounds of accusation against him, not one of them, even the least scrupulous, ven- tured to assert that he had failed in personal respect and con- sideration for his fellows in the committee room.2
Sumner's way of speaking of the things he had done, and of what others had said of them, had this extent, no more.3 After his death, Whittier thus wrote : —
1 Quarterly Review, July and Oct. 1876, p. 6.
2 John W. Forney, who as Secretary of the Senate had observed Sumner, wrote in his "Anecdotes of Public Men," vol. ii. p. 256: "He had his faults; and one most dwelt upon by those who can find no other cause of censure is his alleged arrogance and dog- matism, and a certain self-sufficiency. Beyond a somewhat stubborn adherence to his opinions and a lofty defiance of adverse public sentiment, I have never known a more tolerant and generous man. That which some call arrogance and self-sufficiency was perhaps a consciousness of superior intelligence and a restive discontent under the suc- cess of notorious inferiority."
3 E. P. Whipple, a critic of character, who knew Sumner well, has treated the charge of vanity imputed to him, noting his entire freedom from all envy and his greater interest in the achievements of others than in his own, — "Recollections of Charles Sumner," Har- per's Mngazine, May, 1879, pp. 275, 276. The same charge is referred to by James Free- man Clarke in his estimate, "Memorial and Biographical Sketches," p. 96. It was dis- missed as of little account by A. G. Thurman and E. R. Hoar in their tributes in Congress, April 27, 1874. Congressional Globe, pp. 3400, 3410.
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 73
" Safely his dearest friends may own The slight defects he never hid, The surface-blemish in the stone Of the tall, stately pyramid.
" What if he felt the natural pride Of power in noble use, too true With thin humilities to hide
The work he did, the lore he knew?
" Was he not just ? Was any wronged By that assured self-estimate % He took but what to him belonged, Unenvious of another's state.
" Well might he heed the words he spake, And scan with care the written page Through which he still shall warm and wake The hearts of men from age to age." x
Sumner wrote to Whittier, April 11, 1850 : —
" I have copied from Mrs. Jameson all that relates to Saint Mark and the Christian slave.2 I commend it to you as a fit subject for a poem. Under your hands it may become a lesson to our people. You will remember Saint Mark as the tutelary saint of Venice. Though an Evangelist, he was not one of the Apostles, but was, I believe, an early convert of Saint Paul. I missed you the afternoon we were to go to Cambridge together. I was sorry to lose the opportunity of making you and Longfellow better acquainted. Come again."
To E. L. Pierce, Brown University, June 24 : —
" I agree with Professor Lincoln.3 I have always regretted that the P. B. K. Society prolonged to advanced life the ephemeral distinctions of college scholarship ; nor can I walk in its procession without a feeling of pain at perceiving so many worthy persons excluded from its ranks. A society of the Alumni, generously comprehending all without regard to any gradations of college or worldly honor, would better serve the purposes of the present Society, at least among the graduates. I do not wish to express an opinion of the merits of the Society as an incentive to the undergraduates ; but whatever these may be, I think their influence should not be extended beyond Com- mencement Day. I think President Wayland joins in these opinions, for I re- member well his feelings as we walked together in the procession to hear Mr.
1 This poem of fifty-three verses touches many points of Sumner's character and life.
2 This was the suggestion of Whittier's " Legend of Saint Mark."
3 A reply to a request for advice as to accepting an election as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
74 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
WheatoTi.1 Notwithstanding these strong convictions, I have not hesitated to take part in the public proceedings of the Society, and habitually attend its meetings. My own course should not be a guide for you ; and I am unwilling to say anything to check that noble independence that leads you to bring your acts to the standard of your own conscience. Still, I cannot but re. peat that I agree with Professor Lincoln. As a member of the P. B. K. Society you may be useful in inducing it to abandou its present exclusive char- acter, or to yield its place entirely to a society of the Alumni. There are many who are hoping for this result ; you can help them. In matters of principle I would stand like adamant ; but in matters of indifference I conform cheerfully to those about me. I shall be glad to see you when you come to Boston. My volumes about which you inquire are still dragging their slow length along."
To Richard Cobden, July 9 : —
"... The peace questiou, though appealing less palpably to the imme- diate interests of politicians, has been winning attention. Burritt has inde- fatigably visited distant places, and aroused or quickened an interest in the cause. His singleness of devotion to this work fills me with reverence. Per- haps with more knowledge of the practical affairs of government he would necessarily lose something of that hope which is to him an unfailing succor. As he was leaving America I suggested to him to leave no stones unturned in order to secure Alexander von Humboldt as President of the Frankfort Con- gress. If this venerable scientific chief should preside, I should consider the success of the Congress secure. Indeed, his presidency alone would be success ; it would put the cause under the protection of his name. From my personal recollections of him, and more particularly from the character of his life and writings, I am led to believe that he must be substantially with us. His 'Kosmos' is a peace tract, revealing the harmony of the universe; it pleads powerfully for harmony among men. Though a friend of the king, he has kept aloof, so far as I am aware, from the late political excitement; aud I can- not but feel that he can be pressed, with much effect, to crown a glorious life of science by helping to inaugurate universal peace."
To George Sumner,2 July 29 : —
. . . "Horace was pure in heart, and without guile or selfishness. I am particularly struck by his unselfish life. His recent letters from Italy show this character. . . . Mother and Julia feel their bereavement keenly. Horace on many accounts had been more of a companion to them than any other member of the family, and they were counting upon stores of pleasure in the account of his experience. Julia, I fear, will miss his brotherly attentions very much. I feel painfully my own inability to supply them. If you were at home, our happiness would be increased very much, and our resources of all kinds also."
1 Henry Wheaton, September. 1847, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Brown University.
2 Written after a visit to Fire Island, N. Y., to find, if possible, the remains of his brother Horace, who had been lost in a shipwreck. Ante, vol. i. pp. 33, 34.
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 75
To Josiah Quincy, September 2 : — -
" Mrs. Quincy's long illness bad made me often think of late that the close of her beautiful life was near at band; and yet the sad tidings struck my heart like a knell. Closely interwoven with the memories of my college life is the kindly and elegant hospitality of your house. With every year since those early days that hospitality has been again and again renewed ; confidence and regard have been extended to me ; and amidst the coldness or alienation of others I have found Mrs. Quincy a constant friend. Grateful to her memory, and deeply sympathizing with you and your family, I cannot forbear offering the tribute of my grief." 1
To George Sumner, September 2 : —
" I rejoice in your confidence in the French Republic; and yet I must say it seems a government which deserves very little sympathy. I have been shocked by the press gag and the retrenchment of suffrage. It is a kingless monarchy, with the selfishness and expenditures of a monarchy, and not of a republic. Still, I know that the future is secure, and all things tend to our desires, even through disappointments. . . . When will this accursed passport system be abolished? "
To Longfellow, from Fishkill on the Hudson, September 15 :
" My dear Henry, — I have passed several happy days here with an an- cient classmate, Sargent,2 who lives with great elegance at a beautiful seat on the banks of the Hudson. All here have read and admired ' Evangeline.' Be- fore coming here I saw Jenny Lind at her lodgings. She is not handsome, but is earnest and persuasive in manner. Her sympathies are with everything that promotes the good of men. She does not regard Miss Bremer as a woman of ' genius.' I had a prolouged discussion with her on this point. She admitted that she was a ' well-instructed woman,' — of fine feelings of heart, but not a genius. In the course of conversation she said, ' We Swedes are a sensible people,' meaning ' sensitive.' Her English is not accurate. She spoke on education ; on the condition of the people in Europe, for whom she expresses the greatest interest ; on the duties of kings. ' What right,' she said, ' have kings to live merely for carriages, horses, and palaces ? ' Her appearance on the stage was very fine. Her pose, movement, and expression were beautiful. My place was in the front gallery, directly opposite the singer."
To R. H. Dana, Jr., November 1 : —
" What can have turned you to those old fields ? 8 I send you the volume containing the article on Replevin.4 Looking at this and my other labors in that volume, I am reminded how completely my mind has flowed into other
1 Mrs. Quincy's early and constant interest in Sumner has already appeared in this Memoir, vol. ii. p. 262.
2 Henry Winthrop Sargent.
3 Dana had written, "Will you lend me your article on Replevin, written years ago in the Jurist, and much commended to us by Professor Greenleaf at the school? "
4 American Jurist, July, 1834. Ante, Memoir, vol. i. p. 124.
76 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
channels since those early days of precocious judicial enthusiasm. That vol- ume contains some eighteen articles, or notices of books, written and published while I was yet a student."
To George Sumner, November 26 : —
" I rejoice in your hopes for France. If less hopeful than you, I am more hopeful than people here. I believe in France, in freedom, and in progress ; but I have no respect for Louis Napoleon aud for his machinations, — not that they can secure empire, but because they may thwart the republic. When you have seen more of Cavaignac, I shall be pleased to know what you think of him. He seems a person of character."
To Whittier, December 3 : —
" Some days ago I sent you my two volumes,1 and I am now tempted to write, partly to excuse myself for thus venturing. My ideal is so much above everything actual in my poor life that I have little satisfaction in anything I am able to do ; and I value these things which are now published, simply as my earnest testimony to truths which I have most sincerely at heart. They have all been done because I could not help it, — almost unconsciously, I may say. One of the thoughts which reconciles me to my audacity is that possibly these volumes may tempt young men, particularly at colleges, to our fields of action. But I have little confidence even in this aspiration."
To J. Willard Brown, a student at Phillips Academy, An- dover (with whom Sumner was not personally acquainted), Jan. 31, 1851 : —
" I am not able to correspond with you at length on the subject of your inquiry; 2 but I cannot lose the opportunity of impressing on your mind the importance while at school and college of mastering the regular studies, omit- ting nothing, aud adding to them as much as possible of solid history. Above all, do not expect to do anything without work, as well attempt to fly. No person ever regretted any scholarship he succeeded in obtaining. Alas ! all of us are called to regret that we missed obtaining much that was within our reach. It is of incalculable importance to the student that he should be thor- ough in his studies. Such a habit commenced early will last through life. I have a sympathy with the young, and always wish them the best success."
To Lord Morpeth, April 8 : —
u Have you enjoyed Tennyson's ' In Memoriam '? It has charmed, touched, and exalted me. I have read very few poems in any language with equal de- light. What a tribute of friendship ! No one can read it without feeling how great a thing it is to have and to be a friend. The young Hallam is preserved in poetic amber. I have mourned with the father in his second loss. Two such sons are rarely given to a single father."
1 Orations and Speeches.
2 Concerning the allotment of time between regular studies and other academic means of culture.
JEt. 34-39.] PERSONAL LIFE. 77
To John Bigelow, June 6 : —
"... Mr. Ticknor's book is a good dictionary of Spanish literature; but, he is utterly incompetent to appreciate the genius of Spain.1 He cannot look at it face to face. Besides, his style is miserably dry and crude. As a politi- cian here he is bitter and vindictive for Webster."
To Thomas Brown,2 Lanfire House, Scotland, June 24 : —
" I mourned the death of Mr. Colden,3 who was an amiable and most ex- cellent gentleman. For several years I never failed to enjoy his very agree- able hospitality whenever I was in New York. I know no house that was more attractive ; his wife was a fascinating lady. And Lord Jeffrey is gone too, and Mrs. Jeffrey ! I hope the Empsons are well. Are they still at Haylebnry, and does he conduct the Review ? Remember me kindly to your father and sisters. I recall with inexpressible interest the long avenue and the groves of Lanfire."
To Lieber, June 25 : —
" I have just read your paper on Pardons, which seems to me admirably done. It is a piece of pure science. Your criticism on the existing state of things is perfect. I am not so confident as to your scheme of remedy. The first volume of the new work on ' The Science of Politics,' 4 where you are noticed, will be published at once in Boston. It seems to me calculated to influence many minds. No previous English work on the same topics will compare with it, nor do I know any Continental work equally profound, care- ful, and revolutionary. It is curious that British authors should take such a sudden start. Since this work there has appeared ' Social Statics,' by Herbert Spencer (who can he be ? Is it not a nom de plume, — two great families grouped on one page?), which is not inferior in talent to the other book, and which is equally original and penetrating, but not calculated to reach so many readers, though it is most artistic in its style and arrangement. Two such works published within two months of each other, — one in Scotland, and the other in England, — without any apparent concert or knowledge of each other, form an era in political science."
To George Sumner, August 5 : —
" I have just finished the diary of old John Adams, which is to me deeply interesting. He shows little faith in Franklin or in Vergennes. Bancroft works hard upon his History, and will put two volumes to press this winter, beginning with 1767, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. It will be a very
1 Sumner, writing to Longfellow from Montpellier, France, Jan. 24, 1859, said that M. Moudot, the lecturer on Spanish literature at the University, had changed his purpose to translate Ticknor's work into French, being discouraged by its "dryness and dictionary character."
2 Ante, vol. i. p. 156.
3 David C. Colden. He married Miss Wilkes, whose sister married Lord Jeffrey. Ante, Memoir, vol. i. p. 359, note.
4 By P. E. Dove, published anonymously in the first edition.
78 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-50.
brilliant work. Sparks is also plodding at his history of the Revolution. Prescott, with whom I dined a day or two since, professes indolence and little progress in his Memoirs of Philip II.
" Your report of sentiment about Italy is encouraging. When will Austria disappear from that beautiful laud, to which my heart turns with a constant glow ? Germauy seems in a hopeless condition, with less cheerful signs even than Italy ; but the day for both will come. Of this I have an undoubting faith.
" Have I told you that among the crowds in Europe are Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, — the latter the sister of James Russell Lowell, and the author of the learned and admirable articles which overthrew Bowen'f * She is a beautiful lady as well as a most accomplished scholar."
i Mrs. Mary Lowell Putnam contested Prof. Francis Bowen's view of the Hungarian question.
JEt. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 79
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES IN TREMONT TEMPLE. — 1846-1847.
DURING the period 1825-1850 there was an earnest conten- tion in this country on prison discipline, between the parti- sans of the separate or Pennsylvania system — which enforced the absolute separation of convicts from one another by day as well as at night — and those of the congregate or Auburn system, which, while requiring solitary confinement at night, allowed the convicts, under restrictions, to work side by side, and during re- ligious exercises to sit together. The comparative advantages of the two systems in promoting the prisoner's reformation, keep- ing him in good physical and mental condition, and giving him useful industrial training, were contested points. The separate system, first tried in Pennsylvania, drew the attention of European philanthropists and publicists, and their reports after personal in- spection were uniformly in its favor.1 It was established in Bel- gium, where it is still continued in full vigor ; but elsewhere in Europe the congregate or some mixed system now prevails. In this country the separate system survives only at Philadelphia.
The Boston Prison Discipline Society was founded in 1825, at a time when the discussion as to the merits of the two systems had begun. Early in its existence its reports, prepared by its secretary, Rev. Louis D wight,2 declared a positive preference for the Auburn method, and treated the rival one in an unfriendly and captious spirit.3 The board of managers rendered little more than a nominal service, and Mr. Dwight, the only salaried officer, became practically the Society. He had been educated for the ministry, but did not assume the charge of a parish. His natu- ral ability was moderate and his culture limited ; he was better
1 Among the visitors were Beaumont and Tocqueville in 1831, and Demetz and Blout in 1837, from France ; Crawford, in 1834, from England ; and Julius, in 1836, from Prussia.
2 1793-1854.
3 Among letters to Sumner which objected to the temper of the secretary's reports were those from Rev. C. A. Bartol and Dr. James Jackson.
80 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
fitted to serve prisoners as a chaplain than to deal with the complex questions of prison discipline.1 He took a certain in- terest in prisoners, but lacked industry and any large compre- hension of his subject. The foreign advocates of the separate system sometimes accused him of wilful perversion. They however exaggerated his offences, which seem to have been those only of narrow partisanship, indolence, and a slovenly way of writing.
Dr. Samuel G. Howe, who always took kindly to new ideas and schemes, had become a convert to the Pennsylvania system, and was irritated by Dwight's mode of treating it in the successive reports of the Society. It was through pressure from Howe that Sumner was drawn into a controversy where he became the prin- cipal antagonist against Dwight and his party ; and it was under his friend's inspiration that he assumed the aggressive style which marked some of his addresses.
The treasurer of the Society, who appears to have been in full sympathy with its secretary, was Samuel A. Eliot, who has already been mentioned, — one of the representative men of the city, con- nected by blood and marriage with several of its best known fam- ilies, a merchant, treasurer of Harvard College, and interested in charities and education. His temperament was not suited to pub- lic discussion ; nor was he familiar enough with the subject to be able to cope with Sumner and Howe. He was of a type of men, then dominant in the society and politics of the city, which has been described in the opening chapter of this volume. Looking at things from his point of view, it is not strange that one of his character and associations should have resented Sumner's and Howe's intrusion into the formal proceedings of the Society, and have met them in an impatient and offensive way ; or that when thus met, Sumner and Howe should have been more personal and aggressive with him than the narrow question at issue seemed to justify. It will be seen that Eliot's set came quickly to his sup- port, even without the slightest interest in the question, whenever they were needed to checkmate the two radicals. The contest, which was kept up for three years in Park Street Church and Tremont Temple, has been well remembered by all who wit- nessed it ; and it remains an episode in the history of the city
1 A German writer Dr. Varrentrap criticised his too free use of religious phrases in his reports, thinking them more appropriate to devout exercises. Law Reporter, Boston, July, 1846, vol. ix. pp. 100, 101.
JEt. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 81
which, both in the combatants and the audience, illustrates well what its people and society were at that time.
The Prison Discipline Society was accustomed to hold an an- nual private business meeting, which was followed on a later day by a public meeting, where addresses were made for the purpose of stimulating a general interest in the subject. These were held on the last week in May, known as the Anniversary Week, when, according to ancient custom, the people of Massachusetts gather in Boston to attend various meetings in behalf of religious and benevolent objects. Crowds at such a season go from church to church, from hall to hall, to listen to addresses, — some doubt- less having a genuine interest in the subject to be discussed, but large numbers drawn only by the social instinct and the attrac- tions of well-known speakers. The Anniversary Week still re- mains ; but with the more varied excitements of modern life, it no longer bears in interest the same relation to the community that it did at the period to which this chapter relates.
The Society's annual meeting in Park Street Church in May, 1845, has already been referred to.1 Dr. Wayland, who had been persuaded to retain the presidency after his removal to Provi- dence, was in the chair. George T. Bigelow,2 a member of the bar, rising, according to previous arrangement, to move the accept- ance of the secretary's annual report, expressed his approval of its treatment of the Pennsylvania system, and accused the man- agers of the Philadelphia prison of wilful misrepresentation, made for the purpose of upholding an inhuman system. Sumner and Howe, who were on hand, anticipating the course of things, at once rebuked the secretary's persistency in his vicious method of* treating that system, and repelled Mr. Bigelow's imputation. The interruption was disagreeable to the managers, but Sumner's motion for a committee to revise the report, and to visit Phila- delphia, was carried without dissent.3 An eye-witness thus de- scribes the scene from memory : —
" There was a platform, on which sat a large numher of persons, more or less notable, — officers of the Society and friends of its object. President Way- land, then at the top of his strength and his renown, imposing with the mas- sive dignity of his best years, was in the chair. The secretary, Mr. Dwight, a
1 Ante, vol. ii. pp. 329, 330.
2 Afterwards chief-justice.
3 Sumner explained his first participation in the controversy in his speech, June 18, 1847. Works, vol. i. pp. 489-490. For accounts of the meeting, see Boston "Advertiser," May 28,1845; Boston "Traveller," May 30, 1845.
VOL. III. 6
82 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
stout person, with a hard, red face and a dogmatic manner, had read a long report. To all appearance, it was to take the ordinary course of such docu- ments, and, on the motion and seconding of some respectable persons, to be adopted without debate. But no sooner was the motion for adoption made, than a person rose in about the third pew at the left of the platform, and in a moment it was clear that the decorous routine of the meeting was being dis- turbed by some interloper whose name was not down on the card. Everybody was asking everybody who it could be. He was tall and rather slender, with a shock of black hair not very carefully arranged, dressed in a blue frock-coat, buttoned, with a velvet collar, and he held a bundle of* papers in his hand. He did not stand for ceremony, but mounted upon the rail of his pew, and passed rapidly from pew to pew till he stood upon the platform. He scarcely recognized the president, but at once rushed into a vehement arraignment of Secretary D wight, and a criticism of his report. Dr. Wayland did not appear to know who the intruder was, but turning to some person, inquired ; and then rising, vexed apparently at the interruption, he came forward in his most dig- nified style, and said, 'Mr. Sumner, gentlemen.' The speaker took little, if any, notice of the interruption, but rushed on for at least half an hour, thresh- ing the report after a style which became quite familiar in later years. It was like the descent of some unknown and unexpected god from Olympus. There was anger and fear and impatience on the platform ; but the congregation was with the speaker. He came like a breeze on a calm, dull day at sea. Every- body was on the qui vive, and relished the assault, and sympathized with the assailer all the more that there was such fluttering and wrath among the people on the platform. Opinion among the hearers went with the unscared aggressor; and pushiug on, he compelled the reference of the report to a committee. As I remember, Mr. Dwight replied in an angry and inconclusive manner ; and whatever speaking there was, flew in the face of the young knight who had pushed into the lists like the unrecognized Richard on the field of arms at Ashby."
Four members of the committee — Sumner, Howe, Eliot, and Dwight — inspected the Philadelphia prison on two successive days in October,1 and on the third day, which was Sunday, at- tended the religious exercises, which were conducted in one divi- sion by Miss D. L. Dix, and in another by Mr. Dwight. Naturally enough, the visiting members were confirmed in their previous impressions, — Sumner and Howe taking one view of what they saw, and Eliot and Dwight the opposite one. Richard Vaux,2 one of the directors, received the committee, and in 1876 re- called vividly the occasion. He found the visitors, who had come unannounced, at Jones's Hotel. Sumner was anxious for an
1 Two other members, Horace Mann and Dr. Walter Channing, made their visits some weeks later.
2 Mr. Vaux has been for nearly fifty years chairman of the board of inspectors. He was elected almost unanimously a member of Congress in 1890.
Mt. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 83
immediate inspection, so that no preparation could be made, or be thought to have been made, for their reception. They therefore drove at once to the prison, and began their examination. To Mr. Vaux, Eliot and Dwight appeared listless and not at all enter- prising ; but Sumner's manner was that of one very serious and thoroughly in earnest. For two hours he went everywhere, talk- ing with the prisoners and looking into everything. The commit- tee, to whom every facility was given, contrary to the expectations of the critics of the system, renewed their examination the next day, and at the close of the visit held a formal interview with the directors, whom Sumner plied with many questions as to the working and effects of the system ; and at the end he bore down heavily on Dwight, taking him to task for his misrepresentations. Mr. Vaux writes : —
"The impression the scene made on me is vividly in my memory. Mr. Sum- ner was standing up ; the light from the north window fell on his nohle face; there was a majesty in his presence ; there was an indignant expression on his face ; he was straight and commanding as he spoke ; the whole physical man was deeply in earnest, as the posture, mien, voice, and expression of his eye indicated. I shall never forget his appearance then ; it was as that of Jus- tice personified. Mr. Dwight said not a word. Mr. Eliot asked some ques- tions, which were answered. Mr. Sumner entered into the conversation with energy. This was the first time I ever met him. Occasionally, since, I have met him, hut he lives in my memory as I saw him first, — a bold, brave, hon- est, fearless, earnest man ; young, comparatively, and striking by an imper- sonation of high attainments, culture, and aims. His appearance, his mien, his manner, his dress, — -for this last so often characterizes the man, — all showed to the eye of one, too young then as I was to analyze it all, that he was an extraordinary man ; and his life proved it."
The same autumn, Sumner contributed to the " Christian Examiner," at the request of its editor Rev. E. S. Gannett, an article on " Prisons and Prison Discipline." 1 It took for its texts nine recent publications on the subject, all but two of which were foreign. Beginning with a graceful tribute to Miss Dix, it is devoted chiefly to a statement of the points at issue between the separate and congregate systems, and gives the preference to the former as best promoting the reformation of the prisoner by excluding him from the contagion of evil asso- ciations. While recognizing Mr. Dwight's beneficent labors, it deals, though not harshly, with the unfairness and prejudice which had characterized his reports.
1 Christian Examiner, January, 1846. Works, vol. i. pp. 163-183.
84 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846^17.
The controversy which began in May, 1845, was renewed at the anniversary meeting of the Society in May, 1846. Eliot, Dwight, Dr. W. Channing, and Bigelow concurred in a report drawn by Dr. Channing, which sustained the course of the Society and its secretary ; while Dr. Howe, Sumner, and Mann joined in a minor- ity report drawn by Dr. Howe.1 Sumner made ineffectual efforts at business meetings of the Society to have both reports printed with the annual report for 1846, but was defeated by the per- sistent opposition of the secretary and his friends. At the busi- ness meeting on the day preceding the public anniversary it was also voted, on motion of Nathaniel Willis, Dwight's father-in-law, that " it is not expedient to discuss the subject at the anniversary meeting." The managers were bent on suppressing further agi- tation ; but they had to deal with an antagonist who had a spirit of determination even exceeding theirs, and he was learning a lesson of persistence which was to avail him in later years on a more conspicuous field of controversy.
The public meeting was held in Tremont Temple on the morn- ing of May 26. The audience was very large, — two thousand by estimate, largely composed of women. On the platform were dis- tinguished clergymen and laymen. Dr. Wayland was in the chair. Dwight read the annual report, omitting, as he said, some parts to give opportunity for speeches. As he concluded, Sumner stepped forward at once ; but before he began, Dwight interposed, say- ing in a peremptory tone, " Mr. President, the annual meeting was interrupted in this manner last year ; there are gentlemen present who are invited by the committee of arrangements to ad- dress us." The president promptly reminded Dwight that Sumner had the floor, and the latter proceeded. The audience thought Dwight's interruption to be rude, and, as is usually the case, rel- ished a break in a routine which had been previously arranged.2
Sumner spoke an hour at least, making points as to the parti- san character of the annual reports and as to the rival system, to which he recurred the next year.3 These will be noted in a
1 Sumner assisted in correcting the proofs.
2 Dr. Wayland, writing to Sumner, July 1, said : " Mr. Dwight treated you veiy badly, and was exceedingly rude." The Law Reporter, edited by Peleg W. Chandler, July, 1846, vol. ix. p. 98, commented on Dwight's interruption and the " cut-and-dried " character of the public meetings.
3 The speech is reported in the Boston "Advertiser," May 28, and in a revised form in the Boston " Courier," May 30. It was reprinted at Liverpool in pamphlet at Mr. Rath- bone's instance, and by him sent to persons in England interested in the question.
^Et. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 85
later connection. He commended Dwight for what he had done in awakening an interest in prisons, and in pressing the reforms of flagrant evils in their construction and management ; but there was a touch of irony in this tribute when he applied the term " indefatigable " to the secretary, whom he was well known to have thought wanting in enterprise. In urging the Society to confess and reform its errors, his language was toned by the political discussions in which he was then engaged. " ' Our coun- try, right or wrong,' is a cry that rises from the hoarse conclaves of politics. Let its spirit never intrude into any association like ours. Let none of us say, ' Our Society, right or wrong.' " He concluded by moving the appointment of a committee to examine and review the former printed reports and course of the Society, and to consider if its action could in any way be varied or amended so that its usefulness might be extended.1 Bradford Sumner, Dr. W. Channing, Rev. Mr. Todd, John Tappan, and Dwight followed Sumner in reply, and George S. Hillard spoke briefly in his sup- port. The resolution was carried ; and the president appointed as the committee, Bradford Sumner, Charles Sumner, Hillard, Dr. Channing, and Dwight ; and the president was added to it by the vote of the Society. Dr. Wayland did not at the moment sup- pose he was designating the member first named as chairman, as- suming instead that he would be chosen by the committee ; and afterwards he expressed regret that he had omitted to name the mover first, and also that he had placed Dwight, whose action was the subject of complaint, on the committee. Bradford Sum- ner and Dr. Channing, however, did not attend the meetings of the committee, leaving the acting committee to consist of the other three members, with Charles Sumner as chairman.
Dwight was absent during the summer of 1846, to attend the International Penitentiary Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main ; but his Boston antagonists, though not present, more than matched him there. Sumner advised Mr. Rathbone, of Liverpool, and Dr. Julius, of Berlin, of his coming ; and the former in England and the latter on the Continent were assiduous in distributing among the delegates the Liverpool edition of Sumner's recent speech. The president of the Congress was Sumner's friend, Professor Mittermaier, of Heidelberg. It was a distinguished assembly, composed of men eminent in jurisprudence and science, or prac-
1 The Law Reporter, July, 1846, vol. ix. p. 98, spoke of the speech as one of "great eloquence and power." See also p. 92.
86 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
tically connected with prison administration. Dwight was called to the tribune,1 and spoke briefly in English on the objects of the Boston Society, without entering on a development of the penitentiary system of the United States, — evidently not at ease in a body which approved by a large majority the separate sys- tem, and contained many delegates who were familiar with the Boston controversy. But the advocates of the separate system, who had awaited an exposition of his adverse views and were ready for an encounter, were too aggressive to let him alone in the quiet part he had prescribed for himself, and pressed him in personal intercourse. He was confronted by Joseph Adshead, of Manchester, author of a paper on " Prisons and Prisoners," who invited him to a public debate ; by Dr. Varrentrap, of Frankfort, whose criticisms of his reports had been translated and repub- lished in the Boston Law Reporter,2 and who assailed his statis- tical tables ; by Suringar, who upbraided him for his partisanship, telling him he could never expect to be a happy man until he tried to undo all the mischief he had done by his onesidedness ; by Julius, who was fully equipped on all points of the contro- versy, and was an ardent friend of the separate system ; and by Benjamin Rotch, of London, a Middlesex magistrate, who in a session of the Congress held Sumner's speech in his hand in full view of Dwight, ready to reply in case the latter ventured to maintain the superiority of the Auburn system.3 The secretary, thus pursued and confronted, did not find the atmosphere of the Congress congenial ; certainly he was altogether silent as to a controversy which was always on his mind when in Boston. Before coming home he passed some weeks in London, during which he inspected the prison at Pentonville.
Sumner attempted, soon after the Society's meeting, to procure a meeting of the committee ; but this was prevented by D wight's absence. In the spring of 1847 he prepared a report,4 following in style and purport the suggestions of Dr. Wayland, which was agreed to by three members, — himself, Dr. Wayland, and Hil- lard, — the only acting member who dissented being Dwight. It was temperate in tone, and confined to general propositions not
1 Boston Advertiser, July 22, 1847. Law Reporter, vol. ix. p. 428.
2 July, 1846, vol. ix. pp. 97-110, 428.
3 Mr. Rotch was the grandson of William Rotch, a Nantucket whaler. He wrote Sum- ner that Dwight's abstinence from voting alone prevented a record that the first three reso- lutions of the Congress were unanimously approved.
4 Printed in the " Semi- Weekly Courier," May 27, 1847.
Mi. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 87
in controversy among fair-minded men. It attempted no cen- sure of Dwight, except so far as might be implied from its insist- ence on the duty of greater energy on the part of officers and members of the Society. It refrained from reviewing former action and reports, while expressing the opinion that the Society should extricate itself from the position of advocacy it seemed to have taken. It set forth the proper scope and method of the secretary's report, and enjoined on the members greater activity in the visitation of prisons and in the care for discharged con- victs. The resolutions submitted were of like spirit and sub- stance, affirming that the Society ought not to be the pledged advocate of any system, but should treat fairly all systems ; that it should recognize the directors of the Pennsylvania system as conscientious aud philanthropic fellow-laborers ; that any ex- pressions of disrespect in the Society's reports or public meet- ings, which had given them pain, were sincerely regretted ; and in conclusion called for greater efforts to extend the usefulness of the Society and for the consideration of a new plan of action. Aside from the hostile feelings engendered by the discussion, such a paper could not have provoked controversy.
The annual public meeting for 1847 was held in Tremont Tem- ple, May 25, at eleven in the morning. The public were eager to witness the renewal of the debate. Theodore Lyman, formerly mayor of the city, was in the chair as president, having been chosen at the business meeting on the previous day as successor to Dr. Wayland, who had declined a re-election. Sumner's re- port being offered, Bradford Sumner at once objected that it was not the report of the committee, but of only just half its mem- bers ; but as it was concurred in by three out of four members who served upon it, the general sense of the meeting was against the objection, and it was withdrawn.1 The report and resolu- tions were then read, and the meeting adjourned to the evening of Mav 28.
A question between two prison systems, relating merely to the extent to which the separation of convicts should be carried, is rather one for specialists than for a popular assembly. It was not at the time a practical question in Massachusetts. The issue in the Society was even narrower than a theoretic choice between the two systems, and as put by Sumner was only one of candor and good faith in the treatment of two rival systems. It has been
1 Boston Advertiser, May 26, 1847.
88 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
so very difficult ever since to collect a hundred persons in Bos- ton to listen to an address on prison discipline, that one marvels at the strange interest which in 1847 drew together multitudes on successive warm evenings in May and June, going early and remaining late. The audiences which filled the spacious Temple represented the intelligence and philanthropy of the city, as well as all that was radical and adventurous in speculation, — people already enlisted or about to enlist in the warfare against Amer- ican slavery ; people earnest for moral reforms, like temperance ; seekers for novelties, who imagined they had found a new reve- lation in phrenology as taught by Spurzheim and George Combe ; disciples of Theodore Parker's theology and of Emerson's phi- losophy. An audience of such tendencies and inspirations could be gathered in no other city. Their interest was rather in the disputants than in the subject; it was aesthetic and sentimental, rather than philanthropic and practical. They were interested in Sumner as a man, enjoyed his refined eloquence, were inspired by his noble sentiments, and admired the spirit with which he re- sisted the dictation of those whose right to dictate had not before been disputed, and who had now found an antagonist with capac- ity and courage for debate which were more than their match. The crowd of both sexes — young men, and, above all, young women conspicuous in numbers — thronged to the Temple as to a tournament where the fame and gallantry of the knight awak- ened sentiments quite apart from the cause he espoused. Sum- ner's reputation as an orator had during the previous year been greatly increased by his Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard Col- lege and his speeches on the Mexican War. His opposition to Mr. Winthrop's votes on the war and to his re-election, in which Dr. Howe had been associated with him, had made him warm friends as well as bitter enemies in politics and society. He was in the freshness and vigor of his powers ; he had become familiar with the platform ; and it is remembered that as he handled one adversary after another, he seemed conscious of his strength. The other speakers were without attractions of style and manner, and, except Mr. Gray and Dr. Howe, knew very little of the subject.
The meetings were prolonged during eight evenings, from half- past seven till nearly or quite eleven, and sometimes till nearly midnight.1 Sumner opened the debate on the first evening, occu-
l May 28, June 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18, and 23.
Mr. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 89
pying an hour and a half, leaving the rest of the time to three speakers who replied.1 The speech is like his later one, though going more into details on some points, and being quite severe on the meagre quality of the Society's reports, particularly the last one, which he thought " a small month's work." " Between its flimsy covers is all that we have done. Our three thousand dollars have been wrapped here as in a napkin." This he said in a derisive tone, laying stress on the " all," and flapping the leaves of the report over his head. He then emphasized the com- plaints made against the reports in various quarters in this coun- try and abroad, and reminded Dwight of those which he had encountered within the year at the Frankfort Congress and else- where in Europe.
Sumner made another speech, occupying two hours, on June 18, in which he reviewed the debate.2 It repeated much that he had already said. The report, as written out ,by him, probably does not follow very closely his argument on that evening, but includes the remarks on different evenings which he particularly desired to have preserved. He did not undertake the defence of the Pennsylvania system, and disclaimed the desire to have the Society commit itself to that or any system ; and the chief point of his contention was that the Society had not treated the system with candor and justice. He contended that the reports had con- founded it with the more rigid system of absolute solitude, which was discarded in Pennsylvania in 1829, and in other States at about the same time ; that the report for 1838 had applied the opinions of Lafayette and the historian Roscoe, condemning the discarded system, to the separate system, which had not come into existence when those opinions were expressed ; and that the reports, while careful to give prominence to every opinion unfriendly to the separate system, had suppressed all reference to opinions in its favor, and particularly to the approval of it by European commissions and European writers and publicists, and to its adoption by European governments in the construc- tion of prisons. In this and other speeches Sumner charged that
1 A report of his speech is printed in the Boston "Courier," June 1, 1847.
2 Works, vol. i. pp. 486-529. The speech fills six columns of the " Semi- Weekly Cou- rier," July 5, 1847. Dr. Julius wrote from Berlin of this speech, "It is excellent, — one of the most temperate, lucid, and convincing I have ever read in any debate." Longfellow wrote in his journal, June 18,1847 : "Went to town to hear Sumner before the Prison Dis- cipline Society. He made a very strong, manly speech. It was a kind of demolition of the Bastile and of ." The blank is for Eliot and Dwight.
90 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
Dwight " garbled " the documents from which he made extracts, particularly in citing Roscoe and Lafayette.1 He directed his severest criticisms against the report for 1843, describing it as " seamed and botched with error and uncandid statement," and quoted, without adopting, the still stronger animadversions of foreign writers.
Provoked by what he thought to be Mr. Eliot's overbearing manner and personal reflections on Dr. Howe and himself, Sum- ner made in his second speech several personal references to Eliot, using terms hardly proper for a young man to apply to his seniors, except under provocation.2 " I will borrow," he said as he began, " from the honorable treasurer, with his per- mission, something of his frankness without his temper," — a thrust which, an eye-witness says, " made Mr. Eliot start as if he had been shot." Later on in the speech Sumner spoke of him as " the Achilles of the debate," " impiger, iracundus, in- exorabilis, acer," — saying also that he had " in the course of a short speech contrived to announce himself as treasurer of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, next as treasurer of Har- vard College, and not content with this, told us that he has been a member of the city government and a senator of the Com- monwealth." Sumner, who never seemed to realize how sharp his blade was, was surprised afterwards, when told that he had said anything at which his opponents took offence.3 These per- sonalities rankled during the lifetime of the actors. Eliot's social position was of the best, as he was closely connected by marriage with George Ticknor, Edmund Dwight, Benjamin Guild, and Dr. Andrews Norton, and by blood with the Curtis family. The influence of these families ramified in the society of Boston ; and this debate, in connection with Sumner's political diver- gence from its traditions and interests, helped to bring him into general social disfavor.
Sumner was supported by Dr. Howe, who spoke at great length on two evenings, making a minute comparison of the two prison
1 Dwight had cited the opinions of Lafayette in 1825 and 1826, which were adverse to the Pennsylvania system as then existing ; but after the system was essentially changed, in 1829, he continued even in 1843 to cite them, giving no dates, as if they were intended for the modified system. Quite likely this was a blunder rather than an intentional misrepresentation. See Stevenson's remarks, June 18. Boston " Atlas, :' June 21.
2 Some of Sumner's friends thought his personal references in this debate "needlessly cutting." E. P. Whipple in Harper's Magazine, May, 1879, p. 276.
3 Edward Austin, in an interview with the writer.
^t. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 91
systems, and earnestly advocating that of Pennsylvania ; 1 by Henry H. Fuller, a hard-headed lawyer, who spoke twice, com- mending the resolutions in terse and pertinent remarks ; and by Hillard, who appeared only once in the debate, urging fairness in the reports of the Society, and rebuking an anonymous news- paper attack on Sumner.2 On the other side there were several speakers, — Rev. George Allen, of Worcester, who consumed one hour in his first speech and two in another, comparing to some extent the two systems, but chiefly defending with friendly zeal Mr. D wight; Bradford Sumner, a lawyer respectable in charac- ter, but moderate in professional attainments ; J. Thomas Steven- son, who confessed that he knew nothing about prison discipline, and whose late participation in the debate was due only to his political antipathy to Sumner and Dr. Howe ; and Francis C. Gray,3 who though lacking the qualities of an attractive public speaker, was better equipped for the debate than any other of Dwight's party. Mr. Gray spoke at three meetings, occupying an hour at some of them ; he assailed Sumner's report as con- taining an implied but undeserved censure of the Society and its officers, charged the Pennsylvania system with promoting in- sanity, rejected the opinions of foreigners quoted in its favor as not tested by experience, and moved the indefinite postponement of the resolutions. Eliot spoke twice, sharply criticising Sum- ner's report, particularly in its use of the treasurer's figures ; he took little time in debate, but his manner seems to have stirred Sumner very much. D wight spoke the same evening, and appeared, according to the newspapers, much exhausted.
Midway in the course of the meetings of this year, Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop sought to compose the differences by offering a series of resolutions as a substitute, which, while avoiding all terms capable of being construed as a reflection on former action of
1 June 2 and 16. Dr. Howe's speech of June 16 is fully reported in the " Semi-Weekly Courier," June 24.
2 Sumner, Howe, and Hillard were the subjects of coarse attacks in communications printed in the Boston "Post," June 2, 4, 9, and 22. The first article was replied to by a writer in that journal, June 5. The Boston "Advertiser," June 26 and 30, contained com- munications friendly to Dwight.
3 1796-1856. Mr. Gray was in his youth the private secretary of John Quincy Adams at the time of the latter's mission to Russia. His writings were miscellaneous, chiefly arti- cles for reviews, and related to history, poetry, foreign literature, commerce, and science. He is spoken of by his surviving contemporaries as a person most remarkable for the vari- ety and fulness of his knowledge; and his vigorous intellect easily digested his acquisitions. It was not for want of natural gifts or of liberal training that he failed to become one of the eminent men of his State.
92 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
the officers of the Society, affirmed the duty of treating the dif- ferent systems of prison discipline fairly and impartially. Sum- ner seconded the resolutions, and Dwight also assented to them. Genuine friends of the Society who had not yielded to the ex- citement thought this the best solution of the difficulty.1 It had been understood that Sumner's speech was to close the debate ; but his opponents feared its effect on a vote immediately taken, and insisted on further discussion. Stevenson replied, justify- ing D wight's good faith and his citations of Lafayette's and Ros- coe's opinions. Gray began to speak, but at eleven the meeting adjourned. At the next and final meeting Gray replied to Sum- ner's speech, and Sumner followed with a rejoinder. Stevenson continued his defence of D wight's extracts from Lafayette and Roscoe, the ever recurring point of contention, and moved a com- mittee to investigate action in this respect only. Mr. Lothrop moved a recommitment, with instructions which included an ex- amination of the whole subject. It was now nearly midnight, and the audience was retiring, when the public discussions were brought to a close in an unexpected way. Charles P. Curtis, a prominent member of the bar and relative of Stevenson, and like him drawn to the meeting by political antipathy to Sumner and Howe,2 moved to lay the whole subject on the table. After referring to the accumulation of charges and replications, and resolutions upon resolutions, which had resulted in perplexity and confusion, he recalled the incident in Congress when a mem- ber, known as " Apocalypse Smythe," on being reminded that he was wearying the body by a long and tedious speech, answered that he was addressing, not this generation, but posterity, and drew the retort that if he kept on he would have his unborn audience before him. Mr. Curtis thought the movement in the hall indicated that the present generation was about to leave it. His motion was carried unanimously, and the Society adjourned sine die.8 The lateness of the hour, the physical weariness of all present, and the skilful resort to a motion to lay on the table, which was a surprise to the supporters of positive action, pre- vented the adoption of Mr. Lothrop's substitute.4
1 Rev. Dr. Parkman, June 16, favored them. See also " Christian Register," July 3.
- C. F. Adams noted the underlying political feeling in the Boston " Whig," July 10, 1847. He also remarked on the general impression that the action of the Society had been "neither judicial nor philosophical." See other articles, Boston "Whig," June 23 ; Boston "Atlas," June 23.
3 Boston Atlas, June 25. 6 Boston Advertiser, August 5.
Mr. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 93
One of the audience writes as follows : —
"I was out of town when the meetings began, and on returning found everybody in wild excitemeut about a subject to which they had never be- fore paid the slightest attention. I thiuk all the fashion of the city went and ranged on one side or the other. The girls were excited, and became as strong partisans for the Philadelphia or Auburn systems (of which we had never heard before) as of the white rose or the red. Sumner took an active part in the debate when I was there. I have a picture in my mind of him as he sat on the settee behind the speakers, with a heap of books and pamphlets, his legs crossed, with light trousers on, shakiug his long dark locks from his forehead, aud his face full of bright intelligence and action. I never shall forget his readiness when Mr. Gray read a garbled extract from a report, and said, ' I wish I had the report here to read you the whole passage.' Sumner immediately jumped up, with the report in hand, saying, 'Here it is, sir,' and the audience found Mr. Gray's part better than the whole. Gray seemed to me very foxy. Poor Dwight looked crushed. He was astonished at the reve- lation of his own misdeeds. Eliot was pompous and Boston personified, as usual. The crowd enjoyed it heartily, — better than any play at the theatre. I think Sumner was then unfashionable. The Fourth of July oration had affected people ; but nobody could help enjoying his spirit and eloquence, who was not strongly prejudiced."
Another writes : —
" I remember very well, as many others do likewise, how my youthful feel- ings were carried away by the courtly presence and graceful eloquence of the man. A hero he certainly was to me at that time ; and I gave myself up wholly to the pleasurable sensations of the moment without considering, as I was borne along by the glowing words, that there were two sides to every subject, and taking it wholly for granted that Mr. Sumner must be on the right side. In this enthusiasm the audience shared, for there was never any lack of hearty applause."
Sumner, hard pressed in the controversy, missed the open sup- port of Dr. Wayland, who had joined him in the report, and who in 1845 had encouraged him to persevere in his effort to bring the Society back to a course of candor and justice. Eminent as a moralist, and rarely wrong in his theoretic conclusions, the doctor lacked the nerve for controversy ; and he was perhaps re- strained by reasons of prudence from a contention which might affect injuriously his usefulness as head of a college. He natu- rally regretted the personal turn which the discussion had taken, and gave this afterwards as one of the reasons of his absence. He complained, without good cause, that Sumner had read in the debate of 1847 the doctor's letter of support written in 1845, although it was free from personal matter, insisting upon his
94 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
technical right to be held responsible only for public expressions and for public documents bearing his name. For some years he thought hard of Sumner for thus bringing him into the debate.
Sumner's urgency in behalf of energetic and wiser action by the Society did not end with the popular excitement. He was in this as in all things, unwearied and persistent. The failure of the Society to come to any definite result after the prolonged dis- cussion caused public disappointment,1 which led to a meeting of the managers on July 10, when it was voted to call a meet- ing of the Society for the purpose of voting upon Mr. Lothrop's proposition, without debate. Sumner offered at the same time resolutions for correcting the reports of the Society, and for effective work during the summer. At an adjourned meeting of the managers, which became necessary to perfect the arrange- ments for another meeting of the Society, he arrived late to find the project of such a meeting reconsidered, other votes passed to prevent for the season the renewal of discussions of the plans and work of the Society, and the resolutions offered by himself at the previous meeting discredited by an entry on the margin of the record.2 A few days later he addressed D wight an elaborate note, expressing regret that the managers separated without agreeing upon some plan for effective work during the summer, after the example of prison associations in New York and Philadelphia, urging the secretary to take immediate steps for the systematic visitation of jails by members of the Society, and for awakening public sentiment in behalf of the cause, — in all which, notwith- standing pressing engagements, he was ready to assist. Dwight did not respond to the appeal. In the summer Sumner contrib- uted several articles to a newspaper on prison discipline, chiefly in support of the views he had maintained in the debate.3
Late in the year 1847 Mr. Gray's pamphlet on " Prison Disci- pline in America" was published. It was an argument for the congregate system, admirable in style and tone, strong in logical power, and better adapted to win conviction than any American paper ever published on the subject. Sumner himself recognized its superior quality, saying in a letter to Lieber that it was " sin- gularly able, and calculated to produce a strong impression." It
i Christian Register, July 3, 1847.
2 Communication in "Advertiser," Aug. 5,1847.
3 Roston " Advertiser," Jul}' 1, 9, 22, 27, and 29. Those in that journal of June 29 and Julj' 8 may, or may not, be his.
JEt. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 95
practically ended the discussion, and no subsequent effort was made in Massachusetts to enlist public sentiment in behalf of the Pennsylvania system. The controversy did not disturb the per- sonal relations of Sumner and Gray, and the latter's pamphlet was the occasion of friendly correspondence between them.1
The debate had been followed by European penologists, par- ticularly by those who had officially visited the American pris- ons. Tocqueville wrote Sumner from his chateau in Normandy, August 6, a letter in which he expressed his surprise and regret that the Society, which had made him a member, and which en- joyed a European reputation, had refused to adopt resolutions which, while disclaiming the advocacy of the Auburn or of any other system, committed it to the impartial study and treatment of all systems. Regretting that it had become the champion of the Auburn system, and the systematic adversary of the separate system, he said : —
" I need not inform you that at the present day in Europe discussion and experience have, on the contrary, led almost all persons of intelligence to adopt the separate system, and to reject the Auburn system. Most of the govern- ments of the Old World have declared themselves more or less in this way, not hastily, but after serious inquiry and long debate." 2
Sumner, in his reply, September 15, wrote : —
" The discussions which have recently taken place in Boston on the subject of prison discipline have been the means of diffusing much information and awakening an interest which will be productive of good. Everything relating to it is now read with avidity. The government of our Society is in the hands of a few persons who are strongly prejudiced against change. I think, how- ever, that its course will now he altered. Mr. D wight, the secretary, has be- come insane, — whether incurably so, I do not know. The New York Society promises great usefulness. ... 1 cherish a lively recollection of my brief inter- course with you in Paris."
An international prison congress was held this year at Brus- sels. Sumner, in letters from Europe, was urged to attend, but was unable to do so. His brother George, however, was present, and acquitted himself well in the debates, showing in
1 The pamphlet was approved in articles in the North American Review for January, 1848, and in the Christian Examiner for February of the same year. Its positions were contested by a work published in Philadelphia by F. A. Packard.
2 Works, vol. i. p. 530. Contrary to Tocqueville's expectations, the separate system lost ground with the decline of interest in the discussion. See his remarks to Sumner in Paris, April 13, 1857, post, chap. xli.
96 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
them, according to Dr. Julius, " a rare moderation and excel- lent temper." 1
The discussions of 1846 and 1847, which had discredited the character of the managers for efficiency, fairness, and breadth of view, were a fatal blow to the Society, and it never recovered public confidence. In May, 1848, Sumner appeared before the managers, and sought in vain to impress them with his views in favor of more vigorous action. The same month, the Society de- cided to hold no more public meetings, and recalled the notice of one already announced. Mr. Ticknor and George T. Curtis attended the meeting where this decision was made, and both were chosen officers for the first time. They had taken no in- terest in the subject before, and their political hostility to Sum- ner and Dr. Howe, as well as Mr. Ticknor's kinship with Mr. Eliot, account for their selection. Eliot became president ; and Dwight continued in office till his death, in 1854. In 1855 no officers were chosen, and Mr. Eliot took the chair in the pres- ence of three reporters and only two members. The officers recommended a dissolution of the Society, for the reason that no suitable successor to Dwight could be found. There was a week's adjournment to consider the disposition of the funds, and there the record ends. A part of the amount still in the treasury was spent in the useless republication, in three huge volumes, of Dwight's reports, which were of little value in them- selves, and already sufficiently distributed. The Society was in its later years kept alive for his support, and with his death it disappeared.
Sumner did not again recur to the controversy as to the two rival systems of prison discipline. As is often the case in human life, he doubtless came to see that its importance had been over- rated, or that it called rather for scientific treatment than for excited debate. Once, late in life, he had a practical connection with the construction of a prison, in 1872, when, as a member of the Senate committee on the District of Columbia, he insisted that there should be a house of correction established with the jail about to be built in Washington, and after applying to E. L. Pierce for suggestions as to a proper model, caused one hundred
1 His principal speech, translated into English, was republished in the Boston " Daily Advertiser," Oct. 22, 1847, with an introductory note by Charles, who wrote to him a note of congratulation on the high quality of his speech and his success in speaking in a foreign tongue.
^t. 35-36.] PRISON-DISCIPLINE DEBATES. 97
thousand dollars to be added to the appropriation. He was the chairman of the committee of conference which decided finally on the provisions of the bill.1
The details of the prison discipline controversy as given in this chapter are justified by its intimate connection with Sum- ner's start in his public career. They show better than any general statement what was the kind of community in which he first demonstrated his powers, as well as what social ob- structions stood in the way of his taking his place among reformers and agitators ; and the recital also is not without interest in its exhibition of the qualities and training which were to stand him in good stead in the greater contests before him. The platform at Tremont Temple gave him a conscious- ness of power in hand-to-hand debate, and taught him that, pacific and sens'tive as he was by nature, he could still fight like other men.
1 Sumner had an interest unusual with public men in questions outside of politics. Tocqueville plied Mr. Webster with questions on prison discipline, but found that he was not interested in the subject, saying that it was useless to try to reform criminals. Tocque- ville added : "Webster, like thousands of statesmen, cares only for power." Life and Let- ters of Dr. F. Lieber, p. 256.
VOL. III. 7
98 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. — THE MEXICAN WAR. — WINTHROP AND
SUMNER. — 1845-1847.
THE annexation of Texas, plotted during Jackson's Admin- istration, obstructed by Van Buren's, and consummated by Tyler's, was in its origin and at every step a conspiracy of the aggressive and fanatical partisans of slavery to consolidate their power in the national government, and to strengthen and per- petuate their institution. It was one of the three great vic- tories in our history won by the slaveholders over a feeble- spirited and submissive North. Texas was, indeed, a territory which might well be coveted by a people and race distinguished by a passion for empire, already fed by acquisitions from France and Spain. It was imperial in extent, fortunate in position, rejoicing in marvellous fertility, commanding the Gulf of Mex- ico, and assuring military and commercial advantages ;* but far different thoughts from such as appealed to a far-sighted patri- otism filled the minds of Tyler and Calhoun and their fellow- plotters. Their purpose, boldly avowed not only in Southern journals and conventions, but in Congress and state papers, was to add immediately two members to the pro-slavery party in the Senate, with more in prospect by a division of the new State, to fortify the interests of their caste on our southwestern frontier, and to open a market for the redundant slave population of the old slave States. The plot was carried through in defiance of the Constitution, in disregard of the rights of Mexico, and in contempt of Northern sentiment. When the treaty of annex- ation, negotiated by Calhoun, Secretary of State, had been re- jected by the Senate in 1844, President Tyler promptly resorted to a joint resolution, easily carried through the House, but pass- ing the Senate by a majority of only two votes, and taking effect
1 Sumner, in a letter to his brother George, Sept. 30, 1845, admitted that the material interests of the country might be forwarded by the acquisition, but insisted that sound morals were against it.
JEt. 34-36.] THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 99
March 2, 1845, two days before Tyler was succeeded by Polk, who was instigated by the same pro-slavery ambition as his predecessor. The slave-power was then the master of the Dem- ocratic party ; and Northern Democrats — some from pro-slavery sympathies, and others from servile fear — voted for the meas- ure in Congress,1 joined by a sufficient number of Whigs in the Senate to carry it through. It is painful, in reading the history of that period, to see how feeble was the resistance to the great conspiracy ; to observe the sham neutrality of our government in the contest between Mexico and Texas, — its pre- tences of offended dignity and its support of unfounded claims; its unconstitutional use of the navy and army in threatening, and at last invading, a sister republic, to whom we were bound by conditions of peace and a common polity ; the sophistry, dis- ingenuousness, and falsehood of its diplomatic papers, and its unblushing avowal of its purpose to extend and perpetuate sla- very. Viewed in connection with the war which followed, and the age and country in which it took place, history records no baser transaction than the annexation of Texas.2 The spirit of the people had fallen low indeed, if they would not rise up to drive from power and punish all who had borne a part in it. At least the time had come to organize a resistance as deter- mined as the conspiracy itself, and to abandon political com- binations which openly aided or weakly submitted to it.3
No such general revolt as might have been expected followed the consummation of the iniquity. Partisans were disposed to accept an accomplished fact, and discountenanced further con- tention as useless. The Southern Whigs, who had put their opposition on mild grounds of detail or expediency, yielded very graciously to the final result; but among Northern Whigs, in- stead of such general resignation, a divergence of sentiment developed. They had, in State legislatures and political con- ventions, as also in journals and popular meetings, affirmed their unalterable purpose to resist the sclieme to the end, going so far
1 In the House, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Democrat, voted for the resolution; but another Democrat from New England, John P. Hale of New Hampshire, revolted from his party. With the latter also stood Preston King of New York. In the Senate, John A. Dix of New York, an unstable politician, voted for it.
2 After the final vote, at 8 p. m., Giddings, "pensively and alone," walked to his lodgings, and that evening in solitude meditated on the calamities in store. Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," p. 235.
3 Von Hoist, "Constitutional History of the United States," vol. ii. chap. vii. gives an excellent idea of the course of events, with citations from documents.
100 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
even as to declare that the act of annexation, being unconsti- tutional, was of no binding force ; but as the event proved, the greater number, while having a sentimental aversion to slavery, often boldly expressed, were wanting in thorough conviction as to its moral wrong and its political dangers, and were bound to stop at any point of resistance where they were confronted by material sacrifices or a breach in the party. In this major- ity, particularly in New England, the influence of manufacturers and capitalists was dominant. With them the protective tariff of 1842 was of paramount importance, Whig success essential to its maintenance, and Southern Whig co-operation essential to the election of a Whig Congress and President ; and they were indisposed to prolong a controversy which would embar- rass their Southern allies and obstruct the restoration of the party to power.
There was, however, a body of Northern men in the two par- ties, more numerous among the Whigs than among the Demo- crats, whose conscience and patriotism had been profoundly stirred by the annexation of Texas, and who were determined from that time to make resistance to the extension and domi- nation of the slave-power the paramount principle of political action. Though seeming at first to be larger in numbers than under party pressure they afterwards proved to be, they were strong in enthusiasm, in moral power, and in the heroic quali- ties of their leaders. They had, too, among the Christian masses "great allies," — "exultations, agonies, and man's unconquer- able mind." They stood together in this dark hour, perhaps the darkest in our history, with an indomitable spirit, indeed with what seemed the resolution of despair. Having failed to prevent the incorporation of Texas into the Union, they now took their stand, hopeless as it was, against her admission as a slave State, the final consummation of the plot. If the result was already a foregone conclusion, they could at least, by a con- test at every stage, attest their high purpose, and maintain their unity and vigor as a political force. Lifted by their cause to a broader view, their aims now advanced beyond the immediate issue. The time had come, as they saw it, when patriotism and moral duty required the people of the free States to put in abey- ance material questions, and to unite not only in resisting future aggressions of slavery, but also in overthrowing the power it had usurped over national politics and legislation. They had in view
Mr. 34-36.] THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 101
constitutional methods only ; and instead of starting an inde- pendent movement, they sought in their first effort to put the party to which they belonged on the same plane of sentiment and action where they themselves stood. With this body of men at this period Sumner allied himself, taking the first step in his active political career.1
This brief statement of the national contest which resulted in the annexation of Texas is sufficient to introduce a particular ref- erence to the course of events in Massachusetts. Here the tone of resistance and defiance was stronger than in any other State. The people had inherited a Puritan repugnance to slavery, and they had been instructed and alarmed as to the Texas scheme by their first moralist and their veteran statesman, — Dr. Channing, and John Quincy Adams. They had, in every form in which public opinion can be expressed, denounced the conspiracy of the propagandists of slavery, and declared their purpose to re- sist it to the end ; and as its success drew near, their protests were uttered with the depth and fervor of religious conviction. The Legislature, at the beginning of its session in 1815, affirmed in resolutions the invalidity of the proposed act of annexation, and the perpetual opposition of the State to the further exten- sion of slavery. A convention was held at Faneuil Hall, January 29. The call invited the people of the State to attend without distinction of party ; and although a few of the advanced anti- slavery men were present, the greater part of the delegates were of the conservative class. They included lawyers, merchants, and public men who had long held the confidence of the people. The address, one of the ablest in the political history of the State, was prepared by Mr. Webster, Charles Allen, and Ste- phen C. Phillips.2 It declared that " Massachusetts denounces the iniquitous project in its inception, and in every stage of its progress ; in its means and its end, and in all the purposes and
1 He had already, from his youth, in a more private way, — by correspondence, and contributions to the newspapers, — assisted in the antislavery debate. See Index of this Memoir, under title " Slavery."
2 The original manuscript, with the parts in Mr. Webster's handwriting, is in the pos- session of Stephen H. Phillips, son of Stephen C. (" Re-union of the Free-Soilers of 1848- 1852," held June 28, 1888, pp. 30-32.) Mr. Webster was said to have read the call, and promised to attend the convention, but was called to Washington before it met. (Boston "Republican," Oct. 16, 1849, containing a full history of the period 1845-1848 so far as it relates to the antislavery conflict in Massachusetts, probably contributed by Henry Wil- son.) Mr. Wilson reviewed this period in a speech in the Massachusetts Senate, Feb. 24, 1852 (Boston "Commonwealth," March 1,1852), and in a letter to L.V.Bell ("Common- wealth," July 14, 1852).
102 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
pretences of its authors." A solemn earnestness such as befits a great crisis in human affairs pervaded the assembly.
This was the last demonstration of resistance to the annexa- tion, or of protest against it, in which the representative Whig politicians of Massachusetts took part. Even this convention did not have the countenance and good-will of Levi Lincoln, Abbott Lawrence, and Nathan Appleton ; and when the annexa- tion had been consummated, a few weeks later, a disposition to acquiesce was manifested in various quarters. A section of the Whigs in the Legislature, prominent among whom was John H. Clifford, endeavored to avoid action on the resolutions proposed by C. F. Adams immediately after the measure of annexation had passed, although they were of similar purport to those pre- viously passed at the same session. Mr. Winthrop's toast on the Fourth of July 1 was understood to discountenance any further agitation of the subject. The Whig leaders in the autumn threw the Texas question into the background, and brought to the front the economical issues which divided them from the Democrats.
The antislavery Whigs, known as " Young Whigs " in the political nomenclature of the period, sometimes as " Conscience Whigs " (the last a name first applied to them derisively by their more politic Whig opponents), at once organized an oppo- sition to the admission of Texas as a State with a constitution which not only established slavery, but undertook in certain provisions to make it perpetual. Their leaders were Charles Francis Adams, Charles Sumner, Stephen C. Phillips, John G. Palfrey, Henry Wilson, Charles Allen, Samuel and E. Rockwood Hoar (father and son), and Richard H. Dana, Jr. Among these it would not be invidious, in view of his sober judgment, per- sistency, courage, and his social and hereditary position, to put Mr. Adams at the head. These men were all highly regarded in the Whig party ; most of them had been chosen to office by its nomination. They were strong in personal character and in their unquestioned loyalty to moral principles as the basis of political action, and they exercised a large influence over the voters in the country towns who were removed from an imme- diate connection with the moneyed interests of Boston. During the summer and autumn of 1845 they, and others acting in accord with them, held public meetings in different parts of the State to
i "Our country," etc. Ante, vol. ii. p. 356.
Mr. 34-36.] THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 103
protest against the admission of Texas as a slave State ; and appealing to the mass of voters, they forwarded a remonstrance to Congress with sixty thousand signatures. From this agita- tion the manufacturers and many of the Whig politicians kept aloof, excusing themselves from joining in the remonstrance, taking no part in the meetings, and discouraging others from participating in the protests.1 Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Appleton, who stood at the head of the manufacturing interest, replied to the committee which requested their co-operation, that the question had been settled, and further agitation was a waste of effort on the impossible ; and the latter saw fit to make an offensive and uncalled-for thrust at the " abolition movement," which in his view was not " reconcilable with duty under the Constitution." 2 The Whig journals of Boston, notably the " Advertiser," while assiduous in reporting Whig meetings, ignored these popular protests against this creation of a slave State out of foreign territory acquired for the purpose.
Sumner was an efficient member of a State committee ap- pointed in the autumn of 1845 at a convention in Cambridge, and charged with the duty of organizing public opinion against the admission of Texas. He assisted in the arrangements for a public meeting at Faneuil Hall, November 4. The evening was inclement ; and spectators sympathetic with its object thought the storm suggestive of the moral and political aspects of the period, while others of a different mood saw in the darkness and tumult outside emblems of the foul and traitor-like designs within. C. F. Adams made a speech on taking the chair. The other speakers were Palfrey, Sumner, and Hillard, Whigs ; Wen- dell Phillips, Garrison, and W. H. Channing, Abolitionists ; and H. B. Stanton, of the Liberty party. Sumner had drawn the resolutions (though read by another), which, as he wrote at a later day, " start with the annunciation of equal rights and the brotherhood of all men as set forth in the Declaration of Inde- pendence, which he always, from beginning to end, made the foundation of his arguments, appeals, and aspirations." 3 His
1 John Quincy Adams said in his Diary, Sept. 23, 1846, vol. xii. p. 274, " There are two divisions in the party, — one based upon public principle, and the other upon manu- facturing and commercial interests."
2 He apparently intended the slur not merely for Mr. Garrison's followers, but for those also who were in favor of a political party acting against slavery. The Boston "Adver- tiser," Nov. 27, 1845, discountenanced the agitation as fruitless, and approved the position of Lawrence and Appleton.
3 Works, vol. i. p. 149.
104 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
speech was his first public address since his oration in July, and his first public participation in the political contests against sla- very. The speech, one of his briefest, as well as the resolutions, are an earnest plea against the admission of Texas as a slave State ; and reserving any argument based on political expediency or sectional supremacy, he pleaded in the name of patriotism, humanity, and religion for the union of men of all parties in resisting the extension and perpetuation of slavery.1 Certain passages show that he did not anticipate immediate success, and that he faced the possibility that Massachusetts by her stead- fast resistance might be left to stand in noble isolation. He said : —
"But we carmot fail to accomplish great good. It is in obedience to a prevailing law of Providence that no act of self-sacrifice, of devotion to duty, of humanity, can fail. It stands forever as a landmark, from which at least to make a new effort. Future champions of equal rights and human brother- hood will derive new strength from these exertions."
In his appeal to the people he said : —
" God forbid that the votes and voices of Northern freemen should help to bind anew the fetters of the slave ! God forbid that the lash of the slave- dealer should descend by any sanction from New Englaud ! God forbid that the blood which spurts from the lacerated, quivering flesh of the slave should soil the hem of the white garments of Massachusetts ! "
He wrote to Lieber, Nov. 17, 1845 : —
" Webster has talked of resigning his seat in the Senate.2 His debts annoy him very much, and he is unwilling to go to Washington unless these shall he paid. The debts that must be paid amount to about thirty thousand dollars. If lie should resign, it would he difficult to determine his successor. The anti- slavery element is becoming the controlling power in our State ; and I doubt if any person could be sent who was not in favor of earnest efforts for the abolitiou of slavery under the Federal Constitution. Ever since you left the North, this topic has assumed a great importance in Massachusetts. S. C. Phillips and W. B. Calhoun (formerly of the House of Representatives), and several other prominent Whigs, have entered the field, and will labor to bring the Whig party of Massachusetts to the antislavery platform. This will, of course, put them out of communion with the Southern Whigs. These efforts are discountenanced by Abbott Lawrence and Nathan Appleton. I doubt if the Whisrs of Massachusetts will ever again vote for a slaveholder as Pres- ident. We have commenced au agitation against the admission of Texas as a slave State, which promises to light a powerful flame. S. C. Phillips has delivered a couple of lectures on the Texas question and on slavery, which
1 Works, vol. i. pp. 149-159. 2 The resignation did not take place.
JEt. 34-36.] THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 105
present a masterly development of the relations of Massachusetts to these matters. They have elevated immensely my estimate of his character, moral and intellectual."
To George Sumner, November 30 : —
" The spirit of Antislavery promises soon to absorb all New England. Massachusetts will never give her vote for another slaveholder. The cotton lords will interfere, but they will at last be borne away by the rising tide ; but this cannot be immediately. You will be at home, and an actor in the conflict that approaches."
Again, December 31 : —
"I think there will be a strong movement to place some person in Web- ster's seat who will be true and firm in the assertion of Northern rights against the domination of the slave-power. John Davis and most of the leading Whigs are too anxious to keep the State in line with the Southern section of Whigs. This cannot be done. It is easy to see that there will be soon a large party at the North pledged to perpetual warfare with slavery."
To Lord Morpeth, March 29, 1846 : —
"Among the persons who have lost character in the Oregon discussions is J. Q. Adams. His course has been eccentric, claiming the whole 54° 40'. He told me before he went to Washington that he was prepared to uphold our title to this extent, but that he distrusted Polk's intentions ; that he thought the latter would fly off, and that he should try to hold him to the original declaration of his inaugural that the title to the whole was unquestionable. I think his speech frightened the slaveholders ; for they suspected him of a real desire to plunge us into a war with England, in order to bring about the emancipation of the slaves.1 Perhaps this accounts partly for the unanimity with which they have declared in favor of peace. Calhoun has won what Adams has lost ; and I have been not a little pained to be obliged to withdraw my sympathies from the revered champion of freedom, and give them to the unhesitating advocate of slavery. Calhoun's course has been wise and able."
In December, Texas, with a constitution establishing slavery and guarding against emancipation by extreme provisions, was admitted as a State without serious opposition. Massachusetts was, however, heard at the final stage, in brief but weighty words from Webster in the Senate, and in a speech from Julius Rock- well in the House, where the latter succeeded in getting the floor in spite of a resolute effort to suppress debate.
In the session of the Massachusetts Legislature which followed shortly after the admission of Texas, the division of sentiment
1 Both Adams and Giddings, who took the same course, sought by frightening the South to bring about a peaceful settlement of the Oregon question. Julian's "Life of Giddings," pp. 185-189.
106 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
which has already been noted again appeared. Wilson, after- wards Senator and Vice-President, carried through the House resolutions denouncing the purposes and methods of annexation and invoking resistance to the slave-power ; but they failed in the Senate, chiefly by the opposition of members who were closelv allied to the manufacturing interest. One of these, Mr. T. G. Cary, declared that Massachusetts must " submit," and cease passing antislavery resolutions. E. Rockwood Hoar replied with spirit, " It is as much the duty of Massachusetts to pass reso- lutions in favor of the rights of man as in the interests of cotton," — a retort which led to the application of the name " Cotton Whigs " to those who were opposed to the adoption of a distinctively antislavery policy by the Whig party.
The necessity of a journal by which the antislavery Whigs might reach the public was sorely felt at this time. The Whig press of Boston was wanting in spirit, indifferent to a great extent to the aggressions of slavery, and morbidly sensitive as to any action which might create disturbance within " the united Whig party." Mr. Adams said, thirty years later : " The tone of their newspapers was absolutely servile, and the spirit of opposition became completely hushed. A few of us, after con- sultation together, decided that we could not continue silent in this emergency. The chief difficulty was in finding any poli- tical organ that would express our sentiments as freely as we desired." Mr. Palfrey, then Secretary of the Commonwealth, called a conference at lobby No. 13 in the State House, which was held in May, 1846, and consisted of himself, Adams, Sum- ner, S. C. Phillips, and Wilson. The result was the purchase of a journal already existing with a slender support, and in June the Boston " Daily Whig " under new auspices was issued, with Adams as editor.1
The offensive conduct of our government towards Mexico during the proceedings for the acquisition of Texas was con- tinued after the act of annexation took effect. Though Texas asserted the Rio Grande as her western boundary, her domin- ion and her title did not extend beyond the Nueces. Never- theless, President Polk, having already advanced our army to the Nueces and stationed our fleet in the Gulf, directed General
1 "Reunion of the Free-Soilers of 1848," Aug. 9, 1877, pp. 20, 21. Sumner, as appears by Palfrey's diary, attended, July 23, a meeting where Palfrey, Adams. S. C. Phillips, Wilson, and W. B. Spooner took counsel for maintaining the journal. Another meeting was held at Adams's office, September 5.
JEt. 34-36.] THE MEXICAN WAK. 107
Taylor, Jan. 13, 1846, to move the army to the left bank of the Rio Grande ; and two months later that officer marched from Corpus Christi, with Mexicans armed and unarmed fleeing be- fore him, to the river, and turned his guns on the public square of the Mexican town of Matamoras, which lay on its western side. At the same time the fleet blockaded the mouth of the river. These acts were war, and aggressive war, on the part of the United States.1 A collision between small bodies of the two forces occurred April 25.2
The President, on receiving Taylor's report of the skirmish (for that was all it was), communicated his version of the affair to Congress, May 11, falsely alleging that t; Mexico has invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil," and that " war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." The supporters of the Administration in the House rejected Winthrop's motion to have the official correspondence read ; amended a bill which had been promptly reported by adding a preamble which re- peated the President's statement that " by the act of the Repub- lic of Mexico a state of war exists between that government and the United States ; " and shutting off debate at every stage, passed it, with its provision for fifty thousand men and an appropriation of fifty thousand dollars for " the prosecution of the war to a speedy and successful termination." Only sixteen votes were given against the measure in both Houses : two in the Senate, — John Davis of Massachusetts, and Thomas Clay- ton of Delaware, — and fourteen in the House, with the name of John Quincy Adams standing at their head.3 The Massa- chusetts members present, except two, voted with the minor- ity. The mass of Whig members, except only the sixteen, thus voted for a bill supplying the means for a war which they believed to have been unjustly and unconstitutionally begun, and containing a declaration as to its origin which they pro-
1 General Grant, who served in the war, regarded it as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker power." (Personal Memoirs, p. 53.) He says that it was "a political war," and that our troops "were sent to provoke a fight."
2 There is a conflict of evidence as to which side made the first attack, but the question is not important. See William Jay's "Review," pp. 140. 141.
3 Mr. Calhoun pleaded for deliberation; denied the truth of the statement in the bill as to the origin of the war; distinguished between hostilities which had begun and war which could alone be authorized and declared by Congress; and refused to vote on the bill. (See his speeches, Jan. 4, March 16, 17, 1848.) Berrien of Georgia, and Evans of Maine, sen- ators, also refused to vote on it. Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," pp. 253, 265.
108 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
nounced historically false.1 The apology which they generally made for submitting to the humiliation forced on them by the Democratic partisans of the Administration was that the means provided by the bill were necessary for the succor of our troops ; but this plea had no justification in the circumstances, and with most who urged it was only^ a pretext. For immediate relief the troops authorized by the bill could not be made available, on ac- count of the time required for their transportation to the seat of war. General Taylor did not ask for or need them for de- fence and succor, and he even undertook offensive operations without further reinforcement, notifying the Administration that he had called on neighboring States for support.2 They could only serve the purpose proclaimed in the bill, — of prosecuting the war of invasion against Mexico to a successful termination. But whatever might be the real or imagined necessity for the supplies, the bill, with the full support of the Administration, was sure to pass by Democratic votes only, and the Whig mem- bers might have saved their honor without compromising their patriotism. Their weak submission in an hour which called for courage and faith — the courage of convictions and faith in the people — was due wholly, or almost wholly, to party consid- erations.3 They applied, or rather misapplied, as warnings to themselves, the fate of the Federalists, who withheld their sup- port from the government in the war of 1812 ; and they exagger- ated the strength of the war spirit among the people. They had in immediate view the national election of 1848, and were pru- dent in taking positions likely to affect the election of the next President.4
The action of the Whig members in voting for the war bill, while not formally condemned by the party, was not in con-
1 They voted in a body, Jan. 3, 1848, that "the war was unnecessarily and unconsti- tutionally begun by the President of the United States."
2 Luther Severance's speech in the House, May 28, 1846.
3 Their party interests, according to Von Hoist, were "for all a weighty, and for many a determining, consideration." Vol. iii. p. 251.
4 Von Hoist, vol. iii. pp. 250-255, is emphatic in condemning the Whig opponents of the war who voted for the bill with its preamble, maintaining that they should at least have abstained from voting, and " not allowed the country to suffer from the guilt of its rulers," and that Congress by passing the bill made the President's mendacious statement of the origin of the war its own. He says: "If the entire opposition in both Houses of Congress had had the moral courage to act like Calhoun, the 11th and 12th of May, 1846, would not be counted among the darkest and most significant days in the constitutional his- tory of the United States. The sixteen who voted against the bill deserve, from an ethical standpoint, still greater recognition than the Carolinian, who thenceforth pursues his way in even greater isolation than before."
^Et. 34-36.] THE MEXICAN WAR. 109
formity with its best opinion. Henry Clay, the Whig candidate for President at the last preceding election, then in private life, said that " the preamble falsely attributed the commencement of the war to the act of Mexico ; " and added, " no earthly con- sideration would have ever tempted or provoked me to vote for a bill with a palpable falsehood stamped on its face. Almost idol- izing truth as I do, I never, never could have voted for that bill." 1 Corwin publicly expressed regret for his vote for it in the Sen- ate.2 The American Review, a magazine devoted to the defence of the principles of the Whig party, strongly condemned the action of the Whigs in voting for the bill.3 The " National In- telligencer," the national Whig organ at the capital, and more than any other journal of the time representing the party, im- mediately expressed disapproval of the support which the Whig- members had given to the bill. " Too late," it wrote, " they will find their error, and we shall live to see the day when they will deeply regret having suffered themselves to be deluded or influenced in the manner in which they have been." 4 And again : " The two Houses of Congress have given the seal and sanction of their authority to a false principle and a false fact ; " and it ascribed the error to a dread of the people, whose intelli- gence they undervalued.5 Even the Boston " Advertiser," which became the chief apologist of the two Massachusetts members who voted for the bill, said before the controversy arose that it was " passed in a panic." 6
The war bill was at the time disapproved by the moral sen- timent of the people of Massachusetts ; and the main body of their delegation in Congress, in voting against it, acted in accordance with the current of opinion in the Whig party of the State. No one of them, at this or any later period, lost favor or encountered criticism among his constituents on ac- count of his negative vote. Of the only two Whig members from Massachusetts who voted for it, — one was Abbott, of the Essex district, a person of very moderate ability, and supposed to have acted under the influence of his associate ; the other
1 Speech at Lexington, Ky., Nov. 13, 1847. "National Intelligencer," November 25. Colton's " Last Years of Henry Clay," p. 62.
2 Speech at Carthage, Ohio, September, 1847, printed in Boston "Whig," Oct. 7, 1847.
3 May, 1847, p. 435 (Charles King).
4 May 13. s May 16.
6 May 18. Webster said in his speech at Springfield, Sept. 29, 1847, that Congress was "surprised into the Act of 13th May, 1846."
110 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
was Robert C. Winthrop, of Boston, whose vote is intimately connected with Sumner's political activity at this time.
Mr. Winthrop had been from his youth the pride of his na- tive city. No citizen of Boston in all its annals has combined so many points for attracting the support of its ruling classes. He belonged, it may be said, to its most historic family, — one cele- brated in colonial times ; and hereditary excellence has always counted in Massachusetts in a public man's favor. He came very early to public life, being Speaker of the State House of Representatives when less than thirty, and elected to Congress when only thirty. He was courtly and formal in manner, but his deportment towards all who came into personal or political relations with him was distinguished by good breeding and civil- ity. His presence commanded attention in any company and with any audience ; and his person and mien befitted one whose ancestors, as well as himself, had been exempted from a strug- gle with adverse fortune. In private life he was decorous in habits, reverent, punctilious in the discharge of social offices, exempt from impulses or inspirations which carry men outside and beyond the currents of life about them. He passed from his studies to public station ; and was naturally more sensitive to criticism than if he had undergone the discipline and friction of a profession. If not quite so complete in his equipment as a few of the foremost of American statesmen, he was nevertheless a diligent student of public questions, and enjoyed a rare gift for debate. His style was finished, direct, and spirited.1 As an orator for festive and anniversary occasions he ranks next to Everett, while in forensic power he was altogether Everett's superior. With his early start and his rare accomplishments, there was no high place in the national government to which he might not have aspired, none which he might not have filled with credit to himself and to the country. He belonged also to a generation and a community to which he was eminently adapted. Society as then existing in Boston was conservative, delighted in refined manners and liberal culture, shrank from moral re- forms and from any agitation which was likely to bring the masses to the front ; and it was besides the faithful ally of the capital of the city, which was heavily invested in manufacturing enterprises. It found in Mr. Winthrop a public man who fully
1 James S. Pike describes vividly in the Boston "Courier," Feb. 25, 1850. Winthrop's style and manner, which made him the peer in debate of any member of the House.
Mr. 34-36.] WINTHKOP AND SUMNEK. Ill
represented its interests and spirit, and it remained loyal to him from the beginning of his career until 1853, when its power over the politics of the State was broken by the disruption of the Whig party. But made as he was and fitted as he was to rep- resent the ruling class of Boston at the time when he entered on public life, his part was not to be that of a leader in the im- pending conflict with American slavery. This was evident when he assured the Abolitionists at the time of his first election that he " should not regard it as any peculiar part of his duty to agitate the subject of slavery;"1 and his subsequent action was in harmony with this declaration.
The Whigs had before them, as an example for an opposition to an unjust war, the conduct of the English Whigs, — Chatham, Camden, Burke, Fox, and Barre, — in their denunciation of the American war and their refusal to vote supplies.2 The spirit of those exemplars was shown in the epithets which the younger Pitt heaped upon it in Parliament while it was in progress, calling it " the most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war." There were, indeed, among the Whig mem- bers some — as Hudson of Massachusetts, Corwin of Ohio, Sev- erance of Maine, and Garrett Davis of Kentucky — who were unsparing in their condemnation of the Administration ; but even their votes were not always consistent with their speeches. Giddings stood out in fearless and uncompromising resistance by voice and vote at every stage of the iniquity ; but very few were equal to his heroism. The course of the mass of the Whigs in both Houses was to the end neither one of sympathetic support nor of effective opposition ; it was one of partisan tactics, rather than of patriotic resistance. Their policy, as it appeared in de- bate and in their votes, was not so much to save the country from the dishonor of an unjust war as to seize every opportunity to put their opponents at a political disadvantage. At one moment they denounced the invasion of Mexico ; at another they sup- plied the means to carry it on. They berated the President, and yet sought a candidate to be his successor among the gen- erals who had executed his worst orders. After all, the au- dacity of the Democrats, who had no scruples against aggres- sive war, the extension of slavery, and the dismemberment of
1 Winthrop's " Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 634.
2 In this connection, the action of Cobden at the time of the Crimean war, and Bright's withdrawal from the Cabinet after the bombardment of Alexandria, may be recalled.
112 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
a sister republic, command more respect than the indecision and pusillanimity of the Whigs.
Mr. Webster was not in the Senate an antagonist of the war itself. At home when the war bill passed (May 12), he was in his seat two days afterwards ; but he did not seize the oppor- tunity to denounce the invasion. He avowed (June 24) his readiness to vote all necessary supplies, without reference to the origin of the war. He kept out of the heats of the contest, more intent on his briefs than on the vital questions pending ; apparently gave his sanction to his son's service as a volun- teer with a captain's commission ; and confined his criticism of Polk and his Cabinet chiefly to incidents and details.1 He seemed only in earnest when he was supporting the " no terri- tory " expedient.
Mr. Winthrop did not in any defence or explanation define explicitly the reasons for the vote (May 11) which severed him from his colleagues. His speeches, like those of most of the Whig leaders, do not disclose a definite policy of support or opposition.2 He voted for some war bills providing men and money, and against others of like tenor. He avowed his readi- ness to vote for " reasonable supplies," not merely for the with- drawal of our troops, but for the prosecution of the war vigorously and successfully on Mexican territory, with the view of achieving an honorable peace. He insisted that in voting such supplies he was relying on the pledges of President Polk that he was not carrying on the war for the purposes of aggression and conquest, though from the beginning the acquisition of Mex- ican territory was well known to be the principal object of the Administration.3 He rejected as a model of conduct the ex- ample of the English statesmen who refused support to the British ministry in our Revolution, for the reason that a hos- tile vote of Congress does not, as in England, effect a change in the Administration.4 He condemned the Administration for
i Speeches, May 14, June 24,1846; March 1,1847; March 17, 23,1848. Webster's " Life." by G. T. Curtis, vol. ii. pp. 291, 301, 302, 315.
2 "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 526, 527, 529, 565, 568, 574, 580, 596.
3 The design to acquire California had been openly avowed from the beginning of the war, and had even been disclosed before it began. Von Hoist, vol. iii. pp. 109, 253, 267, 268.
* "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 565, 566. He quoted, as stating the principle of his course, a letter of John Jay, Nov. 1, 1814; and this drew a paper in reply from Wil- liam Jay, printed in the New York "Tribune," Feb. 1, 1847. J. Q. Adams, as well as Sumner, did not admit the pertinency of the distinction made by Winthrop. Delano of
Mt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 113
its avowed purpose to seek a cession of territory by way of indemnity for the private claims of American citizens against Mexico ; 1 and when an army bill was pending, he denounced the acquisition of territory by conquest, and moved an amend- ment disavowing as an object of the war such an acquisition or any dismemberment of Mexico.2 Though holding Tyler and Polk responsible for the war, he was milder in his censure of the Administration than his colleague Hudson, and other asso- ciates already named, particularly in putting upon Mexico a con- siderable share of the blame and responsibility both before and after the final rupture.3
The division in the Massachusetts delegation upon the war bill, May 11, — John Quincy Adams and his four colleagues,4 who were present, as also Senator Davis, voting against it, and Winthrop and one colleague voting for it, — was for two months hardly referred to by the Whig journals of Boston. The divi- sion, however, could not escape attention in quarters where the progress of slave extension created anxiety. It was not a ques- tion involving complex transactions in commerce, where it may be difficult to draw the line between plaintiff and defendant; it was a transcendent issue of morals as well as of policy, where there must be a right and a wrong. War is bloody business, laying huge responsibilities on all who sanction or support it in a civilized and Christian age. Either Adams was wanting in a just appreciation of the rights of his country and in a due regard to the safety of our army, or Winthrop had sanctioned a war of invasion against Mexico. Those who had come to treat the slavery question as paramount in political action strongly approved the negative votes of Adams and his associates, and as strongly disapproved Winthrop's affirmative vote. They recog- nized among the supporters of the bill the names of very respec-
Ohio, in a reply to Winthrop, Feb. 2. 1847, maintained that the difference between the Eng- lish and American systems did not at all affect the right and duty of Congress to with- hold supplies from the Executive in the prosecution of an unjust war. J. R. Giddings's "Life," by G. W. Julian, pp. 202-204, where Sumner's letters to Giddings, Jan. 15 and 16, 1847, are printed.
1 Jan. 8, 1847. "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 581.
2 Fel). 22, 1847. "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 589.
3 "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 527, 528, 575, 576. He condemned Mexico's refusal to receive Slidell as a minister. But that refusal was justified by the "National Intelligencer," Jan. 17, 1848, and has been approved by Von Hoist in his History, vol. iii. pp. 200-208.
4 Ashmun, Grinnell, Hudson, and King. Rockwell, who was absent, would have voted, if present, against the bill.
vol. m. 8
114 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-17.
table Whigs from other States ; but they held Winthrop responsi- ble for breaking the unity of the Massachusetts delegation and impairing the position of the State on a question involving moral more even than political issues. On the other hand, the Whig politicians and capitalists, whose interest in the slavery ques- tion was only politic and conventional, came at once to his sup- port when his vote was the subject of criticism. They did not, however, assume to defend it as required by patriotism and public duty, for that line of defence would reflect on his col- leagues ; but they confined themselves to the apology that it was given under peculiar and difficult circumstances, which justified an honest difference of opinion. The reserve of the journals was broken by a very earnest leader from C. F. Adams in the " Whig," in which he treated Winthrop's vote as " a positive sanction of the worst acts of the Administration," and charged, using the interrogatory form, that he had " set his name in per- petual attestation of a falsehood." He wrote thus : " Accord- ing to the best estimate we can form of political morality, if he could expunge the record of it by the sacrifice of the mem- ory of all his preceding brilliant career, he would make a bar- gain." 1 When this was written Sumner had not taken his pen, and nothing which he afterwards wrote exceeded in substance the measure of Adams's severe condemnation of the vote. The "Advertiser" then broke the silence it had maintained, and re- plied to the " Whig." 2 Withholding a decision between the oppos- ing votes of Winthrop and his colleagues, it treated the question as a difficult and embarrassing one, on which his vote ought not to be the subject of criticism among Whigs. It regarded the bill as a measure of national defence, a vote for which should be deemed a support of its practical provisions without involving an approval of its preamble and declarations.
Sumner did not enter as a volunteer into the controversy concerning Winthrop ; he came to it after it had been opened by Adams, and then only at the request of friends, who knew how deeply he felt upon the subject, and desired him to take a part in the discussion. He was reluctant to become a critic of Winthrop's vote ; he respected the latter's personal character and attainments, had approved generally his public course, and
1 July 16. Adams repeated the charge in nearly the same terms later, — Boston "Whig," Nov. 20, 1847; Feb. 1, 1848.
2 July 27, August 3.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 115
held agreeable personal relations with him.1 It happened here as at other times, that he soon found himself with a promi- nence in the debate which he had not anticipated. Others, knowing well his vigor and earnestness, were glad to put on him the burden of the controversy ; and when he was fairly in it, they left it chiefly to him.
Sumner's first public expression on the subject was a com- munication to the " Whig," July 22, signed " Boston." It was plain-spoken, but temperate in spirit. On broad moral grounds it denied the right of a representative to affix his name to a le- gislative falsehood. What applied particularly to Winthrop was written in no bitter mood, but in a tone of deep regret. He said : —
"As a Whig, who never failed to vote for Mr. Winthrop whenever I had an opportunity, and always cherished for him a personal regard, justly due to his accomplishments and his many virtues, I must confess peculiar sorrow in observing his course. I cannot doubt the integrity of his character ; but I fear that some thoughts, little worthy of a Christian statesman, have intruded upon his mind. I fear that he was unwilling to be found alone in the com- pany of truth ; or that he would not follow truth in the company of those few men who bore the stain of antislavery ; or that the recollection of the uupop- ularity of those who opposed the late war with England frightened hiin from his propriety."
Sumner contributed, shortly after, an article to the " Courier,"2 in reply to the " Advertiser's " defence of Winthrop. After an argument showing that the bill, being practically a declaration of war, and containing a national falsehood, should have been opposed by the entire Massachusetts delegation, be reiterated his expressions of respect for Winthrop's character and attain- ments, and of the pain which he felt in being obliged to condemn his public action. In a note to Winthrop,3 he announced himself the author of the two articles. Winthrop replied,4 statino- that he had already connected Sumner with them, and complaining that they misrepresented his whole conduct, and appeared to be intentionally offensive to him personally. He said :« " I can-
1 Sumner, in a letter to Winthrop, Dec. 22, 1845. approved strongly the latter's resolu- tions offered in Congress in favor of arbitration instead of war. His letter to Winthrop, Jan. 9, 1846, commend d the latter's speech in favor of a peaceful settlement of the Oregon question, while taking exception to one of its declarations, that the country would be united in the event of a war, whatever might be previous differences of opinion. He maintained, on the other hand, that the people ought not to sustain the government in an unjust war. See ante, vol. ii. pp. 256-259.
2 July 31, — "Mr. Winthrop's Vote on the War Bill."
8 August 5. * August 7.
116 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
not conclude without reciprocating your regret that anything should occur to interrupt our pleasant relations, nor without expressing the hope that circumstances may occur which may enable us to restore them without the sacrifice of self-respect on either side." To this Sumner replied 2 in a note which showed his desire to maintain friendly relations with Winthrop. He stated his disinclination at the beginning to become Winthrop's critic, and his delay in becoming such till Adams had broken ground in the " Whig," and Buckingham had pressed him in two calls to write for the " Courier." Disclaiming all personal sentiments towards Winthrop except those of kindness, and re- gretting with pain that the latter's letter showed personal and unfriendly feelings, he said in his own justification: —
" In the great public question, on which we are for the moment separated, I had hoped, perhaps ignorantly aud illusively, that an honest, conscientious, and earnest discussion, such as the magnitude of the occasion seemed to require, might be conducted without the suggestion of personal unkindness on either side. ... I have no feeling except of kindness. It would please me more to listen to your praise than your censure. But the act with which your name has been so unhappily connected is public property. Your con- duct is public property. Especially is it the property of your constituents, whose conscience you represented. I do feel, my dear sir, that holding the sentiments on this subject which I do, and which seem to be general in our community, it was a duty to direct them distinctly, unequivocally, and pub- licly against the act. This was rendered at a later day more imperative by the fallacious and immoral apology which the ' Advertiser ' set up, keeping out of view the fact of facts, that the representative from Boston had voted for an unjust war, aud arguing that two or more votes against a falsehood would justify a final vote for it. ... I hope, my dear sir, that we may always meet as friends. It will not be easy for me to be pressed into any other relation."
Sumner published a third article2 on Winthrop's vote, more pointed and rhetorical than the two which had preceded, and similar in substance and style to the open letter which he pub- lished in the following October. He affirmed that Winthrop had by his vote " given his sanction to one of the most impor- tant acts, as it is unquestionably the most wicked act, in our history," and " a sanction to all the desolation and the blood- shed of the war ; " and further wrote : —
1 August 10.
2 Boston " Courier," August 13, — "Mr. Winthrop's Vote on the War Bill." Sumner, in a reply to Nathan Appleton, August 11, treated at some length the latter's justification of Winthrop's vote on the war bill, contained in a letter to Sumner, August 10. The rela- tions of the two correspondents were shortly to end.
Mr. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 117
" All this misery has the sanction of your vote, Mr. Winthrop. Every sol- dier is nerved partly by you. Away beyond the current of the Rio Grande, on a foreign soil, your name will be invoked as a supporter of the war. Surely this is no common act. It cannot be forgotten on earth ; it must be remem- bered in heaven. Blood ! blood ! is on the hands of the representative from Boston. Not all great Neptune's ocean can wash them clean." 1
Mr. Winthrop replied, August 17, in a letter which ended the correspondence. In his view, Sumner's articles not only ar- raigned his acts, but were " full of insinuations as to his motives and imputations on his integrity," and " proceeded upon the offensive assumption that under some influence of ambition or moral cowardice he had knowingly and deliberately committed an unworthy and wicked act." Without entering on a justi- fication of his vote, he claimed that in the perplexity of the case it was honestly and conscientiously given ; and he asked no man to defend it, or to agree with him in opinion. He re- fused to maintain relations of social intercourse with one who had grossly assailed his public morality, and declined all fur- ther communication with Sumner while matters stood as they did between them, saying also, " my hand is not at the ser- vice of any one who has denounced it with such ferocity, as being stained with blood." 2 This mode of treating Sumner was from this time adopted by Winthrop's particular friends and supporters.
Public men, while bearing in good temper assaults from the other side, are sensitive to criticisms from the ranks of their own party ; and Winthrop could not be expected to remain on intimate and confidential terms with a political associate who publicly condemned his official action as contrary to jus- tice and the moral law. But certainly Sumner had as yet done nothing to justify a formal proclamation of personal non-inter- course ; he had violated no confidence, broken no ancient ties of friendship, nor turned against a benefactor. His sole favors from Winthrop were the courtesies bestowed on himself and
1 Gladstone's speeches on Beaconsfield's Eastern policy abound in denunciations as strong as any applied by Sumner to Winthrop's vote, and provoked the retort that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity." Nevertheless, Gladstone moved in Parliament a national monument to Beaconsfield.
2 Mr. Winthrop published in 1852 this letter in a note to the first volume of his " Addresses and Speeches," pp. 770-773. In an introduction he called attention to Sum- ner's prolonged silence on the slavery question during the session of Congress then going on, the first session in which Sumner served. Before the volume reached the public, Sumner had broken the silence, Aug. 26, 1852, in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Act.
118 MEMOIR OE CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
Prescott, as fellow-visitors to Washington ; and these were snch only as a public man bestows on distinguished constituents without expectation of personal service or loyalty. He did, indeed, find in the vote a misplaced political caution and a want of moral fearlessness ; but as to motives and impulses, he went no further. He had neither directly nor by sugges- tion impeached Winthrop's honor or veracity, but had taken pains in successive papers to disclaim the purpose to impugn his motives, and even paid tributes to his character and services. What he said was this and no more : he put in strong language — the strongest he could command — the moral effect of a vote for the war bill, declaring it, no matter upon what pretence given, to be in itself and necessarily a sanction of the war, and involving him who gave it in responsibility for its wickedness and bloodshed. This is a style of argument familiar in all times with theologians, moralists, and reformers. The form — too rhetorical, perhaps, for good taste — in which Sumner put his thought doubtless made it sting ; but what he wrote still remained in substance the discussion of a public act, not an attack on personal character. His sincerity was beyond ques- tion. His opinions on war and slavery led him to the irre- sistible conclusion that a vote for the war bill violated the fundamental laws of moral duty. He was prompted by no per- sonal rivalry or antagonism, by no pique or ambition ; and until the vote in question Winthrop had no more loyal constituent than the author of the protest against it. He came slowly and reluctantly to the controversy, urged to it by his convictions and the pressure of others who felt as he did. Public men may wince under honest criticism ; but having at heart the in- terests of justice and humanity in whose behalf it is made, or being only broad-minded in a worldly sense, they should hesitate to "boycott" a critic with social discipline and exclusion.1
So far as the use of strong language is concerned, neither Sumner nor Winthrop was at fault. Nominally of the same party, they were already further apart in their view of a great issue than Whigs and Democrats were on the measures dividing the two parties. That issue, as seen ahead, was no common one ; it was like those contests in history where race, religion, and liberty bring fierce elements into conflict. On the war it-
1 Sumner was sometimes hurt by Wendell Phillips's attacks upon him, but bore them rather in sorrow than in anger.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 119
self, aside from the greater question of slavery, to which it was closely related, the two divisions of the Whigs were absolutely opposed to each other. Sumner was against all support of the war by any means whatever, and demanded the immediate stop- ping of the supplies and the withdrawal of our army ; Winthrop, though disapproving certain proceedings which resulted in the war, was for its vigorous prosecution, and maintained the duty to supply the Administration with the men and money required to that end. The issue in Massachusetts was therefore not between political friends and allies, but between leaders and bodies of men behind them, who, notwithstanding their com- mon name, disagreed radically and fundamentally on ques- tions of morals, politics, and national honor. There was no occasion for delicate and mincing speech on the one side or the other. Sumner had a right to strike as hard as he could, and Winthrop had an equal right to strike back with all his force. Figuratively, one might see blood on the hands of the other, and the latter might in return point to the former as one of " a nest of vipers." Historic controversies are never without such inci- dents, and posterity giving slight heed to them will care only to find out with which party was the essential right.
The controversy concerning Winthrop created against Sumner much asperity of feeling in Boston, broke up his relations with families by whom he had been hitherto received most cordially, cost him friendships which he valued dearly,1 and secluded him almost entirely from general society. It ended his visits at Nathan Appleton's.2 Ticknor's door was closed to him;3 and when a guest at a party there inquired if Mr. Sumner was to be present, the host replied, " He is outside of the pale of soci- ety." The feeling became so pervasive in Boston's " Belgravia" that a lady living on Beacon Street, who had invited Sumner with other guests to dinner, received a withdrawal of an accept- ance from one of them when he found Sumner was to be present, although he was not at all in politics, and had no personal griev- ance. Prescojfct, of gentler mood than his neighbors, though with no more sympathy than they in Sumner's themes, still welcomed
i Letters to George Sumner, Dec. 31, 1846, and July 31, 1847, post, pp. 138, 142.
2 To Lieber, March 22, 1847, MSS.
3 Ticknor and Sumner had no intercourse after this. They met casually, July 15, 1857, at the house of General Fox, in London, Ticknor leaving and Sumner arriving at the same moment. General Fox observing that they did not speak, inquired of Sumner as to the cause, and was indignant to learn that the latter's course on slavery was the trouble.
120 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
him in his home on Beacon Street and to his summer retreat ; but the tradition is that he was obliged to select his guests with care when Sumner was invited, lest the feast should be marred by unseemly behavior on their part. Longfellow and his wife, made of far finer mould than their kin or their class, were, in spite of their connection with Mr. Appleton, as devotedly at- tached to Sumner as ever, and kept a chamber at his service ; but even they sometimes found it necessary to send him a warn- ing from Cambridge that some one was with them whom it was not best for him to meet. Even his triumphant career — his election to the Senate and his fame as an orator — did not soften this animosity. In 1853, driving down Beacon Street towards the country with R. H. Dana, Jr., as his companion, he said : " There was a time when 1 was welcome at almost every house within two miles of us, but now hardly any are open to me." He was taken to the Wednesday Club, where good breeding prevailed with most ; but even there he was snubbed by some of the mem- bers. A few there were who kept a higher level of thought and sentiment, — among them the Quincys, friends of his youth, who were faithful to him to the end.
This social pressure fell more heavily on Sumner than on others, for, bachelor as he was, his life was not engrossed with home interests. Adams, such was his lineage, could not be set aside or ignored ; but he too had some dark looks to encounter. One evening at a party he and Rufus Choate were observed to " glare " on each other without speaking.1 Palfrey described the slights and affronts received by himself, the changed counte- nances, the rude language, and the refused recognitions by old acquaintances and parishioners.2 Dana, finding one day his salu- tations in the street, when addressed to one of the ruling class, met with only the slightest return, assumed that the cause was a recent bereavement ; 3 and making an apology, drew the an- swer, " Oh, no ; it is your politics." Calling, as had been his habit, with his wife on the Ticknors, he got a reception which was enough to prevent any repetition of the experiment. It is needless to write for any one who knew him that he met both repulsions with a manly spirit. An older visitor at the same
1 Adams resented Choate's speaking of John Quincy Adams as "the last Adams." Later history, with the career of Charles Francis Adams and the public work of his sons in authorship and affairs, will make it hazardous for any one to speak of a past Adams as the "last" one.
2 A Letter to a Friend, pp. 25, 26. 3 By the death of Greenough, the sculptor.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 121
house,1 bearing a family name distinguished for business probity and honored in the history of science, with ties growing out of associations abroad as well as here, encountered the same un- friendly discrimination on account of his loyalty to the cause of humanity, and cut loose from a relation which compromised his manhood.2
Naturally, Sumner felt keenly this social restriction. He had been a favorite in society, and had a genuine relish for the taste, luxury, and refined conversation which at the time distin- guished the homes whose interior life he well knew. This weak- ness— if weakness it was — was not peculiar to him ; and it is to his credit chat it did not keep him from the discharge of his duty ; for hard as the sacrifice was, he made it without hesita- tion. After all, it was best for the rupture to come when it did. Sumner could not have kept along with Boston society as then organized and inspired, and yet fulfilled the high behests of his being. The choice of Hercules was before him, and he chose well; and unlike Hillard, who was held back from his splendid possibilities by the untoward influence, he went forward with a free and unhindered spirit to do great service for mankind, and take his place as a permanent figure in American history.
Sumner did not cherish then or later any animosity to Win- throp. To his brother George, arriving from Europe in 1852, he wrote : " To Mr. Winthrop personally I have had nothing but feelings of kindness, and I commend you to the same." 3 He was an admirer of Winthrop's finished style as a speaker, and of his general course as a public man, aside from the slavery question. They did not, after 1846, speak to each other until the autumn of 1861, when Sumner congratulated Winthrop on Boston Common, at the close of his address to Henry Wilson's regiment as it was leaving for the seat of war. From that time, in Washington and in Boston, they exchanged civilities, as in- vitations to dine. Winthrop was present in 1865 when Sumner delivered his oration on Lincoln, and gave him congratulations at its close. Just before going to Europe in 1872, Sumner drove
i Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, 1808-1892.
2 This social exclusion of others than Sumner came mostly later, —in 1850-1852, — when the conservative feeling in Boston was intense in favor of Mr. Webster and in sup- port of the Compromise measures of 1850. It is referred to in Adams's " Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 128, 129, 177.
3 In all the writer's intercourse with Sumner the latter spoke of Winthrop only with great respect.
122 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
to Brookline to call on Winthrop ; and the latter, as survivor, paid in 1874, before the Massachusetts Historical Society, a cor- dial tribute to the memory of the dead senator. If the order had been reversed, the eulogist of Fessenden would have been the eulogist of Winthrop.1
Sumner attended, in September, 1846, the Whig caucus in Boston which was called to elect delegates to the Whig State convention, and was chosen one of the delegation to which the Whigs of the city were entitled. This was the first time he had taken part in a caucus or meeting which had in view the nomination of candidates for public office. Here, as in other Whig meetings held at the time in Massachusetts, one section sought to maintain the supremacy of the former issues, particularly the tariff ; while another was pushing to the front the questions growing out of slavery and the Mexican War. Mr. Lawrence dwelt on the material interests at stake in the election, and Sumner urged the moral issues which demanded attention. On the evening before the convention, which was to meet in Boston, the Whig delegates held a conference, or " festive entertainment," at the United States Hotel, where Mr. Lawrence expressed his desire that the convention should adopt " a platform broad enough to include all the Whigs of the United States," — by which he was understood to mean one which would not emphasize the slavery question to an extent which would repel the co-operation of Southern Whigs. Sumner was present at the conference, but did not speak.
The convention met in Faneuil Hall, September 23. It was largely attended, and the session lasted from ten in the morn- ing till nearly seven in the evening. No issue was made as to the organization or as to candidates. Charles Hudson, who had voted against the Mexican war bill in Congress, was chosen chairman, and Governor Briggs was renominated. There was, however, a general expectation, which had been noted in the newspapers, that there was to be a struggle as to the platform between the commercial and the antislavery Whigs, — between those who regarded the maintenance of a protective tariff and the unity of the Whig party as paramount, and those who re- garded the questions growing out of slavery and the war as
i The New York "Tribune." March 16, 1874, made Winthrop's tribute in the Massa- chusetts Historical Society the occasion of a leader entitled "Sumner and Winthrop," which, recalling former differences, united the two as entitled to public esteem.
^Et. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 123
of supreme importance. The managers of the convention, who were of the former class, had arranged that when the uncon- tested business had been completed a speech from Winthrop should give the key-note to the further proceedings. But the antislavery Whigs, or " Young Whigs," who were well distrib- uted in different parts of the hall, called loudly for Sumner, who at once went to the platform. His speech urged the Whigs to treat former issues concerning material interests as of second- ary consequence, and to direct their energies as a party against the extension of slavery and its longer continuance under the Constitution and laws of the Union. While adhering to the methods provided by the Constitution, he asserted the right to amend it so as to allow further aggressive action against the in- stitution.1 He appealed to the fundamental principles of human right and duty, and invoked the party to sustain them by fear- less and determined action. He concluded thus : —
"To my mind it is clear that the time has arrived when the Whigs of Massachusetts, the party of freedom, owe it to their declared principles, to their character before the world, and to conscience, that they should place themselves firmly on this honest ground. They need not fear to stand alone. They need not fear separation from brethren with whom they have acted in concert. Better be separated even from them than from the right. Massa- chusetts can stand alone if need be. The Whigs of Massachusetts can stand alone. Their motto should not be, ' Our party, howsoever bounded,' but ' Our party, bounded always by the right.' They must recognize the dominion of right, or there will be none who will recognize the dominion of the party. Let us, then, in Faueuil Hall, beneath the images of our fathers, vow perpetual allegiance to the right, and perpetual hostility to slavery. Ours is a noble cause, — nobler even than that of our fathers, inasmuch as it is more exalted to struggle for the freedom of others than for our own. The love of right, which is the animating impulse of our movement, is higher even than the love of freedom. But right, freedom, and humanity all concur in demanding the abolition of slavery." 2
The speech contained an invocation to Mr. Webster, whose presence had been expected, appealing to him to add to his de- served titles of " Defender of the Constitution " and " Defender of Peace " that of " Defender of Humanity." This, as well as other passages, were heartily applauded by the delegates, par- ticularly by the young men. But the tone and substance of the speech were repugnant to mere partisans, and especially to dele-
1 Sumner, in reply to a newspaper criticism of his speech, denied that he had called for an amendment of the Constitution authorizing Congress to abolish slavery in the States. New Bedford "Mercury," Oct. 5, 1846. 2 Works, vol. i. pp. 315, 316.
124 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
gates who were in interest or feeling identified with the com- mercial Whigs of Boston. Mr. Appleton said to Sumner, as he finished his speech and was stepping from the platform, " A good speech for Virginia, hut out of place here ; " to which Sumner replied, " If good for Virginia, it is good for Boston, as we have our responsibilities for slavery." 1
Winthrop, being called for with enthusiasm, followed Sumner in a different vein, — dwelling upon the measures on which Whigs in the North and in the South were agreed ; giving prominence to their views on the custody of the public nioney, the exercise of the veto power, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and particularly on the protection of manufactures as affected by the repeal of the protective tariff of 1842 and the passage of the rev- enue tariff of 1846. It was his evident purpose to keep the party in the line of its former action, and to arrest the tendency to a distinctively antislavery policy. Anticipating the contest on the resolutions, he said: "Nor am I ready for any political organiza- tions or platforms less broad and comprehensive than those which may include and uphold the whole Whig party of the United States." He, however, avowed his opposition to acquisitions of territory for the purpose of extending slavery or adding slave States to the Union. He spoke with evident feeling, as was observed at the time, and showed in more than one expression that he resented the criticisms which Sumner had made upon his vote for the war bill.2 The two speeches, less by what they expressed than by their general tone and the responses which they met from diverse elements of the party, indicated clearly two divisions no longer bound together by any tie of sympathy.
The next step was the consideration of the resolutions, which were reported from a committee by J. Thomas Stevenson, one of the commercial Whigs, and according to the fashion of the day were extended to an extreme length.3 In deference to an exact-
1 Winthrop subsequently wrote of the speech that it was "an inflammatory appeal on the subject of slavery." ("Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 770.) But as now read, it does not appear to go beyond an earnest statement of a pending issue, or exceed in fervor and emphasis what John Quincy Adams had repeatedly said in Congress and elsewhere.
2 "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 551-563. A passage on p. 560 was understood at the time to refer to Sumner. What is said on p. 551 as to the place of meeting is a reference to what Sumner had said in his speech concerning it. On p 562 there is per- haps a reference to his toast, July 4, 1845, which Sumner may also have had in mind in the concluding passage of his speech.
3 The resolutions had been agreed upon the evening before in a meeting of the Whig State committee, in which E. R. Hoar, finding them defective on the slavery question, insisted on a more positive declaration, and against Stevenson's spirited opposition carried
^Et. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 125
ing public opinion which it was necessary to respect, they stated with considerable force the antislavery position of the Whigs of the State, pledging them " to promote all constitutional meas- ures for the overthrow of slavery, and to oppose at all times, with uncompromising zeal and firmness, any further addition of slaveholding States to this Union out of whatever territory formed, and all further extension of the slavery of the Afri- can race on this continent." They were, however, encumbered with qualifications and limitations which impaired their effect ; and they gave equal if not greater prominence to the financial and material questions with which the Whigs had been iden- tified, and affirmed that the slavery question could be success- fully dealt with only by the united Whig party of the country. Stevenson in reading them so managed his voice, which was high-sounding and declamatory, as to give quite as much em- phasis to the old commonplaces as to the new and greater issues.1 As had been expected, Stephen C. Phillips2 then offered a series of resolutions as an amendment and addition to the committee's report. By their general effect as well as by direct expression they made opposition to slavery the paramount polit- ical duty, declaring that the Whigs " must hereafter be regarded as the decided and uncompromising opponents of slavery and its extension beyond its present limits, and its continuance where it already exists ; that they will concur in all constitutional meas- ures to promote its abolition ; and that in their political action they will support such men only as will steadfastly advance by appropriate measures these their principles and purposes." In this last clause, which was more than a statement of doctrines, and suggested a possible separation from the national Whig party, as also in their more determined spirit, the resolutions offered as an amendment differed from those reported by the committee.
in the committee, with the assistance of Judge Hopkinson, the insertion of a paragraph on the subject. This amendment made the difference between the two drafts, which were dis- cussed before the convention, not very discernible ; and when the point as to whether there was a material difference was made in the debate, and the reading of the declaration in question was called for, Stevenson read in a high, triumphant, and sonorous tone the paragraph which had been inserted at Hoar's instance but against his own protest. E. R. Hoar, while in full accord politically with the supporters of Mr. Phillips's set of resolu- tions, was satisfied with those reported by the committee.
1 J. Q. Adams states in his Diary, vol. xii. p. 274, that Webster prepared the reso- lutions. The style is surely not Webster's, but it is quite likely that he was consulted before the convention, and knew their purport in advance.
2 A meeting was held at Adams's office, September 19, at which Adams, Palfrey, Phil- lips, and Sumner considered the subject of resolutions to be offered on their side.
126 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER [1845-47.
Phillips introduced them to the convention in an earnest and conciliatory speech. Linus Child at once objected to the amend- ment that it was superfluous, being the same in substance as the committee's report, which sufficiently covered the ground.1 C. F. Adams, whose speech was heartily cheered, expressed his earnest desire both for a union of the party and a union founded on principle, and advocated resolutions which, instead of re- peating old commonplaces, met the new state of affairs. His remarks were a reply to Winthrop's speech and to Child's ob- jection to Phillips's resolutions, and criticised sharply the com- mittee's report. The convention was by this time pervaded by deep feeling. The earnestness of the speakers, the personalities open and covert, what was said, and what though unsaid was implied, combined to intensify the excitement. It was the first conflict within the party in which the two opposing sections had met face to face ; and the result was doubtful. The passion was not confined to the platform, but was shown on the floor in sul- len countenances and angry voices. There was some confusion, and there were fears that the body would break up in disorder. The fate of Phillips's amendment was uncertain ; but it seemed likely to pass. It was opposed by many active politicians, and found little favor with the delegates from Boston ; but it re- ceived general support from the country delegates. The four leaders who sustained it — Sumner, Phillips, Adams, and Allen — were a combination of personal power and capacity for debate which found no serious obstruction save in Winthrop. At this juncture Lawrence, Winthrop, Child, and other prominent Whigs were seen to be anxiously conferring, and immediately at their instance Fletcher Webster left the hall. Soon he came back, and whispered to Lawrence, who went out, and shortly re- turned leading Daniel Webster by the arm. The scene is still vividly remembered by men now old, or middle aged, who were then young. The great orator, endowed with a marvellous pres- ence, such as has been the gift of no other, ancient or modern, walked slowly the length of the hall, the delegates parting as he advanced, and took his seat near the platform. The whole
1 Child was a delegate from Lowell, to which city he had recently removed from Wor- cester to become the manager of some mills. While living at Worcester and representing that county in the State Senate he had taken very radical ground against the annexation of Texas, maintaining that if Texas were annexed by legislation, it should be excluded by legislation. Judge Allen referred to this change of position as connected with a change of residence, and Child defended himself with considerable warmth.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 127
scene changed. As soon as he was seen entering, the debate was suspended, the disorder ceased, and all eyes turned to him. Both parties, just now in fierce discussion, rose and joined in loud cheers for him. The applause was universal and pro- longed ; and when it subsided the assembly was still. But the scene was something more than a spectacle. Webster's pres- ence, without a word from his lips, had sealed the fate of the amendment. The circumstances under which he had been sent for, the escort of Lawrence, who was known to be unfriendly to Phillips's motion, and something in the manner of Webster him- self, showed clearly enough where he stood. The debate, how- ever, proceeded. Allen spoke most earnestly, maintaining that " the question is not whether slavery shall be endured, but whether liberty shall be endured upon the American conti- nent ; " and he protested that he " would resist to the death any further encroachments on the area of freedom/' Phillips, at the suggestion of Samuel Hoar, for the sake of brevity, reduced his amendment by dropping three of his resolutions ; but Sam- uel H. Walley renewed, even as to the remaining three, the ob- jection which Child had made as to the whole, — that they were superfluous. Tiie vote was now taken at a late hour, when the delegates from the country in large numbers had left, and the amendment was lost.1 The regular series was then unani- mously passed, the supporters of the amendment generally not voting. Webster, as soon as the resolutions were disposed of, took the platform "amidst tremendous and prolonged cheering." He spoke very briefly, hardly more than five minutes, but with profound attention and prodigious effect. What he said was intended to inspire party enthusiasm, and was an implied re- buke of attempts to press the introduction of disturbing ques- tions on which the party as a national organization could not be united. It was then that he uttered the sentence so impressive at the time, and so often repeated since : " Others rely on other foundations and other hopes for the welfare of the country ; but for my part, in the dark and troubled night that is upon us,
1 The vote was 91 to 137. The Boston delegation numbered 105, and supplied the main part of the 137. See accounts of the convention in Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power." vol. ii. pp. 118-121; Boston "Times," September 24. Boston "Atlas," September 24. The account in the " Times," though interspersed with levity, is the most picturesque, and gives details which the Whig journals for the sake of harmony sup- pressed. Some of the Congressional conventions, notably the one which nominated John Quincy Adams, passed Phillips's resolutions.
128 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
I see no star above the horizon promising light to guide us but the intelligent, patriotic, united Whig party of the United States." He resumed his seat, according to a report, " amid a perfect torrent of applause." 1
Whittier, immediately after reading the proceedings of the convention, wrote the poem entitled " The Pine Tree," an out- burst of patriotic fervor, and sent the original in autograph to Sumner, saying, —
" I have just read the proceedings of your Whig convention, and the lines enclosed are a feeble expression of my feelings. I look upon the rejection of S. C. P.'s resolutions as an evidence that the end and aim of the managers of the convention was to go just far enough to save the party, and no further. We shall have another doughface in the Senate for six years. As for Web- ster, — thy hopes and wishes to the contrary, — he is, I fear, no better on that question than 'a colossal coward.' All thanks for the free voices of thyself, Phillips, Allen, and Adams. Notwithstanding the result, you have not spoken in vain."
Sumner replied to Whittier, September 26 : —
" We do not despair. We are all alive to wage the fight another day, and feel that more was done than we had hoped to do. Our vote was strong ; but it was at an hour when many had gone home by the early trains, whose pres- ence would have made it stronger. Many who were present did not vote, and they were moderately with us. The ball has been put in motion ; it cannot be stopped. Hard words are said of us in State Street. I am grateful to you for your note of encouragement. The poem is beautiful, and must be printed."
Sumner was accustomed to relate in after years, that, on the morning after the convention, a stranger, tall and dressed in black, entered his law office, and expressed a cordial approval of the part he had taken the day before. This was the begin- ning of his acquaintance with Francis W. Bird,2 of Walpole, who as a member of the Legislature during the winter of 1846- 1847, often sought him for conference on questions concerning slavery and the Mexican War. From this time the two were in close relations of confidence, without the slightest break ; and Bird's stalwart arm was always raised in Sumner's defence whenever there was any sign of attack. No surviving friend has held Sumner's memory dearer than the one who came to salute and cheer him on that morning in 1846.
1 Boston Atlas, Septemer 24.
2 1809-. Mr. Bird is (in 1893) still active in business, politics, and general affairs.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 129
Sumner, after the convention, addressed a letter to Mr. Web- ster,1 to which the subjoined reply,2 written from Marshfield, October 5, was received : —
" I had the pleasure to receive yours of September 25, and thank you for the kind and friendly sentiments which you express. These sentiments are reciprocal. I have ever cherished high respect for your character aud talents, and seen with pleasure the promise of your future and greater eminence and usefulness. In political affairs we happen to entertain, at the present mo- ment, a difference of opinion respecting the relative importance of some of the political questions of the time, and take a different view of the line of duty most fit to be pursued in endeavors to obtain all the good which can be ob- tained in connection with certain important subjects. These differences I much regret, but shall not allow them to interfere with personal regard, or my continued good wishes for your prosperity and happiness."
Sumner prepared a review of the convention, in which, while recognizing Mr. Lawrence's " amenity of character and sincerity of purpose," he remarked upon the key-note which he had given to the convention at the preliminary caucus ; ascribed to him and Child, and others who were swayed by the same influences, the defeat of Phillips's resolutions ; and put upon those who had a direct personal interest in the tariff the responsibility of pre- venting on this and other occasions united and persevering ac- tion in Massachusetts against the aggressions of slavery. He said : —
" It cannot be disguised that the opposition to the movement against slavery in Massachusetts proceeds from the most earnest supporters of the tariff, who prematurely abandoned opposition to Texas with a slaveholding constitution, regarding the tariff as a higher principle of union in the party than the love of freedom. Nor is it too much to say that the country towns of Massachusetts do not, to any great extent, sympathize in this matter with the exclusive supporters of the tariff. . . . The country is right on this subject ; and Mr. Allen pointedly expressed the unhappy antagonism which now pre- vails, when he referred to the opposing influences of Worcester and Lowell, — the heart of the Commonwealth on one side, and the spindles on the other."
Sumner found a difficulty at this time in getting access to the public. Buckingham of the " Courier," — who was in general sympathy with his views, and had usually welcomed him as a contributor, — being hampered by creditors and a partner, and
1 Webster and Sumner exchanged calls early in 1848. The agitation of the slavery- question widely divided them from this time. Webster was Secretary of State during Sumner's first term in the Senate. It is believed that they met casually in Washington, without, however, any mutual recognition.
2 Works, vol. i. p. 316.
VOL. III. 9
130 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
dependent on the merchants of Boston for patronage, was con- strained to decline his manuscript, pleading that, not being in independent circumstances, he was obliged to submit to influ- ences from which he would be most heartily glad to be free, and that the insertion would involve a sacrifice which Sumner as a friend could not ask him to make. Sleeper of the " Journal " rejected it on the ground that it would widen the breach in the party, and prevent harmony of feeling and unity of action among the Whigs. Adams cheerfully admitted it to the " Whig," say- ing, in an introduction, that it had " taken refuge with us from the system of exclusion which is now rigidly pursued in the rest of the Whig press of our good city." 1
On the day after the convention, a meeting was held at Faneuil Hall to deliberate upon the recent abduction from the city of a colored man who had been claimed as a fugitive slave.2 Early in the month the brig "Ottoman," owned by John H. Pierson, a Boston merchant, arrived in the harbor, having the negro on board, whom the captain had discovered some days after sailing from New Orleans. The negro showed no ordinary enterprise and alertness, and succeeded in escaping to the mainland ; but the captain, after a pursuit of two miles, retook him in the streets of Boston, charged him with theft, and forced him on board the " Niagara," a barque bound for New Orleans, which, though kept in the harbor for some days by a storm, eluded a steamer which had been despatched with a State officer to serve a process for the rescue of the negro. The capture was unlaw- ful ; the pursuing captain was a volunteer in a service which was odious to all men of honorable sentiments ; and the juris- diction and process of the State had been treated with contempt. The circumstances certainly invited an expression of public in- dignation. John A. Andrew, a young lawyer, was active in making the preliminary arrangements for the meeting. Sumner and Dr. Howe visited Ex-President John Quincy Adams at his home in Quincy, and requested him to preside.3 He was then seventy-nine years of age, and had just returned from Washing- ton after a long session of Congress, which had been extended into the severe heat of summer. He hesitated, on account of his feeble condition, to accept; and it remained doubtful until
1 Boston Whig, October 10.
2 Boston Courier and Boston Whig, Sept. 25, 1840.
3 J. Q. Adams's Diary, vol. xii. pp. 272-275.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 131
the day of the meeting whether he would be able to be present. His strong will, and an interval of strength which fortunately came to him, gave the people of Massachusetts another and last opportunity to look upon his venerable form. Coming from Quincy with his son, he took tea at Dr. H. I. Bowditch's, where were Andrew, Sumner, and others interested in the object of the meeting, and then went to the hall. He was received with loud and continued cheering as he entered, and conducted with difficulty through the crowd to the platform.1 The audience was immense, as journals of different types of sentiment concurred in reporting, packing the hall to its utmost capacity, and being the largest it had ever yet contained. The great attraction was undoubtedly the expected presence of the Ex-President. When he had taken the chair, he spoke with a weak and tremulous voice, beginning with a reference to his presence at a meeting in the same place forty years before, which was held to consider the seizure of American seamen on board the " Chesapeake " by a British man-of-war, when Elbridge Gerry, then aged and infirm, said on taking the chair that if he had had but one day to live, he would still have been present. Then, in a solemn and im- pressive manner, he proceeded : " It is a question whether the Commonwealth is to maintain its independence or not. It is a question whether your and my native Commonwealth is capable of protecting the men who are under its laws or not."
After Dr. Howe had related the circumstances of the abduc- tion, and resolutions offered by Andrew, the secretary, had been adopted, Sumner spoke. He had made no preparation, and in taking a public part at the meeting yielded to pressure from Andrew. In the course of his remarks, he said : —
"And now, Mr. President, what is the duty of Massachusetts? It has been stated that that government is best where an injury to the humblest in- dividual is resented as an injury to the Commonwealth; and he who has lately been returned to slavery was as much entitled to all the privileges of citizenship in this State as you, Mr President, covered with honors as you are. Some twenty years ago, in the State of New York, an individual, not a colored person, was kidnapped, carried away, and killed. That outrage caused an immense excitement where it took place, which finally spread to New Eng- land. The abduction of William Morgan — of that single citizen! — by the Free Masons of his own State aroused the Northern States, and even called into existence a political party. Now an individual has been stolen, — we have not heard that he has been slain, — but he has beeu carried back to
i Mrs. M. W. Chapman in "Liberator," Oct. 2, 1846.
132 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
suffer all the wrongs which slavery can inflict. That outrage should rouse the citizens of Massachusetts and the Northern States to call for the abolition of that institution which has caused it.''1
The meeting was further addressed by Stephen C. Phillips, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, C. F. Adams, and George B. Emerson. Mr. Parker affirmed the supremacy of divine over human law, and his own allegiance to the former when- ever it forbade what the latter enjoins. He and other speakers commented severely on the tone of submission to the aggres- sions of slavery which prevailed among the ruling classes of the State. The Ex-President withdrew from the chair as his son began to speak, and arrived home at a late hour, without suffering from the fatigue and exposure. Two months later he was smitten with paralysis , and although he resumed his seat in Congress the following February, he did not again appear before the people of Massachusetts. It was fitting that his last words in the famous hall, where in less than two years his re- mains were to lie in state, should be spoken for freedom. The meeting, though distinguished in its first officer and attended by a large concourse of citizens, received little attention from the public journals, which dismissed it in a brief paragraph or with unfriendly comments.2 It will be observed that the mana- gers and speakers were either Abolitionists, or Whigs who had lost caste in the party on account of their radical opposition to slavery. The manufacturers, capitalists, and old politicians kept away ; to them not even the name and sanction of the illustri- ous statesman who presided could make the occasion respectable. Pierson, in defending himself and his captain against the free use of his name by the speakers, said that what he had done was commended by the merchants of the city, and that "on 'Change" five to one would, if inquired of, answer that they would do as he had done ; and there is no reason to doubt his statement.3
A letter to Sumner written soon after the meeting shows the temper of society at the time. Rev. Andrews Norton, a learned
1 Boston Whig, September 24.
2 The "Atlas" was brief and the "Advertiser" cool. Sumner was a member of the committee appointed to issue an address and serve as a committee of vigilance to protect persons in danger of abduction. A pamphlet was issued containing the speeches at the meeting, the committee's address, and sympathetic letters from Gerrit Smith, R. W. Emerson, and William H. Seward. The address was probably prepared by Andrew, with touches from Sumner.
8 Pierson was the owner of the brig "Acorn," which carried Sims, a fugitive slave, back to Savannah in April, 1851.
^Et. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 133
divine, was closely connected with leading families, and asso- ciated with the wealth and culture of the city. His kindly nature and Christian profession should have inclined him to listen with open ears to the cry of a pursued negro who had testified his longing for freedom by enterprise and endurance which in a better age would have drawn to him universal sym- pathy. Dr. Norton had taken an early interest in Sumner, giving him a benediction as he left for Europe, and felt a genuine regret when he saw a young man of his high promise diverging, as he thought, from a career of usefulness and pro- priety. He wrote thus, September 29 : —
" I thank you much for your kindness in sending me your oration before the P. B. K., and heartily congratulate you on its success. I have been so occupied since its publication that I have not been able to read it through ; but last evening I heard passages of it read aloud with great pleasure.
" There is another subject on which, though you have invited ray attention to it, I have doubted about expressing my opinion ; but possibly it may be of some service to you to understand the feelings of one who is so little of a party man and so friendly to yourself; and this hope makes me willing, at any risk, to take the chance that what I say may lead you to reflect on the position in which you are standing.
" You are giving yourself up to politics as the principal occupation of your time and feelings. It is a dangerous trade; oue in which a poor man, — a man dependent on his own exertions for his support, with whatever good resolutions he may set out, — must find it difficult to preserve his moral prin- ciples uninjured and his honor unsullied. With your talents, your goodness of temper, and right principles, your character is yet in some respects par- ticularly unfitted for political life. You have begun by offending many indi- viduals who are among the most respectable and estimable, and who are and ought to be among the most influential, in the community. You have publicly and explicitly connected yourself with a party — the Abolitionists — which I believe has caused the greatest mischief to the country, and by the intem- perance of its language, the folly of its measures, and by rejecting all practi- cable good in aiming at what is impracticable, has done all which it was in its power to do in impeding the attainment of the object professedly desired by it. I have a sincere respect for the feelings of many Abolitionists, particularly females, and others who may be expected to be governed by their feelings; but it is intolerable assumption in the party to present itself before the world as having a monopoly of all the humanity, sympathy for suffering, and sense of justice which exist among us, especially when so much of its philanthropy is of such a rabid and ferocious character, reminding us of the philanthropy of the days of Robespierre.
" I cannot help thinking that in your speech before the Whig convention you were more influenced by the opinions and feelings of those who look on the great evil of American slavery from a distance than by a consideration of what is practicable or possible, or what it is wise to propose, in the existing
134 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
state of our country. The object which you do propose there is no chance of obtaining at any future day by such measures as are pursued by the Abolition- ists. One great evil of the party is that it thrusts itself forward, and seizes on occasions which would necessarily excite the feeliugs of the community were it not for their interference. I have seen in the ' Whig ' an account of the meeting last Thursday evening ; and it is lamentable and disgraceful that what is put most prominently forward as an expression of public sentiment is a low, unprincipled, buffoon speech of one disgraced in the eyes of good men as an infidel clergyman.1 Who are the leaders of a party winch would have us trust to it the destinies of the country, — such individuals as this, or men as temperate and wise as Mr. Wendell Phillips, and others who might be named % The party is evidently becoming, or has already become, a faction. However they may disguise it from themselves, many of its leaders are aiming at poli- tical distinction and office, with as great a disregard of principle and of the good of the country as the leaders of any other party. I do not know of any faction which in all its bearings can do more harm to the best interests of mankind. If it increases in numbers, activity, and party zeal, there is a de- plorable prospect before us of the continuance and increase of that misgovern- ment which it has done so much to produce, of a conflict of violent passions, and of all but anarchy.
" Much of what I say you may not believe, and to many of my expressions you may not assent. I hope that circumstances will never be such as that time may prove my apprehensious well-founded. But I appeal from your judgment now to what it may be ten years hence. Should this letter then fall in your way, it will probably come to you as words from the dead ; and neither then nor now can you imagine me to have had any other motive iu writing it than a conviction of its truth, and a sincere interest in your welfare and usefulness. I beg you not to feel that you are called upon to answer it, or that I shall regard it as any mark of disrespect or dissatisfaction if you do not. On the contrary, I know of no good which may result from a further discussion of these topics between us ; and whatever may be our differences of opinion or action, I beg you to believe me very truly your friend."
Sumner published, October 25, his open letter to Winthrop, who was then a candidate for re-election, in which he set forth with great earnestness the injustice of the war against Mexico, the falsehood contained in the preamble of the war bill, the responsibility for the measure assumed by Winthrop in his vote for it, whereby he involved the people of the State, and the apology which he had made in Congress six weeks after it was given.2 The letter showed profound indignation, and was in- tended to inspire others wTith the same sentiment. The style was highly rhetorical, and its form quite as much as its sub- stance made it offensive to Winthrop. Sumner said : —
1 Theodore Parker.
2 Works, vol. i. pp. 316-329. G. T. Curtis defended Winthrop at length in a speech. Boston "Advertiser,'' Oct. 3, 1846.
JEt. 34-33.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 135
"Such, sir, is the Act of Congress to which by your affirmative vote the people of Boston are made parties. Through you they are made to declare unjust and cowardly war, with superadded falsehood, in the cause of slavery. Through you they are made partakers in the blockade of Vera Cruz, the seizure of California, the capture of Santa Fe, the bloodshed of Monterey. It were idle to suppose that the soldier or officer only is stained by this guilt. It reaches far back, and incarnadines the halls of Congress; nay, more, through you it reddens the hands of your constituents in Boston. . . . Let me ask you to remember in your public course the rules of right which you obey in private life. The principles of morals are the same for nations as for indi- viduals. Pardon me, if I suggest that you have not acted invariably accord- ing to this truth. You would not in your private capacity set your name to a falsehood; but you have done so as representative in Congress."
Sumner in this letter, as in other criticisms of Winthrop's course, confined himself to a statement and condemnation of his public acts without impeaching his motives, bore testimony to his "blameless private life and well-known attainments," and disclaimed any personal feeling " except of good-will min- gled with the recollection of pleasant social intercourse." 1 In this letter he called for the withdrawal of our forces from Mex- ico, — a measure which afterwards was advocated by leading journals and public men of the Whig party.
The constituents of Winthrop who were aggrieved by his vote for the Mexican war bill did not at first meditate an or- ganized opposition to his re-election ; but in the autumn the feeling among them was so strong that they decided to ex- press it by voting for another candidate. Such action was not expected to affect the result, but only to serve as a protest. A meeting of citizens was held in Tremont Temple, October 29, to nominate a candidate for Congress whose position on slavery and the Mexican War was satisfactory. Speeches were made by C. F. Adams, who presided, by Dr. Howe, and by J. A. Andrew, who was chairman of the committee to nominate a candidate and report resolutions. Sumner's well-known opin- ions as to Winthrop's course, and his recent letter, naturally directed public attention to him as the person to be selected. He had, however, no tastes for public life, and had freely ex- pressed his unwillingness to enter it. He was at the time absent in Maine, where he was delivering lectures before Lyceums ; and before leaving Boston he had in interviews with Andrew posi-
1 Winthrop subsequently referred to the letter as "an effusion," and as "verbose and vituperative." "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 770, note.
136 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
tively refused to allow the use of his name for the purpose, — both on account of his aversion to a political career, and the further reason that he would not consent that his criticism of Winthrop should be weakened by the imputation of a desire for his place. The committee, however, as well as the meeting, were so unanimous in the conviction that Sumner's well-known attitude in opposition to Winthrop's action in the matter of the Mexican War made him the proper representative of the move- ment, that they put him in nomination, " in the face," as was stated at the time, " of his constant, repeated, and determined refusal, at all times, to allow his name, even for a moment, to be held at the disposal of his friends for such a purpose." 1 Andrew's series of resolutions, which condemned the war and Winthrop's course, closed with the one which nomi- nated Sumner : —
" We recommend to the citizens of this district, as a candidate for repre- sentative in the national Congress, a man raised hy his pure character above reproach ; whose firmness, intelligence, distinguished ability, rational patriot- ism, manly independence, and glowing love of liberty and truth entitle him to the unsought confidence of his fellow-citizens, — Charles Sumner, of Bos- ton, fitted to adorn any station, always found on the side of right, and especially worthy at the present crisis to represent the interests of the city, and the cardinal principles of truth, justice, liberty, and peace, which have not yet died out from the breasts of her citizens."
Sumner, on returning home, withdrew his name in a public letter.2 His letter to Winthrop, and a report of the meeting signed by its officers, had already been printed and distributed as a broadside. The better course for Sumner would have been to stand as the candidate. He was the natural leader of the bolt, and he had done the most to bring it about. His dis- claimer of a desire for public office, though entirely sincere, was hardly in place ; for he was by nature, and already in action, more a politician than he thought.3 He was at that time too careful in guarding his position or the cause itself from the charge of his own personal self-seeking ; but he soon grew wiser in such matters.
1 Andrew, in a note, October 30, said that at the first mention of Sumner's name there was " tremendous applause and repeated bursts from the assembly."
2 Works, vol. i. pp. 330-332.
3 W. S. Robinson took exception, in the "Courier," in October, 1846, to Sumner's ex- pression, "I am no politician," in his open letter to Winthrop, and insisted that it was the duty of men like him to be "politicians." Warrington's "Pen Portraits," p. 30.
Mt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 137
Dr. Howe was then substituted as the candidate, and a meet- ing was held in Tremont Temple, November 5, to support the nomination. Andrew was made chairman, and Sumner and Adams spoke. Sumner began with a tribute to Dr. Howe's character, and then, disclaiming any sentiment except of kind- ness towards Winthrop as a citizen and an honorable gentle- man, touched upon the issues of the slavery question on which he had failed to meet the exigencies of the times, and com- mented upon his vote for the Mexican war bill. The note- worthy feature of the speech was a review of the opinions and action of eminent English patriots — Chatham, Burke, Fox, Camden, the Duke of Grafton, Barre", and others — who reso- lutely opposed the war of our Revolution, refusing to vote sup- plies for its prosecution, or even a tribute of praise to the offi- cers and troops engaged in it ; and it concluded with a demand for the instant withdrawal of our forces from Mexico. Sumner was the first to apply the historical parallel to the discussion. Giddings availed himself of it in a speech in Congress, and quoted the declarations which Sumner had cited.1
The Whig newspapers, in view of Sumner's open letter to Winthrop and his expected candidacy in opposition, fell upon him with sharp personalities.2 These — although he could not reasonably have expected different treatment — made him sorely uncomfortable, as he confessed to Howe. The latter, who was absent in New York near the end of the contest, wrote him tenderly and paternally, appreciative of the sacrifices of friend- ship and general esteem which he was making, but regretting that he did not treat with indifference and contempt the re- vilings he had to bear ; saying also, —
" It has never been my lot to know a man so perfectly loyal to truth, right, and humanity as you have been. Your efforts and sacrifices cannot be lost ; for if no other good comes out of them, this will come, — that your example will kindle and keep alive high purpose in the souls of hundreds, of whom I am one. You are my junior by many years ; but to you I owe many of the public aspirations which I feel for progress upwards and onwards, in my spirit- ual nature."
Sumner was not combative by nature, as many or even most reformers are ; and, unlike Wendell Phillips, he took no de- light in a proud isolation. Phillips treated social aversion with
1 Dec. 15, 1846. "Speeches in Congress," pp. 286-288.
2 Boston Atlas, October 28 and 30.
138 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
that lofty scorn which those who saw him on the platform well remember, and which may still be seen in the lineaments of his face as preserved in photograph and marble. But Sumner was stung by censure, and pleased with approval of himself or of what he had done ; he was hurt by a familiar face turned away in displeasure, and parted from an old friend with a pang. It is to his credit that, sensitive as he was to praise and blame, he never swerved a hair's-breadth from duty to win the praise or escape the blame.1
Winthrop was chosen by a large majority, receiving 5,980 votes to 3,372 for all others, — his majority being enlarged by the accession of Democratic supporters. Dr. Howe's vote was 1,334, which included, besides his Whig vote, the support he re- ceived from the Liberty party men and the Native Americans. His candidacy drew from Winthrop hardly more than five hun- dred votes, and according to the Whig estimates not even that number. Notwithstanding the earnestness of Winthrop's oppo- nents, they had as yet made but little impression on the party. The Whig votes which were cast for Dr. Howe did not, how- ever, express the extent to which Winthrop's course was dis- approved. Many who dissented from it hesitated to reject a regular nomination, particularly that of Winthrop, whose vote for the war bill they were disposed to condone in view of his accomplishments and eminent position as a Whig leader.
Sumner wrote to his brother George, Dec. 31, 1846 : —
" . . . You will see by the papers which I have sent you something of the part I have taken in public affairs. I do not know where your predilections would be, and yet I am persuaded that no party biases could render you in- sensible to the atrocious injustice of this war with Mexico. It is bad in every respect; it is without legal cause; it was unconstitutional in its inception ; it is wasteful of life and treasure ; it is demoralizing in its influence. As such it ought to be arrested at all hazards. Winthrop and a large portion of the Whigs were drawn to its support contrary to the principles of the party. In contending with the prevailing sentiment of Boston I have, of course, exposed myself to much asperity of feeling.
" The affairs of our country are now in a deplorable condition. The Mexi- can War and slavery will derange all party calculations. The antislavery principle has acquired such force as to be felt by all politicians. In most of the free States it will hold the balance between the two parties, so that neither can succeed without yielding to it in a greater or less degree. The
1 James Freeman Clarke observed that Sumner's love of approbation, strong as it was, never led him to disloyalty to his convictions. "Memorial and Biographical Sketches," p. 97.
Mr. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 139
Abolitionists have at last got their lever upon a fulcrum where it can operate. It will detach large sections from each of the other parties. Both parties are now controlled in their conduct, even on the Mexican War, by a reference to the next Presidential election. The Whigs shrink from opposing it from fear of unpopularity at the South and West ; and the leaders of both parties act mainly with a view to maintain the force of their party. The question of slavery advances upon the country with giant strides. Come home and give us the advantage of your counsels."
Again, Jan. 30, 1847 : —
" . . . The Mexican War still goes on. It is disgraceful in its origin, and in every step by which it is maintained. The Whigs, as a party, are afraid to oppose it, lest they should draw upon themselves the odium that covered those who opposed the last war with England ; and they proffer as their ex- cuse the wretched dogma that the country must be sustained in the war now that it is commenced. In this they lose sight of the clear distinction between measures of defence and offence. The country may be sustained in the former, but never in the latter."
To Lord Morpeth, January 31 : —
" I am grateful for your warnings on the subject of slavery; * but I think they proceed from some misconception of my true position. The party, soi- disant Abolitionists, reject me for my shortcomings. Prescott shakes his head because I have anything to do with the thing. His insensibility to it is a perfect bathos. This is wrong ; I wish you would jar him a little on his side. My position is, that the Federal Government should make all legal and constitu- tional efforts for the removal of this monster evil. This question has at last got into our politics. It will enter the next Presidential election in 1848. There is a breaking up of both parties. The Northern wing of the Democracy is breaking off from its slaveholding allies, and so is the Northern wing of the Whigs. The question of the tariff cannot be the great issue before the country. Webster has not been able to resurrect it. Old John Quincy Adams said to me a few weeks ago, as he lay in his bed after his attack of the paralysis, from which he has now partially recovered, ' The tariff is an obsolete idea.' "
Sumner, in January, 1847, made an argument before the Supreme Court of the State against the validity of the enlist- ments in the Massachusetts regiment of volunteers for the Mexican War. He did not succeed in his contention that the proceedings in general were invalid ; but the persons who had applied for a discharge, being minors, were set at liberty by the court.2
1 Morpeth had advised Sumner that some mutual friends of the conservative type from the United States (probably the Bancrofts) thought him "far-going" on the slavery ques- tion, and " verging on quixotism;" and he added the caution, " Do not, however, in your righteous ardor on the right side forget that there is always a danger of being one-sided, and that we ought to be fair to all adversaries."
2 Works, vol. i. pp. 352-373.
140 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
On Feb. 4, 1847, a meeting was held at Faneuil Hall as a popular demonstration against the war. The leading Whigs kept aloof from it. The speakers were Sumner, James Free- man Clarke, Judge John M. Williams, Theodore Parker, Elizur Wright, and Dr. Walter Charming. It was interrupted by con- siderable disturbance, in which volunteers for the war took the principal part, and attempted to prevent the speakers being heard. Sumner insisted that the war was purely offensive, and on this as on other occasions he assailed it as a violation of the fundamental principles of morals, binding alike on nations as on individuals ; and he called for the withdrawal of our troops from Mexico.1
In the spring of 1847 Sumner prepared for a legislative com- mittee an elaborate report2 on the Mexican War and the duties and responsibilities of citizens as to the institution of slavery. It reviewed the events connected with the annexation of Texas and the war ; set forth in vigorous language the pro-slavery pur- poses of their authors ; denounced the war as waged " against freedom, against humanity, against justice, against the Union, against the Constitution, and against the Free States ; " called for the withholding of supplies and the withdrawal of our troops from Mexico, and briefly urged strenuous and combined efforts for the restraint and overthrow of the slave-power. The four resolutions which accompanied the report summarized its con- clusions. The majority of the committee, of which Hayden, editor of the " Atlas," was chairman, had been dilatory in tak- ing any action, and finally agreed upon a report which was thought to be wanting in spirit and directness. Edward L. Keyes, of Dedham, from the minority of the committee, sub- mitted the report and resolutions which Sumner had drawn. There was a contest in the House, attended with considerable excitement, and lasting for several days.3 The resolutions re- ported by Keyes were on the motion of C. R. Train substituted for the majority report by a considerable majority, and were then passed by a vote of more than two to one. With a slight amendment, they then passed the Senate with no serious oppo- sition. Sumner's resolutions thus became the declared opinions
i Works, vol. i. pp. 374-382. Hudson's speech in Congress, Feb. 13, 1847, was in the same line.
2 House Doc, No. 187, 1847, 35 pages. Sumner's authorship of the report does not seem to have been known at the time.
3 Boston Whig, April 17, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28.
^Et. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 141
of the State. The antislavery Whigs, after their defeat at the State convention in September, took great satisfaction in this result, which, as they felt, put Massachusetts again right on the record.
Sumner wrote to J. R. Giddings, February 25 : —
" Our first point should be our principles; and if Corwin does not stand firm on those, much as we admire his present position, we could not support him. I am afraid of a convention; we should he beaten there. The ma- chinery of the party, or of a majority, is in the hands of the 'Old Whigs.' It would be desirable to prevent a convention if possible. The device of leaving to the States each to vote for its own Vice-President might avoid local em- barrassments in the canvass ; but behind there is the chance of some John Tyler for Vice-President, whose influence might neutralize all our doings. It seems to me clear, however, as I have more than once mentioned, that we cannot expect candidates from the united Whig party on our principles. The party as a party does not receive them, and would not nominate men who were true and frank in their support. By such a device as you propose they might be lulled, and we might, by the chances of death, pay the penalty in being obliged to serve some Vice-President with Southern principles. I am willing to be in a minority in the support of our principles ; and I am not satisfied that it would not be preferable to bring forward candidates who may be beaten in the next contest, but who will be carried in 1852. The anti- slavery sentiment is not of itself strong enough to place candidates in the chair now; it will be very soon. Our struggle is not for persons nor for honors nor for spoils ; it is to advance certain truths deemed vital to the happiness of the country. How can they be best advanced ? By an inflexible maintenance of them, disregarding the chances of elections; or by a careful and prudent management of the canvass, so that our principal candidate may succeed with- out the whole country distinctly passing upon the issues which we present ? I do not know that the latter may not be the better course, but I doubt. But I throw out these things for your consideration, repeating the assurance of my confidence in your judgment."
To Mrs. Bancroft,1 February 28 : —
" Do not think me too extreme on the subject of slavery. I have no opin- ion now which I have not long maintained, and I suspect often expressed under your roof. I doubt not that opinions are sometimes attributed to me beyond any that I entertain. In my view, every constitutional effort ought to be made to restrain and abolish slavery. In this I am quite in earnest ; but I am disturbed not a little by those who attack the Constitution and Union, and I do not wish to be confounded with them. I make this explanation be- cause I inferred from something Lord Morpeth wrote me that you might have given him an erroneous idea of the exact extent of my opinions. But whatever they may be, they can be of very little consequence, and I have stumbled into this explanation only in the spirit of friendship.
1 Mr. Bancroft was now our minister to England.
142 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
" You must sigh hi your heart over the deplorable war in which we are now engaged. Public sentiment is becoming stronger against it. It is des- tined to be most unpopular. The ground which I took in my letter to Win- throp last autumn in favor of stopping the supplies, and withdrawing the troops, is now adopted by a large section of the Whig party."
To Lieber, in Columbia, S. C, March 25 : —
" The Mexican War has hastened by twenty or thirty years the question of slavery. The issue is now made ; it will continue until slavery no longer has any recognition under the Constitution of the United States. . . . Massa- chusetts is fast becoming, if she be not now, a thorough, uncompromising antislavery State."
To George Sumner : —
April 30. "The victories of Taylor promise to overthrow all political speculations. He has fastened himself upon the public mind, so that he can probably be President almost without party aid. . . . Indeed, it is evi- dent that after his election there must be a new formation of parties, probably hinging on slavery."
June 1. "You will be received most kindly. I have offended many persons much by my opposition to Wiuthrop; but they will all be glad to see you, even Winthrop himself. Perhaps you have seen him. He was to be in Paris about this time. He is cold and formal, and for a politician ' honest ; ' but he meas- ures his course by the doctrines of expediency and the tactics of party. But I suppose he cannot do otherwise. I am disposed to believe that there is a necessity which controls our course, though I will not undertake to reconcile this with the seeming freedom of will which we enjoy."
June 30. "You and I must stick together against slavery. Come home, — perhaps to devote your genius and energies to that cause so far as you mingle in public affairs."
July 15. "If you fall in with Winthrop, don't avoid him on my account. I don't want you to share any of my enmities, but only my friendships. But I have no personal' feelings to W. except of kindness."
July 31. "I think you are mistaken in saying that in the prison move- ments I felt the recoil of the Fourth of July oration. It was the opposition to Winthrop that aroused personal feelings against me. No development not calculated to bear immediately upon politics seriously disturbs people; but the cotton lords, whose nominee Winthrop was, were vexed with me for that just and righteous opposition. It has cost me friendships which I value much."
To Thomas Corwin, September 1 :1 —
" It cannot be doubted that territory will be acquired. The iron hand which is now upon California will never be removed. Mr. Webster's efforts, when Secretary of State, to obtain a port there are too well known ; so that even if
1 Reply to Corwin, who requested Sumner's opinion on resolutions adopted at Corwin's instance by a Whig convention in Warren County, Ohio.
Mt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 143
a large fraction of eastern Mexico should not become ours, still there will be territory acquired on which the Wihnot Proviso must operate. It is, then, of vast importance that we should be prepared for this alternative, and not be cajoled into the simple cry of ' no more territory.' ... I observe that you omit any explicit declaration of the right and duty of Congress to stop the supplies which feed the unjust war. Perhaps this is expedient, in order to avoid the offensive misinterpretation which would make us leave our poor ser- vants and soldiers already in the field a prey to famine and death; and yet the line is sufficiently clear between those active appropriations which sustain the war, and the passive appropriations which only contemplate the support and safety of our troops. . . • An interesting question here arises which has occu- pied much of our attention, and which seems to be contemplated by the tenth resolution, — what will be our duty if the [Whig] national convention should postpone or evade or negative these questions '? Our policy has been adher- ence to the Whig party, believing that through that organization we might accomplish the greatest good, and most effectively advance our sentiments. But if that convention, under slaveholding influence, should decline to sanction what seem to us cardinal truths, placed also in the foreground by your resolu- tions, can we sustain its course? ... It has appeared to us almost vain to expect a Whig convention or the Whig party throughout the country at present to sustain our views, which are substantially set forth in your reso- lutions. It has, however, seemed to us not impossible that many of the Northern Democrats, and perhaps all of the Liberty party, would join us, if we stood firmly on the ground which we have assumed."
Political movements in the autumn of 1847 were of particular interest on account of their relation to the national election of the next year. The delegates from Boston to the Whig State convention were chosen at a general caucus held September 15 in Washingtonian Hall, where Sumner in response to a call from the floor made an earnest speech of half an hour, offering at the same time resolutions which condemned the war, called for the withdrawal of our troops, and demanded the prohibition of slavery in territory which should be acquired from Mexico.1 They were supported by C. F. Adams, and opposed by James T. Austin,2 William Hayden, and C. T. Russell. Although they corresponded in substance with those which the Legislature had passed a few months before, they were laid on the table. Hayden intimated that " the source " from which they came affected his action in a measure.3 Sumner was placed at the head of the list of delegates, exceeding one hundred in num-
1 Works, vol. ii. p. 55.
2 Noted for his hostility to the antislavery movement. Ante, vol. i. p. 155; ii. p. 1.
3 The rejection of the resolutions was the subject of discussion in the newspapers. Bos- ton "Atlas," September 17; Boston "Whig," September 16, 17, 18, 20, 21.
144 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
ber, among whom were Winthrop, Adams, J. Lothrop Motley, G. T. Curtis, and P. W. Chandler. Eev. A. P. Putnam,— then a youth, since well known as a clergyman, — after speak- ing of the great public interest felt at the time in Sumner on account of " his addresses of transcendent merit," especially his Fourth of July oration, and of his being then regarded as " a most able, fearless, and eloquent representative of the ' Con- science Whigs ' and champion of freedom," writes : —
"The interest which he was now attracting to himself was very marked; and as he more and more came to he talked about, and men were turning to him in increasing numbers, I had with the rest a strong desire to see and hear him. Well do I recall my delight in finding him present at the primary meet- ing, Sept. 15, 1847, and at seeing him, in obedience to the clamorous demands of the young, intelligent, and liberty-loving ' Conscience Whigs ' who sur- rounded him, rise from his seat among the audience and with resolute strides advance towards the platform, apparently to the dismay of the fine but hostile old gentlemen who had pre-empted the spot, but who were now dwarfed in comparison, and seemed to shrink into the background. He was most en- thusiastically applauded ; and as he mounted the dais and stood before us all with his magnificent form, and all aglow with the fire of youthful man- hood and the love of freedom, voicing with stirring eloquence the noblest truths and sentiments, and parrying with ready skill and resistless vigor the rude thrusts that were aimed at him from right and left to embarrass and confound him, it was sufficiently evident that the hour had found its man and the man his hour."
The convention was held at Springfield, September 29. A con- test as to the platform between the two sections of the party, similar to that of the preceding year, was expected. Palfrey, re- cently elected to Congress, was ready with a resolution prepared in consultation with Adams, Sumner, and others, which proposed a test of political action. Webster was present, to be formally named as a candidate for the Presidency, and to state his posi- tion on national politics. In the course of his speech he affirmed his opposition to any extension of the slave-power, and to any annexation which would increase slave representation ; but he showed unmistakably his want of sympathy with those who were striving to commit the party to definite antislavery action, par- ticularly in certain passages understood at the time to apply to them, in which he expressed himself against violent words and actions ; and asserting his own early adhesion to the principle of prohibiting slavery in the territories, he repudiated the right of others " to take out a patent " for it, or to claim it as " their thun-
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 145
der." J He received from the convention the nomination which he desired ; but it availed him little. The antislavery Whigs, with a few exceptions, had come to distrust him, and declined to vote. On the other hand, active partisans intent upon success, and seeking a candidate who could command more votes than his party, were looking in other directions. Later in the day there was a debate on the resolutions, one of which affirmed that Massachusetts would never consent on the conclusion of a peace to any acquisition of territory except on the unalterable con- dition that slavery should not exist within it. In order to make this declaration one of action and not merely one of doctrine, Palfrey moved an additional resolution pledging the Whigs of Massachusetts " to support no men for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States but such as are known by their acts or declared opinions to be opposed to the ex- tension of slavery." The resolution was supported by Palfrey, Adams, Sumner, Allen, and William D wight. Sumner spoke briefly, urging the Whigs to make opposition to slavery the paramount rule of action in voting as well as in declarations of opinion.2 He said in conclusion : —
''And be assured, sir, whatever the final determination of this convention, there are many here to-day who will never yield support to any candidate for Presidency or Vice-Presidency who is not known to he against the extension of slavery, even though he have freshly received the sacramental unction of a 'regular nomination.' We cannot say, with detestable morality, 'Our party, right or wrong.' The time has gone by when gentlemen can expect to intro- duce among us the discipline of the camp. Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty to party. The first is a heavenly sentiment, from God ; the other is a device of this world. Far above any flickering light or battle-lantern of party is the everlasting sun of Truth, in whose beams are the duties of men."
These speeches of Palfrey, Adams, Sumner, and Allen met with demonstrations of disfavor, chiefly from delegates from Boston. The noise began as Palfrey rose, and the shouting and
1 Webster in this speech declared it to be a duty to stop the supplies if the war was to be prosecuted for the acquisition of territory or any purpose not connected directly with the safety of the Union. Later in the day, Adams, in some caustic remarks, received with hisses as well as cheers, spoke of Sumner as "the first man in the United States to proclaim, and to argue at length, the doctrine of withdrawing the supplies," and asked if Webster would not soon claim that also as his "thunder." He discussed Webster's speech in the "Whig," Oct. 9 and 13, 1847. Webster's presence at the Whig State conventions in 1846 and 1847 is not mentioned by his biographer, G. T. Curtis, and his speeches on those occa- sions are omitted from Everett's edition of his Works ; but they were published in the newspapers at the time.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 55-62.
VOL. III. 10
146 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
hissing broke out while he and Adams were speaking ; but wry faces only were reserved for Sumner's speech.1 Winthrop al- most alone conducted the opposition to Palfrey's resolution,2 rising twice to speak against it, and by interruptions of Sumner and Adams obtaining two more hearings. He maintained that the resolution would unwisely fetter the action of delegates to the national convention, make a fatal breach between Northern and Southern Whigs, and aid the election of a Democratic Pres- ident who would be more obnoxious than a Southern Whig.3 He received hearty cheers from the Boston delegates who had expressed dissent when Palfrey was speaking. At a late hour, when many delegates had left, and the dim light interfered with a certain count, the vote was taken, and the resolution declared to be lost.4 Winthrop had thus in two successive conventions defeated the leaders of the antislavery Whigs. This was the last struggle within the party in Massachusetts.
Winthrop was the Whig candidate for Speaker in December, 1847. By natural gifts and experience he was remarkably fitted for the duties of the office. His controversies with the anti- slavery division of his party in Massachusetts, his moderate tone on the slavery question, and his vote for the Mexican war bill naturally attracted to him the support of Southern Whigs ; 5 while for the same reasons he was distrusted by members like Giddings, Palfrey, and Tuck, who insisted upon the adoption of effective measures against the prosecution of the war and the extension of slavery. They therefore voted independently,6 and the subtraction of three votes from Winthrop left him without a majority ; but on the third ballot his election was effected by the refusal of two Southern members to vote, — Holmes of South Carolina, a Democrat of the Calhoun school,
i Boston Whig, October 16.
2 John C. Gray, of Boston, supported him in debate.
3 Boston Whig, October 13.
4 Some of its friends thought that it received a majority. (Palfrey's "Letter to a Friend," p. 9.) The defeated resolution passed afterwards in seven county conventions. Boston "Whig," Nov. 13, 1847.
5 The Southern Whigs in the Whig caucus, acting under the lead of Stephens and Toombs, supported Winthrop in a body in preference to Vinton of Ohio. Johnston and Browne's " Life of A. H. Stephens," p." 220.
6 This independent action of the three antislavery members which called out such in- temperate criticism from Whig partisans was afterwards regarded, as Giddings states, as the germ of the Free Soil party of 1848, although they had no such thought at the time. (•'History of the Rebellion," p. 263.) The course of Giddings and Palfrey at this time, as well as the subsequent controversy between Giddings and Winthrop, are fully related in Julian's " Life of Giddings," pp. 206-238.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 147
and Tompkins of Mississippi, a Whig, both of whom had previ- ously voted for members who were not candidates. Holmes soon after, in a published letter, justified his action by the course which Winthrop had taken in Massachusetts adverse to the anti- slavery leaders, and by the opposition which the supporters of the Wilmot Proviso in Congress had made to his nomination and election ; and he expressed his satisfaction with the com- mittees as organized by Winthrop. A member from Florida, Cabell, in a letter to his constituents, gave a similar explanation of his vote for Winthrop.
Before the voting began, Palfrey had inquired by letter of Winthrop whether it was his intention if elected so to consti- tute the committees as to arrest the war with Mexico, to ob- struct the legal establishment of slavery within the territories, and to obtain a trial by jury for fugitive slaves, the favorable consideration of the abolition of slavery in the District of Co- lumbia, and the promotion of constitutional measures for rem- edying the grievances of citizens of Massachusetts (colored seamen) sojourning in South Carolina.1 Winthrop declined to give any special intimation as to his policy, and referred the inquirer for information to his general conduct and character as a public man. Palfrey did not deem the answer satisfactory, and therefore voted for another member. He put the interroga- tories without any promptings from his political friends at home, and conferred only with Giddings after arriving at Washington. Giddings and Palfrey were severely censured for their votes by Whig journals of Ohio and Massachusetts. Giddings immedi- ately by a letter to his constituents,2 later by speeches in Con- gress,3 and through life,4 defended his vote, — maintaining that it was justified by Winthrop's arrangement of the committees, which sustained the war, and stood in the way of the prohibi- tion of slavery in the territories and of other constitutional action against slavery, contending that their defaults arose from what was manifest in their composition, and could have been
1 Palfrey's "Letter to a Friend." After the first or second ballot J. Q. Adams sent Rockwell and Ashmun with a message to Palfrey requesting him to vote for Winthrop.
2 Cleveland "Herald," Dec. 25, 1847; Boston "Whig," Jan. 15, 1848. See letter of E. L. S., "Ohio True Democrat," reprinted in Boston "Whig" Feb. 16, 1848.
3 June 30, 1848; Feb. 17, and Dec. 27, 1849; and March 15, 1850. "Speeches in Con- gress," pp. 322, 350, 351, 364, 367-377. Of his sincerity in his position and statements there can be no question; this appears in a letter to Sumner, Dec. 17, 1847, in manuscript. In the debates, Schenck of Ohio took thejead in Winthrop's defence.
* Giddings's " History of the Rebellion," pp. 263, 281, 300.
148 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
no surprise to the Speaker. Palfrey, against whom a great clamor arose among the partisan Whigs of Boston,1 justified his vote in a formal statement two years later.2 When Win- throp was a candidate for re-election in December, 1849, the Free Soil members, then increased to nine, again set up their objections to him, and refused to vote for him,3 — expressing their readiness, however, to vote for Thaddeus Stevens, or some other Whig of positive antislavery position. The result was the election of Howell Cobb of Georgia, a pro-slavery Democrat, on the sixty-third ballot, by a plurality vote, which it had been agreed should be decisive.4 The spectacle of this small band of Free Soilers, immovable in spite of frowns and odious epithets from all sides, and threats from Southern members suggestive of disunion and violence, was an exhibition of moral power which did not fail to impress the country.5
Sumner wrote to Palfrey, December 10, from the United States Circuit Court room in Boston : —
" The papers bark, people talk, but they cannot rail away the value of your act. I admire your courage, firmness, and conscience. Your single vote struck a strong blow for freedom. It was strong in itself, — stronger in the assurance of what you would do hereafter. The 'Atlas' and 'Advertiser' may utter their maledictions, but good men cannot fail to sympathize with you. Richard Fletcher came to me here in court yesterday, and expressed his warm admiration of your course. He said you ought to be defended, and that he would write an article on the subject ; he admired a man who followed his own conscience rather than the lead of party. Edward Brooks last even- ing expressed to me his warm sympathy with you. S. C. Phillips, as you may imagine, appreciates your noble position. I regret very much that Mr. Adams and Mr. King did not stand with you."
Sumner defended Palfrey's vote in two articles contributed to the " Courier." 6 They were respectful and temperate in tone,
1 Longfellow wrote in his diary, Dec. 12, 1847: "Sumner joined us at dinner. We talked over Palfrey's vote against Winthrop, which is making a tempest in the Boston tea-pot. The act partakes somewhat of the heroic." Longfellow's " Life," vol. ii. p. 101.
2 A Letter to a Friend, 1850, pp. 12, 13.
8 Charles Allen's Speech in the House, Dec. 13, 1849. Julian's "Political Recollec- tions," p. 77.
4 Some of the Southern Whigs, holding advanced pro-slavery positions, as Stephens and Toombs, who had supported Winthrop two years before, now voted for an independent candidate of their own kind. In the interval they had been drawing nearer to South Caro- lina disunionism. Stephens had, perhaps, a personal reason, not having been assigned to the place on committees which he desired. "A. H. Stephens's Life," by Johnston and Browne, pp. 220, 221. 237, 238.
5 Von Hoist, vol. iii. pp. 469, 474.
6 Dec. 23, 1847, "Honor to John Gorham Palfrey." Jan. 6, 1848, "Mr. Palfrey and Mr. Winthrop." They were signed with a *, but they were known to be Sumner's at the time, with no purpose on his part to conceal the authorship.
^Et. 34-36] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 149
and altogether free from any personal criticisms or suggestions which could be deemed offensive ; and it shows the heated and overbearing temper of the Whig leaders of the period that they called out the epithets which the Whig organ applied to the author. They expressly disclaimed any imputation as to Win- throp's motives, or any intention to institute a comparison be- tween him and Palfrey in that regard, and even admitted an honest difference of opinion between the divisions of the Whig party to which they respectively belonged. The two men rep- resented, he argued, two opposite systems of policy, and were radically separated in their respective methods of opposing slavery and the war. Palfrey, as he contended, was in favor of determined action, even to the hazard of party success, against the institution of slavery wherever it was within na- tional jurisdiction, and therefore involving national responsibil- ity, and supported the policy of refusing supplies for the war, and of withdrawing our troops from Mexico ; while Winthrop, on the other hand, giving undue heed to the importance of maintaining the unity of the Whig party, had inadequately rep- resented the sentiments of Massachusetts on the slavery ques- tion, as declared in the resolves of the Legislature, and had hesitated to grapple with the monster evil. He had voted for the original war bill ; had avowed his readiness to vote reason- able supplies for carrying on the war; and had maintained, in his speech on the tariff, June 25, 1846, the necessity of an ample revenue as essential to its vigorous and successful prosecution. In the same communications Sumner defended Palfrey's vote to retain the postmaster of the House, who was a Democrat, — a vote which was violently assailed by Whig partisans ; and in this part of his argument he anticipated the civil service reform,1 which he was to be the first to bring forward in Congress,2 and which has found favor in recent times.
1 He said: "He [Mr. Palfrey as Secretary of the Commonwealth] declined to use his influence in dismissing from office under him any persons who were faithful in the dis- charge of their duties merely on grounds of a difference of political opinions. This rule certainly commends itself to all whose sense of justice is not entirely benumbed by partv. It ought to win the applause especially of the Whigs, representing, as they profess, the better sentiments of the community, and sharpb' condemning that system which is main- tained by the cohesive attraction of public plunder. It is proper that with a change of policy, as indicated by a change of parties, the important functionaries, who may impress their peculiar opinions upon the country, should be changed. But it is not just or proper that the humbler office-holders, who cannot in any way influence those matters on which parties hinge, should be driven with every political change from the duties to which they have just become accustomed, and in this way, perhaps, be deprived of their daily bread."
2 April 30, 1864. Works, vol viii. pp. 452-457.
150 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1846-47.
C. F. Adams joined with Sumner in defending Palfrey's refusal to unite with the Whig members in supporting Winthrop for Speaker. In a series of articles J in his journal, the " Whig," he reviewed Winthrop's course concerning the war, pronouncing his vote for the war bill, and other votes, as the sanction of " a na- tional falsehood," as " a sacrifice of the old pledges of Massachu- setts," and as showing " an ambiguous and trimming policy ; " took exceptions to his speech of Jan. 8, 1847, as " feeble, irreso- lute, and unsatisfactory ; " deplored " his grievous errors as a politician," and maintained that his arrangement of the com- mittees " showed the complete triumph of the compromising school of politicians to which he belonged." Adams had a sharp controversy with the junior editor of the "Atlas" (William Schouler), who assumed Winthrop's defence, and who, though refusing to admit that he meant Adams, had evidently referred to him as the author of letters to members of Congress written for the purpose of defeating Winthrop's election as Speaker. Adams replied indignantly that the language of that editor " betrayed the cowardice of the hired assassin, and not the courage of the open murderer."2 Adams's part in the discus- sion ended Feb. 21, 1848. On that day John Quincy Adams, while in his seat in the House, was stricken the second time with paralysis, and was taken to the Speaker's room, where he died two days later. Winthrop was devoted to the dying statesman, and Adams, moved by filial sentiments, but with unchanged judgment, retired from the controversy. Sumner, at his request, took temporary charge of the "Whig" during February and till near the end of March,3 but in consonance with Adams's wishes refrained from comments upon Winthrop, and only recurred to the subject in printing a summary of Gid- dings's published statement concerning the Speaker.4 Adams withdrew from the paper early in April, and desired Sumner to be his successor ; but the latter declined, as appears in a letter to Palfrey : —
1 Jan. 16, Dec. 15, 16, 18, 21, 1847: Jan. 5, 28, Feb. 1, 4, 5, 16, 18, 21, 1848. See also his letter in the Boston "Whig," Nov. 20, 1847. S. C. Phillips, under the signature of " A Massachusetts Whig," contributed a series of articles to the "Whig," taking the same view as Adams and Sumner. Dec. 29, 30, 31, 1847; Jan. 6, 8, 13, 1848.
2 Boston "Whig," Feb. 1,1848. See correspondence between Adams and Schouler, " Whig," Nov. 20, 1847.
3 Leaders March 1, 9, 10, 16, and 23, 1848, bear intrinsic evidence of being written by Sumner.
4 March 18 and 22.
^Et. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 151
" I am placed in a dilemma which is most trying. Adams appeals to me to take charge of the ' Whig.' His present relations with Winthrop and his new and absorbing duties make him think that he cannot continue to conduct it. It is very hard for me to decline this duty ; but I fear that it would be harder still to assume it. To conduct the ' Whig ' at the present crisis will require the strength of a strong man. He must write much. But more than this, he must keep himself thoroughly familiar with all the movements of all the papers and politicians in the country. The course of the paper must be uppermost in his mind. Now, I am a professional man, without fortune, dependent upon my profession. Besides my ordinary professional duties, which in themselves are not absorbing, I am at present the trustee of Judge Story's copyrights, — superintending the edition of these works. . I have just published an edition of Equity Pleadings, adding some fifty pages of my own, which is incorporated into the text or notes. Besides these engagements, pro- fessional and juridical, I have many others, — some of which you can compre- hend,— multifarious and incessant. I am now engaged to deliver the address at Schenectady College in June. Have I time to take the ' Whig ' ? I feel that I have not; and yet I do not like to decline. I fear that Adams may think me indifferent to his comfort and to our cause."
Winthrop, while he remained Speaker, left the controversy- concerning his conduct in that office to the journals of his party ; but when he was no longer in the chair, he defended his arrangement of the committees by placing against each other the opposite charges of Southern men like Andrew John- son, and of Northern men like Giddings and Palfrey, and maintained that they effectually answered each other. This was rather a retort than an argument. A middle position is not necessarily the right one for a statesman simply because it exposes him to the fire of both parties.
The explanation of Palfrey's opposition to Winthrop at Wash- ington, and Sumner's and Adams's in Massachusetts, which was prolonged in the discussion of 1846-1848, is that they regarded him then, as they regarded Webster later, as the great obstruc- tion to the antislavery movement in the State. Winthrop, aside from what may be said on the slavery question, made one of the best Speakers who ever filled that eminent chair ; and even the antislavery men were not entirely agreed that he did injustice in his appointments of committees by which questions concern- ing slavery were to be considered. Horace Mann thought him fair in this respect;1 and though not considering him as satis- factory as he could wish, voted for him in 1849 ; and Dr. Bailey
1 Letter to Sumner, Jan. 9, 1850. Mann's view of Winthrop later was less favorable. Mann's Life, pp. 283-286, 289, 310.
152 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
of the " National Era," 1 who on the spot kept a sharp eye on such matters, concurred in Mr. Mann's view as to one commit- tee, but thought otherwise as to two others. At this distance from the controversy, which left many stings behind, and after trying to judge it fairly, this may be considered a just conclu- sion : Winthrop was placed in the chair by his party as a whole, by the votes of Southern as well as Northern members, and could not be expected to discriminate between them ; but all that could be expected was that he should hold the balance fairly between the conflicting forces within his party. He was not, and did not pretend to be, a Free Soiler, like Giddings, Pal- frey, Allen, and Julian, — not even a Whig who had made oppo- sition to slavery paramount, like Mann ; and while it was right for Palfrey to question him, it was equally his right, even his duty, to make no private pledges as to his action as Speaker.
A bitter controversy arose a year later on a point not at all material, — whether, as stated by Giddings,2 Winthrop attended and spoke at a meeting of Whig members on the morning of the day that the vote on the Mexican war bill was taken, and whether he endeavored to use influence with his colleagues to support the measure. As he voted for the bill himself, the effort, or the omission of effort, to persuade others to do the same did not add to or diminish his responsibility ; but it gave an oppor- tunity to make a point on Giddings, and substitute a side issue for the main one. It turned out that while such a meeting was held, Giddings, misled partly by failure of memory and partly by the testimony of others, was probably mistaken in stating Winthrop's attendance.3 Winthrop's defenders were not explicit in meeting the rest of Giddings's charge, — that he endeavored to persuade his colleagues to vote with him, — and on that point did not offer proofs. The Boston "Atlas" at once controverted Giddings's statement,4 and Giddings replied at length.5 The "Atlas" rejoined in several articles.6 Adams and Sumner, in- structed by Giddings, repeated in the "Whig" the latter's state- ment as to Winthrop's participation in the meeting. Forth-
i Jan. 3, 1850.
2 Dec. 25, 1847, in Cleveland "Herald."
3 The testimony in support of Giddings's statement is given in his " Life " by Julian.
4 Dec. 30, 1847; Jan. 27 and Feb. 3, 1848.
5 Boston "Whig," March 18, 1848; Boston "Atlas," March 17.
6 Winthrop defended himself in the House, Feb. 21, 1850. "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 642-645, 648-650.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 15o
with the " Atlas " assailed Sumner, in successive articles, with coarse personalities.1 G. T. Curtis entered into the controversy on the same side and with the same spirit, assuming a super- cilious tone, and threatening him with the loss of private and public confidence.2 It is hardly needful to say that the style of writing about him kept up for some weeks did not contribute to Sumner's peace of mind. Adams regretted the necessity for the controversy, and wrote to Giddings, Feb. 17,1848 : " I deeply regret all this business, because it will make permanent enmi- ties here, to last us all through life. Winthrop' s ambition has pushed him into it, and the folly of his friends has done the rest ; they chose to irritate and to defy us." 3
Winthrop, after this heated discussion, looked with less favor than ever on the antislavery leaders of Massachusetts, and treated them sharply on different occasions, calling those in and near his district (Sumner, Adams, and Palfrey) " a little nest of vipers/' He continued to diverge more and more from them, — withhold- ing his vote on measures for prohibiting slavery in the territories, because untimely, in his opinion ; giving his adhesion to Presi- dent Taylor's policy of non-interference;4 and even sanctioning the view that an expansion of slave territory, as it does not in- crease the number of slaves, does hot of itself strengthen the institution.5
The controversy of a year and a half, in which the two names had been pitted against each other, wore upon Sumner. The burden of the controversy had been left on him by those who had urged him to it. He might expect harsh words from intem- perate partisans ; but he was misjudged by fairer men, some of whom ascribed his pertinacity to animosity or ambition. They wished Winthrop had given a different vote ; but they thought the question a complex one, and calling for charitable construc-
i Dec. 30, 1847; Jan. 3, 27, 29, Feb. 3, March 17, 1848.
2 Boston "Advertiser," Feb. 17, 1848. Sumner had been of service, two years before, in composing a difficulty between Mr. Curtis and W. W. Story, a relative, for which B. R. Curtis wrote Sumner, May 24, 1846, thanking him "for disinterested, judicious, and kind exertions in this unhappy affair."
3 Giddings's "Life," by Julian, p. 228.
4 Feb. 21 and May 8, 1850. "Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 630-647, 654-692. Wilson considered this "a new policy and new departure." ("Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 230.) See Theodore Parker on "The Slave Power in America," May 29, 1850. Parker's Works, vol. v. (Trubner's ed.) pp. 123, 124. Winthrop was criticised by Root, Dec. 3, 1849, and by Cleveland, April 19, 1850.
5 Addresses and Speeches, vol. i. pp. 686-688. The unsoundness of this view has been often shown. Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 480; Sumner's Speech on the Nebraska Bill, Feb. 21, 1854; Works, vol. iii. p. 294; J. E. Cairnes on "The Slave Power."
154 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
tion in the case of one of so high character. Sumner's friends who were not in the political current were troubled at the mis- conceptions of his motives, and were anxious to withdraw him from the controversy. In the spring of 1848, the wife of one of them, who cherished for him a sister's affection, begged him to suspend public censure of Winthrop's course. From respect to this appeal, or from his own thought, he forbore any further dis- cussion of the subject from that time forward.
In 1847 Sumner was in correspondence, as already seen, with Thomas Corwin, — an orator who in the Senate and before the people combined humor, pathos, a rare dramatic faculty, and logical force. His speech in February, 1847, against the Mexi- can War was of extraordinary power, surpassing as an invective against a great wrong — a war wicked at its beginning and in its progress — any ever heard in Congress except Sumner's against slavery.1 The antislavery Whigs at once turned to him as a can- didate for the Presidency. Sumner, in private letters and news- paper articles; advised his nomination.2 Corwin desired a copy of Sumner's oration on " Fame and Glory ; " and writing to him said : " I almost abhor that last word ; it has kept so much bad company in its time that I fear it will always bring with it error and contamination." Corwin, however, was unstable by nature ; of generous impulses, but without firmness of character, — un- able " to keep the heights his soul was competent to gain." In the summer he fell under adverse influence, — that of Schenck, as Giddings thought. His last letter to Sumner was October 25, in which he discountenanced an independent movement, whatever action the national Whig convention might take, and in which, as well as in an address to his constituents, he showed signs of wavering, and put the " no territory from Mexico " issue as a substitute for the Wilmot Proviso, and even put aside the latter as " a dangerous question." 3 A brilliant light went out. He was as a senator a sympathetic spectator of the surren- der of the North in 1850, accepted during that period a place in Fillmore's reactionary Cabinet, and ten years later was the fore- most compromiser with an incipient rebellion. A brief mission to Mexico closed his public life ; and resuming the practice of
1 Giddings wrote Sumner that Root noticed that the speech "made Mr. Webster look pale."
2 Letters to "True Democrat," Cleveland, O., Aug. 15 and Dec. 25, 1847. Henry Wilson, in the Boston "Whig," Aug. 18, 1847, advised Corwin's nomination.
3 At Carthage, Ohio, September, 1847. Boston " Whig," October 7.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 155
the law at Washington in the midst of the Civil War, he had no inspirations for the period, and sadly confessed, " I am but a tradition." * He ended as a man of such weak moral fibre is always likely to end.
From December, 1846, until 1851, when he entered the Senate, Sumner was in frequent and confidential communication with Joshua R. Giddings.2 Among the leaders of the antislavery cause in the House of Representatives, Giddings is entitled to hold in history the foremost place. He combined vigilance, prudence, readiness, self-possession, and a courage, moral and physical, which never failed. In a period of servility and com- promise, in a period when political and social ostracism and even personal violence were the doom of antislavery men in Congress, deserted by allies on whose fidelity he had counted, and sometimes obliged to stand alone, he kept his loyalty with- out swerving under any pressure of influence or circumstances. His period of service lasted for twenty years ; but from 1843 to 1847, after Gates of New York and Slade of Vermont had re- tired, and Adams had become enfeebled by age, the brunt of the conflict fell upon him ; and it was not till December, 1849, that he had any considerable reinforcement. But whether sup- ported by few or many, unwearied and undaunted, he met the aggressive slave-power with a challenge wherever it appeared, — whether in the suppression of debate, the demand for compen- sation for slaves (insurgent, fugitive, captured, or wrecked), or in the maintenance of the internal slave-trade, or in plots for the extension of slavery. All the while his positions, radical as they were, were nevertheless reasonable and constitutional, and he lived to see them in substance adopted by a victorious party. To suggestions of party policy which were in conflict with the supreme duty of resisting the slave-power he was at all times deaf ; to all menaces he was defiant. Once he was censured for his manly conduct by the House, acting at the dictation of the slaveholding interest ; and he appealed to his constituents, who at once returned him. He gave the solitary negative to a resolution of thanks to General Taylor for ser- vices in the Mexican War. He and Adams were Whigs ; but they were disowned by the party at Washington, and were not
1 A. P. Russell's "Sketch of Thomas Corwin," p. 111.
2 Some of this correspondence will be found in Julian's "Life of Giddings," pp. 202, 204, 210-214, 217, 222, 227, 247, 260.
156 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1845-47.
admitted to its conferences. Adams's illustrious name and career insured for him respectful treatment ; but the social pressure fell on Giddings. Society was closed to him ; even the Speaker, in giving a reception, left his name off the list, which included all other members.1 Few Southern men (Mr. Clay, to his honor be it remembered, was an exception) rec- ognized him in the lobbies or on the street.2 All this he met with dignity and serenity. He entered Congress in the prime of his powers, and he left that body an old man stricken with disease ; but no crown was ever deserved by old age nobler than was his by right of heroism in the cause of humanity.3
Giddings had been deeply interested in Sumner's Fourth of July oration and other addresses. They met first at Spring- field in the autumn of 1846, and again when Giddings followed as a mourner the remains of his veteran colleague, Mr. Adams, to Massachusetts. During the whole of 1847 and until the nomi- nation of General Taylor, their correspondence concerned the probable course of parties and public men, and they were in entire accord on questions of principle and policy. Sumner re- lied on Giddings for full statements as to movements at Wash- ington, and to no one outside of Ohio did Giddings write so freely as to him. Giddings was early in 1847 more hopeful than Sumner that the Whigs would assume an antislavery position in the coming national election ; but both from the first agreed that in case they failed to assume it, the duty of separate action would be incumbent on antislavery men.
Sumner's other correspondents at Washington were Palfrey, from December, 1847, and Horace Mann, who took J. Q. Adams's seat early in 1848. He had requested Mann to undertake the defence of Drayton and Say res, indicted in the District of Colum-
1 Julian's "Life of Giddings," p. 258, and Buell's "Sketch of Giddings," p. 186. He was omitted from the committee appointed to accompany the remains of Ex-President Adams to Massachusetts, although he was Mr. Adams's nearest friend in Congress, and was allied to him, as no other member was, by identity of opinions.
2 Giddings's " History of the Rebellion," pp. 216, 248; Julian's "Life of Giddings," p. 103; Buell's "Sketch of Giddings," pp. 147, 186.
3 Giddings, after a service of twenty years, failed, under strange conditions, to receive a renomination from a constituency whose confidence and gratitude he still retained. Sum- ner wrote to him, Feb. 1, 1859, from Montpellier, France, a letter which is printed in Gid- dings's "Life" by Julian, pp.357, 358. It is full of affection and grateful appreciation. Their correspondence while Giddings was consul-general at Montreal, where he died May 27, 1864, will be found in the same volume, pp. 384-394. One of Giddings's last letters written to others than his family was to Sumner.
JEt. 34-36.] WINTHROP AND SUMNER. 157
bia for the abduction of slaves, and assisted him with points and authorities.1
Sumner wrote to his brother George, Nov. 1, 1847 : —
"You will see the split in the New York Democrats. They [the Barn- burners] will rally in the Presidential campaign against the extension of slavery. It is probable that there will be a coalition between them and the antislavery Whigs. The old parties are crumbling ; there is no principle of cohesion but that of public plunder. The antislavery sentiment will be the basis of a new organization."
To Whittier, Jan. 5, 1848 : —
"Thank God! at last we have a voice in the Senate. Hale2 has opened well. His short speeches have been proper premonitions of what is to come. I wish to see him discuss the war in its relations to slavery. Then I hope he will find occasion to open the whole subject of slavery, constitutionally, mor- ally, politically, economically.3 I wish to see Theodore Parker's letter4 spoken in the Senate. That will difi'use it everywhere."
To W. W. Story, January 14 : —
" E is stiffening and hardening into a stanch ' Old Whig,' and talks
of ' regular nominations,' and voting the regular ticket. He seems to be inspired with an exalted idea of a combination to which I am entirely indif- ferent, — ' the united Whig party.' Like Mr. Webster, he sees no star in the horizon but Whiggery. What a dark place this world would be if there were no other lights! The Whigs are behaving very badly — very, indeed — on this war. They oppose it only so far as is consistent with their party organ- ization. . . . Winthrop has the reward of his service to party and the South. He is Speaker, and will help check the free spirit of the North and the move- ment for peace. Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts ' Conscience ' Whiggery seems for the moment uppermost."
T
1 Mann's "Life," pp. 260, 265, 269-272.
2 John P. Hale of New Hampshire.
3 This was an early and favorite idea with Sumner, finally carried out by himself in 1860.
4 Letter to the People of the United States touching Slavery.
158 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1848. — THE FREE SOIL PARTY.—
1848-1849.
THE invasion of Mexico proceeded with uninterrupted suc- cess, and in less than two years from its beginning ended • — as such a war between two such powers was sure to end — in the acquisition of an immense territory by the conquering power. During the hostilities this extension had appeared inev- itable to men of political foresight ; it would spread our empire on the continent, always an American aspiration ; and territory was all that the conquered nation could give as an indemnity. In February, 1848, Mexico ceded to the United States Upper California and New Mexico, a region extending from Texas to the Pacific Ocean.1 It was a domain which, even without its hidden treasures, might well be coveted, and it has wonderfully promoted national development. At the same time its acquisi- tion aggravated a sectional controversy which was to close in blood. The question of its future condition — whether to be free or slave, to increase the number of free or slave States — was one of transcendent import, involving the welfare of the whole nation for generations to come. It appealed to moral as well as political interests. It could not, from its nature, be excluded from politics until it was settled, and settled justly. It pressed upon the attention of large masses of citizens, thought- ful and sober-minded, who had hitherto regarded the conflict with slavery as one of sentimental and speculative rather than practical interest, and who now recognized the supreme impor- tance of electing a Congress and President who could be trusted to exclude slavery forever from the newly acquired territory.
It had been long a scheme of the slaveholders to extend their power to the Pacific Ocean, though the wiser heads among them
1 Ratified by the Senate, March 10, 1848, by a vote of thirty-eight to fifteen. The proposition made by Mexico, for a guaranty against the introduction of slavery into the ceded territory, was peremptorily rejected by our commissioner. Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 334.
JEt. 37-38.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1848 159
shrank at the last from an extension which might after a strug- gle leave them relatively weaker. The purpose of Polk's Admin- istration to acquire territory from Mexico was manifested early in the war, and even before. The President, in August, 1846, signi- fied to Congress that a cession from Mexico was a probable mode of concluding peace, and with that purpose in view called for two millions of dollars. An appropriation bill being reported in the House, Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved, August 8, an amend- ment, known afterwards as the " Wilmot Proviso," prohibiting slavery forever in the territory to be acquired. It passed the House with the general support of both Northern Whigs and Democrats, but a vote was prevented in the Senate by "the unseasonable loquacity " of John Davis of Massachusetts, who was still talking when the session expired.1 The struggle was renewed at the next session, 1846-1847, on appropriation bills providing the means for negotiating a treaty ; but though the Proviso at different times passed the House, in which the North- ern members were largely in a majority, it was as often rejected in the Senate, which was more equally divided between the sec- tions, and less susceptible to popular pressure. Uniformly the House receded from its position, and the Proviso was lost. Thus the question was left open for the national election of 1848.
When the issue of freedom or slavery for the new territory had been sharply drawn, a considerable body of the Whigs — the Southern generally, and the Northern to a large extent — sought to escape it by a declaration against any acquisition from Mexico. This proposition was made in the Senate by Berrien of Georgia, a Whig, in February, 1847, expressly, as he said, in the interest of the South ; it was favored by other Southern men as a mode of allaying sectional agitation ; and in the North, Whig poli- ticians accepted it as a device for keeping the peace within the party. Webster earnestly advocated it;2 Corwin gave it later his sanction as a way of avoiding a direct issue on the Wilmot Proviso;3 Winthrop in the House supported it;4 and the North- ern Whig press very generally adopted it as a politic solution of a vexed question. The proposition, as it came from Berrien in the Senate and from Winthrop in the House, was lost by a vote
1 Von Hoist, vol. iii pp. 287-289. " Davis's long speech was certainly a ridiculous folly as well as a grave mistake."
2 Speeches of March 1, 1847, and March 23, 1848. Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 253, 271.
3 At Carthage, Ohio, September, 1847. Boston " Whig," Oct. 7, 1847.
4 Feb. 22, 1847 " Addresses and Speeches," vol. i. p. 589.
160 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
which was rather party than sectional. The advantages of the acquisition were too apparent, and the passion for territorial ex- pansion too strong, to admit of this feeble expedient for resist- ing the course of events. Sumner from the beginning believed the acquisition to be inevitable, and treated the " no more terri-* tory" makeshift as altogether impracticable. Indeed, he never accepted the Whig idea of keeping the republic within its an- cient limits, and was ready — as his welcome to Alaska and Canada late in life shows — for any extension on the continent which came naturally and justly.1
Contemporaneously with the debates concerning the exclusion of slavery from Mexican territory to be acquired, there was a similar contest as to a territorial government for Oregon. After a discussion prolonged from the previous session, a provision interdicting slavery in that territory passed the House, Aug. 2, 1848, mostly by a sectional vote, and was rejected by the Sen- ate ; but the latter body, which had on similar occasions carried its point against the former, receded August 13, and the bill received the signature of President Polk, — his approval being accompanied with the apology that " it was not [on account of the latitude] inconsistent with the terms of the Missouri Compromise."
Among the incidents of the conflict was the Clayton compro- mise, reported in July, 1848, — an insidious device for establish- ing slavery judicially. It prohibited the territorial legislatures of California and New Mexico from acting on the subject, and referred the question of its legal existence in those territories to the Supreme Court of the United States, then a pro-slavery tribunal. The measure received the support of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, with no Northern Whig senator supporting it except Phelps of Vermont. It passed the Senate, but was lost in the House, — its defeat in the latter body being accom- plished, strangely enough, by Alexander H. Stephens, who, from whatever motives acting, did the country a good service on that day.2
The debates in the years 1846-1848 in relation to the Oregon and Mexican territories brought the opponents and partisans of
i Adams, in the Boston "Whig," July 29, Aug. 4 and 21, 1847, combated the "no territory" position as untenable.
2 A. H. Stephens's " Life," by Johnston and Browne, pp. 228-230. The Boston " Adver- tiser," July 22 and 29, 1848, and June 28, 1850, approved this measure.
7F/r. 37 38.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1848. 161
slavery into a closer and fiercer conflict than before. The lat- ter, emboldened by recent triumphs, set up with greater au- dacity than ever their pro-slavery theory of the Constitution, maintaining that it carried slavery into all national territories, and established it there beyond the power of Congress or of the inhabitants to abolish it; and they were turbulent and defiant, threatening disunion and armed resistance if their alleged right of dominion should be denied. In the midst of this turmoil and uncertainty, when Northern votes in Congress were shitt- ing, and political leaders were hiding behind subterfuges, there was an uprising in the free States which defeated the Clayton compromise, forced the organization of Oregon as a free terri- tory, and reserved the question as to California and New Mexico for a popular agitation.1
The Democratic national convention meeting at Baltimore in May, 1848, nominated Lewis Cass for President. He had been an unhesitating partisan of the annexation of Texas and of the Mexican War ; and though professing himself at one time to be in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, he avowed a change of mind as the time for the selection of a candidate approached, and was now fully committed against any legislation by Congress on the subject of slavery in the territories. No Northern politician was ever more abject in his submission to Southern dictation. The convention abstained from an explicit declaration on the vexed question, but its resolutions in their general drift indicated an entire accord with the opinions and purposes of the slaveholding class. Its proceedings met with a vigorous protest from a con- testing delegation from New York, — the " Barnburners," as they were called, who immediately after its adjournment organized a formidable revolt in that State. This division of the Demo- cratic party was compounded of uncongenial elements, — some of its adherents acting under genuine antislavery convictions, while others (the larger number, as it was proved by their action four years later) avowed them only as a cover for a purpose to revenge Van Buren's rejection in 1844, or were inspired by parti- san animosities growing out of the strifes of New York politics.
1 The Clayton compromise was defeated in the House less than two weeks before the meeting of the Free Soil convention at Buffalo; and the Oregon bill was passed just after its adjournment. The New York "Tribune,'' though afterwards supporting Taylor, ascribed to the convention the passage of the bill without any concession to slavery. Giddings, in a letter to Sumner, Sept 8, 1850, considered that the Free Soil movement saved California to freedom.
VOL. III. 11
162 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
The Whigs, while strong with capitalists and conservative cit- izens, did not attract the masses of the people ; and they had little hope of success except with a candidate who could inspire popular enthusiasm and draw a considerable body of voters from the rival party. This accounts for their setting aside in three elections — 1840, 1848, and 1852 — their historic representatives, and taking in their stead candidates prominent only as military men, and having little or no identification with the policy of the party. Their convention meeting at Philadelphia in June, 1848, nominated on the fourth ballot General Zachary Taylor. His selection had become probable for some months, though other candidates did not yield without a contest. Henry Clay, identified with the history of the party, and more than any one representing its general spirit, received considerable sup- port. General Scott, distinguished as a soldier, and like Clay inclined to a moderate course on the slavery question, was thought by a respectable body of delegates to be both a worthy and an available candidate. A small number of delegates from New England stood faithfully by Webster. The convention put forth no platform of principles and measures, and rejected resolutions which approved legislation by Congress for prohib- iting slavery in the territories. Two delegates from Massachu- setts— Charles Allen and Henry Wilson — announced, amidst demonstrations of disfavor, their determination to oppose the candidate because he did not represent the party or the prin- ciples of liberty, — the former declaring that the Whig party was from that day dissolved, and the latter saying with em- phasis that he would do all he could to defeat the candidate. Their protests had an immediate effect on the vote for Vice- President, which resulted in the defeat of Abbott Lawrence, of Massachusetts, and the success, by a small majority, of Millard Fillmore, of New York.
General Taylor's declarations oefore his adoption by the con- vention were so inconsistent with the position of a party leader, in which the nomination would necessarily place him, as to pre- clude his selection by a party which had any confidence in its hold on the people. He had, indeed, no political record, — had not so much as exercised the right to vote, the primary right of the citizen ; had confessed that he had no opinions on politi- cal questions, and said that he would not be the candidate of any party, or the exponent of the principles of any party. He
jEt, 37-38.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1848. 163
was the proprietor of estates in Louisiana, and the owner of a large number of slaves. His candidacy was chiefly of Southern origin. Almost with the first suggestion of his name for the office he was announced as an independent candidate in vari- ous meetings, mostly in the slave States; and he then signified clearly his purpose to remain a candidate irrespectively of the formal action of the Whig party. It was even doubtful at one time whether his special partisans would submit his name to the convention. Not only did his nomination have a Southern origin, but the main body of his original supporters in the convention were Southern men, intensely opposed to the Wilmot Proviso.1 His Southern partisans, both before and after the convention, contended in their journals that more than any other person named for the place he would be loyal to Southern interests and to the institution of slavery, and that he would put his foot on Congressional action against slavery in the territories. His selection, as all admitted, was due to the popular favor he had won by victories obtained in a war growing out of the annexa- tion of Texas and a plot, for the extension of slavery.2 With the associations and interests of a slaveholder, with a candidacy thus promoted and a popularity thus obtained, whatever might be his attractive personal qualities, he necessarily repelled the support of antislavery men who were pledged by their convic- tions and declarations to accept no candidate whose position on the extension of slavery was either hostile or ambiguous.
General Taylor's candidacy found quite early some support at the North, — chiefly with active politicians intent upon success and comparatively indifferent to any principles involved, and with manufacturers personally interested in restoring the pro- tective system as existing under the tariff of 1842, which had been repealed in 1846. These classes had no real interest in the slavery question, or treated it as only on a level with, or even subordinate to, material questions. In Massachusetts the support which Webster received as a candidate at this time from many of the Whig leaders was only nominal ; and they
1 Three fourths of his vote on the first ballot was from the slave States, — largely from States from which the WJiigs could not well expect electoral votes. A. H. Stephens was one of his effective partisans.
'2 Webster wrote, Jan. 30, 1848: "There are hundreds and thousands of Whigs, who are sober-minded and religious, who will not vote for a candidate brought forward only because of his successful righting in this war against Mexico." Curtis's " Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 336.
164 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-4U.
gave in a quiet way, in personal interviews and wide corre- spondence, their countenance to the Taylor movement.1 Their real sympathies were well understood at the South, and were gratefully recognized in the large vote — almost a majority — which was given to Lawrence as a candidate for the Vice- Presidency, and in his subsequent appointment as minister to England.
Sumner awaited the result of the Whig convention with in- difference. He had come to the conclusion that no effectual resistance could be made to the slave-power until one of the two parties was broken up, leaving room for a party pledged to opposition to slavery. Some of his associates in Massachusetts would have accepted Webster ; 2 but he had come to distrust the fidelity of that statesman, who had shown weakness in im- portant crises, and had already interfered to arrest antislaverv demonstrations which appeared to him likely to impair the unity of the Whig party. To Sumner a solid mass of antislaverv voters in the free States, moving steadily and courageously against the slave-power, was of far greater consequence than the temporary advantage of a President, elected in part by the slaveholding interest, who might be more or less affected with Northern sentiment. As his convictions were altogether in favor of an independent movement, so also he was not bound to the Whig party by any tie of sentiment; nor had he any real faith in its distinctive measures. The party bond, therefore, which it cost others a pang to break, he broke without hesitation or regret. He wrote to Palfrey, April 23, 1848 : —
" There is a movement at the State House to nominate Webster. E. Rock- wood Hoar and Charles R. Train promote it. The former invited me to favor it. I told him that I could not regard Wehster as the representative of our sentiments; that he had been totally remiss on slavery and the war. It was proposed to issue an address setting forth the Wilmot Proviso as the platform, and showing significantly that Taylor would he opposed in Massachusetts. All these T welcomed ; at the same time I said that if Wehster were presented as a candidate on these grounds our present policy would be silence; we could
i The Boston "Advertiser" remained loyal to Webster until the nomination was made. The ''Atlas's" support of Webster was at first genuine, but late in the canvass for the nomination was only nominal, showing leanings to Taylor for President and Lawrence for Vice-President.
2 E. R. Hoar, C. R. Train, and Rev. J. W Thompson, and even Wilson (Xew York "Tribune," April 1, 1848), were of those who took the favorable view of Webster at this time. Wilson and Allen voted for him in the convention at Philadelphia. His subse- quent course justified Sumner's distrust rather than their confidence
Mt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 165
not oppose him, nor join in introducing him as a candidate. Hoar says that the address and resolutions are well drawn aud satisfactory. He has evidently felt the fascination of Webster's presence. Webster told him that he would not oppose the nominee of the Whig convention, but that he would never call on the people to support Taylor, though he might be nominated."1
The antislavery Whigs of Massachusetts, anticipating the re- sult of the Whig convention, conferred in advance as to the manner in which they should meet it. On May 27 there was a conference in Boston at the office of C. F. Adams, where were present Adams, S. C. Phillips, Sumner, Wilson, E. R. Hoar, E. L. Keyes, F. W. Bird, and Edward Walcutt. They decided in case General Taylor, or any candidate not distinctly committed against the extension of slavery, should be nominated at Philadelphia to enter at once upon an organized opposition to his election, and to call a State convention for the purpose. At a later meeting, June 5, they approved a form of call pre- pared by E. R. Hoar, and agreed to issue it in the event of Gen- eral Taylor's nomination. Wilson and Allen were joined at Philadelphia by thirteen2 other delegates, who approved their public protest against General Taylor's nomination, and it was decided to call a national convention to be held at Buffalo in August. The two protesting delegates from Massachusetts upon their return home addressed their constituents, — Wilson by letter, and Allen in person, — both reviewing the proceedings at Philadelphia, and summoning the people to reject them.3 The call already prepared was at once issued, with a list of signers, in which Adams's name stood first and Sumner's second. It invited the citizens of Massachusetts who were opposed to the
1 Nevertheless he entered, though reluctantly, into the canvass for Taylor. Early in 1848, Webster said to a company of "young Whigs," his earnest supporters for the Presi- dency (among whom were E. R. Hoar, O. P. Lord, G. T. Davis, and C. R. Train), on the occasion of their call upon him at J. W. Paige's house in Summer Street, Bo-ton, that he would support heartily as the Whig candidate any conspicuous leader of the party, trained and experienced in civil affairs, and of national reputation as a statesman; but that he would not advise the nomination, or recommend the election, of a "swearing, righting, frontier colonel."
2 The last survivors of the fifteen were Stanley Matthews and John C Vaughan, both of Ohio. The former died in 1889, and tl-e latter died in Cincinnati in 1892.
3 Boston " Whig," June 19 and 24. 1848. Wilson gave an account of this period, in- cluding 1845-1851, in a speech in the Massachusetts Senate, Feb. 24, 1852 (Boston "Com- monwealth," March 1, 1852), and in a letter to L. V.Bell ("Commonwealth." July 14, 1852). The meeting, which was addressed by Allen, passed a resolution which deserves a perpetual record: " Massachusetts wears no chains and spurns all bribes; she goes now, and will ever go, for free soil and free men, for free lips and a free press, for a free land and a free world."
166 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
nomination of Cass and Taylor to meet at Worcester, June 28, " to take such steps as the occasion shall demand in support of the principles to which they are pledged, and to co-operate with the other free States in a convention for this purpose." Sumner took an active part in obtaining the speakers,1 and making other preparations for the convention. Five thousand people answered to the call. It was an assembly distinguished for that loyalty to moral principle which has been the life and glory of New England. Finding no hall large enough, the multitude thronged upon the Common. The venerable Samuel Hoar, whose name is associated with the mission to South Carolina for the protec- tion of the colored seamen of Massachusetts, was called to the chair. S. C. Phillips reported an address and resolutions ; six delegates at large, with Adams's name at the head, were chosen to attend the convention at Buffalo. Among the speakers were Allen, Wilson, Amasa Walker, Joshua Leavitt, Adams, Sumner, Keyes, E. R. Hoar, J. R. Giddings, and L. D. Campbell, the last two from Ohio. Early in the day Sumner read a letter from Dr. Palfrey (then in Congress) approving the objects of the meeting, and moved a vote of thanks to Allen and Wilson. His speech at the City Hall in the evening was entitled " Union against the extension of Slavery."2 Wilson has described it as " one of great thoroughness and force ; not only enunciating the commanding principles of liberty, but foreshadowing with con- fidence and hope the time when they should be embodied in the actual and triumphant policy of the State and nation." Sumner, writing of the convention, said : —
" This was the beginning of the separate Free Soil organization in Massa- chusetts, which afterwards grew into the Republican party. . . . The speeches were earnest and determined, and they were received in a corresponding spirit. No great movement ever showed at the beginning more character and power. It began true and strong. All the speakers united in renouncing old party ties. None did this better thau C. P. Adams."
Sumner's speech was a brief one.3 He dwelt upon the growth and potent influence of " the slave-power," which he defined as
i Among (hose whom he invited were William Pitt Fessenden, who, however, decided to support Taylor.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 76-88.
3 " There was the manly form of Charles Sumner in the splendor and vigor and mag- netic power of his youthful eloquence," — G. F. Hoar at Reunion of Free Soilers of 1848, held Aug. 9, 1877. W. S. Robinson described the scene in a letter to the Springfield " Republican." Warrington's " Pen Portraits," pp. 184, 185
Mt.37 -38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 167
" that combination of persons, or perhaps of politicians, whose animating principle is the perpetuation and extension of slavery, with the advancement of slaveholders;" and he contended that former issues, altogether material and economical, which had hitherto been party watchwords, had disappeared. He con- cluded with an inspiring appeal to all, particularly the young, to join the new movement for truth, justice, and humanity. With reference to the objection that the new party could not succeed, he said : —
" But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our opposi- tion will fail. Fail, sir! No honest, earnest effort in a good cause can fail. It may not be crowned with the applause of men ; it may not seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end and aim of so much in life. But it is not lost ; it helps to strengthen the weak with new virtue, to arm the irresolute with proper energy, to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers all. Fail ! Did the martyrs fail when with their precious blood they sowed the seed of the Church ? Did the discomfited champions of Freedom fail who have left those names in history that can never die? Did the three hundred Spartans fail when in the narrow pass they did not fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the sun? Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they left an ex- ample greater far than any victory. And this is the least we can do. Our example will be the mainspring of triumph hereafter. It will not be the first time in history that the hosts of Slavery have outnumbered the champions of Freedom. But where is it written that Slavery finally prevailed?"
Sumner wrote to Palfrey, June 8 : —
" The news has come by telegraph; we have no details. Meanwhile the enclosed call1 has been printed; it was written by Rockwood Hoar. The Webster men have promised to bolt with us; it remains to be seen if they will. They say that Webster will. Our call has not yet received any signa- tures; indeed, it has not left my office. We await the movement of the others; we offer to lead or follow. I wish you were here. It is said that Mr. Lawrence will be ousted from the Vice-Presidential chances; this pleases many here. The Webster and Lawrence factions are very angry with each other, — almost as much as both once were with us."
To George Sumner, June 13 : —
" Taylor is nominated at last. A week or fortnight will disclose whether a new combination will not be effected among the free States. The effect of a regular nomination is potential. It is difficult to oppose it; but it will be opposed in Ohio, and there are symptoms now of rebellion in New York. In Massachusetts we have called a convention for June 28 to organize opposition.
1 For a State convention of all opposed to both Cass and Taylor
168 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
Meanwhile the ' Barnburners' are shaking New York to its centre. We hope to establish an alliance among the disaffected of both parties throughout the free States."
Again, July 4 : —
"We of the Whigs in Massachusetts have had our demonstration at Wor- cester, which was very effective. We have struck a chord which promises to vibrate throughout the free States. There are many persons who say now that the nominees of the Buffalo convention, called for August 9, will carry all the free States. Our movement does not interest the cotton lords or the rich, but the people; it is eminently a popular cause. In Massachusetts it has been successful beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wherever our speak- ers have been they have produced a strong impression, so that we are led to believe that all that is wanted is that the truth should be declared. Put it before the people, and they will receive it. The coming Presidential contest promises to have a character which none other has ever had. High princi- ples will be discussed in it."
To Whittier, July 12 : —
" Things tend to Van Buren as our candidate; I am willing to take him. With him we can break the slave-power: that is our first aim. We can have a direct issue on the subject of slavery. We hope that McLean will be Vice- President. Truly, success seems to be within our reach. I never supposed that I should belong to a successful party."
Sumner answered briefly to a call of the audience at a meeting in Tremont Temple, June 30, where Giddings made the principal speech ; 1 and he assisted in arranging other meetings in July.
The popular insurrection against the nominations made at Baltimore and Philadelphia seemed formidable when the anti- slavery opponents of Cass and Taylor came thronging to Buffalo from all parts of the free States. As they met August 9 in the City Park under a spacious tent, their numbers were esti- mated by impartial spectators at not less than ten thousand, and even as high as forty thousand. C. F. Adams was called to the chair. A part of the delegates had been chosen with method, and with deference to a fair apportionment; but the greater number were chosen irregularly, or came as volunteers. With some difficulty there was eliminated from the mass a rep- resentative body of delegates or " conferees," from which pro- ceeded the resolutions and nominations. Over this body Salmon P. Chase presided. The men marked as leaders were Chase,
1 Sumner wrote to P;ilfrey of this meeting: "It was the most remarkable political demonstration which I ever witnessed. The immense audience was prodigiously im- pressed " A letter from Sumner describing this and other meetings in Massachusetts which were addressed by Giddings is printed in the latter's " Life " by Julian, p. 247.
^t. 37-38] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 169
Giddings, and Samuel Lewis of Ohio ; Adams of Massachu- setts ; and Preston King, Benjamin F. Butler, D. D. Field, and Samuel J. Tilden, of New York. Both the nominating body and the mass meeting were animated by a profound earnestness. A religious fervor pervaded the resolutions and addresses. The speakers asserted fundamental rights and universal obligations, and in their appeals and asseverations sought the sanctions of the Christian faith.1
The resolutions, which were prepared chiefly by Chase, assisted by Butler and Adams, while accepting constitutional limitations which excluded interference with slavery in the States, declared the duty of the national government to prohibit it by law in the national territories, and to relieve itself from all responsibility for the extension and continuance of the system wherever the power of that government extended. The platform was an ad- vance beyond the position of the Barnburners of New York, as it did not limit the issue to the freedom of the territories. The delegates were, however, confronted with a more difficult duty when they sought for a candidate fitly representing their cause, and likely to inspire confidence and enthusiasm, without exciting the prejudice of voters formerly acting with either of the two leading parties. The candidacy did not promise imme- diate success, and therefore did not attract statesmen with an assured position. Corwin, to whom Giddings, Sumner, and other antislavery men had turned with high expectations, was now an open supporter of Taylor. Webster, after some dalliance with the movement, was keeping aloof from it. Judge McLean, whose nomination was most favored by those who had been Whigs hitherto, withdrew his name at the last moment.2 These Whig names being out of the question, the only alternative was the nomination of Ex-President Martin Van Buren, who was urged by the well-organized delegation from New York. As a Demo- crat, he had shown himself to be an intense partisan; and on two occasions as President he had given just offence to the antislavery sentiment of the free States. But in subserviency to the South he was not a marked exception among the public
1 Julian's "Political Recollections," pp. 60, 61. Regular meetings were held in the Park under the tent in the early morning of each day of the session, at which prayers were offered for the freedom of all men, and passages of Scripture read which were appropriate to the movement. New York "Tribune," September 6, 1848.
2 Giddings distrusted Judge McLean, believing he had no heart in the political move- ment against slavery; he was not alone in this distrust. Letter to Sumner, June 2, 1847.
170 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNEE. [1848^9.
men of his time, and one of his acts was to his credit. He had refused as President to promote the annexation of Texas in any way involving war with Mexico, — an exhibition of political virtue which prevented his nomination in 1844, — and he was now fully committed to the principles of the new party.1 His nomination, by dividing the Democrats in New York, insured Cass's defeat, as that of McLean would probably have insured Taylor's defeat. Adams was nominated for Vice-President.
Sumner was not a delegate to the convention. The delegates from Massachusetts had been appointed equally among the re- cruits from existing parties ; and Sumner, though hitherto acting as a Whig, was not thought to have been sufficiently identified with that party to be taken as one of its representatives. He expressed his desire that some other person should be chosen, and cordially approved the selection of Mr. Dana in his stead.2 His interest in the movement led him, however, to go to Buf- falo, where he was urged to address the mass meeting; but as there was a sufficiency of speakers, he declined. Unlike some of his former Whig associates, Sumner had no prejudices against Van Buren. He was then, as always, hospitable to new con- verts, and disposed to take men as they were at the time. He was also predisposed in Van Buren's favor by personal asso- ciations with some leading Barnburners, — as with Theodore Sedgwick, H. B. Stanton, and D. D. Field ; and after the nomi- nation John Bigelow, S. J. Tilden, and Preston King were his correspondents.
State conventions and ratification meetings of the new party now known as the Free Soil party, or Free Democracy,3 at once followed the Buffalo convention. Sumner, who had been obliged to suspend political speaking while preparing his address for Union College, Schenectady, now entered actively into the can- vass. He was called to the chair at a meeting held at Faneuil Hall, August 22, to ratify the nominations of Van Buren and Adams, and was cordially welcomed by a full and enthusiastic house. He spoke briefly of the three conventions and of the candidates, giving his support to " the Van Buren of to-day, — the veteran statesman, sagacious, determined, experienced, who
1 Adams having written to Van Buren, received a reply manly in tone, dated July 24, 1848. Adams gave it to the public Aug. 9, 1877, at the Reunion of the Free Soilers.
2 Letters to C. F.Adams, July 30 and 31, in manuscript; Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 135, 136.
3 Sumner preferred the latter designation, which was used more or less somewhat later.
JEt 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 171
at an age when most men are rejoicing to put off their armor girds himself anew, and enters the lists as the champion of free- dom." Of the new movement he said : —
" The sentiment of opposition to the slave-power, to the extension of slavery, and to its longer continuance wherever under the Constitution the national government is responsible for it. though recognized by individuals and adopted by a small and faithful party, is now for the first time the leadiug principle of a broad, resolute, and national organization. . . . We found now a new party. Its corner-stone is freedom, its broad, all-sustaining arches are truth, justice, and humanity." 1
He introduced as speakers R. H. Dana, Jr., D. D. Field, and Joshua Leavitt, who had been delegates at Buffalo. A series of resolutions was read by John A. Andrew.
The Free Soil State convention met at Tremont Temple in Boston, September 6. Sumner was present at the preliminary caucus in that city, speaking briefly, and being placed at the head of the list of delegates. He assisted in the prepara- tions for the convention by inviting speakers and counselling as to candidates. The convention continued for two days. It nominated S. C. Phillips for governor, and an electoral ticket, at the head of which was Samuel Hoar. The addresses and proceedings were marked by a most serious and determined spirit. " It was," as Sumner wrote to Palfrey, " an earnest, imposing body, with an enthusiasm that rose to fever heat." Sumner spoke briefly in moving a committee to report an ad- dress and resolutions, of which he was made chairman.2 His name was put at the head of a State committee which was charged with the management of the campaign, and he became its chairman. At a later stage in the convention he again spoke briefly, stating the sympathy of Ex-President Adams with the movement in his last days.
Besides the work of organization and conference which fell to him as chairman of the State committee and one of the leading
i Works, vol. ii. pp 140-148.
2 The address was not his own composition ; Palfrey was its reputed author. The Free Soilers of Massachusetts proved to be men of extraordinary vitality; and it is inter- esting to observe how many of them came to the front before or during the Civil War, — Sumner, Adams, Wilson, Burlmgame, Dana, E. R. Hoar, and Andrew. Among the younger Free Soilers were George F. Hoar, Henr}- L. Pierce, John A. Kasson, and Marcus Morton, Jr . the last of whom became chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the State. The Free Soilers of Massachusetts have held two reunions, — one, Aug. 9, 1877, at Downer Landing, Hingham, with C- F. Adams presiding; and another, June 28, 1888. at the Parker House in Boston, with E. L. Pierce in the chair. The proceedings in each case were printed in pamphlet form.
172 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49
promoters of the movement, Sumner gave a large share of his time to addressing the people. He was urged in formal invita- tions to attend mass meetings in other States, — Vermont, Con- necticut, Rhode Island, and Ohio, — and to speak in the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Albany, and Philadelphia ; hut except a week in Maine, he confined himself to Massachusetts, speak- ing in the principal towns and cities,1 and on October 31 at Faneuil Hall. The speech was not written out, and no report is preserved 2 In stating the issues of the contest growing out of the aggressions of the slave-power, he drew, both in sub- stance and form, on his previous speeches, particularly the one on the admission of Texas as a slave State. He dwelt at length on the pro-slavery position of Cass and the unsatis- factory record of Taylor, citing and commenting upon the lat- ter's numerous letters ; and in contrast with the hostile or ambiguous utterances of these candidates, he set forth Van Buren's positive and ample declarations against the extension of slavery. The passage best remembered by those who heard him was the closing one, in which he likened the three parties with their three candidates to three ships, — describing that com manded by Taylor as " built in a Southern port with a single view to speed, without papers, chart, or compass, manned by a disaffected crew, sailing under no particular flag, and bound for no particular port," — a figure which, according to a newspaper report, was received with " thunders of applause." 3 The speech was lively, varied with the sober treatment of contending policies and brilliant criticisms of public men ; it was genial in its gene- ral tone, and won the favor even of opponents. Sumner usually spoke for three hours, beginning sometimes at a late hour after the other speakers, and ending at midnight or later, the audi-
1 In Maine he spoke at Portland, Bath. Waterville, Augusta, Gardiner, and perhaps one or two other points in that State In Massachusetts he spoke at Central Hall, Boston, September 14, and at other dates at Plymouth, Roxbury, Somerville, Chelsea, Milford, Newburyport, Dorchester, Amherst, Pittsfield, Great Barnngton, Adams, Stockbridge, Chicopee, Springfield, Lynn, Salem, Brookline, Nantucket, Fall River, Taunton, Lowell, Fitchburg, Dedham, Canton, Worcester, and Cambridge.
2 He wrote a summary of points on a single sheet, which is preserved, and he had always with him an anonymous political pamphlet, much referred to at the time, entitled "General Taylor and the Wilmot Proviso." This also is preserved, with the numerous marks which he made upon it. The biographer has availed himself of brief notices of the speech in the newspapers, and of the recollections of persons who heard it. The Spring- field "Republican," October 18, the leading Whig journal in the western part of the State, called the address "able, plausible, and brilliant," and its author "one of the most finished scholars of our country."
3 Boston Republican, October 19.
JEt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 173
ence remaining without weariness to the end. Contemporary witnesses are emphatic as to " the beauty, eloquence, and con- vincing argument of the speech," 1 and the long and repeated demonstrations of applause, which at the close, as at Faneuil Hall, rose to " the highest pitch of enthusiasm, with deafening and tumultuous shouts, and cheer upon cheer, as if they would never stop." The Whig newspapers referred to him as " the Demosthenes " of his party, — a title which gives an idea of the impression he made on those who were not inclined to give him more than his due. He was altogether the most popular speaker in the canvass in Massachusetts, and voters of all parties were charmed if not convinced.2 It may be noted that at Chelsea he preceded by one evening Abraham Lincoln, who, then the only Whig member of Congress from Illinois, had been brought by his party to the State.3 Only at one place where Sumner spoke was the meeting disturbed, — at Lyceum Hall, Cambridge, in the midst of the associations of his youth ; where the students, some Southern, and others reflecting the sentiments of the ruling class in Boston, interrupted him with hisses and coarse exclama- tions.4 He bore the rudeness well, till at length he singled out the leader of the disturbance, who had made himself conspicuous by loud expressions of contempt at the speaker's comments on Taylor, and said : " The young man who hisses will regret it ere his hair turns gray. He can be no son of New England ; her soil would spurn him." That rebuke restored quiet, and afterwards the speaker and those in accord with him had it all their own way. Henry W. Muzzey, who was present, wrote : " I heard
1 Boston Republican, November 1.
2 One of the audience at Faneuil Hall wrote that it was spoken of at the time as "the greatest speech of the campaign." Boston " Chronotype," November 1.
3 Mr. Lincoln spoke first at Worcester on the evening before the Whig State con- vention, and a liberal summary of his speech, chiefly directed against the Free Soilers, appeared m the Boston "Advertiser," September 14 He was in or near Boston a week, speaking twice in the city (once in company with Seward at Faneuil Hall), and also at Dedham, Dorchester, Cambridge, and Lowell. His speech was not on a high level, and gave no promise of leadership in the antislavery conflict. Seward's more serious treat- ment of the slavery question on the evening they spoke together started a train of reflec- tions in the mind of the future President. (Seward's Life, vol. li. p 80.) The stress of Lincoln's argument was on the point that the Free Soilers were a party of one idea or prin- ciple, good enough in itself, but not broad enough to found a party on, — an objection urged with equal force against the Republicans, who twelve years later made him Presi- dent. By a curious turn of politics, the men whom he came to Massachusetts to oppose — Sumner, Adams, Wilson, Andrew, Dana, and Burlingame — became his supporters in the election of 1860 and during his Presidency, while the foremost of the Whig leaders whom he came to assist were opponents of his election or of his Administration.
4 Longfellow's Life, vol. ii. p. 127.
174 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49
Mr. Sumner speak several times during that campaign, and no- where was he more effective and powerful than on the occasion referred to at Cambridge."
The speech had a more important relation to Sumner's future career than appeared at the time. It brought him into connec- tion with persons in all sections of the State who were shortly to attain and hold for a long period a large influence in its poli- tics. It tested his capacity for the political forum, showing that his power was not confined to elaborate discourses on literary and moral themes, but embraced as well a vigorous discussion of men and measures before miscellaneous audiences. It cen- tred on him the enthusiasm of the young men of the State, who had in large numbers joined with great earnestness and vigor in the new movement. It placed him without question as an ora- tor at the head of his party in the State, and opened the way to the honors and responsibilities which awaited him.1
Longfellow's diary illustrates Sumner's tone of mind at this time : —
" June 2J/., 18Jf8. Dined in town. Saw Sumner surrounded by his cap- tains, Adams, Allen, and Phillips. They are in great fervor touching their Anti-Taylor-and-Cass meeting in Worcester.
" Sept. 3. Sumner full of zeal for the Barnburners. But he shrinks a little from the career just opening before him. After dinner we called on Palfrey.
" Sept. 17. Sumner passed the afternoon with us. After tea I walked half- way into town with him. He looks somewhat worn. Nothing but politics now. Oh, where are those genial days when literature was the theme of our conversation !
uOct. 22. Sumner stands now, as he himself feels, at just the most critical point of his life. Shall he plunge irrevocably into politics or not? That is the question-, and it is already answered. He inevitably will do so, and after many defeats will be very distinguished as a leader. Let me cast his horoscope : Member of Cougress, perhaps ; minister to England, certainly. From politics as a career he still shrinks back. When he has once burned his ships there will be no retreat. He already holds in his hands the lighted torch.
u Oct. 26. Sumner made a Free Soil speech [in Cambridge]. Ah me! in such an assembly ! It was like one of Beethoven's symphonies played
1 The writer is not to be understood as saying that Sumner produced conviction with more minds than some other speakers, — notably Charles Allen, S. C. Phillips, and R. II. Dana, Jr. Other speakers who rendered conspicuous service in the campaign were Samuel and E. R. Hoar, father and son. Charles Allen, of Worcester, by his personal influence and force of character and his favorable situation in a community removed from the influ- ence of Boston capital, perhaps brought more votes to the party than any one of the leaders. See, for sketches of the Free Soil leaders, Boston " Republican," Oct. 31, 1849.
Mr. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 175
in a saw-mill ! He spoke admirably well ; but the shouts and the hisses and the vulgar interruptions grated on my ears. I was glad to get away.
" Oct. 29. Sumner. His letter accepting the nomination of the Free Soil party as candidate for Congress is very good. Now he is submerged in politics. A strong swimmer, — may he land safely !
" Nov. 9. In the evening finished ' Kavanagh.' Sumner came in just as I wrote the last word."
The Free Soil party of the Boston district nominated Sumner for Congress. The convention was unanimous, and no other name than his was considered. His early formed resolution not to be a candidate for any political office was known to the dele- gates, but the emergency was thought to be one which required him to forego his personal wishes, and was urged in the letter which communicated to him the nomination. He did not feel at liberty to refuse the post assigned to him, and in his reply, October 26, considered at some length the philosophy of parties, the failure of the Whig and Democratic parties to meet the ex- igency presented in the slavery question, and the necessity of the new organization.1 Some of these points had been treated in his campaign speech. It was a forlorn hope ; and he received less than a third as many votes as were given to Winthrop, the Whig candidate.
In the brief interval then existing between the national and State elections, Sumner, on behalf of the Free Soil State com- mittee, prepared an address urging the support of the candi- dates of the party for State offices.2 A few weeks after the State election the committee issued another address, also pre- pared by him.3 It stated what had been accomplished by the new movement in the election of members of Congress, and in bringing the slavery question to the front ; called on the voters to adhere to the organization and its principles, and referred to the dangers which required immediate attention and constant vigilance. Sumner urged, in correspondence with Free Soilers in New York and Ohio, co-operation in issuing a national address, and received replies from Field, Tilden, and King of New York, and from Giddings.
In the early part of the year Sumner thought that General
1 Works, vol. ii. pp. 149-163. Charles Allen had said in the course of the campaign that he hoped the leading Free Soilers would not be put into office, but he thought an exception might be made in the case of Sumner.
2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 164-167.
3 Boston Republican, Dec. 12, 1848.
176 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
Taylor could not command the votes of the Northern Whigs. He was quite sure of a Free Soil plurality in Massachusetts, and felt hopeful of a similar result in New York. His con- fidence continued through the summer. But his too sanguine hopes were to be disappointed. It was easy in such a case to miscalculate forces. The sentiment against the extension of slavery was widely diffused ; it had been expressed in solemn protests, and the enthusiasm of the friends of liberty in the free States ran high ; moreover, Taylor's nomination was offen- sive to Whigs who cherished an historical devotion to the party and to its representative statesmen. But the party was still strong enough to hold its masses, and General Taylor was elected President. Van Buren received less than three hundred thousand votes, exceeding but a small percentage one tenth of the vote cast ; 1 and two-thirds of his vote came from New York, Massachusetts, and Ohio.2 He led Cass only in New York and Massachusetts, but by dividing the Democratic vote in New York effected Taylor's election. As the majority rule then prevailed in Massachusetts, there was no choice of elec- tors by the people ; but the Legislature being Whig, gave the vote of the State to General Taylor. The Free Soilers had elected nine members of Congress, giving them the balance of power in the House and a strong force for debate. Southern men of an extreme pro-slavery position saw that there was something formidable in a movement so profoundly earnest and so wisely directed.3
Notwithstanding General Taylor's slaveholding interests and associations, and the type of Southern politicians who had pro- moted his candidacy, large numbers of antislavery Whigs finally gave him their votes, relying on his declarations in general terms against the exercise of the veto power,4 and upon cer- tain qualities which in popular estimation belonged to him. He was indeed a man whose character was marked by moderation, sincerity, and firmness. His nature was alien to political in- trigue. He was truly patriotic, loyal to the Union, and looked with aversion upon those who threatened its disruption in any
i 291,342 in all.
2 New York, 120,510; Massachusetts, 38,058; Ohio, 35,354; Illinois, 15,774; Vermont, 13,837; Maine, 12,096; Pennsylvania, 11,263; Wisconsin, 10,418; Michigan, 10,389.
3 A. H. Stephens's " Life," by Johnston and Browne, pp. 236-237.
4 Letter to Allison, April 22, 1848. He declined to make the declaration specific as to the Wilmot Proviso.
Mt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 177
event or upon any pretext. He had not turned his thoughts to the vital question of the time, and professed no theory concern- ing it ; and he did not comprehend the machinations of those who sought to extend and perpetuate slavery. If he was not an opponent of slavery on moral and political grounds, — as cer- tainly he was not, — neither was he its partisan after the manner of Calhoun. The policy to which he came as President, so far as he seemed to have one, was to suspend action by Congress, and allow the people of the territories to settle the question for themselves, without influence from the national executive ; to admit the State, whether slavery was established or pro- hibited in its constitution ; and to discourage new plans for either consolidating or weakening the slave-power. He inter- posed no obstruction to the admission of California when, to the surprise of both sides, the inhabitants formed a constitu- tion which expressly prohibited slavery. Temporizing and drift- ing, and sure to fail, as such a policy was, this veteran soldier stands, for a Southern man of that period, in a fair light before his countrymen ; 2 and when by his death the government passed to Fillmore the Vice-President, with Webster, then bitter in his hostility to Northern sentiments, as the head of the new Cabinet, and Clay as the leader of compromise in the Senate, there were no sincerer mourners for the late President than the antislavery men of the Free States.
Whig partisans were very bitter, during the canvass, against the Free Soil seceders from their ranks. They set up the claim that theirs was the true Free Soil or antislavery party, and de- nounced the Free Soilers who had left them, as renegades and apostates, and in some parts of the North invoked against them the mob spirit.2 They seemed to have a peculiar antipathy to those who remained loyal to the faith they themselves had once professed. In Massachusetts they spared no terms of reproach against their former allies, paying hardly any attention to the Democratic party, and directing all their energies against the supporters of Van Buren and Adams.3 Their organ in Boston
1 He was for leaving the question of slavery in New Mexico to the chances of a pop- ular vote when the inhabitants were few and greatly mixed. His scheme of bringing that territory into statehood was premature by half a century. His method is stated in his messages of Dec. 4. 1849, and Jan. 21, 1850.
2 Julian's "Political Recollections," pp. 64, 65.
3 Choate in a speech at Salem, September 28, probably referred to Sumner when he spoke of Mr. Everett as one "who could be a philosopher, a scholar, and a progressionist, without being a renegade."
VOL. III. 12
178 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
was the " Atlas," a journal intensely partisan, the columns of which were almost exclusively given to politics, rarely con- taining any discussion of social questions, of foreign affairs, material enterprise, or scientific discovery, — topics which now so largely occupy a metropolitan journal. Its successive editors
— Richard Haughton, William Hayden, Dr. Thomas M. Brewer, and William Schouler — were each true to the general spirit of the journal, regarding no institution so sacred as the Whig party, no men so deserving of invective and proscription as those who, having once borne its name, refused to submit to its authority. The last two named were at this period its man- agers. Schouler was by nature genial and kindly, and while an editor at Lowell was one of the antislavery Whigs who organized the opposition to the admission of Texas as a slave State. But he now yielded to the traditions of his journal and to the tone of the politicians who frequented his establishment. Instead of treating the seceders in a body, and assailing their positions, the " Atlas " (the articles bearing the ear-marks of an- other than the editor) made every effort to give the controversy a personal direction, habitually naming the leading offenders,
— Adams, Sumner, Allen, Wilson, Palfrey, Keyes, and Bird.1 Adams, for whom the most venomous shafts were reserved, was described in that journal as " a political huckster, who lives upon the reputation as well as the wealth of his ancestors, in- tense egoism being the characteristic of his appearance, and self- ishness that of his action;1' Palfrey was a "Judas;" Sumner, a "transcendental lawyer." Adams, Sumner, and Palfrey were styled " The Mutual Admiration Society," or " Charles Sumner & Co.," with "their headquarters on Court Street;" and they were held up to public odium as " ambitious and unscrupulous," and abounding in " inordinate self-esteem, pride of opinion, and cormorant appetite for office." 2 Altogether it was a disreputa-
1 The Webster Whigs in 1850 became very bitter against Scbonler because, his original and better instincts now prevailing over his political connections, he refused to support Webster"s "compromise" course; and in consequence he was obliged to leave the "Atlas" in the spring of 1853, and later in the same year he assumed the charge ol the Cincinnati "Gazette."
2 See "Atlas " in 1848 for February 10; June 19, 22; July 3, 8, 11 ; August 14, 15, 17, 19, 31; September 5, 7, 13; October 3i; November 2, 11, 13, 20, 21; December 14. The same paper, Sept. 6, 1849, applied to Mr. Chase, afterwards chief-justice, the epithet of "Joseph Surface." In the issues of October 12, 13, 16, and November 2 Sumner was accused of attempting; to mislead the people in holding the Whigs responsible for not re- sisting the admission of Texas as a slave State. To this charge he replied in a letter, — "Atlas," October 16; "Advertiser," October 18. The "Advertiser," while refraining
JEt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 179
ble period in Boston journalism, such as has never been known since. Seceders from a party must not expect soft words from former associates ; but the Whig journals of Boston at that time exceeded the limits of decent criticism, and undertook to enforce a discipline inconsistent with individual liberty. In contrast with their vindictiveness was the course of the New York " Tribune," the representative Whig journal of the United States, which treated the Free Soil leaders with uniform respect and charity.
It was the fashion of the time to invoke the sentiment of na- tional unity against a party organized on the basis of antislavery ideas. The " Atlas " denounced the new party as " sectional," and promoting " disunion," and said the South ought not to sub- mit to its policy,1 though the editor became eight years later an earnest supporter of the Republican party, to which the charge could be equally well applied. The Whig orators joined in this outcry. Choate assailed the Free Soilers as a party " founded upon geographical lines." 2 Others associated them with nulli- fiers, and held them up as deserving the penalties of treason.3
The passage of Sumner's speech at Worcester in June, in which he mentioned " the secret influence " that went forth from New England, especially from Massachusetts, and " contributed powerfully " to Taylor's nomination, and in which he referred to the "unhallowed union — conspiracy, let it be called — between remote sections ; between the politicians of the Southwest and the politicians of the Northeast ; between the cotton-planters and flesh-mongers of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the cotton- spinners and traffickers of New England; between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom," — led to a correspondence with Nathan Appleton, in which that gentleman, supposing him- self to be one of the persons referred to, insisted upon Sumner giving his proofs. Sumner in reply reviewed the course of
from the coarse epithets of the "Atlas," gave to its arguments against the new party a personal direction at Sumner and Adams, — September 21, 27; October 3, 13, 17, 28, 30. It belittled the slavery question, treated the alleged "slave-power" as fictitious and denied that the slaveholding interest was a dangerous power in the government. — August 1 1, and September 9, 11. The Whig newspaper outside of Boston which reflected most the spirit of the Boston press was the New Bedford "Mercury." It applied V en and later to Free Soilers the coarsest epithets, — to Giddings, for instance, "knave," " hypocrite," " bigot," "lying politician." The Lowell "Courier" was not far behind in this generous use of billingsgate.
1 August 26 ; November 13.
2 At Salem, Sept. 28, 1848.
8 Adams, November 9, at Faneuil Hall, made a spirited retort to Winthrop's sugges- tion. Boston " Republican," November 13.
180 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-4&
prominent gentlemen engaged in the cotton manufacture which had been unfriendly to organized resistance to the slave-power^ and maintained — referring to newspaper statements and other evidence — that Abbott Lawrence, and other active and influ- ential politicians in the State, had effectively promoted Gen- eral Taylor's nomination, while the party was in its open and formal action pressing Webster as its candidate. He gave a long account of a conversation between himself and Mr. Law- rence late one evening at the latter's house ten days before the convention, in which Mr. Lawrence predicted the nomination of General Taylor, and justified it as the only one likely to suc- ceed ; admitted his part in promoting it ; stated that Mr. Choate was for Taylor, and implied that John Davis and Governor Lin- coln were of the same way of thinking. Mr. Appleton rejoined at length and with spirit, denying any secrecy or conspiracy, — admitting that for a year he had been in favor of General Tay- lor's candidacy, and had freely expressed his opinion that Web- ster could not be nominated, or elected if he were nominated ; and that Clay, if nominated, could not be elected, and that Tay- lor was the only candidate whom the Whigs could elect. He stated that Mr. Lawrence's preference for Taylor dated as far back as his own, and had been expressed for months ; and that he had signified to the New York Taylor committee that he would accept a place on the ticket with General Taylor.1 But without imputing duplicity to either of these gentlemen, there is no doubt that the Whig leaders, at least some of them, did not have the courage to deal frankly with Mr. Webster, and under cover of devotion to him were diligently preparing the way for Taylor's nomination. This was the " secret influence " to which Sumner referred.
Mr. Appleton in his letter denounced Allen's and Wilson's conduct at the Philadelphia convention as " the most disgrace- ful piece of political swindling," and " a transaction from which every honorable man should revolt." This remark shows the temper of the time among conservative people in relation to protests which have since been regarded as manly and patriotic.
1 Mr Lawrence, Feb 17, 1848, wrote a letter to a Taylor meeting in Philadelphia con- necting the names of Washington and Taylor (printed in the "Atlas," February 25), say- ing that Ta3'lor, if nominated by the Whigs, would be elected. Henry Wilson, in a letter to the New York "Tribune," April 1, 1848, stated that a few manufacturers of considera- ble influence were almost the only supporters of Taylor, and were associating with his candidacy the name of Mr. Lawrence, though not coming forward in conventions
JEt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 181
Of his own letter, written in 1845, discountenancing any further agitation of the Texas question, he said that its purpose was ■" to win back, if possible, a young friend [Sumner] from the gulf of Abolitionism into which he was plunging." Of Sumner lie said : —
" I have regretted your course the last two years, but more in sorrow than in anger. I have regretted to see talents so brilliant as yours, and from which I had hoped so much for our country, take a course in which I consider them worse than thrown away. But I have been inclined to consider you as act- ing under impulses which are a part of your nature rather than from selfish calculation."
A correspondence with an old friend, Samuel Lawrence, oc- curred later in the canvass, which was even more unpleasant than that with Mr. Appleton.1 Sumner, in the political speech which he made at different places in the canvass, had cited, in support of his view that the tariff was not at the time a practi- cal issue, a published letter of Mr. Lawrence, which assigned causes for the depression in manufacturing business independ- ent of the tariff, and omitted all reference to the existing low duties as one of them.2 Other speakers — S. C. Phillips, for instance — made the same use of the letter. Mr. Lawrence au- thorized the " Atlas " to state that Sumner had perverted the language of the letter ; whereupon Sumner applied to him for an explanation. Mr. Lawrence, in his reply, did not attempt to specify in what the perversion consisted, but proceeded to assail Sumner for his speech at Worcester, in which he had brought into conjunction " the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom," and for his antislavery course in general. He wrote :
'■ No man regrets the part you are acting more than I do. You have taken hold of this one idea of slavery, and are in a fair way of becoming severed from a very large circle of friends who give dignity and honor to our common country. I could name scores and scores of men whom you have honored your whole life who regret and condemn the course you have taken."
Sumner replied at length after the election, stating in what particulars Mr. Lawrence had done him injustice, and appealing to their ancient friendship. The latter rejoined with much bitterness : —
1 A year before, when lecturing at Lowell, he had been invited by Mr. Lawrence to be his guest. Their early friendship has been noted in this Memoir. Ante, vol. i. p. iy9.
2 Boston Republican, November 3.
182 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
" You and other Abolitionists are solely responsible for the continuance of slavery in four States, also for the admission of Texas and the war with Mexico. Your principles tend directly to the breaking up of this glorious republic. You and I never can meet on neutral ground. I can contemplate you only in the character of a defamer of those you profess to love, and an enemy to the permanency of this Union."
Sumner was disappointed in not having the co-operation of certain public men who might have effectively aided the new movement. Charles Hudson and Governor Briggs had avowed with great earnestness antislavery sentiments, and had been strongly opposed to Taylor's nomination ; but they soon came to his support, making their decision as " a choice of evils." The former lost his re-election to Congress, being defeated bv Charles Allen ; and the latter, who explained the reasons for his decision at considerable length in a letter to Sumner, passed two years later out of political life, being defeated as a candi- date for governor by the same union of Free Soilers and Demo- crats which elected Sumner to the Senate. Horace Greeley, editor of the " Tribune," wrote to Sumner June 25, declining to take definite action for the present, and expressing the fear that the secession of earnest Free Soil men from the old parties would leave the pro-slavery men in control, and increase the number of members of Congress who would not insist on the prohibition of slavery. While kindly to the dissenters, he wrote that he had decided not to identify himself with them, and added : " I do not judge that this course is the best for you or for others ; act as your own conscience and judgment shall dictate." Later he announced his support of Taylor.1
After entering Congress in March, 1848, Horace Mann re- tained, by advice of the friends of popular education, his office of Secretary of the Board of Education ; and on account of that connection was disinclined to enter into political contests which would interfere with his usefulness in the office of secretary.2 Sumner, in person and in several letters, urged him to declare against Taylor's nomination, and to take his place openly with the Free Soilers ; but Mann, while generally heedful of Sumner's opinions, did not see his duty in that light. He made a speech in Congress on the slavery question, which Sumner admired very much ; but he took no stand in the national election, withholding
1 New York Tribune, September 29.
2 Mann's Life, pp. 264-265.
^Et. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 183
his vote.1 He was re-elected by the combined support of Whigs and Free Soilers, notwithstanding his silence on the question of candidate for President. Sumner again plied Mann in 1849 with earnest entreaties to take his stand openly with the Free Soilers.2 He wrote Sept. 20, 1849 : —
" I have sent you our State Address,3 which I hope you will read. There are many reasons for my faith. I belong to a party pledged unequivocally to place the Federal government on the side of freedom. In sustaining any other party it seems to me I should jeopard this vital principle, — the only principle of national politics that is worth contending for, or that could have drawn me from other pursuits. Think of this ! I wish you were with us ! I think the Free Soil party of Massachusetts is the best political party of its size this country has ever seen, — containing a larger amount of talent, prin- ciple, and sincere, unselfish devotion to the public good than has ever before been brought together in any similar number of persons acting politically ; it will yet leaven the whole lump.'7
Sumner wrote in 1848 to Mr. Everett, inquiring if he would accept a nomination from the Buffalo convention as Vice-Presi- dent ; but the latter declined in a letter in every way creditable to him, chiefly on the ground of the evils inseparable from third parties, and of the responsibility of Northern Whigs for the nomination of General Taylor, — closing with the sentence, " I pray God that I may live to see the day when all good citizens, North and South, will unite in wiping out this dreadful blot upon the fair fame of our country."
The result of the national election in 1848 settled the position and defined the work of the Free Soilers. With only one tenth of the voters in their ranks ; with no representative in the elec- toral colleges ; without a majority in a single Congressional dis- trict, and with a plurality in very few districts ; having failed, except in New York, where the conditions were peculiar and not likely to be permanent, to break the columns of either party, — it was vain to expect accessions which would give them numer- ical success as a party in a single State, still less in the nation ; and in view of the attractions which large parties present to the mass of citizens, they would be fortunate if they could keep to- gether one half of their voting forces. The time had passed when antislavery men, with practical purposes in view and great
1 Though not voting for President, he is understood to have voted for Whig State officers.
2 A year lat^r Mann took his place with the Free Soilers.
6 A Free Soil State Address, drawn by Sumner. Works, vol. ii. p. 282.
184 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
exigencies confronting them, could be content with making merely a moral demonstration. Standing between two parties well balanced, they could use their power as an independent organization to force one or the other to do their work, and availing themselves of favorable opportunities could secure the election of senators and representatives in Congress fully com- mitted to their principles. If they had been satisfied with merely bearing their testimony they would have been met only with derision ; but they inspired different sentiments when they made their power felt, sometimes by voting for the candidate of the party with whom they were most in sympathy, and some- times by a combination with one of the two great parties. They had already in this way won a victory in New Hampshire over Democratic subserviency by joining with the Whigs in the elec- tion of a Whig governor and of John P. Hale as senator.1 Early in 1849, holding with only two votes the balance of power in the Legislature of Ohio, they joined with the Democrats in the election of Democratic judges, in the repeal of the infamous laws against negroes, and the election of Salmon P. Chase to the Senate.2 Similar co-operation in Connecticut and Indiana resulted in the election of Free Soil members of Congress, or of Democrats who were pledged to Free Soil principles. On the other hand, Free Soilers in Massachusetts supported Mann for Congress, although he was at the time a voter and candidate of the Whig party. If political parties are only means to ends, — and certainly they are no more, — such co-operation or tempo- rary connection with cither of the two national parties was judi- cious and patriotic. The time was sure to come when it was to take place in Massachusetts, where the Free Soilers and Demo- crats exceeded the Whigs by twelve thousand voters, unless the latter by their representatives in Congress and their policy in the State assumed an unequivocal position in favor of anti- slavery principles and measures.
Extracts from Sumner's letters show his spirit and expecta- tions at the time. To James A. Briggs, Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 18, 1848, he wrote: —
1 This was indeed before the formal organization of the Free Soil party; but the same considerations governed in that as in the later unions referred to. The Whigs took advan- tage of such opportunities, though condemning similar action in the Free Soilers. In Mis- souri they joined with Democrats of the Calhoun type to defeat Benton, and elected Henry S. G' yer as senator.
2 Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 338.
Mi. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 185
"I rejoice in Mr. Giddings's success.1 His constituents should be proud of him. There is no man in the House of Representatives who deserves so well of the country. I remember John Quincy Adams said to me, as he lay on his sick-bed in Boston, after he was struck with that paralysis which at Wash- ington closed his life, that he looked to Mr. Giddings with more interest than to any other member of the House. He placed him foremost in his regard. Most certainly the benedictions of the great champion have fallen on your representative."
To George Sumner, November 15 : —
" The papers will tell you of the Presidential election. As I view it, the Democratic party is not merely defeated ; it is entirely broken in pieces. It cannot organize anew except on the Free Soil platform. Our friends feel happy at the result. We shall form the opposition to Taylor's administration, and secure, as we believe, the triumph of our principles in 1852. You know tbat there will be a new census in 1850, and a new apportionment of the rep- resentatives and electors, securing [to the North] a large preponderance of power. This will count for us. In Massachusetts the contest has been earnest, active, persevering beyond any other in our history. Here has been the best fought field. You will see that the Free Soil party comes out second best; it is no longer the third party. I have spoken a great deal, usually to large audiences, and with a certain effect. As a necessary consequence I have been a mark for abuse. I have been attacked bitterly ; but I have consoled myself by what John Quincy Adams said to me during the last year of his life : ' No man is abused whose influence is not felt.7 "
To John Jay, December 5 : —
" Surely our good cause of freedom is much advanced. I do hope that at last there will be a party that does believe in God, or at least in some better devil than Mammon."
To Whittier, December 6 : —
"Your poem2 in the last 'Era' has touched my heart. May God pre- serve you in strength and courage for all good works ! . . . The literature of the world is turning against slavery. We shall have it soon in a state of moral blockade. I admire Bailey3 as an editor very much. His articles show in- finite sagacity and tact. . . . But I took my pen merely to inquire after your health. There are few to whom I would allot a larger measure of the world's blessings than to yourself had I any control, for there are few who deserve them more."
To Charles Allen, Jan. 3, 1849 : —
" I cannot forbear expressing to you my joy in the recent election in the Worcester district. Your triumph is a complete vindication of your own per- sonal position, while it insures to our cause an influence over our State and in
1 His re-election to Congress as the Free Soil candidate.
2 "The Wish of To-day."
3 Dr. Bailey, of the "National Era."
186 MEMOIR OF CHAKLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
Congress which it would be difficult to estimate. I wish much that Mr. Pal- frey had been returned. He is sure to succeed another time." 1
To William Jay, June 4 : —
"Let me not delay my thanks to you any longer for yonr last most powerful effort in the cause of peace. 1 have read your ' Review of the Mexicau War' with the interest aud gratitude inspired by all your productions. By a careful analysis of documents aud of uuquestionable facts you have shown the aggres- sive character of the Mexican War, and still further the foul slaveholding mo- tives in which it had its origin. I think that the just historian hereafter will be compelled to adopt your views, and to hold the war up to the indignation and disgust of posterity. I am very anxious that a history of the Mexican War should be written in the spirit of peace. Some time ago an application was made to my friend Mr. Prescott, and I think also to Mr. Bancroft, to write the history of the second ' Conquest of Mexico ; ' General Scott's papers were to be placed at their disposal. They have declined. I am glad of it. I would not have them soil their pens by such work unless they can see it as an occasion for diffusing the principles of peace. I long to see history written in the spirit of human brotherhood. There would then be no pompous efforts to make war attractive ; but it would be always exposed as an assault upon God's image and a violation of his law."
To George Sumner, July 31 : —
" The most important political question now is whether the old Democrats, or Hunkers, will unite with the Free Soil party. The latter requires a com- plete adhesion to their principles. The people are all anxious for the union ; but there are certain Hunker leaders who are so committed that they cannot espouse our principles. They stand in the way. A cordial union cannot take place until they are laid upon the shelf. This will be done. The Free Soil movement is destined to triumph. I see this clearly."
During the year following the election of 1848, Sumner at- tended faithfully the conferences of the Free Soil leaders. In January, 1849, he was present as an adviser of the Free Soil members of the Legislature at their meeting in a room connected with Tremont Temple, at which Amasa Walker was nominated for Speaker.
The Free Soil State convention for 1849 met at Worcester September 12. The large body of delegates present showed that the party retained in Massachusetts, unlike the course of affairs in New York, its full vigor. Sumner, as chairman of the State committee, called it to order and spoke briefly.2 Previous to the convention he had made arrangements as to the officers and
1 Palfrey failed to secure a majority, and his Whig opponent was chosen.
2 Works, vol. ii. p. 280.
jEt. 37-38.] THE FREE SOIL PARTY. 187
other details, and had invited persons to address the delegates. As chairman of a committee appointed for the purpose, he re- ported an address and resolutions which he had previously pre- pared, and which occupied an hour in the reading.1 The address was a full argument justifying the continued support of the party, and putting in a strong light the issues which divided it from its adversaries. It reviewed the aggressions of the slave-power, and showed how it had governed the nation ; insisted that the policy of the national government should be reversed so as to place it on the side of freedom openly, actively, and perpetually ; and vindicated the necessity of the Free Soil party as a permanent national organization.2 In the treatment of some local questions he referred to the resistance which the money-power of the city of Boston had made to the antislavery opinions of the people, — a power all the more effective because concentrated in elections by a general ticket which then prevailed. This was a grievance which tended to bring the two opposition parties — the Free Soil and the Democratic — into co-operation for the defeat of the Whigs. He said : —
"The efforts to place the national government on the side of freedom have received little sympathy from corporations, or from persons largely interested in them, hut have rather encountered their opposition, — sometimes concealed, sometimes open, often bitter and vindictive. It is easy to explain this. In corporations is the money-power of the Commonwealth. Thus far the instinct of property has proved stronger in Massachusetts than the instinct of freedom. The money-power has joined hands with the slave-power. Selfish, grasping, subtle, tyrannical, like its ally, it will not brook opposition. It claims the Commonwealth as its own, and too successfully enlists in its support that needy talent and easy virtue which are required to maintain its sway."
Sumner was one of the speakers at a Free Soil meeting in Tremont Temple, Nov. 9, 1849. He condemned Taylor's policy as hostile to the Wilmot Proviso, and insisted on the insertion of a provision in the constitution of new States prohibiting slavery.3 He expressed himself in favor of the unions then forming be- tween the Free Soilers and the Democrats in the State senatorial districts.4 At the election the party succeeded well in keeping
i Works, vol. ii. pp. 282-321.
2 Sumner, by a letter to the Boston "Atlas,1' Oct. 1, 1849, met certain criticisms upon his use of the opinions of our early statesmen as to the institution of slavery. Works, vol. ii. pp. 322-326.
3 Boston Republican, November 12.
4 Singularly enough, Josiah G. Abbott, in a letter to Sumner, expressed himself as strongly opposed to any union with Democrats. Afterwards as a Democrat he was bitterly hostile to radical antislavery men.
188 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1848-49.
up the morale of its voters, and maintained its relative strength. The way for a more complete union was prepared this year. The Democrats of the State, not now in power at Washington, showed sympathy with antislavery efforts, and in their conven- tion in September, 1849, expressed themselves in resolutions, drawn by B. F. Hallett, against the extension of slavery to free territories. They and the Free Soilers in the autumn, by a popu- lar impulse, with little prompting from leaders, united in several counties and a considerable number of towns, and succeeded in electing thirteen senators and one hundred and thirty represen- tatives, — a number which would have been much larger if a plurality instead of a majority rule had then prevailed.1 This partial result showed the affinity between the masses of the two parties, and pointed the way to the complete and effective co- operation of the next year.
i Wilson, in the "Emancipator and Republican," Oct. 30, 1849. Among the represen- tatives chosen were Wilson, Boutwell, Banks, and Claflin; and among the senators, Joseph T. Buckingham, the veteran editor.
JEt.39.] THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 189
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. — MR. WEBSTER.
THE discovery of gold mines in California contemporaneously with the cession of that territory from Mexico brought an unexpected turn in political history. During the years 1848- 1849 emigrants by tens of thousands, largely enterprising young men from the free States, thronged to the Pacific coast in search of the precious metal. Slaveholders, slow in thought and action, could not keep abreast of this wonderful movement, combining thrift, adventure, and the high hopes which inspire the founders of a new commonwealth. Congress, divided on the slavery issue, failed to supply a government for the newly acquired territory. The people thus left to themselves, holding a convention at Presi- dent Taylor's instance in September, 1849, formed a constitution, which was ' approved by a popular vote in November, and sub- mitted to Congress the following February. One of its articles, which was voted unanimously, notwithstanding some of the dele- gates were emigrants from slave States, prohibited slavery. A new free State was ready for admission, making it impossible to keep the balance between the contending sections. At the same time the inhabitants of New Mexico sent a petition to Congress asking for a territorial government with a prohibition of slavery. Thus it was manifest that a war undertaken to extend and pro- tect slavery was about to reduce the relative power of the slave States.
This failure in a well-laid and long-plotted scheme made the partisans of slavery desperate. When Congress met in Decem- ber, 1848, the last session of President Polk's Administration, the character of the emigration then flowing into California as- sured for her a majority of free State citizens. The Southern members issued an address, and organized resistance to anti- slavery prohibitions. They strove to obtain by some vague and covert phrase a recognition of their right under the Constitution
190 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. Li850.
to carry slaves into the territories ; and the most outspoken and audacious among them threatened to dissolve the Union if the asserted right was denied by Congress. This defiant spirit grew in intensity to the end of the session. The Senate, as before, was a pro-slavery fortress ; and the House was, as in previous sessions, unsteady, — members changing or withholding votes, with no final advantage on either side.
The contest was renewed in the next Congress, — 1849-1850. It began with the debate on the election of Speaker in Decem- ber, and continued during the session which ended September 30, 1850. It passed beyond the question of the territories, and comprehended all the relations of slavery to the nation. It was marked by profound interest on both sides, and watched with deep anxiety by the country. Toombs, Stephens, Clingman, Jef- ferson Davis, and Foote read elaborate speeches at the begin- ning of the session, and, supported by the bolder spirits of the South, declared themselves ready for disunion in the event of legislation by Congress prohibiting slavery in the territories, or even of the admission of California with her free State con- stitution.1 They seemed to be sincere in this aggressive and threatening attitude, though it was observed at the time that their governing impulse was ambition and empire, and slavery the pretext which was used to fire the Southern heart. But it did not yet appear that the masses of the Southern people were with them in their revolutionary purpose. Meanwhile prepara- tions were made for a convention to meet at Nashville in June. These demonstrations had an effect on the more timid of the Northern members, as appeared in the decisive vote, Feb. 4, 1850, against the Wilmot Proviso.
The resolute and defiant attitude of the South and the weak- ening resistance of the North opened to Henry Clay, now again a senator, the opportunity to appear for another and third time in his career as a pacificator between contending sections and policies ; and late in January, 1850, he presented his scheme of a comprehensive and final adjustment. His series of measures, reported May 8, at first failed as a whole, but afterwards pre- vailed in August and September in the shape of separate bills. Their success was promoted by the co-operation of Fillmore, who became President on the death of Taylor, July 9. The latter
1 In Mississippi, Governor Quitman's inaugural message, in January, 1850, was an harangue for disunion.
Mt. 39.] THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 191
had been an obstruction, as he desired the admission of California independently, and not as part of a scheme or bargain ; and sol- dier and patriot as he was, with all his limitations as a Southern planter, he was ready to compel Texas by force of arms to re- spect the territory of New Mexico instead of bribing her to keep the peace.1 California being entitled by all precedents to ad- mission without an offset, Clay's Compromise measures, except the one last named, were all in the interest of slavery. They were (1) the Texas boundary bill, granting that State ten millions of dollars for territory which did not belong to her, and an ex- cessive amount even if her title had been good;2 (2) territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico without the Wilmot Pro- viso ; (3) a new fugitive-slave law, with novel and extraordinary provisions, which disregarded humane and Christian sentiments and set aside immemorial presumptions and safeguards of per- sonal liberty ; and (4) the abolition of the slave-trade (not sla- very itself) in the District of Columbia. The fate of the two territories was left unsettled, and the Fugitive Slave Act marked another advance of the slave-power.
Of this Act it is sufficient, without attempting a minute and critical statement, to say that it invested commissioners ap- pointed by the federal courts with power to decide summarily and finally the claimant's right to the negro ; denied to the lat- ter claimed as a slave a jury trial or a hearing on his right before any court on habeas corpus ; made affidavits taken in a distant slave State conclusive evidence of the master's title, without opportunity to cross-examine the affiants and contest their statements ; denied expressly to the negro the right to testify for himself ; fixed for the commissioner a larger fee when his decision was for the claimant than when it was for the negro ; imposed a heavy penalty both of fine and imprison- ment, without the alternative of either, for assisting the negro to escape or for harboring and concealing him, in addition to a civil penalty of one thousand dollars recoverable by the slave-owner ; provided more commissioners and a large exec-
1 Dr. Bailey wrote Sumner, July 5, 1850, that General Taylor had been growing more and more Northern in sentiment, and had become a most formidable obstacle to a compromise. Horace Mann took the same view of Taylor. (Mann's "Life," pp. 305, 307, 322.) But in the end the General's negative policy would have fallen between the posi- tive forces arrayed against each other. See Boston " Republican," June 27, 1850.
2 Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. pp. 279-282. Giddings's speech, Aug. 12, 1850, " Speeches in Congress," p. 403 and note. Giddings's "History of the Rebel- lion," pp. 314, 315.
192 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
utive force solely for the service of claimants ; and by an un- usual, if not unprecedented, provision anticipated the abhorrence which awaited the Act from a free and Christian people, " by commanding all good citizens to aid and assist in its prompt and efficient execution." 1 No law so barbarous in aim and ma- chinery, so hostile in every line to personal liberty, has ever dishonored the legislation of a civilized people.
The Fugitive Slave law, with its provisions and penalties more effective than those of the Act of 1793, and the increased pro-slavery spirit of the period, stimulated slaveholders to re- claim their escaped slaves, some of whom had been living for a long time in the free States and had intermarried with free persons ; and the hardship, cruelty, and violence which attended the reclamations aroused deep indignation in the North. South- ern masters at once put the law into execution in the cities of New York and Philadelphia and other places, — in some cases succeeding in recovering their negroes with little opposition or excitement, but in others encountering a resolute contest in the courts, or forcible resistance carried sometimes to a fatal result. In Syracuse, N. Y., where the population was altogether in sym- pathy with the negroes, a rescue planned by prominent citizens was effected.
The partisans of compromise set their hearts on a triumph in Boston, the seat of antislavery agitation. A month after Congress had adjourned, a meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, with C. F. Adams as chairman, and R. H. Dana, Jr., as mover of resolutions, to denounce the obnoxious law and express sym- pathy with the negroes against whose liberty it was aimed ; but only Free Soilers and Abolitionists took part in it.2 About the same time, a slave claimant from Virginia sought to secure William and Ellen Crafts, who had recently escaped, and on arriving in Boston had found wise and brave protectors in Theodore Parker, Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, Ellis Gray Loring,
A Von Hoist says (vol. iii. pp. 554, 555): "The law was so hideous that it called forth from the friends of freedom a cry of indignation and rage," and "no other single meas- ure did so much to convince the North of the necessity of breaking the power of the slavocracy, so much to steel the nerves and hearts of the people for the final struggle/' The Act repealing this law was signed by President Lincoln, June 28, 1864. Sum- ner carried the repeal in the Senate against Democratic and some Republican resistance. Works, vol. viii. pp. 403-418.
2 The venerable Josiah Quincy addressed a letter to the meeting, expressing sympathy with its purpose. Sumner was appointed one of the legal committee for the protection of alleged fugitives. On the committee also were S. E. Sewall, Dana, John C. Park, and William Minot. They called C. G. Loring to their aid.
JEt. 39.] THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 193
and Mrs. George S. Hillard. They were skilfully secreted and sent to England. The next February (1851), when the case of Shadrach was pending before G. T. Curtis, a commissioner, a body of colored men forced the door of the court room, and the negro, being taken from the officers, escaped to Canada. President Fillmore at once issued a proclamation, directing the army and navy to co-operate in enforcing the law. Then fol- lowed the trials of persons accused of assisting the rescue, who were defended by John P. Hale and R. H. Dana, Jr. ; but one or two dissenting jurors prevented verdicts against them. Webster, as Secretary of State, took a personal interest in having the law executed in Boston, and assumed the direction of the prosecu- tions, although it properly belonged to the Attorney-General.1
Early in April, 1851, Thomas Sims, another negro living in Boston, was brought before the same commissioner, claimed by a slaveholder from Georgia. The Administration at Washing- ton, under Mr. Webster's lead, determined that this proceeding- should not fail. The city marshal, acting under a formal order of Mayor Bigelow and the Board of Aldermen, in co-operation with the United States officers, surrounded the court house with chains. Sims's counsel, S. E. Sewall, R. Rantoul, Jr., C. G. Lor- ing, and R. H. Dana, Jr., sought to secure the negro's liberty by writs of habeas corpus, bringing him before the Supreme Court of the State and the District and Circuit Courts of the United States, but without avail. The commissioner gave a certificate of rendition, and the negro was taken by three hundred armed policemen to Long Wharf, and put on board the brig " Acorn," owned by John H. Pierson, a name already associated with a kidnapping case.2 While Sims's fate was pending, a public meet- ing was held to denounce the Fugitive Slave Act and its instru- ments,— in which, as before, only Free Soilers and Abolition- ists took part.
Sumner was also counsel in the defence of Sims.3 In asso- ciation with Mr. Sewall he applied, without success, to Judge
1 Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. p. 228.
2 Ante, p. 130. The agent of the owner on his return to Georgia published a card acknowledging gratefully the assistance he had received in Boston, particularly in the co-operation and sympathy of "merchants of high standing." (Boston "Courier," May 8, 1851.) The Boston " Advertiser," April 14, announced the surrender of Sims "as a matter of gratulation."
3 He did not enter the case at the beginning on account of the pending election for senator, in which he was the candidate. Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp 183, 188, 189, 190.
vol. in. 13
194 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
Sprague, of the United States District Court, for the writ of habeas corpus. Judge Woodbury, however, granted it, and sat for the hearing in the Circuit Court room, afterwards occu- pied for many years by the Municipal Court.1 The judge was unfriendly and brusque, — breaking out, when Sewall in a quiet way habitual with him made the point that slavery did not exist in Massachusetts, with the exclamation, accompanied by an em- phatic gesture, " Yes, but there is slavery in the Union ; and Massachusetts is yet in the Union, thank God!"2 The room was crowded, chiefly with the claimant's supporters, and this un- judicial outburst was received with applause. Sumner insisted on the prisoner's discharge, maintaining that Commissioner Hal- lett's warrant charging Sims with assaulting the officer when arrested was defective, and that Marshal Devens's conduct — on which he commented at length — was illegal in not return- ing the warrant, but holding it as a cover to defeat a State criminal process against Sims which the prisoner's friends had procured in order to hold him against Commissioner Curtis's order of rendition. Sumner, as he began, said that the prisoner, though under arrest for seven days, and carried from place to place, had now for the first time the privilege of looking on the face of a judge, — an allusion to the unjudicial and unconsti- tutional powers delegated to commissioners under the Fugitive Slave Act. A discharge was refused ; and this was the last effort to save Sims.
In the session of Congress 1850-1851 the partisans of the Compromise measures — mostly members from slave States — subscribed a compact pledging themselves to maintain the set- tlement effected by these measures, and not to support as candi- dates for President and Vice-President, or for members of Con- gress or of any State legislature, " any man of whatever party who is not known to be opposed to the disturbance of the set- tlement aforesaid, and to the renewal in any form of agitation upon the subject of slavery."3 The only Whig member from
i In March, R. H. Dana, Jr., and Sumner drew a bill to secure the rights of persons claimed as fugitive slaves, particularly with the view of applying the statute of 1843 to proceedings under the new Fugitive Slave Act ; and it was presented to a committee of the Legislature. Adams's "Biography" of Dana. vol. i. p. 184.
2 It was described as "a mere political clap-trap speech, intended for the Southern market." (Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. p. 191.) The writer was present, and well remembers the scene.
s Giddings's " History of the Rebel'ion," pp 348, 349. Among the signers were Howell < 'obb, H. S. Foote, A. H. Stephens, R. Toombs, and J. B. Thompson.
^t. 39.] MR. WEBSTER. 195
New England who signed this paper was Samuel A. Eliot, of Boston. Mr. Appleton, his successor, alone of the Massachu- setts delegation, voted that the Compromise, including the Fugi- tive Slave law, was a final and permanent settlement.1
The speech of Daniel Webster in the Senate, March 7, 1850, in favor of the Compromise measures, was a surprise to the people of Massachusetts. It was in conflict with the principles they had uniformly maintained, as well as with his general course as the representative of the State.2 He was not, like Clay, the natural supporter of compromise.3 He had repeatedly affirmed his convictions against the extension of slavery and the increase of slave representation in Congress ; had asserted for himself precedence of others in the support of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso, and had even voted for its application to the territories acquired from Mexico, whose fate was again in question.4 He now announced that he should vote against the insertion of the prohibition in any bill or resolution providing a government for those territories. He defended this change of position by maintaining that Nature and physical geography had excluded slavery from them as much as from " Mars Hill or the side of the White Mountains ; " that the character of every foot of land owned by the nation, in regard to its being free or slave territory, had been fixed by an irrepealable law be- yond the action of the government ; and that therefore the prohibition in such a case would be only a taunt and reproach to the citizens of the Southern States, and the evidence of su- preme power exercised only to wound their pride. It was not right or patriotic, as he claimed, to insist on an unnecessary restriction which was obnoxious and disagreeable to the South, and regarded by its people as derogatory to their equality as members of the Union.5 He shut his eyes to the historical
1 April 5, 1852.
2 See Sumner's letter to John Bigelow, May 22, 1850, post, p. 215. Still, Webster's efforts in Massachusetts in 1846 and 1847 to prevent slavery becoming the main political issue, and his lukewarm censures of the Mexican War, as well as his "Creole" letter of an earlier period, had already weakened Sumner's confidence in him. Longfellow was hardly surprised at the speech of March 7. He wrote in his journal, March 9, 1850: " Yet what has there been in Webster's life to lead us to think that he would take any high moral ground on this slavery question V "
3 He wrote July 21, 1848: "You need not fear that I shall vote for any compromises, or do anything inconsistent with the past." Curtis's "Life of Webster,'' v 1. ii. p. 342.
* Lodge's "Life of Webster," pp. 292, 321; Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 241; G. T. Curtis's " Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 307, rf te.
5 Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 350-352, 381-385, 421; vol. vi. pp. 568-573. See con- trary doctrine as to the Northwestern territory, in his speech in the Senate Jan. 26, 1830, vol. iii. p. 278.
196 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
fact that slavery has existed under all physical conditions ; and that it was the duty of the national government, carrying out the policy of the Ordinance of 1787, not to weigh chances, but to exclude by positive law the possibility of its becoming an institution of new States.1 Not content with assumptions and with votes against the prohibition,2 he undertook to be- little it by arts of speech, by offensive and disparaging epi- thets. In his first public statement of his new position, and in later speeches and appeals to the public, he made light of it as " a mere abstraction," " a ghostly abstraction," " a naked possibility," "no matter of principle," and of "no real practical importance." 3 In this new direction he did not stop with the territorial question, but joined the Southern party on another measure, hitherto a subordinate subject among their grievances, and volunteered his support of Mason's fugitive-slave bill, "with all its provisions, to the fullest extent." 4 He intimated his pur- pose to offer some amendments which would qualify its harsh- ness, and later proposed one securing to the alleged fugitive a trial by jury ; but his speeches and letters of subsequent date make it clear that the bill unamended would have received his vote.5
He turned aside from the pending questions, — Clay's Com- promise measures, — and committed himself on a matter irrele- vant to the discussion, by affirming the obligation imposed by the resolutions of annexation to create four more slave States. out of Texas.6 He put himself in antagonism with President Taylor's plan of admitting California as a State independently, as she had a right to be admitted ; and he objected to her ad-
i The territorial legislature of New Mexico in 1859 established slavery. Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 500, note.
2 He voted, June 5, 1850, against applying the prohibition to Utah and New Mexico, when moved by Seward. Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 382, 383.
3 Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 421, 422, 423, 436; vol. ii. pp. 547, 562; Webster's Pri- vate Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 370; Curtis's " Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 438.
4 As the speech was first published, he pledged himself to support the bill with Butler's amendment; but in a revision the relative pronoun "which" was transferred so that he appeared to pledge himself to support it only as amended by himself. The transfer of the relative pronoun led to a controversy in the newspapers, —Boston "Courier," May 6, 1850, •'Advertiser," May 7; "Atlas," May 8 and 9; Moses Stuart's " Conscience and the. Con- stitution," p. 67.
5 In a letter, May 15, 1850 (Webster's Works, vol. vi. p. 557), he treated the State per- sonal liberty laws as "an insuperable difficulty " in the way of a jury trial. He uniformly defended the Fugitive Slave Act, and applauded Eliot's vote for it. Private Correspon- dence, vol. ii. pp. 387. 389.
6 Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 341, 350.
JEt. 39.] MR. WEBSTER. 197
mission unless she came with the Compromise on her back.1 He supported the Texas boundary bill, putting forth as his chief ground for yielding to the pretensions of that State that a collision with Texas troops in New Mexico would bring on civil war ; and he condemned the President's decision to enforce the laws and suppress the hostile demonstration of Texas by sending our troops to New Mexico.2 His method of dealing with armed rebellion in Texas was in contrast with his prompt action as Secretary of State in executing the Fugitive Slave law in Boston,3 and with his passionate charges of treason against the rescuers of negroes, unarmed and unorganized, act- ing from instinct of race or generous sentiments of human nature.4 In the Senate he paused in his argument to pay com- pliments to Calhoun, Mason, and the Nashville convention, — a body whose disunion purpose was already understood by men less intelligent than himself.5 His weighing of sectional griev- ances was in proportion and emphasis a judgment against the North.6
In the tone and spirit of what he said, even more than in the substantive propositions he maintained, he stood in conflict with his own past career and the sentiments of his State. He no longer as in earlier days held up slavery as a great moral, social, and political evil which had arrested the religious feeling of the community, and taken a strong hold on the consciences of men ; but in his review he contemplated its advance with a calmness more than judicial, even with indifference ; ' and he deprecated the part which Christian ministers and associations had taken in
i Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. pp. 473, 474. He voted April 11 against ex- cluding the admission of California from the Compromise, a week after he had expressed himself in debate as in favor of her admission independently. This vote, in which he stood alone among New England senators, prevented t fie exclusion of California from the Compromise, and delayed by some months her admission. Boston "Atlas," April 16, 1850.
2 Webster's Works, vol. ii. pp. 557, 562, 571, 572; Private Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 386, 387; Von Hoist, vol. iii. pp. 535-541; Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," pp. 315, 326.
3 Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 400.
4 Webster's Works, vol. ii. pp. 560, 577, 578. He spoke of the city of Syracuse as that "laboratory of abolitionism, libel, and treason." Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. p. 361.
5 Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 336, 337, 363. In a later speech he was obliged to admit the disunion character of the convention (vol. v. p. 429).
6 The remarks as to the imprisonment of Northern colored seamen in Southorn ports were inserted in the speech after it was delivered. Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 245.
7 Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 337-340.
198 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
the discussion.1 Of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, a scandal under the very shadow* of the Capitol, he had nothing to say, even in a comprehensive treatment of the whole contro- versy. He spoke of the Abolitionists as one might speak only of the enemies of human society.2 He passed the bounds of his accustomed moderation and indulged in bitterness and wrath whenever he referred to the opponents of the Fugitive Slave law, — not only when they obstructed its execution, but even when they confined themselves to an exposure of its enormity, and of its conflict with the maxims and safeguards of civil lib- erty. They were "votaries of isms," "a race of agitators," vic- tims of " a wandering and vagrant philanthropy ; " " shallow men, ignorant men, and factious men, — men whose only hope of making or of keeping themselves conspicuous is by incessant agitation, and the most reckless efforts to alarm and misguide the people ; " " subject to the frailty of desiring to become con- spicuous, or to the influence of a false sentimentality, or borne away by the puffs of a transcendental philosophy into an atmos- phere flickering between light and darkness ; " " carried away by abstract notions or metaphysical ideas," or by " that spirit of faction and disunion, that spirit of discord and of crimination and recrimination, that spirit that loves angry controversy, and loves it most especially when evils are imaginary and dangers unreal, which has been so actively employed in doing mis- chief." He denounced the autislavery agitation as " mad," " theoretic, fanatical, and fantastical," leading away " silly women and sillier men ; " and denounced also " the passionate appeals, the vehement and empty declamations, the wild and fanatical conduct of both men and women, which have so long and so much disgraced the Commonwealth and the country."
If patriotism had been his only inspiration, he would have met opposition with more sorrow and less anger. The rescue of Shadrach in Boston, — chiefly the work of fellow negroes, acting under impulses which, however unlawful, have always been deemed honorable, — he pronounced " a nefarious pro- ject" which ought to have been "crushed into the dust."3 He magnified and strained the law of treason after the manner
i Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 331, 332: vol. vi. p. 558, note.
2 Webster's Works, vol. ii. pp. 556, 562; vol. v. p. 357; vol. vi. pp. 556. 557, 560, 561, 562. 563, 577 ; Private Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 376; Curtis's "Life of Webster,'' vol. ii. p. 427.
3 Webster's Works, vol. vi. p. 589.
^Et. 39.] MR. WEBSTER. 199
of the worst judges in English history, — not limiting it to revolution and the overthrow of government, but extending it to forcible resistance to the execution of a single law, accom- panied with an avowed purpose of resistance in similar cases.1 He held his own State responsible for the exigency which jus- tified the new Fugitive Slave law, particularly the refusal of trial by jury to alleged fugitives, because of the passage of her per- sonal liberty law in 1843,2 — a statute seven years old, of which he had never before spoken a word in criticism, although, leav- ing the office of Secretary of State two months after its passage, he was for the next two years in the active practice of his pro- fession in a law office within three minutes' walk of the State House, and in daily association with the law-makers of the period.3
With a disingenuousness least to be expected of him, he con- fused in one mass, under the common epithet of "Abolitionists," two separate classes, — the small number of sectaries, largely non-voters, who disowned the limitations of the Constitution, and the considerable political party which accepted its obliga- tions ; and this while speaking in presence of two senators then representing that party, Hale and Chase, — the latter second only to himself as a lawyer and statesman, and destined to the highest judicial office in the nation.4
The love of liberty traditional with the people of the State, and often lauded by himself, he now derided as "fanaticism," — "a local prejudice" which it was the duty of good citizens "to conquer." 5 Instead of treating, as one with his view of the Con- stitution might have done, the restoration of fugitive slaves — in- volving the separation of families, life-long bondage and cruelty — as a painful duty to be performed with the utmost care and ten- derness, he set aside the moral and humane aspects of a question which in other days had pressed vividly on his mind, and had
i Webster's Works, vol. ii. pp. 560, 577, 578; vol, vi. p. 589.
2 Webster's Works, vol. vi. p. 557; Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. pp. 426, 427.
3 The State law was in strict accord with the Constitution, as it only prohibited the use of the jails and the assistance of State officers in the rendition of fugitive slaves.
4 In the " Emancipator and Republican," June 27, 1850, Henry Wilson gave a full account of interviews with Webster from 1845 to 1848, in which he showed a favorable dis- position towards the antislavery or Free Soil movement.
5 Webster's Works, vol v. p. 432; Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. p 438. The writer was present when Webster spoke from a carriage in front of the Revere House on the afternoon of April 29, 1850. Choate was by his side, and B. R. Curtis addressed him from a temporary platform. His face was never darker and sterner than when he said interrogatively, "Massachusetts must conquer her prejudices."
200 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
nothing to say of the inhumanity and barbarity of the transac- tion, while for the master's claim to the slave's person and ser- vice he was earnest and strenuous. He spoke with a sneer of the humane sentiments of his State ; of the interest, as if it were no matter of her concern, which Massachusetts took in the seiz- ure of negroes in Pennsylvania ; and insisted that the actual evil of such reclamations had been exaggerated, inasmuch as no negro had been taken under process of law from Massa- chusetts for a generation ; but when they followed quickly on the passage of the new law, he had no word of surprise or re- gret, and was indignant at the protests and obstructions they encountered.1 All the while he was petting and soothing the violent and aggressive partisans of slavery.
He was most unlike his former self — for he was by nature and early habit inclined to religious thought — when, with an air of lofty contempt, he assailed the belief that human laws are to be tested, and their obligations finally determined, by the su- preme moral law.2 Here, as on other points, there was a bitter- ness and even coarseness in his language altogether uncongenial with the repose which was his when he spoke with the conscious- ness of a good cause, and was moving in the line of the prin- ciples and traditions of his State.3
From 1813, when Mr. Webster entered Congress, he had not until now censured the free discussion of American slavery. The opponents, moral or political, of the institution, — -"Aboli- tionists," as he called them, — had for twenty years been en- deavoring, in every form of agitation, to array public sentiment against it, all without complaint from him. He now broke the silence for the first time. If their work were the portentous wrong he described it, destructive to the peace and perpetuity of
i "Webster's Works, vol. v. pp. 433, 434; vol. vi. pp. 559. 560, 561. "Massachusetts grows fervid over Pennsylvania wrongs ; while Pennsylvania herself is not excited by any sense of such wrongs, and complains of no injustice."
2 Webster's Works, vol. ii. p. 582; vol. vi. p. 578. He said at Capon Springs, Va., June, 1850 (Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 516): "And when nothing else will answer, they invoke religion and speak of a higher law. Gentlemen, this North Mountain is high; the Blue Ridge higher still; the Alleghany higher than either; and yet this higher law ranges farther than an eagle's flight above the highest peaks of the Alleghany [laughter]. No common vision can discern it; no conscience not transcendental and ec- static can feel it; the hearing of common men never listens to its high behests."
3 Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 433; vol. vi. p. 572. "No drum-head in the longest dav's march was ever more incessantly beaten and smitten than public sentiment in the North has been, every month and day and hour, by the din and roll and rub-a-dub of Abo- lition writers and Abolition lecturers."
JEt.39.] MR. WEBSTER. 201
the nation, surely this defender of the Constitution and the Union should have seen the danger ahead and forewarned his country- men. And not only this, but so far did he go in the Southern direction, — forgetting all he had said in behalf of a Union and government one and indivisible, — that in his speech at Capon Springs, Va., he dallied with the doctrine of secession, and dis- charged the South from "the compact" if the North deliberately disregarded the obligation to surrender fugitive slaves, using laimuao-e not unlike that of the secession orators of 1860 and 1861.1 On the death of President Taylor, he did not conceal from his friends his satisfaction that the government had passed into safer hands, into those of President Fillmore, who would give to the Compromise policy that thorough support which his predecessor had not given.2 His personal feelings carried him so far, that, as Secretary of State under Fillmore, he withdrew the patronage of his department — the publication of the laAvs of Congress — from Whig journals opposed to the Compromise measures, and transferred it to others (sometimes religious weeklies) which supported them.3
The motives of Mr. Webster, whether those of personal ambi- tion or of patriotism, or however these may have been combined, need not be considered in a statement which is intended, so far as it concerns him, only to illustrate the state of affairs in Massa- chusetts at this time.4 He was called to the Cabinet of President Fillmore in July, and continued till his death, in 1852, to use his personal influence and official power in the direction of his " Seventh of March " speech. That speech carried the Com- promise measures, but it made also a political revolution in Massachusetts. If Webster had spoken as he had hitherto al- ways spoken, if he had spoken as Seward and Chase spoke later in the same month, he would have remained in the Senate ; or
1 Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. pp. 517-520. Everett omitted this speech from his edition of Webster's Works.
2 Private Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 376, 377, 386, 387, 395. "And if he [General Taylor] had lived, it might have been doubtful whether any general settlement would have been made." He wrote, two days after Taylor's death, "There is no doubt that recent events have increased the probability of the passage of that measure" [the Com- promise]. Curtis's "Life," vol. ii. p. 464, note.
3 Boston Courier, April 5, 1851. Atlas, April 4.
4 Contemporary writers suggest that a disposition to obstruct President Taylor had something to do with the course of Clay as well as of Webster. (J. S. Pike, in "Courier," April 10, 1850.) The judgment of history is not likely to relieve Webster of the imputa- tion that a desire to become President was a leading cause of his change of course. Vou Hoist, vol. iv. p. 140.
202 .MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850.
if he had by choice passed from it, he would have been suc- ceeded by Winthrop. That speech, and what he said and did afterwards in the same line, called Sumner, a fen- months later, into public life, which otherwise he might never have entered.
Webster, and the other Northern supporters of the Compro- mise in Congress or among the people, put in the foreground its necessity as the only means of saving the Union and avoiding civil war. " The Union and the Constitution " became their watchword.1 In that name Compromise Democrats and Com- promise Whigs, uniting together, determined to rally the national sentiment against the antislavery movement, and for four years, save under peculiar conditions, they had their way. An appeal was also made to a more sordid sentiment, and Northern capi- talists were assured by Webster and other supporters of the Compromise that a revision of the tariff in their interest could be obtained only by concession to Southern demands.2
This review of Webster's course on slavery in 1850-1852, which has been generally left in the background by his eulo- gists, has been no welcome task ; but it is essential to an under- standing of the political revolution which was at hand. Those who have come to manly life since 1852 cannot without it com- prehend the profound indignation which the antislavery leaders and masses in Massachusetts felt towards him from March 7, 1850, till his death. His offence was not that one speech alone, of evil import as it was ; but it was the speech as developed and interpreted by the successive letters and addresses which fol- lowed it.
The Compromise proved to be only a temporary makeshift. Hardly three years had passed when the power — always grasp- ins: and never satisfied — which had wrested it from a timorous and yielding North was demanding new guaranties and a fur- ther extension, even by the breach of an old compact. Happily for the two architects, Clay and Webster, they were not then
1 Von Hoist, vol. v. p. 119, calls "the stereotyped formula of fidelity to the Union the broad, grand cloak under which political and moral cowardice in respect to the slavery question could so well conceal itself. . . . Devotion to the Union had for more than a generation been the official term to express subserviency to slavery."
2 Horace Mann's Life, pp. 331, 332, 335, 337. Webster's Private Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 366, 370, 388, 390, 391 ; Webster's Works, vol. vi. p. 547. Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 505. The paper drawn by Eliot and signed by Boston merchants in support of the Compromise before it was passed put forward "the beneficent legislation" which would follow it. Boston "Courier," June 12, 1850. Palfrey's "Five Years' Progress of the Slave Power" treats of the alliance of that power with "the Northern money-power" through trade and political equivalents.
JEt.39.] MR. WEBSTER. 203
living to see how vain had been their promises of peace and conciliation. The most that can now be said for their work is that it postponed the armed conflict between freedom and slavery, and allowed an interval in which the free States gained in material strength beyond any corresponding advance in the slave States. This was not indeed the wisdom of the period itself, but an afterthought of a generation later. The makers of the Compromise professed to be seeking, not a truce, but a final pacification. But whether their scheme proved to have even this incidental advantage, not claimed or foreseen by them, must always remain a matter of pure speculation. If the loyal people were in numbers and resources relatively stronger in 1860 than in 1850, on the other hand the pro-slavery party had during the intervening decade, under the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan, used diligently its opportunity to spread the^ virus of disunion, solidify opinion, concert action, corrupt officers of the army and navy, and dispose the materials of war in a way to give the insurrection the advantage at its begin- ning. The South was united and prepared in 1860 as it was not in 1850, and the government was at the outset in the means of resistance weaker at the later than at the earlier period.
204 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
CHAPTER XXXV.
MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. — SUMNEK CHOSEN
SENATOR. — 1850-1851.
MR. WEBSTER'S speech of March 7 was received by Northern members of Congress with general disap- proval,1 and by the people of Massachusetts with surprise and indignation.2 The Whig press of New England, with rare ex- ceptions, condemned his " unexpected movement ; " 3 and at first only one Whig newspaper4 in Massachusetts, outside of Boston, cordially approved it. If a direct popular vote could have been taken on the Fugitive Slave bill, or on the Com- promise as a whole, it is safe to say that nine tenths, per- haps nineteen twentieths, of his Whig constituents, excluding those resident or doing business in Boston, would have rejected it.5
The mercantile and manufacturing interests were the first in the free States to acquiesce in the Compromise, and from ac- quiescence they soon passed to open and aggressive support.6 The South, and not the West as now, was the principal pur- chaser of Northern products ; and the threat was common with slaveholders and compromisers in both sections that a with- drawal of Southern custom was the sure penalty of further
i Boston Atlas, March 9, 13, 14, 1850; Courier, March 11.
2 His biographer, G. T. Curtis, admits this adverse opinion, vol. ii. p. 410.
3 The rumor, which anticipated the speech in the last days of February, was not cred- ited. (Boston " Atlas," March 1.) The Southern leaders had been advised of the tenor of the speech two weeks before it was delivered. (A. H. Stephens's "Life," by Johnston and Browne, p. 250.) Webster, as early as January 21, admitted Clay to a confidence as to his purpose which he withheld from his own people. G. T. Curtis's " Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 397.
4 The Newburyport Herald.
5 The Boston " Atlas," March 16, June 17, stated the number of New England news- papers approving the speech as six against seventy disapproving it. The religious press in New England with one accord condemned it.
6 Von Hoist, vol. iii. pp. 505, 515, 556, 557. Theodore Parker, in a sermon on the Nebraska bill, Feb. 12, 1854 (Works, vol. v. pp. 266, 267), described the Whigs as " the mone}' party."
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 205
agitation against slavery. Capitalists were made to believe that the only hope of restoring the higher duties which had been reduced by the tariff of 1846 lay in submission to slave- holding demands. There were, indeed, honest fears with con- servative minds of what the South might do in its madness ; but material considerations inspired largely the harangues which insisted that the Compromise was essential to national peace and the Union. The mercantile and manufacturing in- terests, stronger in Boston than elsewhere in the State, with banking houses in State Street, counting-rooms in Milk Street, homes in Beacon Street or near by, and factories in Lowell, rallied promptly to Webster's support, bringing with them well- established journals of the city, and capitalists and politicians in all parts of the State, who from social or financial connections naturally followed the lead of those interests. Webster's per- sonal magnetism, the authority of his name, pride in his career, the habit of deference to all he said, was a potent influence with many generous minds, swaying them against their natural in- stincts and their better sense.1 The Compromise was promptly approved in a public letter to him, signed by several hundreds of the most conspicuous citizens,2 — among them merchants like Eliot, Perkins, Fearing, Appleton, Haven, Amory, Sturgis, Thayer, and Hooper ; lawyers like Choate, Lunt, B. R. Curtis, and G. T. Curtis ; physicians like Jackson and Bigelow ; schol- ars like Ticknor, Everett, Prescott, Sparks, Holmes, and Felton ; divines like Moses Stuart and Leonard Woods. Its passage was signalized by the firing of one hundred guns on the Common.
Webster's partisans, such was their intensity of feeling, very soon obtained the mastery of the Whig organization of the city, and compelled dissenters to submit to the nominations they dic- tated. The proprietors of the " Atlas " opposed the Compro- mise while it was pending, but maintained disingenuously that the Whigs were not responsible for it, and that they were the true antislavery party. This journal had a following in the
1 Dana wrote in his diary, June 25, 1854, after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise: " The change in public sentiment on the slave question is very great. . . . The truth is, Daniel Webster was strong enough to subjugate for a time the moral sentiment of New England. He was defeated, killed, and now is detected. He deceived half the North, but they are undeceived. He does not stand as he did six months ago." Adams's " Biog- raphy " of Dana, p. 286.
2 Boston "Courier," April 3, 1850; Boston "Advertiser," April 3. The last-named newspaper, by a slip of the pen, called the signers Mr. Webster's " retainers."
206 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
country towns, but its influence in Boston was limited, and it was hesitating and timid.1 The leading commercial journal of the city was the " Daily Advertiser." During the agitation of the slavery question it had shown indifference to the growth of the slave-power, and had even denied the existence of such a power. It apologized for the mobs which assailed the Abolition- ists, and sneered at the agitation against slavery as " clamor " and a " quixotism in behalf of human rights." - It approved the Compromise when offered by Clay, and during 1850 and 1851 defended it in elaborate articles, urging pertinaciously the duty of good citizens to aid in executing the Fugitive Slave law. It went so far in the Southern direction as to object to the ad- mission of California independently, desiring to have her kept back in order to make one of the conditions of Clay's scheme of pacification. It objected to the retention of Taylor's Cabinet by Fillmore, because, Southern as it was, it was an anti-Compromise Cabinet.3 It threatened the withdrawal of Whig support from public men who persevered in opposing the Compromise, and in insisting on the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law, — singling out Mann, Fowler, and Scudder, then Whig members of Congress. It viewed with composure and indifference every advance of slavery, and treated the barbarities of the slave system, and the seizure of alleged slaves at the North, without the sugges- tion of any sympathy for the victim, and with a calmness and method which amaze the reader who now turns its pages. The " Courier," anonymously edited since Buckingham's retirement two years before, opposed the Compromise up to the day of Webster's speech. It denied the existence of Southern griev- ances, and the expediency of yielding to Southern clamor;4 and its tone was manly and spirited. But immediately after the speech it took a reverse direction, and without any explanation came to Webster's support. From that time it was bitter, even malignant, in its treatment of all who dissented from Web- ster. Its leaders were mostly written by George S. Hillard and George Lunt. These two journals teemed with elaborate de-
1 Its article, "Sound the Alarm," April 15, 1850, condemning the Compromise, and hinting that it originated in "ambitious schemes for the succession" to the Presidency, was often referred to. It condemned the Fugitive Slave law, September 14 and 16 ; it now treated with respect the Free Soil leaders whom it had maligned in 1848. Horace Mann's "Letters " in reply to Webster appeared in its columns May 6, June 10.
2 Oct. 21, 23, 1850.
3 July 15, lfi, and 17, 1850.
* February 1, 8, 18, 23, 27; March 7.
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 207
fences of the Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act from Edward G. Loring, G. T. and B. R. Curtis.1
The demoralization was not confined to politics and the sec- ular professions. George W. Blagden, Nehemiah Adams, and William M. Rogers, from Congregationalist (Trinitarian) pulpits, delivered sermons in favor of the Compromise and the Fugitive Slave law.2 Moses Stuart, the Andover theologian, defended slavery from the Bible in learned exegesis. Culture was often dissociated from humanity. The professors at Cambridge were indeed divided ; 3 but the activity there was on Webster's side. Felton was his partisan. Bowen, in the " North American Review," espoused his cause, and supported the Compromise. Theophilus Parsons and Joel Parker, the professors at the Law School, read lectures in defence of the Fugitive Slave law.4 Choate disregarded the proprieties of its anniversary meeting by an oration which was a plea for the Compromise and the surrender of fugitive slaves. The undergraduates, catching the spirit of the place, disturbed anti-Compromise meetings in Cam- bridge during addresses from Horace Mann and Ralph Waldo Emerson.5
While the Compromise was pending Winthrop was appointed senator in place of Webster, who on President Taylor's death took office as Secretary of State in Fillmore's Cabinet. The Web- ster Whigs carried in August with feeble dissent the nomination of Samuel A. Eliot as Winthrop's successor. The choice was made on the avowed ground of his earnestness in behalf of the Compromise. He was supported by the Whigs in a body, and received five times as many votes as Sumner, the Free Soil can-
1 Two other leaders of the bar, conservative in position, gave the weight of their names against the law, — Charles G. Loring and Franklin Dexter; the former as eoun-el in the Sims' Case, and the latter by papers contributed to the "Atlas," October 29 and Novem- ber 23, each maintaining that it was unconstitutional. There was even pressure brought to bear against Mr. Loring for his serving as counsel for a fugitive slave, to which he re- fers in a note to Sumner, April 24, 1851: " It is among the most humiliating indications of the times that the merely faithful discharge of a plain professional duty is made the subject of regret and reproach by the intellectual and intelligent, as well as by those who might not be expected to know better, thinking or feeling only as they are told to do."
2 Rev. Orville Dewey, at Pittsfield, defended the Compromise; but his position was exceptional among the Unitarians.
3 Dr. Convers Francis and Longfellow were anti-Compromise. Longfellow's " Life," vol. ii. p. 192.
4 The writer was a student of the school at the time, and sat restlessly during these lectures.
6 Longfellow's "Life," vol. ii. p. 194; diary, May 14, 1851. The writer was present at both meetings.
208 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
didate.1 Webster, who had complained of want of support in the Massachusetts delegation, welcomed the new member as " the personation of Boston, — ever intelligent, ever patriotic, ever glorious Boston." 2 Eliot did not disappoint those who had promoted his election. Though a few months before he had voted for antislavery resolves in the State Legislature, he voted in Congress for the Fugitive Slave law and all the Com- promise measures ; and in the autumn published a letter de- fending his course at length.3 As he declined a re-election, William Appleton, known to have the same views, was nomi- nated in the autumn to succeed him, over George T. Bigclow, the candidate of the " Atlas " Whigs ; and Mr. Appleton, both in caucus and in the House, proved as faithful to the Compro- mise as his predecessor.
Whigs of all shades, with very rare exceptions, abstained from public demonstrations against the Compromise. In the autumn of 1850 a large meeting was held in Faneuil Hall to protect per- sons claimed as fugitive slaves. C. F. Adams presided ; Rev. Dr. Lowell offered a prayer ; R. H. Dana, Jr., read resolutions ; the venerable Josiah Quincy, sent a letter, giving the authority of his name to the cause ; Frederick Douglass pleaded for his race ; and a committee of vigilance was appointed ; but Boston Whigs were conspicuous by their absence.
The Webster Whigs undertook to exclude from public life all who continued their protests against the Compromise. They were unable to reach Fowler and Scudder, whose districts were remote from Boston ; but they defeated Mann's renomination in a district contiguous to the city. With the support of the Free Soilers, and of Whig friends led by George R. Russell, he was re-elected. In Boston, as in other commercial centres, the effort was made in imposing demonstrations to suppress agitation for the repeal of the Compromise. The meeting at Faneuil Hall4
1 The "Emancipator and Republican," August 15, contains Sumner's letter accepting the Free Soil renomination; also a leader commending him, which was written by E L. Pierce.
2 Private Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 385, 387-389.
3 Advertiser, October 29. It was reviewed in a pamphlet by William Jay, under the name of " Hancock."
4 November 26. The call was signed by some thousands of names, largely those of mer- chants and tradesmen. It bore also the signatures of Webster and Everett, and of the his- torians Motley and Parkman. A similar meeting at Castle Garden, New York, October 30, was addressed by the leaders of the bar of that city, —Wood, O'Conor, Hoffman, Brady, and Evarts. As to Evarts's support of the Fugitive Slave law, see Adams's " Biography " of Dana, p. 176.
Mt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 209
was addressed by B. R. Curtis and Choate ; and the Compromise measures, with no sign of compunction at the atrocious features of the Fugitive Slave law, were ratified with the demand that agitation against them must cease.
Webster's followers joined heartily in the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. G. T. Curtis sat as commissioner to hear cases under it. B. R. Curtis aided with his legal opinion. George Lunt, district attorney, was always ready to assist. The mayor, John P. Bigelow, and the aldermen, by formal vote, volunteered the co-operation of the city police. J. H. Pierson,1 a prominent ship-master, offered his vessel to carry back a fugi- tive. The capital, the society, the culture and intellect of the city took part, with no apparent regret or sense of shame, but with alacrity, in a service which in other days would have been shunned as unworthy of humane and Christian men.
The social pressure brought to bear in Boston on antislavery leaders has already been described ; and it now bore more hea- vily than before. It could not well reach Adams, whose posi- tion was fortified by family name, wealth, and marriage ; but it was directed with greater bitterness than ever against Sumner, Palfrey, and Dana. The intolerance now went further, and aimed at depriving these men of the means of livelihood ; and it was especially directed against Dana. He was an intellect- ual and highly cultivated person, bearing a name honored in several generations, but honored by no progenitor so much as by himself. He would have commanded respect in any parlia- mentary body, or in any English or American court as lawyer or judge. His large family was dependent for support on his professional income ; and his specialty, maritime law, drew to him mercantile clients. He was by instinct and training a conservative, in politics a Whig till 1848, and in religious con- nection a churchman and a ritualist. There was no taint of radicalism in his character. It was not till 1850, in the heat of the Webster controversy, that he was subjected to social discrim- ination. Offence was then taken not only at his general course, but at a remark he made in a speech at Worcester, that " there
1 Ante, p. 132. Pierson in May, 1852, returned without opening an envelope addressed to him with Sumner's frank, writing on it that it was returned as coming from one who had obtained place " by bargain and intrigue of corrupt coalition." He thought it immoral for Free Soilers and Democrats to combine, but altogether right and honorable to return human beings to bondage. The document enclosed was of mercantile interest, being Sew- ard's speech in favor of national aid to the Collins line of steamships. VOL. III. 14
210 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
was not moral power enough in Boston to execute the laws of the Commonwealth when they conflicted with the interests of the slave-power." 1 The two leading journals of the city showed the temper which pervaded its society and capital. The " Ad- vertiser " printed with implied sanction a communication which could bear no other construction than the suggestion to mer- chants to withdraw their patronage from Dana ; 2 and shortly after it admitted another article in favor of withdrawing con- fidence and business from men like Sumner, Mann, and Dana.3 The " Courier," in an elaborate and bitter leader, called for the exclusion of Dana, Dr. Howe, and Theodore Parker from society and patronage.4 Bryant, in the New York " Evening Post," denounced these assaults as " an infamous attempt at coercion," and " the shameless avowal of a spirit both tyrannical and mer- cenary, . . . making political principles a matter of bargain and sale."
Horace Mann, in two " Letters," May 3 and June 6 (" Notes," July 8) subjected Webster's speech of March 7, and his New- buryport and Kennebec letters, to a trenchant criticism, ex- hibiting his inconsistency, and following him closely in his misstatements. Mann's argument was one of great ability, but impaired in its effect by intensives and personalities. Sum- ner read the proofs in connection with Dr. Howe, and made some changes, as well as supplied several points and authori- ties. During the summer his correspondence with Mann was constant. The controversy between the Webster and ant i- Web- ster men became exceedingly bitter. Webster's Latinity — his comparison of Mann to the " captatores verborum," a "set of small but rapacious critics in classical times" — was called in question on the ground that the phrase, at least in the sense
1 Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 187, 192.
2 May 10, 1851, signed "E." See article March 22, suggesting to Southern men not to trade with Lynn manufacturers " who are concerned in the warfare against the Union."
3 June 2, signed " Son of a Merchant." Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. p. 198.
4 June 9. The "Courier," April 24, stated an incident, without disapproval, where a person refused to buy at a shop on hearing the tradesman rejoice at Sumner's election as senator. See references to the "Advertiser's" and "Courier's" articles in Palfrey's "Five Years' Progress of the Slave Power." In the Constitutional Convention, June 23, 1853, Hillard upbraided Dana for "striking at the hand that feeds us," which provoked the latter's reply: "The hand that feeds us! The hand that feeds us! Sir, no hand feeds me that has any right to control my opinions." This passage between Hillard and Dana was often referred to at the time. Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 237, 238.
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 211
applied to it by Webster, had no classical authority. This brought Professor Felton into the controversy, who defended Webster at length, and drew an opposite view from Professor Beck. Sumner took Mann's part in some newspaper articles, but avoided an issue with Felton.1
Sumner wrote to Lord Morpeth, Jan. 8, 1850 : —
" The slavery question has become paramount here at last. The slave States threaten to dissolve the Union if slavery is prohibited by Congress in the new Territories or abolished in the District of Columbia. I trust that Con- gress will do its duty, regardless of threats. What the result may be it is impossible to determine. The Canadian question promises to help antislavery. The annexation of that colony to the United States would ' redress the bal- ance' which has been turned in favor of slavery by the annexation of Texas. I do not observe, however, any disposition at present to interfere in the ques- tion between that colony and the*imperial government. 1 am anxious that It should be left to the parties without any intervention. I shall enclose this in a note to a friend now in London, — Mr. Burlingame.2 Though young iu years, he has won a brilliant reputation as a public speaker."
To George Sumner, January 8 : —
" You will see by the papers the doings at Washington. The contest on the Speakership is showing its good influence already.3 The slave-power has received its first serious check, and all parties see that the slavery question is soon to be paramount to all others. . . . General Cass's motion in the Sen- ate 4 will probably be defeated ; it would certainly be a dangerous precedent. Nevertheless, I am so sincerely displeased by the conduct of Austria, I should be willing to see our country depart from its general course of international usage iu order to testify its condemnation of what has occurred. But, alas ! while we have slavery our voice is powerless. Every word for freedom exposes the horrid inconsistency of our position. The slavery discussion will follow that of the Austrian mission. . . . Iu the Senate I predict great weight for my friend, the new senator from Ohio, Mr. Chase. He is a man of decided ability, and I think will trouble Calhoun on the slavery question more than
1 Boston "Transcript" July 29 and Aug. 2, 1850, each signed "Boston Latin School." "Sigma' (Epes Sargent) replied to them. Sumner replied under the signature of "X" in the " Christian Register," Julv 13 and Aug. 3, 1850, to a writer in the same newspaper, June 29 and July 27, signing " R," and supposed by Sumner to be Ticknor. The point of controversy in the "Register" was as to Webs'er's and Mann's statements of the require- ment of a trial by jury under the Constitution in the ca«e of persons claimed as slaves. Two visible mementos of the controversy concerning Webster remain in the statues of Webster and Mann placed in front of the State House in Boston by their respective partisans.
2 Anson Burlingame.
3 Howell Cobb of Georgia and Winthrop being the Democratic and Whig candidates. Ante, p. 148.
4 Looking to a suspension of diplomatic relations with Austria, on account of her treat- ment of Hungary.
212 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
any others. He is in earnest, is a learned and well-trained lawyer, and is a grave, emphatic, and powerful speaker." l
To Longfellow, January 24 : —
"Dear Henry, — Whittier is here on a short visit. I go to-night with Miss Bremer to hear Wendell Phillips, and to-morrow evening dine out, or I should insist upon taking him [Whittier] to you. He is staying at the Quiney Hotel, in Brattle Street.
"I regret the sentiments of John Van Buren about mobs, hut rejoice that he is right on slavery. I do not know that I should differ very much from him in saying that we have more to fear from the corruption of wealth than from mobs. Edmund Dwight once gave, within my knowledge, two thousand dollars to influence a single election. Other men whom we know very well are reputed to have given much larger sums. It is in this way, in part, that the natural autislavery sentiment of Massachusetts has been kept down ; it is money, money, money, that keeps Palfrey from being elected. Knowing these things, it was natural that John Van Buren should say that we had more to fear from wealth than from mobs. He is a politician, — not a philan- thropist or moralist, but a politician, like Clay, Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence ; and he has this advantage, that he has dedicated his rare powers to the cause of human freedom. In this I would welcome any person from any quarter."
To George Sumner, February 18 : —
" You will read the proceedings at Washington. The bluster of the South is, I think, subsiding, though as usual the North is frightened, and promises to give way. I hope to God they will stand firm. There is a small body at Washington who will not yield, — the Free Soilers. Hale sustains him- self with great address and ability, but Chase is a person of a higher order of capacity. As to Webster, — Emerson calls him ' a dead elephant ! ' "
To William Jay, February 19 : —
" I have just read your admirable letter on Clay's resolutions [of compro- mise].2 You have done a good work. . . . There is a great advantage which our cause now possesses in the full reports of autislavery speeches in Congress, which are made by the Washington papers. At last we can reach the coun- try, and the slaveholders themselves. The Senate chamber is a mighty pulpit from which the truth can be preached. I think that Mr. Hale and Mr. Chase should in the course of the session present a complete review of slavery, using freely all the materials afforded by the various writings on the subject. In this way, through the ' Globe,' ' Union,' and ' Intelligencer,' a knowledge of our cause may be widely diffused. But we need more men there ; we can- not expect everything from two only. We are about to be betrayed by our political leaders. Cannot the people be aroused to earnest, generous action for freedom ? I remember with pleasure my visit to your country home, and hope not to be forgotten by your kind family, to whom I offer my best regards."
1 Mr. Chase spoke against Clay's Compromise, March 26 and 27, 1850, making the most thorough and spirited speech on that side.
2 New York " Evening Post," Feb. 20, 1850.
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 213
Again, March 18 : —
" In this moment of discomfiture I turn to you. I am sick at heart as I think of the treason of our public men. Freedom is forgotten in the miserable competition of party and in the schemes of an ignorant ambition. Webster has placed himself in the dark list of apostates. He reminds me very much of Strafford, or of the archangel ruined.- In other moods, I might call him Judas Tscariot, or Benedict Arnold. John Quincy Adams, as he lay in his bed in Boston after he was struck with that paralysis which closed his days at Washington, expressed to me a longing to make one more speech in Con- gress in order to give his final opinions on slavery, and particularly (I now give his own words) ' to expose the great fallacy of Mr. Daniel Webster, who is perpetually talking about the Constitution, while he is indifferent to free- dom and those great interests which the Constitution was established to pre- serve.' Alas ! that speech was never made. But the work ought to be done. Blow seems to follow blow. There was Clay's barbarous effort, then Win- throp's malignant attack,1 and now comes Webster's elaborate treason. What shall we do % But I have unbounded faith in God and in the future. I know we shall succeed. But what shall we do ? "
To George Sumner, March 18 : —
"You have doubtless read Webster's speech. To me it seems a heartless apostasy ; its whole tone is low and bad, while its main points are untenable and unsound. I have been glad to observe the moral indignation which has been aroused against it. The merchants of Boston subscribe to it, — it is their wont to do such things ; but Governor Briggs expressed himself against it in conversation with me, as warmly as I do, and said that the people of Massa- chusetts would not sanction it. David Henshaw says it is the cunningest and best bid for the Presidency that Webster has ever made. I should not be astonished if he were Secretary of State within a short time. No man can tell how this contest is to terminate. It is clear that there is to be a good deal of speaking before any important votes. I anticipate much from my friend Chase in the Senate. He is an able lawyer, and of admirable abilities otherwise."
To William Jay, March 23 : —
" I thank you very much for writing that letter on Mr. Webster's speech. It will be read extensively, and will do great good. You expose his incon- sistency and turpitude in a manner that must sink into the souls of all who read what you have written. It must sink into the soul of the great apos- tate. Horace Mann writes that all the Northern Whigs out of the three great cities are against the speech, and will speak against it."
Again, April 9 : —
"Your letter to the ' Advertiser' appeared in that paper last Saturday, the 6th.2 The paper is sometimes known as 'the respectable,' affecting as it does
1 Speech in the House, Feb. 21, 1850.
2 In reply to the Boston "Advertiser's" criticisms on Jay's previous paper on Webster.
214 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
the respectability of Boston. ... I am glad to perceive that there is a real hearty difference among the Whigs here with regard to Mr. Webster. The Governor and a large number of prominent gentlemen — some of them in Boston, but more in the country — are earnest against his speech, and in private express their opinions.1 That long list of names attached to the letter to Mr. Webster shows some remarkable absences, particularly noticeable by all familiar with Massachusetts politics. Our Supreme Court gave judgment yesterday in the colored school case against my argument made last Novem- ber. I lament this very much. Is everything going against us?"
To George Sumner, April 15 : —
"It is evident that there will be a new Cabinet soon. I have for several weeks thought that Webster would be Secretary of State, but I have some reason now to doubt whether Taylor would take him. He wishes to get out of the Senate, and I think desires to be Secretary. He can hardly dare con- front the people of Massachusetts at the next election, as he must do if he is a candidate for re-election. The disaffection towards him among leading Whigs of the North, particularly of Massachusetts, is very strong. To me his present position seems deplorable. With all his majestic powers, he is a traitor to a holy cause. Franklin Dexter says strongly that he has delib- erately committed a crime."
To John Jay, May 13 : —
" I am sick at heart when I observe the apostasies to freedom. There is one thing needful in our public men, — backbone.2 In this is comprised that moral firmness, without which they yield to the pressure of interests of party, of fashion, of public opinion. ... In reading the life of Wilberforce, I was pleased to follow the references to your grandfather, who seems to have seen much of the great abolitionist."
To Lord Morpeth, May 21 : —
"The same steamer that takes this note will carry our friend Prescott to see and enjoy English life. In long gossips together, recently, we have talked much of you, on whose friendship he counts. . . . Our politics are full of vile- ness. The question of opposing the extension of slavery into territories now free should have united all the North, and I would say the South, too. But one politician after another has given way to slaveholding urgency, until at last Daniel Webster gave way. His intellect is mighty, but ' unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.' His excuse for waiving a prohibition of slavery in the new territories is that by a law of ' physical geography,' of 'the forma- tion of the earth,' slavery cannot go there, — thus arguing blindly from physi- cal premises to moral conclusions. In his recent course he shows the same obliquity, amounting to incapacity for moral distinctions, which led him to tell
1 Governor Briggs was without courage, and took no public position against Webster.
2 See emphatic repetition of this term in the speech of Nov. 6, 1850. Works, vol. ii. p. 422.
jEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 215
me, two or three years ago, that on deliberately reviewing his correspondence with Lord Ashburton, among all those documents he was best satisfied with the Creole letter.1 I wanted to tell him, ' That letter, dying, you will wish to blot.' »
To John Bigelow, of the New York " Evening Post," May 22 :
" Only a week ago, in overhauling old pamphlets, — a part of my patri- mony, — I found the actual memorial to Congress 2 reported by the committee of which Mr. Webster was chairman, and I determined to send it to you, on reading your article this morning. I have also examined the files of Boston papers at the Athenaeum, and enclose a memorandum from them which may be interesting. The memorial is reputed to be the work of Mr. Webster. The close is marked by his clear and cogent statement. Why it was not preserved in the collection of his ' Opera,' which was first published ten or fifteen years later, I know not. Perhaps he had already seen that he might be obliged, in the pursuit of his ambition, to tread some steps backward, and did not wish to have a document like this, accessible to all, in perpetual memory of his early professions. If you follow him up on this point, read iu this connection the latter part of his Plymouth address, the earliest of his orations in the pub- lished volume. At this time he seemed to have high purposes. I wonder that the noble passage about the Ordinance, in his first speech in the Hayne controversy, has not been used against his present tergiversation. There is another document which might be used effectively against him, — the address of the Massachusetts Anti-Texas State convention in January, 1845, the first half of which was actually composed by Mr. Webster, partly written and partly dictated. In this he takes the strongest ground against the constitutionality of the resolutions of annexation. Then followed his speech, Dec. 22, 1845, in the Senate, against the admission of Texas with a slaveholding constitution. If the faith of the country was pledged, as he now says it was, by these reso- lutions when they were accepted by Texas, he was obliged, according to his present argument about the four States, to vote for her admission with or with- out slavery; but his vote stands nay. But it would be a long work to expose his shiftless course, — ' everything by starts, and nothing long.' Mr. Leavitt, of the ' Independent,' talks of taking him in hand, and exposing the double dealings of his life. I wish he might do it through the ' Post.' When you have done with the pamphlet, please return it. Of the committee who re- ported it were George Blake, now dead, who was a leading Republican ; Josiah Quiucy, Federalist, late President of Harvard College ; James T. Austin, Repub- lican, late Attorney-General of Massachusetts ; and John Gallison, a lawyer, who died soon after, but of whom there are most grateful traditions in the pro- fession. 1 admired particularly the article on Webster, written shortly after the speech. It must have been done by Mr. Dix.3 Ant Erasmus aut Dia- bolus. I canuot forbear expressing the sincere delight with which I read your
i Ante, vol. ii. pp. 193, 194, 205.
2 Of the citizens of Boston in 1819 in favor of the prohibition of slavery in territories and new States. Sumnpr's letter was the basis of a leader by Mr. Bigelow in the New York " Evening Post," May 23, 1850.
3 John A. Dix. Sumner was probably at fault in this conjecture.
216 MEMOIR OF CHAKLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
paper. Its politics have such a temper from literature that they fasciuate as well as convince."
To William Jay, June 1 : —
" I am glad of your new appeal. Like everything from you, it is careful, logical, clear, and with a practical hearing on the times. I am inclined to helieve with you that under the Constitution the duty of surrendering fugitive slaves is imposed upon the States ; hut there is great difficulty in assuming this point in the face of a solemn decision of the Supreme Court. If that deci- sion were out of the way, I think it could he easily vindicated to the States. Mr. Chase in his masterly speech has touched this point strongly.
" You have douhtless read Webster's recent wicked letter.1 There is a dia- bolism in it beyond even that of his speech. He seeks to assimilate the cases of fugitives from justice and fugitive slaves under the Constitution ; and be- cause the former cannot claim the trial by jury where they are seized, 'argal' slaves cannot ! But the Constitution, by its peculiar language, settles this point. Look at the express words of the two clauses. . . . Here ex vi termini the question whether service or labor be due must be determined, as a con- dition precedent, before the person can be delivered up. Of course, this must be determined in the State where he is found, and not in that to which he may be transported.
" The feeling against Webster among many of his old Whig partisans con- tinues to hold out. At present it seems as if there must be another split in the Whig party here. The systematic efforts now making to suppress all dis- cussion of this great question, the increasing malevolence towards the friends of freedom, and the treachery and apostasy of men, small as well as great, are in themselves most disheartening. Still, I know the cause is right, and as sure as God is God must prevail."
To George Sumner, June 25 : —
"The recent outrageous expedition against Cuba2 has dishonored us before the world. . . . My own impression is that it [Clay's Compromise] will pass through the Senate ; and this is founded on two things : first, Clay is earnest and determined that it shall pass; he is using all his talents as leader; and, secondly, the ultra- Southern opposition, I think, will at last give way and support it, — at least enough to pass the measure. If Webster had willed it, he might have defeated it."
To Richard Cobden, July 9 : —
" The slaveholders are bent on securing the new territories for slavery, and they see in prospective an immense slave nation embracing the Gulf of Mexico and all its islands, and stretching from Maryland to Panama. For this they are now struggling, determined while in the Union to govern and direct its energies; or if obliged to quit, to build up a new nation slaveholding through- out. They are fighting with desperation, and have been aided by traitors at the North. Webster's apostasy is the most barefaced. Not only the cause
1 To Citizens of Newburyport, May 15, 1850. * The second attempt of Lopez.
^Et. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 217
of true antislavery is connected with the overthrow of the slave propaganda, but also that of peace. As soon as it is distinctly established that there shall be no more slave territory, there will be little danger of war. My own earnest aim is to see slavery abolished everywhere within the sphere of the national government, — which is in the District of Columbia, on the high seas, and in the domestic slave-trade ; and beyond this, to have this government for free- dom, so far as it can exert an influence, and not for slavery. When this is accomplished, then slavery will be taken out of the vortex of national politics; and the influences of education and improved civilization, and of Christianity, will be left free to act against it in the States where it exists."
To John Bigelow, September 2 : —
" You inquire about Eliot.1 He is an honest and obstinate man, but essen- tially Hunker in grain. In other days and places he would have been an in- quisitor. He dislikes a Democrat, and also a Free Soiler, as the gates of hell; still he is not without individual sympathies for the slave. I doubt if he can be a tool; besides, personally, he has little confidence in Webster. The attack here is just now most bitter upon Horace Mann. The substance of his ' Notes' they cannot answer; but they have diverted attention from them by charging him with personalities, and then by criticism of his classical criticism of Web- ster. Now, in this matter two things are to be said : first, Webster was the first offender in personalities ; and, secondly Webster is clearly wrong in the classical matter."
To Horace Mann, September 3 : —
"You do not reflect that there are many here who have been through similar experiences.2 My position has always been humble compared with yours ; but I remember the time when two or three of the metropolitan papers never missed an opportunity to fling at me, and when the 'Advertiser' and 'Atlas' had elaborate articles often impugning even my character for vera- city. One paper had at least six or seven articles, short and long, against me. At that moment I was surrounded by a large circle of persons calling them- selves friends; not one of them stirred in my behalf. The 'Atlas' and 'Ad- vertiser' were owned in part by persons among my friends. Several became personally hostile, and down to this day have not renewed their friendship. But I have lived through it ; you will live through your trial also. You are not the first who has suffered in this cause ; though your case happens to be now most prominent, as your character and position are most prominent."
To William Jay, September 5 : —
" I take advantage of the leisure of this retreat [Newport, R. I.] to ac- knowledge the kindness of your note of sympathy.3 I should have done it earlier. Be assured that it was most acceptable as a present consolation and
1 Samuel A. Eliot, elected to Congress as successor to Winthrop.
2 Mann was feeling keenly the personal attacks upon him made by the Compromise Whigs on account of his protests against Webster's recent course.
3 On Horace Sumner's death. Ante, vol. i. pr>. 33. 34.
218 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
as a token of your friendship. There would be a hardness of heart which I will not charge upon our opponents if they were otherwise than touched by a domestic bereavement befalling us But they forbear to testify the sympathy which at other times would have been profusely offered. There are not a few now who avert their faces from me. You were right, therefore, in supposing that your words would come with a welcome increased by the coldness of others. I owe you thanks also for your letter in reply to Moses Stuart. It was a com- plete refutation of the reverend defender of Mr. Webster's new faith.
"All the dogs of the pack are now let loose upon Mr. Mann. His thorough exposure of Mr. Webster has maddened the ' retainers,' and they are diverting attention from the substance of his criticisms by comments on the manner, and some of our weak brethren have been carried away by this cry. If he has erred in tone, he caught the infection from Webster himself, who dealt at him some bitter personalities. You saw doubtless that I was a candidate at our last election.1 With infinite reluctance I consented ; for I dislike to see my name connected with any office, even as a candidate ; but I hoped to serve our cause by taking that position in the forlorn hope. A leading and popular Whig said to me on the morning of the election : ' I must go and vote against you, though I will say I should rather at this moment see you in Congress than any person in Boston; but I stick to my party.' There is the secret, — - party, party, party ! Would that this could be broken down ! '*
To George Sumner, October 22 : —
" The antislavery agitation which it was hoped to hush by the recent laws is breaking out afresh. It will not be hushed. Mr. Webster is strong in Boston, but not in Massachusetts. Out of the city he is weak. It is difficult to say now how the elections this autumn will go. I think that everywhere the antislavery sentiment will get real strength. The odious Fugitive Slave law furnishes an occasion for agitation. It has shocked the people of New England. ... I have had a pleasant day or two with Prescott at Pepperell, and he has told me of his English pleasures."
To John Bigelow, October 4 : —
" Our Free Soil convention was very spirited. The resolutions are pungent, and cover our original ground. On this we shall stand to the end. I rejoice in the rent in New York Whiggery. If the Barnburners and Sewardites were together, there would be a party which would give a new tone to public affairs."
To Charles Allen, member of Congress, October 15 : —
" Nothing is clearer to me than this. Our friends should if possible secure the balance of power in the Legislature, so as to influence the choice of sena- tor. Some are sanguine that we can choose one of our men. I doubt this ; but by a prudent course, and without any bargain, we can obtain the control of the Senate. We can then at least dictate to the Whigs whom they shall
1 For Congress, in opposition to Eliot.
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 219
send. But this cannot be done except by thinning the Whig ranks. I fear that the course in Middlesex 1 will jeopard Palfrey's position and our whole movement. I wash my hands of it."
To Horace Mann, October 30 : —
" The enemy has done his work, by skill, determination, will, backbone.2 It is as I have feared. On your account and for your personal comfort, I regret this ; but in this act I see the madness which precedes a fall. The Whigs will certainly be overthrown in the State. There is an earnest desire now that you should at once take the field. You can speak ten or twelve times before the election, and everywhere will rouse the people. In what you say be careful not to disturb the Democrats. They are desirous of an excuse for supporting you. Speak directly to the slavery question, and vindicate its importance, and the constitutionality of our opposition. The Free Soil committee here wish to see you, in order to arrange a series of meetings without delay."
Sumner's saddest experience at this time was his broken friendship with Felton. No two of the old " Five of Clubs " had been more bound up in each other. They had been for years most intimate and confidential, calling each other by their Christian names, " Corny " and " Charley," and writing to each other rather as lovers than as friends. Acknowledging a gift from Sumner, Sept. 27, 1846, on his second marriage, Felton wrote : " I read your note with feelings that I cannot find fitting words to express. I cannot say with what pride and happiness I cling to your friendship, with what joy I receive the suggestion that I may have strengthened any good impulse in a heart every beat of which comes from impulses that angels might own, or added anything to the ardor for scholarly pursuits in a mind enriched with the best learning of other lands, and capable of pouring its accumulated treasures into forms of the most com- manding eloquence." They exchanged all sorts of friendly offices. Felton read Sumner's addresses in manuscript, was always ready to test his classical references, and received him at his house to dine or lodge with a welcome such as awaited no other guest. Sumner was fond of Felton's children, and remem- bered them with Christmas gifts. Felton, however, with all his liking for Sumner's personal qualities, had no natural affinity
1 Opposition to union between Democrats and Free Soilers for the election of mpmbers of the Legislature, led by Samuel Hoar, R. H. Dana, Jr., and Anson Burhngaine. It proved ineffective against the strong current in favor of union.
2 Mann's loss of a renomination to Congress in the Whig convention of his district.
220 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
for his philanthropic aspirations. His second marriage1 brought him into close relations with the conservative and compromising Whigs ; and in March, 1850, he went heartily into the Web- ster movement. He signed the letter approving the speech of March 7, and undertook the defence of Webster's Latin quota- tions in articles which were understood to contain thrusts at Sumner.2 There was a painful correspondence between the two, and they parted. Sumner, beginning his final letter as before, " My dear Corny," arraigned him as the defender of " slave- catching," and ended : " I break off no friendship. In anguish I mourn your altered regard for me ; but more than my per- sonal loss, I mourn the present unhappy condition of your mind and character." Howe thought that Sumner should be more considerate of Felton, and bear in mind his facility of nature, and his exposure to external pressure which he could not resist. Longfellow wrote in his diary, April 8, 1850 : " Felton is quite irritated with Sumner about politics. I hope it will not end in an open rupture, but I much fear it will." Friendship, such as was that of these two men, ordinarily bears the strain of polit- ical differences ; but Sumner's nature, which was profoundly earnest, underwent a revulsion when he saw one with whom he had so long held sweet counsel taking his place among the de- fenders of the Fugitive Slave law. He might, as we may now think, have been more tolerant ; but it must be remembered that the slavery agitation, like Christianity at its birth, was a sword which divided families and friends. The separation lasted till 1856, when Felton, at a public meeting in Cambridge called to condemn the assault on Sumner, referred to a " long, intimate, and affectionate acquaintance " with him, and spoke of him as " a scholar of rich and rare acquirements, a gentleman of noble qualities and generous aims, distinguished for the amenities of social life, and a companion most welcome in the society of the most generous, the most refined, the most exalted." 3 Their re- lations were then resumed and continued unbroken, sustained in personal intercourse and correspondence, until Felton's death in 1862.
The Free Soilers of Massachusetts made their protest against
1 To a daughter of Thomas G. Cary, of Boston. Ante, p. 106.
2 He visited Webster at Marshfield in September, 1852. Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 667.
3 Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 315.
JEt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 221
the Compromise of 1850 from the beginning. They resisted it until it was carried, and from that time demanded its repeal. Their State committee called a mass convention at Faneuil Hall, February 27. Palfrey presided ; Dana reported resolutions ; 1 and Palfrey, Wilson, Adams, S. C. Phillips, Keyes, and Erastus Hopkins, spoke from the platform.2 Reference was made to the rumors of Webster's intended defection. The speakers in- sisted on Congressional prohibition of slavery in the territories without surrender or concession. Whatever statesmen and cap- italists might do, it was there made evident that a body of men remained in the State who would keep alive the spirit of free- dom at all hazards. But more serious business than mere pro- tests, however eloquent and solemn, was at hand. The Free Soilers would have been as impracticable as their adversaries had asserted them to be had they stood aloof from co-operation with any body of men less advanced in antislavery sentiments than themselves, who were willing to unite in a common effort to overthrow the political and social despotism which was fast- ening itself upon the Commonwealth.
Their representatives in the Legislature then in session were as determined as those who had met in Faneuil Hall. Wilson and Erastus Hopkins in the House, and Buckingham in the Senate, took the lead in insisting on such a distinct expression on the Fugitive Slave bill and the proposed abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso as would counteract Webster's support of the Compromise ; but it was prevented by the Whigs, who feared trouble in the party as the result. Wilson warned them on the spot of what would come from their refusal to repudiate the course of their senator. " I will," said he, " go out from this hall, and unite with any party or body of men to drive you from power, rebuke Daniel Webster, and place in his seat a senator true to the principles and sentiments of the Com- monwealth." 3 He was as good as his word, and did more than any one else to fulfil his prophecy. In his newspaper he de- nounced Webster as " the great apostate," and invoked a com- bined effort to prevent his re-election.4 As chairman of the
1 Drawn by a committee of which Sumner was a member. Adams's "Biography " of Dana, vol. i. p. 172.
2 Illness kept Sumner away, but he was appointed on a committee.
3 Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. pp. 247-258.
4 Emancipator and Republican, June 20, 1850. Wilson was its editor from January, 1849, to December, 1850.
222 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
Free-Soil State committee, he called a conference of leading Free Soilers — inviting one hundred, of whom more than one half attended — to meet the committee at the Adams House in Boston, September 10. 1 " It was a meeting," as he says, " remarkable for its large proportion of thoughtful and culti- vated men, and men, too, of irreproachable character and un- blemished integrity." He presided at the meeting, and stated that its purpose was to consider the policy of co-operating with the Democrats at the coining election, expressing his judgment that a large majority of the Free Soilers were in favor of such co-operation for the purpose of securing a United States sen- ator who was to be chosen by the next Legislature. The dis- cussion was frank and earnest. Generally, excepting Wilson, those who had been Whigs — Palfrey, Adams, Phillips, Dana, and Samuel Hoar — opposed the coalition,2 while it was favored by less distinguished men who had been Democrats or Liberty party men. Wilson, who with his very complete acquaintance among the active Free Soilers in the towns knew better than any one else their disposition and tendency, gave the plan his emphatic support. The discussion revealed a majority against it in the conference ; but it was agreed that, without committing the party to it, each member should be left to act according to his sense of duty.3 Sumner had none of the repugnance to Dem- ocrats which some of his friends — former Whigs — shared;4 and, withal, he had a practical turn of mind, notwithstanding the contrary impression given by his early addresses. He was absent from the State, and expressed himself by a letter to Wil- son, from Newport, R. I., Sept. 9, which sanctioned, with proper cautions, the latter's plan : —
" I regret that it will not be in my power to attend the meeting of our friends at the Adams House. I am unwilling to intrude my opinion with re- gard to the points in question ; hut I cannot forbear urgiug two things of
i Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. pp. 341-343.
2 Dr. Samuel G. Howe, who was not present, did not regard the coalition with entire favor. Dana, though opposing it, recognized some of its good results. Adams's "Biog- raphy" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 166, 171, 172, 195, 210.
3 Wilson's , paper, the "Emancipator and Republican," had already, August 15, 22, and 29, contained leaders and articles from contributors (one of them, J. B. Alley) advo- cating a coalition with the Democrats for the purpose of choosh g a senator faithful to antislavery sentiments.
4 "In the present politics of our own State, Mr. Adams is averse to making terms with either party, and has not that confidence that the ' instincts of the Democracy' are on our side which Sumner has; neither has Palfrey." R. H. Dana's Journal in Adams's "Biog- raphy," vol. i. p. 169. Sept. 8, 1849.
Mr. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 22
o
essential importance, — first, our principles; and second, harmony among our- selves. Nobody would propose an abandonment of our principles; but there may be a difference of opinion as to the most effective way of maintaining them. For myself I should incline against any departure from our customary course which did uot enlist the sympathies of all who have thus far acted to- gether in our movement. I see no objection, in point of principle, to unions in towns, and also in counties, such as took place last autumn. Dr. Palfrey has vindicated these in a manner difficult to be answered, in his ' Letter to a Friend,'' recently printed. If such unions should take place, it is possible that the general politics of the State might be changed. But it seems to me a step of questionable propriety for our State committee, or any number of Free Soilers, to enter into an arrangement or understanding with the Democrats as to the disposition of offices. As at present advised, I should be unwilling to be a party to any such bargain. All that we could properly do would be to make the unions in the towns and counties if practicable, and upon the whole deemed best, and to leave the future to the discretion of the men who should be chosen, without any bargain of any kind."
The tendency of the two parties to co-operate was promoted by common views on the subject of representation in the State Legislature. The Constitution at that time distributed repre- sentatives among the towns and cities, but allowed towns of less than a certain population a representative for only a cer- tain number of years in a decade. Even the towns entitled to one or more representatives often failed to elect under the ma- jority rule which then prevailed. On the other hand, Boston elected by general ticket, with no failure in any year, forty-four Whigs, although if required to elect by wards or districts a breach would have been made in this solid column. Its dispro- portionate share of legislative power was a common grievance of both minority parties. They profited in 1850 by the advantage that in this particular election — which was the one preceding the periodical State valuation — each town, however small, was entitled to a representative ; and their strength lay in the coun- try, and not in the large cities.
The Democrats were at the time free from the sinister influ- ence of a national administration controlled by the slaveholders, and were hospitable to antislavery sentiments ; and whatever might be the action of the party as a national body, they were in Massachusetts, at least the larger part of them, well disposed to antislavery action, and hostile to the Compromise.1 They
i Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. p. 339. (See Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 42.) It is worthy of note that the law forbidding the intermarriage of white and colored persons had been repealed, and the personal liberty law of 1843 had been passed during the Democratic administration of Marcus Morton.
224 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
were generally farmers and artisans, free from the influence of the mercantile interests then dominant in the Whig party. Their leaders at the time were Robert Rantoul, Jr., Frederick Robinson, Whiting Griswold, Nathaniel P. Banks, Jr., and Ben- jamin F. Butler, — all of whom in sentiment were in a greater or less degree favorable to the Free Soilers.
The Free Soil State convention met October 3, in Boston, at the Washingtonian Hall on Bromtleld Street, but requiring more room for the delegates adjourned at noon to the Beach Street Museum. Buckingham was the president, and Adams chairman of the committee on resolutions. Sumner attended as a delegate. Early in the session he read a letter from S. C. Phillips declining to be again the candidate for governor, and remarked, as he finished the reading, that it seemed to him very difficult to spare its author. He served on the committee on resolutions, and was again placed on the State committee. Phillips was, against his request, made again the candidate for governor. The resolutions and speeches all denounced the Compromise, and demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. Adams, Burlingame, and George W. Julian, of Indiana, were among the speakers. Late in the afternoon Sumner made a speech containing the germ of the one which he delivered later at Faneuil Hall. The Free Soilers put in the foreground the issue of approving Webster's support of the Fugitive Slave law and his repudiation of the Wilmot Proviso. His change of front was referred to then and later, without reserve, and with all plainness of speech. " Traitor to liberty ! " a " Benedict Arnold ! " " Lucifer fallen ! " were descriptions often applied to him in newspapers and on the platform. Men spoke of him on the streets as " Fallen, fallen, fallen from his high estate ! " 1 Palfrey compared him to Strafford, saying it was well for him that there were no blocks for statesmen now.2 Theodore Parker traced a parallel between him and Strafford and Arnold. Emer- son said of him, in the Cambridge City Hall, " Every drop of blood in this man's veins has eyes that look downward." Whit- tier wrote of him as " Ichabod," —
1 Longfellow's diary, March 9, 1850.
2 Dr. Palfrey has perpetuated his permanent judgment in his "History of New Eng- land," vol. v. p. 487, where he refers to "those great men of New England who, in the three special crises of her history, abased themselves to take the lead in deserting and withstanding her righteous cause." Two of these were the Colonial governors, Dudley and Hutchinson, and the third, not named, was Webster.
Mr. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 225
" So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn Which once he wore ! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore.
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame ; Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame ! "
Adams said publicly of Mann, that he had " boldly taken the great traitor by the throat and held him up to the view of the people of Massachusetts;" and after the election in 1850 he suggested as the justification of the union of the Free Soilers with the Democrats, that it might " ring the political knell of one whose loose private and wavering public career has done more, in my humble judgment, to shake the principles and un- settle the higher policy of Puritan New England than that of any man known in its history.'' 1 These were not passionate outbursts, but the sober judgments of men who weighed their words, and held themselves responsible therefor.
Webster's retirement from the Senate in July, 1850, and the appointment of Winthrop by the governor of Massachusetts to fill the vacancy, substituted Winthrop for Webster as the Whig candidate for senator ; but with the people, at least with the Free Soilers, the approval or disapproval of Webster still re- mained the issue of the State election. Winthrop's course in Congress differed somewhat from Webster's, and yet they con- tinued in general accord politically. Winthrop's speech in the House May 8, in which he rejected the Wilmot Proviso and viewed without alarm the op*ening of new territory to slavery, showed them to be in substantial agreement, and called from the journal which most distinctly represented Webster the com- mendation that Winthrop had by that speech " placed himself side by side with Mr. Webster in the great effort to adjust the important matter in controversy." 2 He passed from the House to the Senate, July 30, in time to vote in the latter body on the
1 The editor of the Boston "Atlas," to whom Adams sent the letter to explain his position as to co-operation with the Democrats in the election of senator, dropped the words "loose private and" from the letter; and Adams immediately caused it (Jan. 9, 1851) to be printed in the "Commonwealth" with those words restored, justifying the reference to personal character " in cases where there is no dispute, and where the public injury done by force of evil example is esteemed of the most dangerous description."
2 Boston Courier, May 14.
VOL. III. 15
226 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51=
Compromise measures. To his credit it should be mentioned that he voted against the Fugitive Slave bill, though putting his objections to it on too narrow grounds, — contending that it should provide a trial by jury for the alleged slave ; and he set forth the unjust treatment of colored seamen in Southern ports. He voted for the Texas boundary bill when standing alone, but against it when united with a bill to establish a territorial gov- ernment for New Mexico. He admitted the payment to Texas to be " enormous," but hoped thereby to remove the only cloud on the peace of the country. The bill was carried by the lob- bying of Texas scrip-holders,1 — an influence, however, which did not affect the action of Winthrop or his colleague, John Davis, who voted with him. Winthrop took no stand against Webster, and expressed no sympathy with the demonstrations in Massachusetts to arrest the passage of the Compromise, or to condemn it afterwards. He remained in relations of personal sympathy with Webster, supplying the motto vera pro gratis for the speech of March 7,2 withdrawing his name as a rival for a seat in the Cabinet, and advising Webster's appointment in " the most friendly, open, and decided manner," and receiv- ing the latter's commendation for the more friendly treatment he (Mr. Webster) had received from him than from " some New England Whigs." 3 The Whigs put Winthrop forward as their candidate for senator, and the Free Soilers accepted the issue, maintaining that his position and Webster's were in substantial identity.4 The Whigs outside of Boston made an effort to avoid the Compromise as an issue. The resolutions of their State convention, drawn by A. H. Bullock, of Worcester, abstained from approval and disapproval, though approving
i Von Hoist, vol. iii. p. 558; Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," pp. 327-332; Horace Mann's "Life," pp, 303, 324. Some Whigs, like Rockwell and Mann, both of Massachusetts, who had Free Soil sympathies, were in doubt on the Texas boundaiy ques- tion, and gave conflicting votes. (Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," p. 328; Mann's " Life," pp. 31G-329.) Mann, who was well disposed towards Winthrop, thought he should have been more aggressive at this time against the Southern party. Writing Sep- tember 15, he said: "They [the South] have never yet been properly answered. If some such man as Sumner were in the seat, he would turn the tables upon them." Mann's " Life," p. 330.
2 Curtis's Life of Webster, vol. ii. p. 410 note.
3 Boston "Advertiser," Nov, 2, 1852. Letter signed " R. C. W." Curtis's "Life of Webster," vol. ii. p. 465 note. The letter to Mr. Haven there printed makes it probable that Mr, Webster indicated to Governor Briggs a preference for Mr. Winthrop as his successor.
4 Emancipator and Republican, August 1 and 29.
Mt. 39-40.] MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE. 227
Fillmore's Administration ; and their address, from the same hand, while delicately commenting on the Compromise, sought to pacify the public mind with the claim that the North had on the whole gained the substance.
The Free Soilers and Democrats united on senators in all the counties with no difficulty, except in Middlesex, where the union was opposed by Samuel Hoar, Dana, Burlingame, and J. C. Docile : and in the towns such unions were almost universal. For Congress the Free Soilers supported Mann, the rejected Whig, and Fowler, insuring the election of both. The canvass was very spirited. The Free Soilers issued a campaign paper, " The Free Soiler," edited by F. W. Bird, John B. Alley, and Horace E. Smith, which was widely distributed among the voters. They held meetings in all parts of the State, not neg- lecting the smallest and remotest towns. They sent out not only their eminent speakers, — Sumner, Palfrey, Wilson, Dana, Burlingame, — but a number of young men, some fresh from college, whose zeal and enthusiasm were effective.1 The details of organization were carefully watched by Wilson, Keyes, Bird, and Alley, who conferred daily, and who were assisted by prac- tical and sagacious men in all sections of the State. The pen- dency of a fugitive-slave case in October, in Boston, the first under the new Act, added to the excitement.
A few days before the election Sumner made a speech in Faneuil Hall, in some respects his most effective one before the people. Certainly no speech he ever made was so calculated to intensify popular feeling. Briefly, as he began, he expressed his approval of the unions with the Whigs on Mann and Fowler as candidates for Congress, and with the Democrats in the election of members of the Legislature. While setting forth the advance of slavery in former times, and recently in the Compromise, and the duty of resisting it and overthrowing it as a national political power, the force of the speech was directed against the Fugitive Slave law. He denied its binding force under the Constitution, and arraigned its enormities. The subject was new, and his speech profoundly moved the vast audience. In some parts he was interrupted at the end of nearly every sen- tence with cheers, or other demonstrations of approval. It was
1 The writer was one of the Free Soil speakers, having become a voter that year; and with him was his chum at the Law School, John Wiuslow, since a distinguished lawyer of Brooklyn, N. Y.
228 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
sometimes called his " Mark Antony " speech, his " Phillipic." It was often cited against him during the canvass for senator, and afterwards in Congress, as inflammatory, revolutionary, and treasonable ; and he himself stated at a later period that his effort and hope at the time were to create a public sentiment which would render the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law (or " bill," as he always insisted on calling it) impossible. Some passages will show the character of the speech : —
' ' The soul sickens in the contemplation of this legalized outrage. In the dreary annals of the past there are many acts of shame ; there are ordinances of monarchs and laws which have become a byword and a hissing to the na- tions. But when we consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly what act of shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law, can compare in atrocity with this enactment of an American Congress1? I do not forget Appius Clau- dius, tyrant Decemvir of ancient Rome, condemning Virginia as a slave ; nor Louis XIV. of France letting slip the dogs of religious persecution by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; nor Charles I. of England arousing the patriot rage of Hampden by the extortion of ship-money ; nor the British Parliament provoking in our own country spirits kindred to Hampden by the tyranny of the Stamp Act and Tea Tax. I would not exaggerate ; I wish to keep within bounds ; but I think there can be little doubt that the condemna- tion now affixed to all these transactions and to their authors must be the lot hereafter of the Fugitive Slave bill, and of every one, according to the measure of his influence, who gave it his support. Into the immortal catalogue of national crimes it has now passed, drawing, by inexorable necessity, its au- thors also, and chiefly him who, as President of the United States, set his name to the bill, and breathed into it that final breath without which it would bear no life. Other Presidents may be forgotten ; but the name signed to the Fugitive Slave bill can never be forgotten. There are depths of infamy as there are heights of fame. I regret to say what I must, but truth compels me. Better for him had he never been born ! Better for his memory, and for the good name of his children, had he never been President ! . . .
" And here, sir, let me say that it becomes me to speak with caution. It happens that I sustain an important relation to this bill. Early in profes- sional life I was designated by the late Judge Story a commissioner of his court, and, though I do not very often exercise the functions of this appoint- ment, my name is still upon the list. As such I am one of those before whom the panting fugitive may be dragged for the decision of the question whether he is a freeman or a slave. But while it becomes me to speak with caution, I shall not hesitate to speak with plainness. I cannot forget that I am a man, although I am a commissioner. ...
" It rests with you, my fellow-citizens, by word and example, by calm de- terminations and devoted lives, to do this work. From a humane, just, and religious people will spring a public opinion to keep perpetual guard over the liberties of all within our borders. Nay, more, like the flaming sword of the cherubim at the gates of Paradise, turning on every side, it shall prevent any slave-hunter from ever setting foot in this Commonwealth. Elsewhere he
JEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 229
may pursue his human prey, employ his congenial bloodhounds, and exult in his successful game ; hut into Massachusetts he must not come. Again, let me he understood: I counsel no violence; I would not touch his person. Not with whips and thongs would I scourge him from the land. The contempt, the indignation, the abhorrence of the community shall be our weapons of offence ; wherever he moves he shall find no house to receive him, no table spread to nourish him, no welcome to cheer him. The dismal lot of the Roman exile shall be his; he shall be a wanderer, without roof, fire, or water. Men shall point at him in the streets and on the highways. Villages, towns, and cities shall refuse to receive the monster ; they shall vomit him forth, never again to disturb the repose of our community. The feelings with which we regard the slave-hunter will be extended soon to all the mer- cenary agents and heartless minions who, without any positive obligation of law, become part of his pack. They are volunteers, and, as such, must share the ignominy of the chief hunter. ... We are told that the slavery question is settled. Yes, settled, settled, - that is the word. Nothing, sir, can be set- tled tvhich is not right. Nothing can be settled which is against freedom. Nothing can be settled which is against the divine law. God, nature, and all the holy sentiments of the heart repudiate any such false seeming settlement."
The speech placed Sumner foremost among the Free Soilers as a candidate for senator. Others had discussed carefully and earnestly the political issues, but no one had stirred so deeply the people. It was often said to have made him senator. In his sanction of the unions with the Democrats, he spoke the senti- ments of the great body of his party, and showed a practical sense and sympathy with popular inspirations which, in appear- ance at least, the other Free Soil leaders with whom he was., most in association did not exhibit.1 This made him also more acceptable to the Democrats. He was in the popular mind as the candidate likely to be selected even before the speech was made. Whittier met him at Lynn in the summer, and in view of the probability that the Free Soilers and Democrats would carry the State, told him that he would be the senator. Sumner replied that it would not be so ; that others were better fitted, and that his own tastes lay elsewhere ; that he preferred lite- rature, and had thought of writing an historical work. The poet, in his ode " To C. S." written in 1856, referred to " that night-scene by the sea prophetical," and —
" Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree With the large future which I shaped for thee When, years ago, beside the summer sea, White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall."
i Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. pp. 346, 347.
230 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
The election resulted more favorably to the union than its most sanguine promoters had anticipated. The Democrats and Free Soilers combined defeated an election of governor which required a majority vote, and secured a considerable majority in both houses of the Legislature. The sentiment of union was so spontaneous that the people had acted upon it in all parts of the State. Twenty-one1 Free Soil and Democratic senators were elected to eleven Whigs, and two hundred and twenty2 Free Soil and Democratic representatives to one hundred and seventy- six Whigs,3 — a majority for the union of ten in the Senate (to be increased when the vacancies were filled by joint ballot), and of fifty-four in the House. The Constitution then required United States senators to be chosen by concurrent vote of both houses. The House selected two of the three candidates for governor having the highest number of votes, and the Senate chose between the two candidates whose names were thus se- lected by the House. The result was extraordinary. Massa- chusetts had been, except Vermont, the most steadfast Whig State in the Union, varying from a uniform Whig majority, usually very large, only in the elections of 1888 and 1842, when Marcus Morton, a Democrat, was chosen governor, — the first time by a majority of one in an election by the people, and the second time by a majority of one in the Legislature. In those exceptional instances of Whig defeats, the question of liquor legislation was the disturbing cause.
Sumner wrote to his brother George, November 26 : —
" Our movement here is part of the great liberal movement of Europe ; and as 'law and order' are the words by which reaction has rallied iu Europe, so these very words, or perhaps the ' Constitution and Union,' are the cry here. The Fugitive Slave bill has aroused the North ; people are shocked by its provisions. Under the discussion which it has called forth, the anti- slavery sentiment has taken a new start. You have seen that in Massachusetts the Whigs are prostrate ; I doubt if they are not beyond any resurrection.4 They are in a minority from which they cannot recover. In the Senate the opposition will have ten or twelve majority, in the House fifty majority. It is understood that Boutwell will be chosen governor, and a Free Soil senator in the place of Daniel Webster."
1 Eleven Free Soilers and ten Democrats.
2 One hundred and thirteen Free Soilers and one hundred and seven Democrats.
3 Among the forty-four Whig members from Boston were Benjamin R. Curtis, Sidney Bartlett, Henry J. Gardner, Samuel Hooper, Moses Kimball, and William Schouler.
4 They regained power in the State in 1852, by the interposition of President Pierce's Administration, which prevented the Democrats from co-operating further with the Free Soilers, but were again finally defeated in 1854.
jEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 231
The decisive rout of the Whigs was due to the support of the Compromise and of Webster by the party in Boston, and its ambiguous position in other parts of the State.1 The " Courier " and " Advertiser," which had insisted that the Fugi- tive Slave law was a part of Whig policy, had repelled Whig voters who would not acquiesce in its inhuman provisions. Web- ster during the summer was writing and speaking in favor of the Compromise. The Free Soilers, their speakers and news- papers, drew materials from his speeches and letters, and from the two Boston journals, using them effectively in creating public opinion. The "Atlas" endeavored, on the other hand, to hold the antislavery Whigs by insisting that the Compromise was not an issue, and that the Whigs were not as a party committed to it. The Whigs after the election fell into a contention as to the cause of their defeat. The "Atlas " attributed it to the " Courier," the "Advertiser," and Webster, and those journals put the re- sponsibility on the "Atlas," — maintaining that Whig success could be achieved only by a faithful and cordial support of Web- ster and the Compromise.2
The Free Soilers kept the senatorship in view during the can- vass, and their purpose to secure it was well understood by their allies 3 But they named no candidate, and in their newspapers there was only a casual mention of names, as of S. C. Phillips, Sumner, and Adams. Simmers name was, however, freely mentioned in the Free Soil and Democratic caucuses as the one altogether likely to be brought forward in the event of success. His speech in Faneuil Hall at the close of the canvass, as stated before, placed him in the front ; and as soon as the result of the election was known, opinion tended to him far more than to any one else. At length it settled on him altogether, — a unanimity which was a popular inspiration, not a result at all worked up by any personal admirers. He was among the Free Soil leaders who had been Whigs least obnoxious to the Democrats, as he had never been a partisan of Whig policy, and in Whig conven- tions had taken part only to press resolutions against slavery.
Seth Webb, Jr., an active Free Soiler, on the morning of the day after the election, left a memorandum in Sumner's office
1 Emancipator and Republican, Boston Atlas, November 14 and 15. Dr. Bailey wrote to Sumner, November 27, "You have whipped Webster."
2 Advertiser, November 18. 21, 22; Courier, November 15, December 16.
3 Emancipator and Republican, August 22 and 29.
232 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
announcing the result ; and adding, " You are bound for Wash- ington." E. L. Pierce wrote, November 14, with reference to the selection of the senator : " Many eyes — yes, many hearts — now turn towards the defender of peace, of freedom, of the prisoner, — in a word, of human progress." Giddings wrote, November 25, rejoicing at the result of the election, as " a rebuke of Webster and Winthrop ; " and a month later : " There is a general ex- pectation that you will be the successor of Mr. Winthrop in the Senate. Nothing will give the friends of freedom greater pleas- ure than to see you there." Dr. Bailey wrote, November 27 : " You certainly are the man who must take the place of the ' Expounder.' ' Sumner vice Webster ' would be one of those rare good things which men are permitted to witness in a life- time." John Jay wrote, December 6 : " I trust most sincerely you are to occupy the seat which Webster in bygone days has filled so worthily, but where in the hour of temptation he be- trayed the Commonwealth which had trusted and honored him." Jolm Mills, of Springfield, wrote, December 10 : " C. S. I am sat- isfied must be the man. He stands better with the Democrats than either A. or P., — I mean either of the P.'s., though I like them both, — and so he does with the Free Soilers in this sec- tion of the State." Rev. Joshua Leavitt wrote from New York, December 18 : "I confidently hope and trust that in a month from this time you will take your seat in the Senate of the United States as the substitute of Robert C. Winthrop and the successor of Daniel Webster. I need not say how greatly I shall be grati- fied at such an event, both for your sake and that of the cause." E. A. Stansbury, a journalist, wrote from Burlington, Vt., Decem- ber 31, expressing strongly the general feeling of Free Soilers in New England in favor of his selection among all who had been named. Adams wrote, December 10, from Washington, where he was passing a few days, a thoughtful letter. He had come to the conclusion that the triumph of the antislavery cause, though sure, was distant, and he was not inclined to estimate so highly as others the importance of securing a Free Soil senator ; and apprehensive of the dangers of any alliance with the Democrats, he had, without opposing, withheld his sanction from the unions which had carried the Legislature. But he said : " If our friends decide to risk themselves in that ship, I trust we may get a full consideration for the risk ; and the only full consideration that we can receive is in securing your services in the Senate. If
^Et. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 233
anything can be done with that iron and marble body, you may do it. You know how hopeless I think the task, and every time I come here my notions become more rigid." The next month, in a published letter, he mentioned Sumner as " one of the ablest and most honest and inflexible advocates of the cause." *
In a reply, December 15, to the letter of Adams, with whom he was in closer confidential relations than with any other poli- tical associate, Sumner opened his mind thus : —
" I am particularly moved to this [to write] by your allusion to me in con- nection with a certain post. I appreciate your generosity, and am proud of your confidence. I am not entirely insensible to the honor that post would confer, though I do not feel this strongly, for I have never been accustomed to think highly of political distinction. I feel that it would, to a certain extent, be a vindication of me against the attacks to which, in common with you and others of our friends, I have been exposed. And I am especially touched by the idea of the sphere of usefulness in which it would place me. But notwith- standing these things, I must say that I have not been able at any time in my inmost heart to bring myself to desire the post, or even to be willing to take it. My dreams and visions are all in other directions. In the course of my life I have had many ; but none have been in the United States Senate. In taking that post, I must renounce quiet and repose forever; my life hence- forward would be in public affairs. I cannot contemplate this without repug- nance. It would call upon me to forego those literary plans and aspirations which I have more at heart than any merely political success. Besides, even if I could incline to this new career, there are men in our ranks, my seniors and betters, to whom I defer sincerely and completely. Mr. Phillips, by vari- ous titles, should be our candidate. If he should be unwilling to take the place, then we must look to you. In seeing you there I should have the truest satisfaction. You are the man to split open the solid rock of the United States Senate. I shrink unfeignedly from the work. For this I have never ' filed my mind.' I shall see you soon, I trust, when we may talk of these things."
Sumner had kept absolutely free from any direct or indirect effort to obtain the office ; he had avowed his disinclination to enter on public life, and his decided preference that some other person should be selected as a candidate. These declarations were repeated in confidential letters to intimate friends, and bear the marks of entire sincerity.2 If after an interval of nearly half a century some critics, more familiar with modern struggles for place than with the earlier contests for principle, have fan- cied that these disclaimers covered a latent ambition, their sug- gestions are only imaginings which are without evidence, and against the judgment of his contemporaries who knew him
1 Boston Commonwealth, Jan. 9, 1851. 2 Commonwealth, Jan. 18, 1851.
234 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
well. Charles Allen wrote from Washington, Feb. 7, 1851 : " I need no declaration from you that you did not seek nor desire political office. On that subject you have no secrets to communicate to me ; your purposes and wishes have been trans- parent. It is not difficult for me to appreciate your repugnance to political life." Palfrey, who was very unfriendly to the co- operation of the Free Soilers with the Democrats, nevertheless expressly acquitted Sumner of all selfish ends, — saying in a let- ter, February 25 : " No one acquainted with your course in this matter can ever say that it has not been most high and honor- able." Stephen C. Phillips 1 — and no finer character distin- guishes this period — naturally felt, after being the head of the Free Soil State ticket, a sense of disappointment that he had not been selected as the candidate for senator. He wrote Sumner pathetically, just after the nomination was made : " I acquit you of all unfriendly intentions or acts. I rejoice in the conviction that this, while it is the severest, is the last of my political trials ; and though it is far from being such a close of a public career as is desirable, I derive satisfaction from the thought that your race begins where mine ends, and that a high destiny awaits you. None can wish you more cordially than I do a long life of usefulness, happiness, and honor." After his formal selection as the candidate, when his party's success had become dependent on his election, Sumner met his supporters in council from time to time, as it was his duty to do.
The Legislature met on the first Wednesday of January, 1851. Henry Wilson, Free Soiler, was at once made president of the Senate ; and Nathaniel P. Banks, Jr., Democrat, speaker of the House, — each of whom was destined to hold the corresponding position in the national government. The Democratic and Free Soil members held separate caucuses at the State House before the session began, — the former in the Green Room, and the latter in room No. 1 above, — and each appointed a committee of conference consisting of twelve persons. The Free Soil com- mittee, of which John Milton Barle was the chairman, commu- nicated to the Democratic committee the disposition of the Free Soil members to place the Democrats in the entire control of the State government, on the sole condition that a Free Soiler, selected by themselves, should be elected senator for the full term. They had entered into the unions for the election of
i 1801-1857.
Mr. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 235
members with a view to a representation in the national Senate, and upon this alone they insisted. The Democrats generally were content with this distribution, preferring the control of the State government ; but they expressed the desire that a part of the State offices should be filled by Free Soilers. It was finally arranged, by the unanimous agreement of the two committees conferring for two days, that the Democrats should have the governor, lieutenant-governor, five of the nine council- lors, the treasurer, and the senator for the unexpired term then held by Mr. Winthrop, being the few weeks remaining till the 4th of March, and that the Free Soilers should have the sen- ator for the full term of six years from the 4th of March, and also the other State officers ; and this arrangement was approved unanimously by the two parties. The candidates presented by either party were to be approved by the other ; and this approval was unhesitatingly given, except in the case of the senator for the full term. The Free Soilers in caucus, January 7, nomi- nated Sumner by a ballot in which he received eighty-four out of eighty-five votes. E. L. Keyes, giving figures slightly differ- ent, said, in a letter to him communicating the result : " We have just taken the vote by ballot for senator, and you are the man. For Charles Sumner, 82 ; others, 0. We have sworn to stand by you ; to sink or swim with you, at all hazards. If you shall fail us in any respect, may God forgive you ! we never shall." When his name was presented to the Democratic cau- cus, some members appeared reluctant to approve it, fearing that participation in the election of so pronounced an opponent of sla- very might compromise their position in the national party ; and it was observed at the time that this class would have readily joined in the election of some less conspicuous Free Soiler, like Amasa Walker, John Mills, or Josiah G. Abbott. The caucus after some discussion agreed almost unanimously to abide by the decision of two thirds of those acting in it, — this being the favorite rule of Democratic national conventions ; and in this vote Caleb Cushing, a member of the House, concurred. A vote by yeas and nays on written ballots resulted in fifty-eight for Sumner and twenty-seven against him ; and his nomination was then ratified, with only five dissenting votes,1 and with no signs
1 The detailed account of the proceedings will be found in Wilson's two statements, published in the "Commonwealth," January 30 and February 18, the "Commonwealth's" article of February 10, and a Democratic narrative, prepared by James S. Whitney of Conway, or Whiting Griswold of Greenfield, both of whom voted for Sumner.
236 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
of persevering opposition from any quarter. His election now seemed assured. George S. Boutwell, Democrat, was chosen governor, and the other State offices were filled as had been arranged. At this point, however, some Democratic members, led by Cushing, met in caucus and decided not to support Sum- ner on account of his antislavery position, which they described as abolitionism and disunionism. They numbered about twenty- five, — or twenty-three, as Wilson definitely fixed the number. They had already in conjunction with the Whig members de- feated in the House a motion of the Free Soil leader, Mr. Earle, to have the election of senator take place on the day that the vote for governor was taken. Meantime, at the beginning of the session there were voices of dissent from one or two Free Soil leaders. Palfrey, who with all his moral excellence had an ele- ment of impracticability in him, addressed the members in an open letter, in which he depreciated the importance of a Free Soil senator, and counselled against co-operation with the Dem- ocrats ; 1 and his address to them was in a measure approved by Adams and S. C. Phillips.2 Annoying as this interference was, it had little effect on the members.
The House appointed January 14 for the election of senator. Never before in the history of the State had such an election so engrossed the public attention. A radical change in the repre- sentation of the State was imminent, and the action of the Dem- ocratic dissenters had made the issue uncertain. The members themselves, the spectators who filled the galleries, the throng outside which pressed at the doors and crowded the passages, awaited the result with intense interest. It was known to the members by report before the formal declaration ; and it was observed that the politics of a man could readily be detected by the expression of his countenance, — anxiety and grief on those of the Free Soilers, satisfaction and a sense of relief on those of the Whigs.3 Sumner had received 186 (110 given by Free Soilers and 76 by Democrats) votes, Winthrop 167, and there were 28 scattering, composed mostly of the dissenting Demo- crats, with three blanks, which were not counted. Sumner lacked five votes of an election, and the only other ballot taken
1 Palfrey was, however, gratified by Sumner's election, and wrote the full biographical sketch of him which appeared in the "Commonwealth," May 16, 1851.
2 Commonwealth, January 9, 13.
3 Boston Courier, January 15.
JEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 237
the same day varied immaterially from the first. The Free Soilers were greatly incensed at the Democratic desertion. Some, like Whittier, counselled an immediate withdrawal from the coalition, a union with the Whigs for governor the nest year, and the resignation of the Free Soil State officers who had been chosen by the Legislature ; r but the practical politicians under Wilson's leadership, inspired by the masses behind them, were determined to persevere and hold the bolting Democrats to their pledges. Twenty-six ballots were taken in all, during a period of more than three months, sometimes with one or more on the same day, then with intervals of some days or weeks, — Sumner coming sometimes within two or three votes of an elec- tion, and then again lacking eight or nine votes of the requisite majority, and once as many as twelve. His own vote was rela- tively changed but little from what he received at the begin- ning, though increased seven on some ballots, and even eight on one, — the variations being due to the absence of members on particular ballots rather than to changes of votes.2 Mean- time, on January 22 he was elected on the part of the Senate, receiving twenty-three out of thirty-eight votes ; 3 and Robert Rantoul, Jr., a Democrat, was chosen by both branches for Web- ster's unexpired term, which Winthrop was temporarily filling. To the end the contest in the House continued a doubtful one. The counts were sometimes unsatisfactory ; and from February 20 the members were required to give their votes while pass- ing in front of the speaker's desk, their names being checked as they gave them. Sumner, as he confessed to intimate friends, had little expectation of a favorable result after the first week. He, as well as other Free Soilers, was at times hopeful ; but the contest as it dragged on was with them a weary one. The Whigs spared no effort to defeat an election, counting — as well they might, if there were no choice — on success in the next State election. Their newspapers, the " Advertiser " and the " Courier," hurled with vehemence and iteration every epithet at the coalition, as " bargain and sale," " base and infamous bargain," " intrigue," " profligacy," " base juggle," " self-abase-
1 Longfellow was disappointed and sad, and wrote to Sumner, January 15: ''I never had anjT great faith in your perfidious allies." "Longfellow's " Life," vol. ii. p. 187.
2 The "Advertiser," April 25 and 26, undertook an explanation of the variations; but it was a difficult task.
3 Sumner would have been easily elected in a joint convention of the two Houses, such as is now held in case of disagreement.
238 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
merit," " degradation," " dishonorable," " disgraceful," " scandal- ous." Having exhausted epithets before the election, after it they resorted to absurdities. In a legislative address, drawn by B. R. Curtis and issued at the close of the session, they denounced the coalition as an " indictable offence," " a factious conspiracy," " criminal not only in morals, but in the law of the land." * The election of John Quincy Adams as President by Clay's help,2 the election of a Whig governor and of an anti-Texas Democratic senator in New Hampshire, and the re- cent election of Geyer as senator in Missouri by a Whig and Calhoun-Democratic coalition, were quite forgotten. The Whig journals assured Sumner of a cool reception in the Senate, which he would enter, if he entered it at all, without author- ity, and with the ignominy of the coalition branded upon him.3 Their chief effort was to keep firm in their position the Dem- ocratic dissenters, whose prejudices and fears were diligently plied with the reminder that they would by voting for Sum- ner exclude themselves from the national organization. The " Courier," exulting in his expected defeat, headed one of its leaders with " The Impossible Senator." The two Democratic journals of Boston, the " Post " and the " Times," sustained " the indomitables," as they were now called, and challenged Sumner as an agitator, a promoter of strife, and an instigator of sectional animosity. The editor of the latter journal called on him, inviting him to modify his opinions as expressed in his speech just before the State election. He refused promptly to retract or qualify ; and being asked how he would like to have it reprinted in the " Times," replied at once that nothing would give- him more pleasure.4 The next day it appeared in full, with an appeal to members of the Legislature to vote against its author. The " Post," as well as the Whig journals, printed extracts from it in capitals, maintaining that they were trea- sonable, and that their author was a disunionist. Cushing, the leader of " the indomitables," called Sumner in debate " a one-
1 Advertiser, May 28. "Life and Writings of B. R. Curtis," vol. i. pp. 138-155.
2 Horace Mann, referring to the charges against Adams and Clay, afterwards fully discredited, said: " I believe the same charge against the Free Soil paily will have come twenty years hence to the same result, — that of conferring honor upon its object and infamy upon its authors." See Von Holatte remarks, vol. iv. pp. 41, 42.
3 The intemperate phrases of these Whig journals did not express the sentiments of their party outside of the State. The New York " Tribune," January 14, edited by Hor- ace Greele.v, commended Sumner as a person who in every way would honor the place.
4 Works, vol. ii. p. 431.
Mt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 239
idead, abolition agitator," and treated his election as " a lost
cause."
Sumner was several times waited upon by the dissenting Democrats, — committees, or individual representatives, — and asked for assurances that he would not agitate the slavery ques- tion in the Senate, or that at least he would put other questions before it ; but he refused steadily to give any assurance of the kind, replying simply that he did not seek the office, and that if it came to him it must find him an absolutely independent man.1 With dishing he declined to have any political conversation while the canvass was pending. Some Democratic representa- tives who were still voting against him found themselves in a false position, and sought an excuse for escaping from it. They would have been content with some slight withdrawal or modifi- cation of his views which might serve as an apology for a trans- fer of their votes ; but Sumner would not give it. He wrote to John Bigelow, Jan. 11, 1851 : —
" Whatever may be the result of our proceedings, I am desirous that you should know my position. I have never directly or indirectly suggested a de- sire for the place, or even a willingness to take it. I shall not generally be believed if I say I do not desire it. My aims and visions are in other direc- tions, — in more quiet fields. To sundry committees of Hunker Democrats, who have approached me to obtain pledges and promises with regard to my future course in the State, or in the Senate if I should go there, I have replied that the office must seek me, and not I the office, and that it must find me an absolutely independent man. The Hunkers, Whigs, and Democrats are sweating blood to-day. You perceive that all the Hunker press, representing Cassism and Websterism, are using every effort to break up our combination."
Again, January 21 : —
" You are right in auguring ill from the Fabian strategy. When the bal- loting was postponed for three days, I thought our friends had lost the chances. My own opinion now is that they are lost beyond recovery ; but others do not share this. The pressure from Washington has been prodigious. Webster and Cass have both done all they could. ' Of course, Boston Whiggery is aroused against me. There were for several days uneasy stomachs at the chances of my success. ... It is very evident that a slight word of promise or yielding to the Hunkers would have secured my election, — it would now if I would give it ; but this is impossible. The charge used with most effect against me is that I am a ' disunionist ; ' but the authors of this know its falsehood, — it
1 F. W. Bird remembers to have obtained a letter from Sumner, in which he spoke, repeating a former expression, of the Union as a "blessed bond." This was given to Speaker Banks, who quieted with it a Democrat then much disturbed by the charge that Sumner was a disunionist. The letter is printed under date of Jan. 21, 1851, in his Works, vol. ii. pp. 428, 429.
240 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
is all a sham to influence votes. My principles are, in the words of Franklin, ' to step to the verge of the Constitution to discourage every species of traffic in human flesh.' I am a constitutionalist and a unionist, and have always been."
The Free Soilers stood resolutely upon their nomination, and presented it as their first and last one. Sumner, however, all along signified his entire readiness for the substitution of an- other candidate ; and in order that his feelings might not be mistaken, he addressed a letter, February 22, to Wilson,1 to be communicated to the Free Soil members, in which — after re- calling that his name had been brought forward contrary to his desires specially made known to all who communicated with him on the subject — he expressed the hope that the friends of freedom in the Legislature would not on any ground of delicacy towards him hesitate to transfer their support to some other candidate, faithful to the cause, and bade them to abandon him whenever they thought best, without notice or apology. These words, repeated orally and in writing, were understood to mean what they said. But policy, and a sense of what they had a right to claim from their allies, kept his supporters firm, and they resolved to stand by him.2 Their stubbornness was not merely from policy ; for they believed that whatever might be the merits of other eminent Free Soilers, Sumner alone could by his power of speech and his daring fill the place of the anti- slavery protagonist in the Senate. The election of any other would in their view be half a defeat. The feeling of the Free Soilers outside of the Legislature was the same. Charles Allen wrote, February 7, " You must be the hero of this war to the end, — the conquering hero, I trust." S. C. Phillips forbade the use of his own name as an alternative, and counselled adherence to Sumner to the end.
The contest dragged wearily on, and the prospect of success grew fainter. There was a meeting in Sumner's office, attended by some members of the Legislature and other leaders, where Sumner again volunteered to withdraw ; but the general convic- tion was that a change of candidates would distract the united forces and give the Democrats who were reluctant to support a Free Soiler an excuse for escaping altogether from their pledges. So again it was decided to stand firm. The Free Soil members
1 Works, vol. ii. pp. 429, 430. Commonwealth, April 26. 2 February 17.
Mr. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 241
in caucus, March 17, passed a resolution that they would pre- sent no other alternative than their present candidate. Their organ, the " Commonwealth," was equally explicit and peremp- tory ; 1 and it answered the " Times's " publication of the Fan- euil Hall speech by reprinting it in full in its own columns, approving it in all respects as stating the doctrines of the party and of its candidate. But with all this exhibition of pluck, and while still rallying their forces, they had at the beginning of April little hope of success. On the second day of that month the vote outside of those given for Sumner and Winthrop rose to thirty-five, and the former lacked nine votes of an election. At that stage, James M. Stone of Charlestown, a member of the House, by nature firm in purpose, stated in debate his convic- tion that though Sumner was his first choice, all further efforts to elect him would be fruitless, and that to avoid throwing away the results of the autumn's victory there must be a change of candidate.2 Governor Boutwell felt embarrassed in holding his position by the Free Soil votes, which would not have been given to him had the action of the dissenting Democrats been known in advance ; and he counselled, for the sake of success, the with- drawal of Sumner and a union on S. 0. Phillips. The governor at that time had no liking for a man of Sumner's pronounced position as an antislavery agitator, as was evident from his action as a member of the Legislature at its previous session on the antislavery resolutions, from his inaugural message as governor, and his appointment, the next year, of Cushing as a judge of the Supreme Court.3 He was more careful than Banks — a Democrat also — not to compromise his position in the national party.
Favorable signs, however, soon appeared. Some of " the in- domitables " — nearly all of whom had been chosen by the aid
i March 18, 19, 20, 31.
2 Courier, April 3.
3 Mr. Boutwell, as a member of the House, spoke and voted March 22, 1850, against a series of resolutions of a thorough and comprehensive character, which expressed the opinions of the State in favor of an antislavery instead of a pro-slavery national policy; and he proposed a milder set, limited to the territorial question. His message as gov- ernor, in January, 1851, refrained from condemning the pro-slavery policy of the gov- ernment, and sought to tone down the public feeling against the Fugitive Slave law. It was received with disfavor by antislavery men. Whittier, in a letter to Sumner, Jan. 16, 1851, referred to it as "that detestable message." The Free Soil organ, the "Com- monwealth" (January 20 and 23), was emphatic in disapproving it. Governor Boutwell signified by letter his approval of Mr. Webster's Compromise course, and received a grateful reply. (Webster's Private Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 472, 479.) Sumner's opinion of the governor's position at this period appears later (post, p. 2-47).
VOL. III. 16
242 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
of Free Soil votes — were uneasy, as they knew that sure defeat awaited them at the next election if they persevered in prevent- ing the election of a Free Soil senator. Some had already been subjected to discipline by their constituents in meetings called to condemn their action. Cushing, their leader, did not con- ceal the embarrassment of his position, and offered to Wilson to join in the election of any other Free Soiler, naming Wil- son himself as a satisfactory candidate ; but Wilson at once re- pelled the suggestion.1 Among the Whigs, too, there were some — perhaps three or four — who while voting for Winthrop were well disposed to Sumner ; among them Nathaniel B. Borden of Fall River, formerly a member of Congress. A provision of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights — the only instance in which it is known to have been called into service — was availed of to gain the requisite votes. The people, under their right " to give instructions to their representatives," assembled in certain towns under a legal call, and instructed their members to vote for Sumner. This gave Mr. Borden2 and also a few " indomi- tables," already weak in their resistance, an excuse which they were in search of for changing to Sumner. All the while during the months of intermittent voting there was no flagging in the popular interest, and the ballots were watched with anxious hopes and fears.
The voting had been adjourned from April 2 to the 23d, when Sumner on three ballots came within one vote of a majority, and on one his election was announced ; but after a revision of the count he was found still to lack one of a majority.3 The Free Soilers, though in painful suspense, were greatly encour- aged, and felt that success was at hand. The first ballot of the next day — the 24th — left Sumner two short of an election. At this stage Sidney Bartlett, a Boston Whig, with a view to prevent mistakes by the adhering of ballots to each other, and perhaps to give Democrats an opportunity to vote unobserved against Sumner, moved that the ballots be enclosed in envelopes
1 Wilson, who did not foresee his own future, said, when he stated to the writer Cush- ing's proposition, that he might some day go to the House, but the thought of the senator- ship for him was absurd.
2 The meeting in Fall River was held April 12. On motion of Dr. Foster Hooper, a Democrat, the Fall River representatives were instructed by a vote of two hundred and thirt3'-three to eighty-four to vote for Sumner, and from that time Mr. Borden cordially complied with the instruction.
3 Mr. Webster was in Boston the day before, when he spoke in Bowdoin Square, and received his friends on State Street.
tEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 243
of uniform character ; and the motion was carried. On the next ballot (the twenty -sixth), conducted in this manner, Sumner re- ceived one hundred and ninety-three votes, — just the number necessary to elect, and the same number he had received on several other ballots, and one less than he had received on one ballot the day before. Winthrop's vote was one hundred and sixty-six, one less than he started with, and five less than the highest he received. The scattering vote was three less than on the first ballot, and from five to twelve less than it had been on several ballots. It was thought that the secret ballot had an effect opposite to that which may have been its purpose, and enabled one or two Whigs, or one or two " indomitables," to vote under cover for Simmer, or to cast one of the two blanks which were found in the boxes and thrown out. Who gave the decisive vote could not be ascertained ; suspicion or guess or a tardy claim has pointed at different members as casting it.1
The declaration of the final vote, which took place early in the afternoon, was greeted with cheers, which the Speaker promptly suppressed. The news spread quickly. The Free Soilers rejoiced with fulness of heart, many saying as long as they lived that it was the happiest moment of their lives. The managers of the " Commonwealth " displayed the national colors from their office at the northeast corner of Washing-ton and State streets, and in the evening illuminated the building and sent up rockets. A large crowd, counted by thousands, were attracted by the display, and were addressed from the east front of the Old State House by Wilson, Thomas Russell, and Joseph Lyman. Wilson, interrupted by a cheer for Web- ster, retorted that the victory of the day and the prostration of the Whigs dated from March 7, 1850, " when that great man stood up in the Senate and repudiated the long-cherished senti- ments of Massachusetts." The event was recognized by a can- non salute in Boston, and by similar demonstrations in other cities and towns. A formal commemoration was arrested by Sumner's earnestly expressed wish, as he was unwilling that the success of the cause should have at all the appearance of a personal triumph.2
1 It has been claimed for Israel Haynes of Sudbury, an "indomitable" (Wilson's " Rise and Fall," vol. ii. p. 350); for Henry A. Hardy of Danvers, another "indomitable," who was himself elected by one majority (A. G. Browne in "Commonwealth," Jan. 31, 1863; L. F. Gould's letter to Sumner, Feb. 7, 1863); and for Nathaniel Doane of Harwich, a Whig. 2 Works, vol. ii. p. 433.
244 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
As soon as the election was announced the Free Soilers in mass sought Sumner at his house, and not finding him there, went to the house of Mr. Adams in Mt. Vernon Street, who answering to a call said that '■ he was glad of an opportunity to be able to congratulate his friends upon the glorious tri- umph of liberty in the election." Next they proceeded to the house of Richard H. Dana, Sr., in West Cedar Street, where they expected to find his son ; but the son not being there, the venerable poet told them that he himself " had kept his bed until noon through illness, but on hearing the news he had suddenly become better." 1
Sumner heard the news of his election about three in the afternoon, while dining at Mr. Adams's house, which was within almost a minute's walk from the State House. Mr. Adams's son Charles Francis, since wTell known to the country, has sup- plied this account of the manner in which Sumner received the tidings : —
" At that time I was about sixteen years of age. In common with all the members of my father's family, I was intensely interested in the election of Mr. Sumner, who was at that time very intimate at my father's house. It was his custom to dine there, I should say, at least as often as once a week. The election had been dragging along all through the winter, and owing to the fugitive-slave excitement it was well known to have reached a climax early in April. I found my way into the gallery of the House of Repre- sentatives on the morning of the day before the final election took place, when the first ballot was going on. I remember very well the bustle and excite- ment of the time, and the crowded condition of the gallery. There was a dispute over the counting of the vote, and a majority and a minority report. When the majority report was declared, giving Mr. Sumner his election, I slipped down from the place and immediately went down to his office in Court Street. I ran upstairs, and found him just coming out of the office, and at once told him of the result and of his election. He took the matter very quietly indeed ; and he and I walked up to my father's house together, it being then about our dinner hour, — half past 2 o'clock. The matter of the dis- puted ballot was discussed, and the opinion seemed to be that, according to the precedents of the session, the blank vote, I think it was, would not be counted. However, the matter was decided otherwise, and that ballot went for nothing.2 The next day the interest was very great, as it was pei'fectly well known that the vote would be very close. Mr. Sumner again came to-
1 Mr. Dana (the father) said to Sumner, a few days later, "This election is gall and bitterness to some people." Sumner replied, "That occurred to me; but I at once sup- pressed all feeling of triumph."
2 This ballot bore Sumner's name in print, crossed with faint pencil-marks, and under- neath was that of "John Mills'' in pencil. The Free Soilers consented unanimously to have it counted for Mills, who had only one other vote.
Mt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 245
my father's house — 57 Mt. Vernon Street — to dine, and we waited with a good deal of anxiety for news from the State House, which was hut two blocks away. Before we had been long at dinner, my younger brother, Henry, was seen coming up to the door, and from the slow manner in which he walked we drew not very favorable conclusions. He came into the room, and was at once eagerly asked what the vote had been. He then stated, I remember, that so many votes were cast, and that Mr. Sumner had received so many, being the exact number necessary for a choice. I perfectly well remem- ber that Mr. Sumner received the result with perfect placidity, merely suggest- ing some question as to its details. Meanwhile, I happened to be seated next to him, aud turning towards him, said, 'Mr. Sumner, I want to shake bauds with you first ; ' upon which he very kindly gave me his hand, and accepted my congratulations. The circumstances of the ballot were then discussed; and hardly had my brother given the details as they rested in his memory, when a number of persons were seen eagerly moving along the street, and they speedily came up to the door, and the bell was ruug. Their inquiry was if Mr. Sumner were there, as they had heard that he was dining with Mr. Adams. They were informed that he was ; and they walked upstairs into my father's library, where I suppose twenty or thirty persons may then have come together, and congratulated him.1 Shortly after, he left the house and went out to Mr. Longfellow's, where he passed that afternoon and the follow- ing night, very wisely getting out of the way of the jubilations which followed that afternoon and evening. These are all the circumstances of the case; and I remember them as distinctly as if they occurred but yesterday. The chief thing that rests upon my memory is the utter absence of any apparent elation or excessive interest on Mr. Sumner's part. He received the news of his suc- cess with as perfect calmness and absence of any appearance of excitement as was possible. There was no change in his face or in his manner ; and the latter was one of perfect quiet and self-possessed dignity. He certainly was far less elated than was my father or any of my father's children ; though the elation was natural enough with us, as we were then by no means grown up."
Sumner remained at Cambridge two or three nights. Long- fellow wrote in his diary, April 24 : —
" A pleasant dinner, at the close of which we heard the news of Sumner's election. In the evening came Lowell and Gurowski and Palfrey, and Sum- ner himself to escape from the triumph aud be quiet from all the noise in the streets of Boston. He is no more elated by his success than he has been de- pressed by the failure heretofore, and evidently does not desire the office. He says he would resign now if any one of the same sentiments as himself could be put in his place.
" 25. The papers are all ringing with Sumner, Sumner ! and the guns
1 Anson Burlingame and Thomas Gaffield were among the number. The latter states that Sumner thanked the callers for their kindness, saying that he rejoiced with them for the cause, at the same time declining a public demonstration which was proposed for the evening, and expressing the wish that nothing would be done to denote the success of a person instead of a cause.
246 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
thundering out their triumph ; meanwhile the hero of the strife is sitting quietly here, more saddened than exalted. Palfrey dined with us. I went to my Don Quixote at college, leaving the two Free Soilers sitting over their nuts and wine.1
u27. Sumner brought a pocket-full of letters of congratulation and good advice which he has received since his election." 2
Sumner wrote to Theodore Parker,3 April 19, 1851 : —
" May you live a thousand years, always preaching the truth of Fast Day ! 4 That sermon is a noble effort. It stirred me to the bottom of my heart ; at times softening me almost to tears, and then again filling me with rage. I wish it could be read everywhere throughout the land. ... I have had no con- fidence from the beginning, as I believe you know, in our courts. I was per- suaded that with solemn form they would sanction the great enormity, therefore I am not disappointed. My appeal is to the people, and my hope is to create in Massachusetts such a public opinion as will render the law a dead-letter. It is in vain to expect its repeal by Congress till the slave-power is over- thrown. It is, however, with a rare dementia that this power has staked itself on a position which is so offensive, and which cannot for any length of time be tenable. In enacting that law it has given to the free States a sphere of discussion which they would otherwise have missed. No other form of the slavery question, not even the Wilmot Proviso, would have afforded equal advantages."
Sumner wrote to his brother George, April 29 : —
" I send you papers which will show the close of the long contest here in Massachusetts. The New York ' Tribune ' of Friday, April 25, candidly states the position I have occupied. Never was any contest in our country of
1 Sumner's first use of a senator's frank was upon documents to promote Palfrey's re-election to Congress. With his large correspondence, he valued the privilege, and parted with it reluctantly when it was finally discontinued in 1870. He wrote a public letter urging Palfrey's election ("Commonwealth," May 22, 1851), but it did not avail.
2 The writer may be permitted to state how he received the news. He was one of the half-dozen Free Soil students of the Law School out of one hundred or more attending it, and the rest of the one hundred were nearly all bitter against the Free Soil party. On the 23d of April he had heard that Sumner was elected, and was greatly disap- pointed an hour later to learn that the report was untrue. When hearing the second report of his election the next day, he distrusted it, and hastened to Boston. He was rejoiced to find this one true, and then sought Sumner in vain. On the evening of the day but one after, he found a scrap of paper in the keyhole of his room, No. 1 Divinity Hall, which proved to be from Sumner, with " Sorry not to see my valued friend " written on it. He sought Sumner at Palfrey's, near by, and found him there. The two walked, after leaving Palfrey's, along the railway track then existing, across the Common, to Longfellow's. The writer said to Sumner on the way, "This is too good; I fear you will die before taking your seat." He replied, "Perhaps that will be the best thing for me." The writer ex- pressed the hope that his first speech in the Senate would be on foreign affairs. The two entered Craigie House, — the writer's first meeting with the poet and his wife; nnd leaving shortly, he walked, thoughtful, and never so happy before, to his lodgings. With much joy and hope the youth of Massachusetts greeted the election of the new senator.
' 3 Printed in Weiss's "Life of Theodore Parker," vol. ii. p. 107. 4 On the rendition of Sims, a fugitive slave.
JEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 247
any kind so protracted ; never did any, except a Presidential contest, excite so much interest. The ardor and determination of the opposition to me has not been less flattering than the constant and enthusiastic support which I have received. The latter is particularly enhanced by the circumstance, well known, that I did not in any way seek the post, but expressly asked to be excused. In truth, I did not desire it. And now that the victory is won, my former dis- like and indifference to it have lost none of their strength. From the bottom of my heart I say that I do not wish to be senator.1 The honors of the post have no attraction for me ; and I feel a pang at the thought that I now bid farewell to that life of quiet study, with the employment of my pen, which I had hoped to pursue. At this moment, could another person faithful to our cause be chosen in my place, I would resign. I am humbled by the impor- tance attached to the election. Throughout Massachusetts, and even in other States, there have been bonfires, firings of cannon, ringing of bells, public meetings, and all forms of joy, to celebrate the event. As I read of these I felt my inability to meet the expectations aroused. Again, I wish I was not in the place. I am met constantly by joyful faces, but I have no joy ; my heart is heavy. Never did I need sympathy and friendly succor more than now, when most of the world regards me as a most fortunate man, with a prospect of peculiar brilliancy.
" The antislavery cause in Massachusetts is destined shortly to a complete and absolute triumph. The Boston set, chiefly from State Street, are pro- foundly ignorant of the real sentiment of the Commonwealth. I know it thoroughly. They remind me of the Bourbons and their friends. I long to commune with you on these things, and to draw from your treasures of expe- rience and study."
To John Bigelow, May 2 : —
11 1 would not affect a feeling which I have not, nor have I any temptation to do it ; but I should not be frank if I did not say to you that I have no per- sonal joy in this election. Now that the office is in my hands, T feel more than ever a distaste for its duties and struggles as compared with other spheres. Every heart knoweth its own secret, and mine has never been in the Senate of the United States, nor is it there yet. Most painfully do I feel my inability to meet the importance which has been given to this election and the expectation of enthusiastic friends. But more than this, I am impressed by the thought that I now embark on a career which promises to last for six years, if not indefinitely, and which takes from me all opportunity of study and meditation to which I had hoped to devote myself. I do not wish to be a politician.
" Nothing but Boutwell's half-Hunkerism prevents us from consolidating a permanent party in Massachusetts, — -not by coalition, but by fusion of all who are truly liberal, humane, and democratic. He is in our way. He has tried to please Hunkers and Free Soilers. We can get along very well with- out the Hunkers, and should be happy to leave Hallett and Co. to commune
1 The same avowal was made in letters to several friends, written in reply to congratulations.
248 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
with the men of State Street. The latter have been infinitely disturbed by the recent election. For the first time they are represented in the Senate by one over whom they have no influence, who is entirely independent, and is a ' bachelor ! 7 It was said among them at first that real estate had gone down twenty-five per cent !
"1 regret the present state of things in New York [the absorption of the Barnburners by the Democratic party], because it seems to interfere with those influences which were gradually bringing the liberal and antislavery men of both the old parties together. Your politics will never be in a natural state till this occurs.''
While the credit of Sumner's election was shared by many, and Keyes, Bird, Earle, Alley, and William Claflin were effec- tive workers, no one person contributed so much to it as Wilson, who five years later became his colleague.1 He had taken the lead in promoting the combination by which the Legislature had been carried against the Whigs. He was the chairman of a committee which had served during the long contest in organ- izing the supporters of Sumner. He insisted on adherence to Sumner as a candidate, and repelled the suggestion that any other name should be offered in his stead. He was conciliatory where conciliation promised any advantage, and aggressive when gentler methods would have signified weakness and distrust. A hostile movement from one who had been prominent as an advo- cate of the coalition drew from him a letter which, in its trench- ant personalities, was not unworthy of Junius.2 Those who knew Mr. Wilson, or General Wilson as he was called, remember how active and restless he was by nature ; and during this contest he seemed ubiquitous, putting life and courage into the united forces of Free Soilers and Democrats in their almost daily meet- ings, or as he sought them at their lodgings or met them in the lobbies of the State House. Other men associated with him could carry organization to a finer point than he ; but for the difficult task then on hand he had no peer. It is pleasant to make this record of one who, though he was himself ambitious, was loyal to his party and its cause, and was at no time the self- seeker that he was sometimes unjustly thought to be. Sumner, always ready to recognize other men's worth, wrote to Wilson, the day after the election, a letter in which he did no more than justice to the latter's remarkable services.
1 Commonwealth, May 3.
2 Letter to Marcus Morton, " Commonwealth," March 18. This was the elder Morton, who is to be distinguished from his son, afterwards chief-justice of the State.
JEt. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 249
Ckaigie House, Cambridge, April 25, 1851.
My dear Wilson, — I have this moment read your remarks of last night, which I think peculiarly happy. You touched the right chord. I hope not to seem cold or churlish in thus withdrawing from all the public manifes- tations of triumph to which our friends are prompted. In doiug so I follow the line of reserve which you know I have kept to throughout the contest, and my best judgment at the moment satisfies me that I am right. You who have seen me familiarly and daily from the beginning to the end will under- stand me, and, if need be, can satisfy those who, taking counsel of their exul- tation, would have me mingle in the display. But I shrink from imposing anything more upon you. To your ability, energy, determination, and fidelity our cause owes its present success. For weal or woe, you must take the re- sponsibility of having placed me in the Senate of the United States. I am prompted also to add that, while you have done all this, I have never heard from you a single suggestion of a selfish character, looking in any way to any good to yourself. Your labors have been as disinterested as they have been effective. This consideration increases my personal esteem and gratitude.
I trust that you will see that Mr. B's resolves1 are passed at once as they are, and the bill as soon as possible. Delay will be the tactics of the enemy.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Sumner.
The joy of the Free Soilers over the result was only equalled "by the wrath and bitterness of the partisan Whigs, particularly those of the Webster type. They hated Sumner as few men have been hated, and he was now to fill the high place which their idol had filled so long. They associated his name with all that was plebeian, ignominious, and revolutionary ; and they had heaped on him and his coadjutors every odious epithet. Seldom has insolence met with so signal a rebuke. These unworthy sentiments were not, however, common to all the Whigs, and from some came public or private assurances of confidence in his high character and aims. The New York " Tribune " re- cognized in his election the absence of self-seeking and embar- rassing pledges, and foresaw that his action, dictated by an earnest and deliberate conviction, would be that of a states- man looking to universal and permanent ends, — never of a partisan looking to the distribution of the spoils.2 The anti- slavery people through the free States received the tidings with profound gratitude. Their leaders — Chase, Giddings, Sew- ard, the Jays, Whittier, Bryant, Parker,3 and many more —
1 J. T. Buckingham's, on slavery.
2 April 25.
3 Parker's letter is printed in his "Life" by Weiss, vol. ii. pp. Ill, 112.
250 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
sent hearty messages of congratulation to the new senator. Few omitted to observe that Massachusetts had put the seal of disapproval on Webster's "Seventh of March" speech. Theo- dore Parker, failing to find Sumner at his office, wrote, April 26 : " You told me once that you were in morals, not in politics. Now I hope you will show that you are still in morals although in politics. I hope you will be the senator with a conscience" Seward wrote : " I take new courage in the cause of political truth and justice when I see a senator coming from Massachu- setts imbued with the uncompromising devotion to freedom and humanity of John Quincy Adams." Richard S. Storrs, Jr., wrote from Brooklyn: "I am sure that there are many thousands of hearts outside of Massachusetts which have thrilled with deep and unexpected happiness at this most honorable and auspicious event. I confess that to me the whole aspect of the future is brighter and more attractive." William H. Furness wrote from Philadelphia of the inexpressible satisfaction which he and oth- ers had taken in the result, and congratulated him with a whole heart on the greatness of his position, and most of all for the sacred cause which had triumphed in him.1 Hillard wrote from Court Street, April 25 : — ■
My dear Sumner, — • I cannot congratulate you on your election, be- cause, with my political connections, that would be insincere ; but I can and do say that I am glad that the lot has fallen upon you, since it must needs fall on one of your party. So far as your elevation shall prove a source of in- creased happiness and usefulness to you, I shall rejoice in it. No one will watch with more interest your career than I shall, or be more pleased with any accession to your solid and enduring reputation. I shall always judge of your sayings and doings in a candid and just spirit. You have now before you a noble career. May you walk in it with a statesman's steps, and more than gratify the good wishes of your friends, and more than disappoint the ill wishes of your enemies.
Yours faithfully,
(jr. b. H.
Sumner sent Hillard, in the autumn of 1851, Horace Mann's speeches on slavery recently collected in a volume. Hillard acknowledged the gift ; but said they differed so widely as to the contents of the book and the recent course of the author, that it would only give pain and do no one any good for him to say more. He added : " We have made up our fagots for life, and we will not wrangle or ' establish raws ' upon subjects on which
1 Other letters of congratulation are noted in Sumner's Works, vol. ii. pp. 436, 437.
Mr. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR 251
we shall never agree, but will respect each other's intellectual rights and accept each other's convictions as facts."
English friends sent congratulations. Ingham wrote as to his election : " You may well believe how it has gratified your many friends ; and not merely from their sympathy with your personal fortunes, but from their admiration of the objects and methods which have marked your course." The Earl of Carlisle wrote : " I have read with great interest about you ; and I hardly can invest my ingenuous, eager, young, slim friend of '39 (was it ?) and '51 with such august and weighty and venerable associa- tions as throng around the curule chair of the Senate. Do not ever get dry and big and pompous like some whom you will find your neighbors there." Macready, writing June 5, 1851, recog- nized in him " the union of lofty sentiment with extensive ac- quirement and high refinement, both of mind and manners," such as had not yet been seen in the United States Senate.
A foreign writer on American history has recognized, long after the event, the significance of Sumner's election as of that of a man " whose name was an emphatic protest against the glittering principles and shifting policy" of Webster's speech, — ■ of one who " owed his election entirely to his position on the slavery question and the conviction that no power on earth could move him from his principles." " This it was," he adds, " that made his election a boundary mark in the history of the United States. The rigid fidelity to principle and the fiery- spirited earnestness of abolitionism, united to the will and capacity to pursue political ends with the given political means, received in him their first representative in the Senate."1
Sumner, as well he might be, felt oppressed with the high expectations that awaited his career in the Senate. He ad- dressed a formal letter of acceptance to the Legislature, in which he took advantage of the opportunity to state the limitations of the Constitution and the blessings of the Union.2 It was, in fact, a disclaimer of the disunionism which pro-slavery par- tisans had charged upon him. The Compromise journals ex- pressed surprise, real or affected, to find that the senator was loyal to the Union and the Constitution, while Edmund Quincy and Garrison respectively, in the antislavery " Standard " and the " Liberator," expressed their disapproval. The letter, how-
1 Von Hoist, vol. iv. pp. 42, 43. 2 Works, vol. ii. pp. 437-440.
252 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
ever, contained no variation from the author's former avowals, and stated the doctrine which he and his party had always held.
Sumner did not take part in the autumn State election. It was an important one to him, as it involved an approval of his own election ; but he naturally wished to keep quiet till he en- tered the Senate, and from motives of delicacy did not wish to be again pitted against Mr. Winthrop, now the Whig candidate for governor. The coalition again carried the State, though by a somewhat reduced majority ; but the Democratic members who voted against Snmner were not re-elected. Boutwell was chosen governor by the Legislature over Winthrop. The result was treated as an approval of the political revolution of the pre- ceding year.
To Longfellow, May 8 : —
" I cannot repress my delight in what I hear of Emerson's utterance at Concord. For an hour and a half he laid hare our evils and their author.1 I have more satisfaction in this voice on our side than in that of any politician. So little am I prepared for my new fellowship ! "
To John Jay, May 23 : —
" My aim, while attending to all the duties of my post, will he to do some- thing to secure a hearing for our cause ; and I wish in advance to hespeak the counsels of our friends, though I feel that in the last moment much must he left to my own personal discretion. As a stranger to the Senate and to all legislative hodies, I regard it to he my first duty to understand the hody in which I have a seat hefore rushing into its contests."
To George Sumner, June 17 : —
" You ought to he a diplomatist. Another motive to me for discontent with my present position is the fear that I may stand in your way. It would be difficult for an Administration to appoint the brother of one so obnoxious as myself without pledges or explanations, which you could not stoop to give. If I were a private man, there would be no influence against you on this score." 2
Again, June 24 : —
" In answer to your inquiries, let me say that there are signs of a contest in Massachusetts such as very rarely occurs. The bitterness of the Whigs is
1 Mr. Webster. This address of Mr. Emerson was not published; but he followed the same line of thought in his treatment of the Fugitive Slave law and Mr. Webster at the Tabernacle in New York, March 7, 1854. Emerson's Works, vol. xi. pp. 205-230.
2 George Sumner did not sympathize with his brother's earnestness on the slavery and peace questions.
JEx. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 253
intense, and they will spare no effort or money to regain the control of the State. I do not think they can succeed. The Free Soilers are united and determined. Our paper 1 has just passed into the hands of Mr. Joseph Lyman, an editor and proprietor, assisted hy Mr. Palfrey. I think it will he the most powerful organ in Massachusetts. In the coming contest its influence must be considerable. There will be a coalition in the autumn between the Free Soilers and Democrats, with no disturbing senatorial question. The Free Soilers have been misrepresented by their opponents ; and none more than myself. This, perhaps, was natural from the strong desire to break me down. " My course in this discussion from the beginning has been most guarded. I am a constitutionalist, and have never taken any position inconsistent with this character. The Garrisonians have criticised my letter 2 with some sever- ity, though they have always known that there were radical differences be- tween us. I believe that you could not hesitate to adopt every principle in our politics which I have ever maintained. Whatever may be the course of things in Massachusetts between now and the next Presidential contest, I entertain no doubt that from that time forward the Free Soil party will easily predominate in our State. In the nation the contest, of course, will be longer; but there our ultimate triumph is none the less certain. The young man whose bosom does not yet stir with sympathy for a noble cause may be swayed by a selfish ambition to keep on the side of freedom."
To Lieber, June 25 : —
" We have before us in Massachusetts a very bitter period of political strife, to last till the Presidential election. After that the Free Soil cause will be completely and without let or hindrance in the ascendant. I know public sentiment here, and I do not for a moment doubt the future. The Curtises and their associates will probably share the fate of the Hartford couventionists. I hope Hillard may be saved."
To Professor Mittermaier, Heidelberg, July 8 :
" In the United States there is a struggle substantially coincident with yours, which is now going on. With us the slave-power is the tyranny, and it unhappily rallies to its support at the North, under the specious name of ' law and order,' many worthy but timid men. But I do not doubt that this paramount influence, so injurious to the character of our government, will be ultimately overthrown, and before long. I wish I could hear that Germany was united, as she promised to be, on the assembly of the Congress at Frankfort. That was a scene worthy of our age, and full of auguries of the future."
To William Jay, August 3 : —
" I had already carefully read the judgment of Chief-Justice Hornblower, and commended it especially to the ' Commonwealth,' where I think it will be republished, before I received your favor of August 1. It seems to me un- answerable in its reasoning, and I honor its author very much. I am sick at heart as I observe the course of parties in New York. The telegraph to-day
l The Commonwealth. 2 May 14, 1851. Works, vol. ii. pp. 437-440.
254 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
tells us that the Whigs are all united in support of the Compromise. Come what may, our Massachusetts battalion will stand firm."
To T. W. Higginson,1 September 5 : —
" More than ever do I feel the importance to our cause of preventing the Commonwealth from passing into the hands of Webster Whiggery. This, of course, can be prevented only by a combination — I wish a complete commu- nity of principle would allow it to be a union — with the Democrats. Re- gretting that they are not more essentially with us, I feel that we shall throw our staff away if we reject the opportunity which seems offered of their co- operation against the Whigs. With a mutual understanding of each other, and with a real determination to carry the combination honestly through in the hope of sustaining our great cause, I cannot doubt the result. Webster and Winthrop will be defeated. Perhaps, at the present moment, no political event connected with elections would be of greater advantage to freedom. . . . 1 fear from what I have heard that these views may not entirely harmonize with yours; but I feel that our aims are so nearly identical, my sympathy with your earnestness is so complete, that I do not think we could differ sub- stantially as to the true course to be pursued if we could see each other and fully interchange opinions."
To George Sumner, September 10 : —
" On the tariff I am absolutely uncommitted. Mr. Henry Cabot, an old manufacturer, told me yesterday that he and others were now satisfied that ' protection was a fallacy ; ' and that William Appleton had said that his vote could not be had for a change in the present tariff. Mr. Cabot thought the subject would not come up in the next session."
Again, September 30 : —
" The field of our national politics is still shrouded in mist. Nobody can clearly discern the future. On the Whig side, Fillmore seems to me the most probable candidate ; and on the Democratic side, Douglas. I have never thought Scott's chances good, while Webster's have always seemed insignifi- cant. His course lately has been that of a madman. He declined to partici- pate in any of the receut celebrations,2 cherishing still a grudge because he was refused the use of Faneuil Hall. The mayor told me that Webster cut him dead, and also Alderman Rogers, when they met in the apartments of the President. The papers — two Hunkers — have hammered me for calling on the President.3 It is shrewdly surmised that their rage came from spite at the peculiarly cordial reception which he gave me. Lord Elgin I liked much ; he is a very pleasant and clever man, and everybody gave him the palm among the speakers. I was not present at the dinner, and did not hear him.
1 This letter to Mr. Higginson, as well as another to Mr. Whittier, written a few days later, were intended to remove their doubts as to the policy of further co-operation with the Democrats.
2 Railroad Jubilee, Sept. 15, 1851.
3 September 17, in Boston, on the occasion of the Railroad Jubilee. Sumner, as already seen, had strongly condemned President Fillmore a jrear before for approving the Fugitive Slave bill.
^Et. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 255
" There is a lull now with regard to Cuba. The whole movement may- have received an extinguisher for the present; but I think we shall hear of it when Congress meets, in a motion to purchase this possession of Spain. This question promises to enter into the next Presidential election. The outrages caused by the Fugitive Slave bill continue to harass the country. There will be no end to them until that bill becomes a dead letter. It is strange that men can be so hardened to violations of justice and humanity, as many are now, under the drill of party. Mr. Webster has done more than all others to break down the North ; and yet he once said, in taunt at our tameness, ' There is no North ! ' The mischief from his course is incalculable. His speech at the reception of the President was regarded — and I think justly — by many Englishmen as insulting.
'• Our State politics promise to be very exciting. There has been a prodi- gious pressure upon me to take the field ; but thus far I have declined. Under present circumstances I do not see my way to speaking. I am unwilling to defend the coalition, as in so doing I shall seem to be defending my own elec- tion ; and I do not wish to seem to pursue Wiuthrop. His defeat seems to me inevitable, though in a contest like the present there must be an allowance for accidents and for treachery."
To J. G. Whittier, October 7 : —
" Will not Higginson see the matter in a practical light? I respect him so much, and honor his principles so supremely, that I am pained to differ from him ; but I do feel that we must not neglect the opportunity affurded by alliances — not fusion — with the Democrats to prevent the Whigs from estab- lishing themselves in the State. Palfrey is now earnestly of this inclining; so is Hopkins ; also Burlingame, — and all these stood out before."
To John Bigelow, October 24 : —
" I heard of your illness, while I was in New York, with great regret. Time and distauce did not allow me to see you at your suburban retreat, al- though I wished very much to confer with you, particularly on the subject of your letter. Let me say frankly, however, that I despair of any arrangement by which any candidate can be brought out on the Democratic side so as to receive active support from antislavery men. Nor do I see much greater chance on the Whig side. The tendency of both the old parties at present is to national conventions; and in both of these our cause will perish. The material for a separate organization, by which to sustain our principles, seems to exist nowhere except in Massachusetts. Had the Barnburners kept aloof from the Hunkers in 1849, the Democratic split would have been complete throughout the free States, and it would have affected sympathetically the Whig party. A new order of things would have appeared, and the beginning of the end would have been at hand. But the work in some way is to be done over. There will be no peace until the slave-power is subdued. Its tyranny must be overthrown, and freedom, instead of slavery, must become the ani- mating idea of the national government. But I see little chance of any arrangement or combination by which this truly Democratic idea can be pro- moted in the next Presidential contest.
256 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1850-51.
" The politicians are making all their plans to crush us, and they seem to be succeeding so well that all our best energies and most unflinching devotion to principles can alone save us. For myself I see no appreciable difference between Hunker Democracy and Hunker Whiggery : in both, all other ques- tions are lost in the 'single idea' of opposition to the Free Soil sentiment. Nor can I imagine any political success, any party favor or popular reward, which would tempt me to compromise in any respect the independent position which I now hold.
" It is vain to try to get rid of this question of the slave-power except by victory over it ; and our best course, it seems to me, is to be always ready for the contest. But I am a practical man, and desire to act in such way as best to promote the ideas which we have at heart. If you can show me the road, I am ready to follow. . . . The two years before us will be crucial years, — years of the Cross. But I know that better times will soon come. For God's sake, stand firm ! I hope John Van Buren will not allow himself to be en- meshed in any of the tempting arrangements for mere political success. He is so completely committed to our cause that he can hope for nothing except by its triumph. I know no one who has spoken a stronger or more timely word for us than he has. I am much attached to him personally. I admire his abilities, and am grateful for what he has done ; but I feel that if he would surrender himself more unreservedly to the cause he would be more effective still. Few have such powers."
Again, November 19 : —
"Ido not see our future on the Presidential question. The recent declara- tion of Toombs seems ominous of a break-up, in which I should rejoice. I long to see men who really think alike on national politics acting together. The Whigs [in Massachusetts] are in despair. They confess that they are badly beaten. The coalition has been sustained and its candidate."
Mr. Winthrop was not again a candidate for office. He acted in 1852 with the Whigs ; in 1856, 1860, and 1864 he opposed the Republicans, and then withdrew from political controversy. His old Free Soil adversaries had a kindly feeling towards him notwithstanding the asperities of their contests with him. Sum- ner, after the early part of 1848, abstained from all reflections upon his course, publicly or privately.1 Wilson, in 1855, for- mally invited him to join in the anti-Nebraska movement, which was the beginning of the Republican party ; but made as he was, and seeing things as he saw them, he could not accept the over- ture.2 There was no time when Wilson and Sumner would not
1 One or two slight allusions in private correspondence do not seem to require a quali- fication of the general statement.
2 Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 433. Whittier, while as positive as other antislavery men against Winthrop's political course at this period, 1846- 1851, regarded him with great respect, and deeply regretted that he did not take his place with the antislavery party.
Mr. 39-40.] SUMNER CHOSEN SENATOR. 257
have welcomed him as a coadjutor. Winthrop has lived more than forty years since his retirement from Congress, — a well- known figure in Boston, its most conspicuous citizen for a long period ; administering charities municipal and national ; an orator of foremost rank, called to speak for his city and coun- try on great commemorative days ; faithful to church, to fam- ily, and to friends ; gracious to old adversaries ; and opening his door on February 22, year after year, for his fellow-citizens to join with him in a filial tribute to Washington. Those who contended against him in the years 1846 to 1851, and have known him in his old age, regret only that he did not take his place with Adams, Sumner, and Wilson, and prolong a public career which promised to be of great service to his country and mankind.
VOL. III. 17
258 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. — WELCOME TO KOSSUTH.— PUBLIC LANDS IN THE WEST. — THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. — 1851-1852.
SUMNER left Boston for Washington Nov. 25, 1851. He had three partings which touched his heart, — with his mother and sister at the family home, and with Howe and Longfellow. Howe wrote to him : " You are now to be lost to us ; and though when here I do not see much of you, still it makes me sad to think I shall no longer have the power when I have the will to get near you for comfort and sympathy when I am sad. God bless and keep you ! " Longfellow wrote in his diary, Novem- ber 23 : —
" Sumner takes his last dinner with us. In a few days he will be gone to Washington for the whiter. We shall miss him much. He passed the night here as in the days of long ago. We sat up late talking."
Again, November 30 : —
''We had a solitary dinner, missing Sumner very much. He is now in Washington, and it will be many days before we hear again his footsteps in the hall, or see his manly, friendly face by daylight or lamplight."
He wrote to Sumner, December 25 : —
" Your farewell note came safe and sad; and on Sunday no well-known footstep in the hall, nor sound of cane laid upon the table. We ate our din- ner somewhat silently by ourselves, and talked of you far off, looking at your empty chair. ... As I stand here by my desk and cast a glance out of the window, and then at the gate, I almost expect to see you with one foot on the stone step and one hand on the fence holding final discourse with Worcester." 1
In New York Sumner made a few calls, among them one on Joshua Leavitt, at the office of the " Independent," where he met for the first time Rev. J. P. Thompson.2 John Bigelow came
1 Author of the "Dictionary of the English Language," — a neighbor of Longfellow, and a good, friend of Sumner.
2 " Some Glimpses of Senator Sumner," by J. P. Thompson, D.D. New York "Inde- pendent," April 30, 1874.
Mt. 40-41.] FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 259
to dine with him ; but John Van Buren, who was invited, was unable to accept. From his lodgings at Delmonico's he wrote on the 26th, Thanksgiving Day, letters to relatives and friends, full of tenderness, and showing with what concern he entered on his new career : —
My very dear Julia, — Your parting benediction and God-speed, min- gling with mother's, made my heart overflow. I thank you both. They will cheer, comfort, and strengthen me in duties where there are many difficulties aud great responsibilities. For myself, I do not desire public life ; I have neither taste nor ambition for it; but Providence has marked out my career, and 1 follow. Many will criticise and malign : but I shall persevere. . . . Good-by. With constant love to mother and yourself,
Charles.
" Dearest Longfellow, — I could not speak to you as we parted, — my soul was too full ; only tears would flow. Your friendship, and dear Fanny's, have been among my few treasures, like gold unchanging. For myself, I see with painful vividness the vicissitudes and enthralments of the future, and feel that we shall never more know each other as in times past. Those calm days and nights of overflowing communion are gone. Thinking of them and of what I lose, I become again a child. From a grateful heart I now thank you for your true and constant friendship. Whatever may be in store for me, so much at least is secure ; and the memory of you and Fanny will be to me a precious fountain. God bless you both, ever dear friends, faithful and good ! Be happy, and think kindly of me."
" Dearest Howe, — Three times yesterday I wept like a child, — I could not help it : first in parting with Longfellow, next in parting with you, and lastly as I left my mother and sister. I stand now on the edge of a great change. In the vicissitudes of life I cannot see the future j but I know that I now move away from those who have been more than brothers to me. My soul is wrung, and my eyes are bleared with tears. God bless you ever and ever, my noble, well-tried, and eternally dear friend ! "
Sumner's lodgings in Washington, engaged on a visit he had made there in October for the purpose, were at D. A. Gardner's, New York Avenue, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets, on the same floor with the street. His simple breakfast of coffee, roll, and eggs was taken in his room. He took his dinner, his only other meal, at a French restaurant, where a few weeks later Judge Rockwell of Connecticut, member of Congress, and Sib- bern, the Swedish minister, joined with him in a mess. He was present in the Senate Dec. 1, 1851, the first day of the Thirty- second Congress. His colleague, John Davis, being absent from his seat, though in Washington, when the session began, his cre- dentials were presented by Mr. Cass, whom he invited to do the
260 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
service as " his oldest personal friend in the body." The other senators who took the oath at the same time were Hamilton Fish of New York, Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, James of Rhode Island, and Geyer of Missouri. Later in the day Mallory of Florida was sworn. Sumner had selected a seat on the Dem- ocratic side of the chamber, — one recently occupied by Jeffer- son Davis, who had resigned, — by the side of Chase, and in close proximity to the senators from Virginia and South Caro- lina.1 He had only two political associates, — Chase of Ohio and Hale of New Hampshire : the former chosen by a com- bination of Free Soilers and Democrats, and the latter by a combination of antislavery men and Whigs. From John Davis, his own colleague, he could expect nothing but personal civil- ity. In sentiment, if not often in action, he could count on a certain measure of sympathy from Seward, who was, however, politic and bent on maintaining his position as a Whig leader,2 and from Wade, who was sincere in his antislavery convictions as well as fearless, but who failed in steadiness and adequate preparation for the contests of the Senate. Hamlin, of Maine,. was now opposed to any scheme for the extension of slavery,, but was unhappily constrained by his position as a supporter of the Democratic party, then controlled by the slaveholding interest. Chase and Sumner were well known to each other before, both in correspondence and personal interviews, and their relations were to continue most intimate and confidential until the former's term expired in 1855.
In point of ability and character the Senate was not then at its best.3 It had seen better days, and was again to see better
1 Butler's seat was immediately before Sumner's, and Mason's immediately behind Chase's. The line of division as to politics between the two sides of the chamber was not rigid. The "Congressional Globe" reported a list of senators which allowed only two classes, and placed Sumner with the Whigs.
2 C. F. Adams, as appears by his letters to Sumner, Dec. 22, 1852, and Jan. 23, 1853, took an unfavorable view of Seward at this period, regarding him as " too much of a Jesuit," and as having "imbibed the poisonous nourishment of New York politics until he has lost the consciousness of the necessity of directness in really great movements of moral reform." Nevertheless, Sumner and Seward as fellow-senators were alwaj^s cordial to each other. Political literature was a topic of their conversation, and Sumner's marks are found in Seward's books. Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 204.
3 In an article on Wade's retirement, March 4, 1869, —the date when Sumner became " Father of the Senate," — the New York " Tribune " described the Senate as it was when, he entered it, and ascribed to the three Free Soilers only a foresight into the real question of the future. Schouler, the correspondent of the Boston " Atlas." Dec. 5, 1851, mentioned the incidents of the first day of the session, and particularly Clay's preuence. The Senate was sometimes called "a bear garden." The scene between Benton and Foote was then freshly in mind.
Mt. 40-41.] EIKST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 2G1
days. Cass had long enjoyed the advantage of various public service abroad as well as at home, and could speak for an in- definite length of time on any question ; but nothing ever came from him which was not prosaic and commonplace. Soule was a brilliant man, the one brilliant representative of the South and Southwest. He had been a partisan of freedom in the Old World, as he would probably have been in the New but for his slaveholding environment. Mrs. Stowe recognized in him " the impersonation of nobility and chivalry," and even hoped that he might become the Southern leader of emancipation.1
The mass of the senators did not in original faculties or training or aspirations deserve to rank with statesmen. Some of them, born in the last century, had passed most of their life in office, — as Berrien, Bell,2 and Badger; but neither in speech nor act did they leave any impression on our history. Their training was generally that of lawyers practising in local courts ; and their studies, if extended beyond what was neces- sary for the trial of cases in which they were retained, were limited to the history of American politics, or at most in- cluded a single reading of Hume and Gibbon. They knew well the art of looking after local interests, of flattering State pride, of serving blindly the party ; and they were expert in min- istering to the fears, the prejudices, the jealousy, and the self- interest of their section.3 If Southerners, they supported the demands of the slaveholding interest without question ; if North- erners, they supported any compromise with slavery which was agreed upon as essential to party success. It has been the cus- tom of statesmen in different periods to enrich and diversify public life with studies in science, the ancient classics, or mod- ern literature ; but not to force a comparison with any eminent names in English or French history, it is doing no injustice to the senators of the thirty-second Congress to say that there was nothing in their speeches to suggest that they followed as exemplars John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Edward Liv-
i Letter to Sumner, Dec. 21, 1852.
2 Mr. Bell was one of the most distinguished of his type, and was a candidate in 1860 for the Presidency. The meagreness of his intellectual resources is described by a for- eigner who had an opportunity to observe him closely. A. Gallenga's "Episodes of my Second Life," chap. xii.
3 Douglas was even then a favorite candidate of the West for the Presidency. His coarse and unscrupulous mode of appealing to ignorance and prejudice is well illustrated in his debates with Lincoln during the senatorial contest in Illinois in 1858.
262 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
ingston and John Quincy Adams.1 Public men in Washington were then under less restraint than now in their habits. They could not forego tobacco even during the sessions, and whis- key and brandy were sold in the restaurants of the Capitol, — a practice which assisted vulgarity at all times, but particu- larly in exciting debates and in sessions prolonged into the late hours, and which will account for some of the indecent and unparliamentary language used in replies to antislavery speeches. To avoid overdrawing the picture, it should be said that here and there in the Senate were men of blameless lives and unfailing courtesy, such as Foot of Vermont and Mangum of North Carolina. In character, presence, and style of debate Chase and Seward were the peers of any who have ever held seats in that body. Four men had recently passed from it who would have given dignity and renown to any parliamentary assembly. Benton, the least distinguished of the four, after thirty years of service, had been thrown out by the intense pro-slavery party of Missouri, made up of Whigs and Demo- crats, as a punishment for his resistance to the Compromise policy.2 Calhoun had died a senator during the preceding Con- gress. Webster had passed from the body to Fillmore's Cabi- net. Clay was still a senator, but was enfeebled by age and by disease, which had been aggravated by his severe labors in sup- port of the Compromise of 1850. He was in the Senate for the last time on the day that Sumner took his seat ; it was ob- served how sadly changed he was from the last session as he came with tottering steps into the chamber. He spoke twice on a point of procedure,3 and at the adjournment on that day left the Capitol to return no more to it. It was significant that the very day when the representative of Compromise passed for- ever from the Senate, it was entered by an equally determined champion of freedom, who would admit no concession wherever its sacred interests were at stake.
Such was the body which Sumner with his high idea of the dignity which became a senator now entered. Being a new
1 R. H. Dana, Jr.'s, diary in manuscript gives an account of a conversation with Palfrey and Sumner in September, 1852, in which the inexactness of Southern mem- bers in their extracts from Latin authors was one of the topics.
2 He was chosen at the next election a member of the House from the St. Louis dis- trict, which was less affected than the rest of the State with pro-slavery sentiments.
3 Sumner referred in the Senate, July 22, 1868, to Clay's participation in this debate, describing his manner, and telling where he stood as he spoke.
^Et. 40-41.] FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 263
member, and having political associations obnoxious to nearly- all the senators, he was assigned a place at the foot of two committees, — one on revolutionary claims, and the other on roads and canals.1
Sumner at once fell into pleasant relations with his associates. Cass, with the recollection of their intercourse in Paris in 1838, was as amiable and gracious as his position of a Northern man altogether subservient to Southern dictation permitted. The Southern senators, the most advanced and intense in their devo- tion to slavery (like Mason of Virginia and Foote of Missis- sippi), did not avoid him, as the Boston Whigs had forewarned, either on account of his antislavery opinions or the manner of his election, but received him civilly, conversed freely with him on public business and general topics, and some of them (as Soule) were very cordial.2 He had from the beginning and always most agreeable personal relations with the diplomatic corps, particularly with the British embassy.3 His ability to speak French was in this respect an advantage which few mem- bers of Congress enjoyed. He already knew well Calderon, the Spanish Minister, and Madame Calderon, who was a lady of Scotch parentage, and had lived in Boston.* Calderon, when leaving the country in August, 1853, wrote him a very cordial note, assuring him that his friendship had been greatly valued and would always be remembered. The welcome at Washing- ton was very agreeable to Sumner, who thought much, and was accused sometimes of thinking too much, of social sur- roundings as important to happiness and usefulness. Some Abolitionists were suspicious of these attentions, fearing that they boded ill to his constancy. Not so another Abolitionist who knew him better, and who, though often judging others harshly, nearly always looked charitably on his early friend. He wrote, February 2, 1852 : —
1 "Perley" (B. P. Poore) described in the Boston "Journal," April 4, 1874, incidents connected with Sumner's first session.
2 Soule, when in Boston the next summer, mentioned Sumner with great respect and regard. (Henry Wilson's letter to Sumner, June 23, 1852.) He wrote to his brother George, April 12, 1852: "In the debate on intervention, Soule- made a brilliant speech. He is the most polished speaker and gentleman of the Senate. Though representing ex- treme Southern sentiments, he is much my friend."
3 Sir John Crampton (1805-1886). He was British Minister from 1852 to 1856, when President Pierce broke off diplomatic relations with him on account of his violation of the neutrality laws. His connection with the Legation at Washington in a subordinate capacity began in 1845.
4 Ante, vol. ii. pp. 153, 256, 260.
264 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Great accounts come floating here of your triumphant success in Wash- ington, social and otherwise. In all that raises you, if such success can, none finds less surprise or more pleasure than
Yours most truly, Wendell Phillips.
R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote, Dec. 11, 1851 : —
" Your kind reception at Washington is not attributable, sure enough, to the influence of our Boston oligarchy ; but their power does not extend much beyond the pavements and Nahant. They are bigoted without being fanatical."
Sumner wrote to Longfellow, December 9 : —
" Shields is now speaking. Everybody has treated me with cordial kind- ness. Clay, I think, has upon him the inexorable hand. He has not been in his seat since the first day. Seward is a very remarkable man ; Berrien, a very effective speaker. I have been pressed by work and care very much, and sigh for some of those sweet hours which we have had and I have lost."
Again, December 28 : —
" I feel heart-sick here. The Senate is a lone place, with few who are capable of yielding any true sympathy to me. I wish I were in some other sphere. Let no person take office or embark in politics unless for the sake of a sentiment which he feels an inexpressible impulse to sustain in this way.
" These latter days have had some recreation. For instance, Tuesday, dinner with the French Minister ; company pleasant ; Cass very genial and friendly ; Calderon always affectionate to me ; our friend Ampere, who talked of you. Wednesday, dinner with the President ; more than forty at table ; dinner French, served a la Musse, heavy, beginuing at 6£ o'clock and ending at 9^; Miss Fillmore pleasant and attractive, particularly when she spoke of you. Thursday, dinner at F. P. Blair's, about seven miles out of town, — a family party, with a diplomat and a politician. Friday, dinner with Seward, whom I like much, and with whom I find great sympathy. Saturday, dinner with Robert Walsh, whose new wife has very little to say. Sunday, dinner with Lieutenant Wise, whose little establishment is very complete. He calls his wife ' Charley.' I thought once or twice he spoke to me. Would that I were with you, and could share your calm thoughts ! As for me, farewell content ; farewell the tranquil mind ! "
Sumner met a welcome from the first in the houses of the New York senators, being received there without ceremony. He counted Mrs. Seward and Mrs. Fish among his best friends, and his relations with the former continued unbroken till her death. He also enjoyed the renewal of intercourse with a college mate, Charles Eames, then an editor of the Washington " Union," the Democratic organ, whose accomplished wife became his sym- pathetic and ever faithful friend ; few American women of her time have had so choice a circle of admirers, among whom
Mt. 40-41.] WELCOME TO KOSSUTH. 265
Everett, Choate, Winthrop, and Bigelow may be named.1 He found also solace and good cheer in the congenial fellowship of men and women, distinguished for antislavery activities or sym- pathies, who gathered almost daily in the home of Dr. Bailey of the " National Era."
Hardly a foreigner of distinction ever came to Washington while Sumner was in the Senate without seeking him. At this session Jacob Bright came, commended by Harriet Martineau ; Arthur H. Clough, by John Kenyon ; Dr. Charles Eddy, fellow of Oxford, by Macready ; but it was not till the next session that he welcomed Thackeray. Among old English friends who visited Washington in 1852 were Lord and Ladv Wharncliffe,2 accom-
O ml /
panied by their daughter, since Lady Henry Scott. Lord Wharn- cliffe, after his return home in the spring of 1852, wrote Sumner long and friendly letters ; and though highly conservative, was sympathetic with his friend's antislavery position. J. J. Ampere, then a visitor in Washington, continued there the acquaintance with the senator which had begun in Boston.
Sumner's first speech was made on the tenth day of the ses- sion, on the resolution of welcome to Kossuth. When the Hungarian patriot, after the subjugation of his country by the Austrians, aided by a Russian army, was in the friendly cus- tody of Turkey, Congress by resolution, March 3, 1851, express- ing the sympathy of the people, authorized the employment of a public vessel to convey him and his fellow exiles to the United States ; and having been conveyed to England in one of our steam frigates, he proceeded, after a few weeks of sojourn in that country, to New York, where he arrived December 5. He was greeted with extraordinary demonstrations of admira- tion and good- will ; and the enthusiasm which swept over the city not only pervaded the populace, but extended in a large de- gree to the educated classes, lawyers, clergymen, and editors.3
Coming as he did with a national invitation, there was a pro- priety, it was thought, in according to Kossuth a national recep- tion. On the first day of the session, when he was still on the
1 Mr. Eames, Minister to Venezuela under Pierce, died in 1867, and Sumner was pall- bearer at his funeral. Just before his death, he sent to the senator a message of personal affection and of admiration for his career in the Senate. Mrs. Eames {nee Campbell), living in Washington most of the time while Sumner was in the Senate, died in 1890.
2 John Stuart Wortley, the second Lord Wharncliffe.
3 Parke Godwin, of the New York "Evening Post," was one of his most earnest advocates.
266 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
ocean, Foote of Mississippi, at the instance of Webster the Secre- tary of State, offered in the Senate a resolution for the purpose ; but as special objections were made to its form, it was withdrawn by the mover, and the debate proceeded on one offered by Seward, which in the name and behalf of the people of the United States gave him "a cordial welcome to the capital and to the country." This also was opposed on the ground that Kossuth had done nothing to deserve an extraordinary reception, and, further, that the proceeding was a departure from our traditional policy of non-intervention in European affairs. It was urged that he had openly declared his purpose to seek the intervention of this country in resisting the intervention of Russia in the contest between Austria and Hungary ; and had in his speeches signi- fied his purpose, if repelled by the government, to appeal from the government to the people. While the resolution was sup- ported without respect to party or sectional divisions, its only earnest opponents were three Southern senators, — Underwood, Berrien, and Badger. Among its zealous advocates were Cass and Shields from the West ; but the most finished speeches in its behalf were those of Seward and Sumner, the former closing the debate with one of singular eloquence and power.
There was a prevailing curiosity to hear the new senator from Massachusetts ; and when he rose late in the afternoon of De- cember 9, all eyes were turned eagerly to him ; but an adjourn- ment being moved, he gave way. There was unusual attention and silence the next day as he took the floor. The Senate was full, both the gallery and the seats of members. The speech was a brief one, and carefully prepared.1 He began with a trib- ute to Kossuth and his cause, and advocated his reception by Congress, as merited by his career and naturally following the invitation under which he had come. But with his views of peace among the nations and his studies in international law, Sumner was not content to rest here ; and while objecting to Berrien's amendment affirming non-interference with the do- mestic concerns of other nations to be the settled policy of our government as extraneous and irrelevant, he took occasion to express himself against any belligerent intervention in European affairs, or any departure from the policy of peaceful neutrality inherited from Washington. In the same passage he implied a criticism of Kossuth's contention that our policy of non-
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 3-9.
^Et. 40-41.] WELCOME TO KOSSUTH. 267
interference, rightly applied to a new state of things, imposed the duty of resisting intervention when attempted by one Euro- pean nation against the independence and freedom of another. Several senators — Cass, Foote, Dawson, and Shields — congra- tulated their new associate on his speech ; and Mason shortly after, pulling his chair near to Sumner's, drew him into a talk on national politics. C. F. Adams, who was present, wrote in his diary that the speech was " admirably delivered and very impressive," and approved its position on intervention as " clear and just."
The speech was well received by the public. The New York " Tribune " J was generous in its praise, treating it as the most successful first speech made in that body for a long time. A political opponent from Massachusetts, heretofore unsparing in criticisms, who was present, commended it for style and matter, and writing of the favor with which it was received, said that the senator had "achieved a triumph." 2 The resolution passed both Houses by a large majority.
Sumner's speech was, in its personal aspects, a good begin- ning. It showed to those who had little personal knowledge of him, that, however strenuous he might be in urging his views on slavery, he was something more than a popular agi- tator, and was competent to treat in a large way, and with calmness and prudence, the various public questions. It was observed that there was a moderation and gravity in his style which gave promise of good sense and fair dealing. His in- sistence on a traditional principle of the government, in the midst of popular demonstrations pushing strongly against it, proved him capable of a sobriety and forbearance which, to many who knew him only as a reformer, was a surprise. The speech was satisfactory to the mass of his political supporters in Massachusetts. They were pleased that he had acquitted him- self so well in his new position ; and they concurred in his gen- erous praise of Kossuth, without having any definite opinion as to how far it was wise to yield to the appeal for aid, and being quite content to leave the decision of that question to their senator. From them came numerous congratulations. Those among them who were students of public questions, like Adams,
1 December 11.
2 William Schouler in the Boston "Atlas," December 13. Webster was in the Senate the day before, but probably not present on this day.
268 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Dana, and Amasa Walker, fully approved his caution against any departure from the policy of non-intervention. He found himself supported in quarters where he had hitherto received little or no favor. His first effort was commended by conserv- ative people, some of whom were personally well disposed to him, but most of whom had expected nothing from him but a radical and partisan course ; and they were now surprised to find him beginning his public life in so sensible a way.1 The social and mercantile sentiment of Boston was then running strongly against the Hungarian, — as indeed it was in the habit of running against popular enthusiasms, — and for once, in his practical conclusion against intervention in foreign wars, he found himself in agreement with it. Epes Sargent, the " Sigma" of the " Transcript," wrote : " There seems to be but one senti- ment here as to your speech on the Kossuth resolution. It is as much admired for its discretion as for the grace and energy of its diction, and the lofty eloquence of its sentiments." Rufus Choate wrote him a cordial note in his characteristic and inimi- table style.2 Hillard also wrote at once in a kindly way of the speech ; and again, May 11, 1852 : " Among the rank and file of the community — I mean the Whigs — there is a decided change of feeling towards you ; and they look to your legisla- tive future with a different feeling from that with which they followed you to your seat in December." R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote : " I am glad you had an opportunity to make your speech on a subject of so great general interest, on which you are so well informed, and one disconnected with party issues. I am glad you were so short, and kept so closely to the only point; it is beautifully expressed."
The speech drew from a college friend of the class gradu- ating after him — Asaph Churchill, a lawyer of high repute — a note warmly commending its assertion of the policy of non- intervention, with a reminiscence of their association at the Law School, which deserves to be preserved : —
1 He received approving letters from Caleb dishing, N. P. Banks, Jr., Samuel E. Sewall, John Pierpont, Rev. Hubbard Winslow, Rev. Leonard Woods, Edward Austin, Samuel H. Walley, J. E. Worcester, George Livermore ; and among letters from citizens of other States may be named those from Theodore Sedgwick and John Jay of New York, Timothy Walker of Cincinnati, Charles J. Ingersoll of Philadelphia, Neal Dow of Port- land, and Miss D. L. Dix. The Whig press of Boston, quick to seize an opportunity of censure, and finding nothing in the speech of which a point could be made, avoided men- tion of it.
2 Works, vol. iii. p. 2.
Mi. 40-41.] WELCOME TO KOSSUTH. 269
" I am reminded of a conversation we once had at the Law School. Several of us were debating as to the course of life we had best pursue, — what, profes- sion or occupation or line of conduct would best enable us to achieve greatness, which we understood as being wealth, power, place, fame. You proclaimed your object to be that of doing the greatest amount of good to mankind. We — or at least I may say I — were astonished or incredulous; and the remark on that account impressed itself upon my memory. As I grow older, how- ever, I can more easily give you credit for sincerity, because I can better ap- preciate, not only the merit of such a determination, but its soundness and wisdom ; for in the chanceful journey of life, I know of no other policy more likely to lead to eminence, — certainly there is none which leads to an emi- nence so free from compunctious visitings. Allow me to say that in your career I have seen nothing to raise a doubt that you have acted upon that profession." 1
The speech, however, did not meet the unanimous approval of Sumner's friends. The popular enthusiasm for Kossuth seemed likely to affect national politics, and even to become an impor- tant element in the Presidential election. The Free Soilers were watching eagerly for any chance to make their diminished num- bers potential in that contest, and they hoped that this was to come from the sympathy of the masses, particularly in the West, with the European struggle for liberty, now awakened by Kos- suth's eloquence. Henry Wilson entered warmly into his mis- sion. He was untaught in public law, and beyond the slavery question was wanting in fixed ideas ; and the defects of his very limited education had not yet been supplied by the long practi- cal training in affairs which was to follow. While calling; the speech " glorious," and taking pride in having helped to give its author the opportunity to make it, he disapproved with much energy of expression its assertion of the doctrine of non-inter- vention, which in his view involved, when first proclaimed by our government, a breach of faith with France ; he treated the law of nations as a " humbug," and avowed his readiness to fol- low an unheeded protest of our government against Russian inter- vention in Hungary with armed resistance. He further declared his purpose to join with any party in support of Cass, or any can- didate for President, who was committed in favor of such action. Burlingame entered warmly into Wilson's views, and indeed many of the Free Soil leaders leaned more or less to them.2
1 See another letter from the same correspondent, written in 1862, repeating the same reminiscence. Works, vol. vii. p. 8.
2 For instance, F. W. Bird and J. B. Alley; also the editor of the " Commonwealth, " December 11.
270 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
None of Sumner's political friends so much regretted his decla- ration of the doctrine of neutrality as the one with whom he had maintained the longest association. Dr. Howe was by natural sympathies a revolutionist. From his early exploits in Greece to his mission to St. Domingo late in life, he took a deep inter- est in the overthrow of governments, and had no respect for laws or traditions which stood in the way of his free lance. He was grieved that Sumner did not end his speech with the tribute to Kossuth, and leave unsaid his affirmation of our duty to keep aloof from foreign complications. He spurned the doctrine of neutrality as selfish and unworthy of the country ; and he repu- diated the law of nations when set up against a movement for liberty in any part of the world, denying that, if it existed at all, it had any popular basis or Christian origin. He repeated what he had often said to Sumner, that his peace principles, while right enough in the abstract, were not adapted to existing conditions, as there was yet much to be done for the human race which only " the instincts of combativeness and destruc- tiveness " could do. He closed his letter, full of tenderness and deep regret, with these words : " This is the speech of Lawyer Sumner, Senator Sumner, — not of generous, chivalrous, high- souled Charles Sumner, who went with me into the Broad Street riot, and who, if need had been, would have defended the women and children in the houses by pitching their ruffian assailants down the stairs." 1 From the first Sumner showed in the Senate his independence of friendly pressure and popular currents, and his adherence to fixed principles.
Kossuth arrived in December in Washington, where he was received by Congress and entertained at a banquet given by citizens in his honor, — the notable event of which was Web- ster's memorable speech. Sumner, though regretting that Kos- suth had been ill-advised in his expectations and imprudent in his appeals, particularly in his speeches made just after landing, sympathized deeply with him as the representative of the liberal cause in Europe, and called on him several times. From the capital the Hungarian patriot proceeded to the South and West, and thence to New England, receiving in his progress honors such as had been accorded to no foreigner except Lafayette ; and in July, 1852, he returned to Europe. The spell of his marvellous eloquence has remained to this day ; but it wrought
1 Ante, vol. i. p. 162.
JEt. 40-41.] WELCOME TO KOSSUTH. 27i
no change in our policy or opinions. His cause was a lost one, even before he left us ; and his American supporters saw that no foreign aid could save it. By the time Sumner returned home, at the end of the session, the Hungarian question had ceased to be a prominent one in the public mind.
Kossuth's reception led to the introduction in the Senate of resolutions on the question of intervention. Several set speeches were made upon them, — among which were those of Cass, Sew- ard, and Soule. Sumner thought at one time of engaging in the debate, but his attention to other matters of more practical inter- est prevented.1 He wrote to John Bigelow, Dec. 13, 1851 : —
" Kossuth errs, all err, who ask any intervention by government. Indi- viduals may do as they please, — stepping to the verge of the law of nations, — but the government cannot act. Depend upon it, you will run against a post if you push that idea. Enthusiast for freedom, I am for everything practical; but that is not practical."
To George Sumner, Jan. 5, 1852 : —
" Kossuth produces a great impression by personal presence and speech, but confesses that his mission has failed. It has failed under bad counsels, from his askinsr too much. . . . When the time comes that we can strike a blow for any good cause I shall be ready ; but meanwhile our true policy is sympathy with the liberal movement everywhere, and this declared without mincing or reserve. ... I have seen Kossuth several times. He said to me that the next movement would decide the fate of Europe and Hungary for one hundred years. I told him at once that he was mistaken ; that Europe was not destined, except for a transient time, to be Cossack. . . . There is a wretched opposition to him here proceeding from slavery. In truth, slavery is the source of all our baseness, from gigantic national issues down to the vile manners and profuse expectorations of this place."
To E. L. Pierce, January 21 : —
" I have one moment for you, and only this. My speech was an honest utterance of my convictions on two important points. I pleaded at the same time for Kossuth and for what I know to be the true policy of our country. I told him in a long private interview the day before he left Washington, that if he had made at Castle Garden the speech he made at the Congressional banquet, he would have united the people of this country for him and his cause; but that he had disturbed the peace-loving and conservative by his demands. My desire was to welcome him warmly and sympathetically, but at the same time to hold fast to the pacific policy of our country."
1 It was well that our government refrained from interposing in the struggle between Austria and Hungary, and making a precedent which might have been turned against us in our Civil War. Sumner reported in the Senate, Feb. 28, 1863, resolutions against for- eign intervention in the Rebellion. Works, vol. vii. pp. 307-312.
272 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
To Henry Wilson, April 29 : —
" Seward has just come to my desk, and his first words were, £ What a magnificent speech Wilson made to Kossuth ! I have read nothing for months which took such hold of me.' 1 I cannot resist telling you of this, and adding the expression of my sincere delight in what you said. It was eloquent, wise, and apt. I am glad of this grand reception. Massachusetts does honor to herself in thus honoring a representative of freedom. The country is for Kossuth; the city is against him. The line is clearly run."
The next subject which engaged Sumner's attention was a grant of lands to the State of Iowa, in aid of the construction of railroads within its limits. Referring to the advantages result- ing from new and improved means of communication, particu- larly to the lands still retained by the government, he maintained in his speech for the bill as his principal point the novel ar- gument that the States in which the public lands lie have an equitable claim to peculiar consideration from the national gov- ernment, arising from the fact that while they are so held, and for some time after a sale, they are exempt from State or mu- nicipal taxation.2 Senators from the West and Southwest — Fitch of Michigan, Geyer of Missouri, and Downs of Louisiana
— were grateful for co-operation from an unexpected quarter, and expressed in debate their appreciation of his timely assist- ance.3 Two senators who led the opposition were not at all complimentary in their replies. Hunter of Virginia referred to the senator's " most delightful idyl," and Underwood of Ken- tucky intimated that he was seeking to gain favor with the West for ulterior personal ends, — an imputation which, how- ever, was afterwards gracefully withdrawn. Sumner's friends at home — among them Dana, Wilson, Burlingame, and Banks
— expressed in notes their pleasure at the manner in which he had acquitted himself,4 and particularly at his disposition to show favor to the West ; but Adams, as well as John Bigelow, while gratified with his success, objected to his contention that the exemption of the public lands from taxation entitled the
1 Wilson was then president of the Massachusetts Senate.
2 Jan. 27, Feb. 17, March 16, 1852. Works, vol. iii. pp. 12-42.
3 The favor shown to Sumner by senators from the Southwest was noted as an evidence of the return of good feeling between the sections. T. M. Brewer in the Boston "Atlas," Feb. 5, 1852.
4 Longfellow was pleased with the speech, as his diary (Jan. 31, 1852) shows. The subject came up in the Legislature of Massachusetts, in which resolutions approving the senator's view were passed in the Senate, but lost by a few votes in the House, in which his political supporters and opponents were nearly balanced.
Mt. 40-41.] PUBLIC LANDS IN THE WEST. 273
States to such grants. Adams wisely suggested that it was a better policy to give the lands to actual settlers than to bestow them in large tracts on States and corporations. There was indeed little popular interest in the question, and what there was in Massachusetts arose chiefly from its relation to the new senator. Sumner's participation in the debate was largely due to his desire to accustom himself to his new forum, and to show that general affairs were within his purpose and grasp, before entering on the discussion of the slavery question.
It was curious to see how eagerly the Whig journals of Bos- ton seized upon the speech as a means for weakening the sen- ator's position. They withheld it from their readers, though publishing Underwood's reply ; and they imputed to its author an extravagance of generosity to the new States at the expense of the old. The " Advertiser " 1 teemed with a series of editorial criticisms exceeding in length the speech itself ; and its contem- poraries 2 in that city, with less elaboration, joined in the cen- sure. The spirit of these critics was shown in the fact that they did not quarrel with the result to which he came, — the support of the bill, — but took all their pains simply to refute one of his reasons for supporting it.
Sumner, it is worth mention in this connection, had at this time no steady and consistent support among the journals of Boston. The Free Soil organ, the "Commonwealth," which was founded early in 1851, had a very uncertain and change- able management. At times Alley, Bird, Dr. Howe, and Joseph Lyman were pecuniarily interested in it, and for some months Samuel E. Sewall was the proprietor. Dr. Howe, Bird, Dr. Palfrey, Robert Carter,3 and Richard Hildreth the historian were at times contributors or editors ; but after a temporary management by one or more of these gentlemen, it usually fell back into the editorial control of Elizur Wright, who was erratic and headstrong, and addicted to so many novelties and hobbies of his own as to exclude any considerate treatment of public questions or effective support of the Free Soil public men.4
i January 30 ; February 2, 3, 7 ; April 16.
2 "Atlas," April 16 and 17. The "Courier," "Traveller," and "Journal" dissented from the senator, but the "Transcript" (February 2 and 13) and the "Commonwealth" (February 4 and April 5) justified him.
3 1819-1879. Journalist and scholar, living in Cambridge, but afterwards removing to New York city.
4 J. D. Baldwin, afterwards of Worcester, succeeded to the management in January,
VOL. m. 18
274 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Meanwhile the Whig journals, which covered the State and most of New England with their daily issues, poured a vol- ley of criticisms on Sumner whenever they could detect what they thought was a joint in his harness ; declined to admit his speeches into their columns, although replying to them in still longer editorials ; and were careful to exclude any mention of his share in debates which was likely to win for him popular approval. Tn contrast with his solitary and undefended posi- tion was the hearty, able, and unfailing support which Web- ster, Everett, Winthrop, and Choate always received from the journals of the city in which they lived. This discrimination against a political opponent no longer exists to the same extent, as metropolitan journals are conducted rather as commercial enterprises than as political organs, and are accustomed to give to the public as a part of the news of the day whatever is said or done by any prominent public man, no matter how hostile or offensive to them his position -may be.
There were miscellaneous matters to which Sumner gave his attention at his first session ; and in some of them his interest continued during his entire service in the Senate. He moved a resolution to abolish the spirit ration in the navy, and in- crease the pay of the enlisted men ; * also a resolution for cheap ocean postage, the rate being then twenty-four cents for half an ounce, for which he gave his reasons briefly.2 He was always greatly interested in this reform, and was in correspondence with Elihu Burritt concerning it ; and he renewed the propo- sition at subsequent sessions. With a view to cheapen postage generally, he called for information in detail concerning the for- eign and domestic service. Other resolutions offered bv him re- lated to vessels in stress of weather, the sailors' hospital money,
1853. During 1853 Dr. Howe contributed a considerable number of articles to the editorial columns.
1 Jan. 19 and 22, 1852. Sumner renewed the proposition at the next session (March 3, 1853). " Sigma " of the Boston "Transcript " (January 26, 1852), noting the resolution, wrote that he was glad, "after running up the formidable column of Mr. Sumner's sins, to make such a respectable entry to his credit."
2 Works, vol. iii. p. 45. He moved, July 20, another resolution on the subject. The Legislature of Massachusetts supported him by a resolve passed April 12, 1852. He re- newed the proposition in 1854 and 1860. He offered a resolution for cheap ocean postage, Dec. 7, 1868 (Works, vol. xiii. p. 1), and spoke briefly for it Feb. 12, 1869. He pressed the reform at the next session (March 20 and April 6, 1869). He advocated at length "one cent postage," June 10, 1870 (Works, vol. xiii. pp. 387-444), and recurred to the subject June 17. In 1854 he offered a resolution for an international system of post-office orders, with the view to facilitate the transmission of small sums of money between our own and other countries.
JEt. 40-41.] FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 275
and the revision of the public statutes. This last resolution was
as follows : —
" That the Committee on the Judiciary be directed to consider the expe- diency of providing by law for the appointment of a commissioner to revise the public statutes of the United States ; to simplify their language ; to cor- rect their incongruities; to supply their deficiencies; to arrange them in order; to reduce them to one connected text; and to report them thus improved to Congress for its final action, — to the end that the public statutes, which all are presumed to know, may be in such form as to be more within the appre- hension of all." 1
He renewed this proposition (reported as inexpedient) at almost every session, — as in 1853, 1854, 1856, 1860, 1861, 1862, and 1863, — till finally, when he moved it in 1866, it prevailed substantially in the form he had given to it. The work was executed by commissioners appointed by the President, and the Revised Statutes of the United States were enacted June 22; 1874, and published as the law of the land Feb. 22, 1875. This beneficial measure thus originated with Sumner at his first ses- sion ; and his repeated efforts in its behalf which finally insured success exhibit his pertinacity as. well as his wisdom.
Other topics to which he gave study and research at this ses- sion, in expectation of debates, were a mint to be established in New York ; the restoration of the Congressional Library, which had been recently destroyed by fire ; international copyright ; and the reform of the system of public printing, which was at the time a political job. On these as well as on ocean post- age he sought through his brother George information as to European methods.
The death of Robert Rantoul, Jr., a member of the House from Massachusetts, Aug. 7, 1852, was the occasion of a tribute from Sumner to his services and character, delivered two days after his death.2 He had been elected to Congress by the com- bined votes of Democrats and Free Soilers, and the sudden and untimely close of his useful and brilliant career, with greater opportunities than ever at hand, spread grief and sadness among the people of Massachusetts. It was believed that if he had lived he would in the end, and probably as the result of the
1 Works, vol. vi. pp. 140-143, where his brief speech, Dec. 12, 1861, is given. Hillard wrote, Jan. 6, 1854: "I heartily wish you success in your movement for the revision of the Statutes. It is a work greatly wanted; but as it will not help anybody to be President, it will never be done."
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 76-82.
276 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
next State election, have been placed by Sumner's side in the Senate. Sumner's tribute, though brief, was complete, — touch- ing on all points of Rantoul's varied character as lawyer, pub- licist, reformer, and statesman, and also on the charm of his pri- vate life. A slight, almost covert, allusion to his efforts against slavery caused irritation among Southern senators, which was assigned by Mr. Davis, his colleague in the Senate, as a reason for his own silence on the occasion. The inscription on Ran- toul's monument in the burial-ground at Beverly was from Sum- ner's hand.
During the session Sumner was occupied with efforts to pro- cure the pardon of Drayton and Say res, master and mate of the schooner " Pearl," convicted in the District of Columbia for pro- moting the escape of seventy-six slaves whom they were carrying down the Potomac, when they were overtaken and brought back. Their heroic act greatly inflamed the slaveholding population ; and their trial, in which they were defended by Horace Mann, ex- cited general interest.1 They received a heavy sentence in fines, which they were unable to pay ; and after a confinement of four years, a petition in their behalf, signed by leading Abolitionists, was forwarded to Sumner for presentation in the Senate. There was little faith that their release could be obtained, or a less sensational mode of appeal would have been resorted to. Sum- ner felt that the thing to be done was to get the unfortunate men out of prison ; and hopeful that there was a chance for them, he went to work quietly in the only way which promised any success, instead of making a demonstration in the Senate which would have prolonged their misery. He regarded them not as tools to be handled for political effect, but as captives to be liberated, and felt it to be his duty to use the most appro- priate means for a specific and practical end. He therefore took the responsibility, with the approval of the prisoners, whom he visited in the jail, and of their counsel, of withholding the peti- tion,2 and appealed directly to President Fillmore for a pardon,
i Ante, p. 156.
2 Drayton, in his " Personal Memoir," p. 115, says : "Mr. Sumner, the Free Democratic senator from Massachusetts, had visited me in prison shortly after his arrival in Washing- ton, and had evinced from the beginning a sincere and active sympathy for me. Some complaints were made against him in some antislavery papers because he did not present to the Senate some petitions in my behalf which had been forwarded to his care. But Mr. Sumner was of opinion, and I entirely agreed with him, that if the object was to obtain my discharge from prison, that object was to be accomplished, not by agitating the matter in the Senate, but by private appeals to the equity and the conscience of the President ; nor
jEt. 40-41.] FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 277
who also, while the examination of the paper was pending, ad- vised against any popular appeal. Miss Dix seconded Sumner's efforts, and his unceasing intercession prevailed.1 The Presi- dent was favorably impressed with the merits of the case, but doubted his power to release parties held for non-payment of fines which at least in part were payable to the owners of the slaves. At his suggestion, Sumner submitted a brief,2 which the President referred to Mr. Crittenden, the Attorney-General, who, reserving any expression on the merits of the case, affirmed the President's power in the premises. The President acted promptly, and in fulfilment of a promise made to Sumner com- municated to him a favorable decision in a note dated August 11, and signed by himself, stating that he had already executed a pardon. Further process to hold the men being apprehended, Sumner hurried to the jail, and taking them in a carriage, put them in charge of a friend, who conveyed them the same night to Baltimore, and a few hours later they were at the North and out of danger.3 It was considered at the time that Sumner had achieved a remarkable success, particularly in view of the strong language he had used concerning the President's signature of the Fugitive Slave bill in his speech at Faneuil Hall in Novem- ber, 1850. The Washington " Union," the Democratic organ, attributed the pardon to his efforts, saying it was an influence which should not have been heeded. The Whig press of Boston was, according to its custom, silent as to his share in procuring it. The editor of the " Liberator " had berated him in his paper and in a public meeting for not presenting the petition in the Senate, accusing him of want of backbone and treachery to free- dom, and would not accept an explanation of Sumner's reasons for avoiding publicity when made to him personally ; even after the pardon had been granted, the editor made no retraction, and abstained from any expressions of praise. The political journals
did he think, nor did I either, that my interests ought to be sacrificed for the opportunity to make an antislavery speech. There is reason in everything ; and I thought, and he thought too, that I had been made enough of a martyr of already."
1 Mr. Fillmore's failure to receive the Whig nomination for President may have aided the petition, it was thought at the time, as his position, if a candidate, might have been embarrassed by granting it.
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 49-72. Sumner consulted George Bemis on the points to be made.
3 Boston Commonwealth, August 12. See articles in the "Commonwealth," August 12 and 24, explaining the senator's action, the second signed E. L. P., which the "Liberator" copied, promising a reply, which did not, however, appear.
278 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
hostile to Sumner were quick to copy criticisms from this quar- ter, but said nothing when the men were free. Sumner wrote to Henry Wilson, April 29 : —
"I uotice the attack on ine in the 'Liberator.' If need be, I shall show backbone in resisting the pressure even of friends. Had I uttered a word for Drayton and Sayres in the Senate, I should have dealt a blow at them which they well understood. At present nothing can be done for them in the Sen- ate. I have presented their case to the President, and am sanguine in believ- ing that they will be pardoned. But of this not a word at present."
Dr. Howe, rejoicing over the release of Drayton and Sayres, wrote : —
" God bless you for your truly noble and courageous course ! Follow it up to the end, however, without caring for blessing or cursing. Such things do my very heart good, and make me love you, if possible, more than ever."
Wendell Phillips wrote : —
"I congratulate you most sincerely on the happy issue oi your efforts for Drayton and Sayres. You have earned your honors."
Sumner wrote to John Bigelow, February 3 :
"I am won very much by Houston's conversation.1 With him the anti- slavery interest would stand better than with any man who seems now among possibilities. He is really against slavery, and has no prejudice against Free Soilers. In other respects he is candid, liberal, and honorable. I have been astonished to find myself so much of his inclining."
To Theodore Parker, February 6 : —
" I have yours of 25th of January proposing to me to write an article on Judge Story in the Westminster Review. As a filial service I should be glad to do this; but how can I? I rarely go to bed before one or two o'clock, and then I leave work undone which ought to be done."
To John Bigelow, February 8 : —
''Pardon me if I say frankly yon have done injustice to Story.2 I admire him as a jurist, but with a discrimination between his titles to regard for his judgments and his books. The former I have always thought unique in vari- ety, learning, point, usefulness, and amount. I love his memory, but I can- not sympathize with much of his politics. Even you will find much to praise in the accumulated expression of his Northern sentiments against doughfaces
i General Samuel Houston, senator from Texas, was mentioned at the time among the Democratic candidates for the Presidency.
2 Mr. Bigelow had in a review of Judge Story's "Life and Letters," in the New York " Evening Post," Jan. 29 and Feb. 4, 1852, disparaged the judge's character as a jurist and author.
J£t. 40-41.] FIRST SESSION IN CONGRESS. 279
and the aggressions of the slave-power. I have known many judges and jurists, but I have never known one so completely imbued with jurisprudence as Story."
Again, March 2 : —
" Congress and all the world have a vacation to-day to quaff fresh air, sun- shiue, and champagne on board the 'Baltic.'1 I voted for the adjournment, but did not care to put myself in the great man-trap set especially for mem- bers of Congress. ... I see nothing certain in the Presidential horizon. In all my meditations I revert with new regret to the attempted reconciliation in '49 in your State. Without that we should now control the free States.
" I read carefully and enjoyed much Mr. Bryant's address.2 It was a truth- ful, simple, and delicate composition, and, much as I value sculpture and Greenough, I cannot but add will be a more durable monument to Cooper than any other. Webster's historical article was crude and trite enough."
George Sumner arrived home, April 19, 1852, after a con- tinuous sojourn in Europe since 1838. His coming had been eagerly awaited by Charles, who had deplored his long linger- ing in Europe. The two brothers had not met for fifteen years. When they parted they were both little known to the world ; but each in his own way was now distinguished. George, shortly after his arrival, came to Washington. A room at his brother's lodgings awaited him, and the latter's sitting-room was put at his service. The meeting was a glad one. He had slight sym- pathy with Charles's antislavery convictions, and while avoiding distinct political associations, was inclined to the Democratic party. He received in 1853 from Mr. Marcy, then Secretary of State, the offer of the post of assistant secretary, accompanied, however, with a condition — the disavowal of his brother's opin- ions — which compelled him to decline.3 In the winter of 1852-1853 he appeared for the first time before Lyceums, taking " The Progress of Reform in France " as his topic. Charles wrote to John Bigelow, March 26, 1853: —
"The post of assistant secretary of state ivas offered to my brother; but I write, not for any public correction of your paper, but merely for your pri- vate information. More than ten days ago Mr. Marcy communicated to me personally his desire to have my brother in the place, his sense of his fitness beyond that of any other person in the country, and also the extent to which
1 Of the Collins line of steamships, whose owners were then seeking a subsidy.
2 On J. Fenimore Cooper, Feb. 25, 1852, at a meeting of which Mr. Webster was chair- man, called to raise funds for a monument to the novelist. Sumner's reply to the invita- tion to attend the meeting is printed in his Works, vol. iii. p. 43.
3 Commonwealth, March 15, April 1 and 2, 1853.
280 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
he was plagued by applications from persons who would make the office only a clerkship. My brother was absent from Washington at the time. At the request of Mr. Marcy I sent for him ; and on his arrival, at Mr. Marcy's re- quest, he reported himself at the state department, was most cordially wel- comed, was assured that not only the secretary but the President desired him to be assistant secretary, that his knowledge of European affairs was needed, that it was the intention to raise the salary of the office and to make it a desirable position. At three different stages of a protracted interview the matter was thus pressed upon my brother. But in the course of the interview Mr. Marcy expressed a desire for some confession on the subject of slavery by which my brother should be distinguished from me, — some acceptance of the Baltimore platform, — all of which he peremptorily declined to do, in a man- ner that made Mr. Marcy say to me afterwards that he had ' behaved in an honorable manner.' After my brother had fully declared his determination, and his abnegation of all desire for office, of which I do not speak in detail, the Secretary still expressed a desire for his services. Subsequently my brother addressed him a brief note absolutely declining, and in another note recom- mended the appointment of Dudley Mann. This affair has got into the news- papers, but by no suggestion of mine or of my brother."
To George Sumner, April 23 : —
"You are right in regarding both the old parties as substantially alike. I do not think that one who looks at principles and seeks to serve his fellow- man can have much satisfaction in becoming the hack of one of these com- binations ; nor would I recommend you to enlist in" any public efforts unless for the sake of a cause which you have at heart, or uuder an impulse too strong to resist. The consciousness of duty done must be your support under the load of misrepresentation and falsehood which are the lot of all in con- spicuous stations. T have been tempted to say this by your note. I could not say less ; I have not time now to say more."
Again, April 26 : —
" If you are conscious that you can speak an effective word for Kossuth's Hungarian career, I should regret not to have it done, though I commend you to the prudence of careful preparation. Boston society, to which you allude, is of course the other way ; but your point of view will enable you to look with indifference upon its criticisms. Remember this: while I counsel all caution and a proper reserve, particularly at the beginning, I would not have you sail by the meridian of Boston. Your own soul would rebuke you if you did."
To John Bigelow, June 9 : —
" I longed to see you. When you called I was at Eames's, discoursing on Baltimore and its scenes. This nomination 1 makes me lament anew the fatal '49, when the Barnburners and the Hunkers coalesced. Had they kept apart, we should all have been together, — perhaps in a minority, but powerful from
1 Of Franklin Pierce, as Democratic candidate for President.
JEt 40-41 J THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 281
our principles and character. For myself, I am left alone. The political fellowships I had hoped to establish are vanishing. Of course I can have noth- ing to do with Pierce or his platform, — probably nothing with Scott or his. How I wish we had all stuck together ! Should Pierce be elected, with a Demo- cratic Senate and House, we should have the iron rule of the slave-power."
To C. F. Adams, June 21 : —
" We hear that Scott is nominated at last. I tell you confidentially how Seward regards it. He thinks that his friends have been defeated , that Scott is made to carry weight which will probably defeat him, and that the cam- paign can have little interest for the friends of our cause. He will take an opportunity, by letter or speech, to extricate himself from the platform. Seward's policy is to stick to the Whig party , no action of theirs can shake him off. But the cause of freedom he has constantly at heart ; I am satisfied of his sincere devotion to it. Major Donaldson says that there is now no differ- ence between the Whigs and Democrats ; their platforms, he says, are identical. This is the darkest day of our cause. But truth will prevail. Are there any special words of your grandfather against slavery anywhere on record, in tract or correspondence ? If there are, let me have them. I wish you were here."
In this session of Congress there was naturally a lull on the slavery question. The slaveholding interest had gained in the preceding Congress all it could expect to gain for the pres- ent ; and the supporters of the Compromise were averse to fur- ther agitation of the subject. Foote of Mississippi, however, who was to leave the Senate at the end of the first month to become governor of his State, and was unwilling to forego another opportunity for defending slavery, introduced a reso- lution on the first day of the session declaring the Compromise measures a definitive settlement of the questions concerning slavery. The debate, which he opened, proceeded at intervals, but was confined almost wholly to the Southern senators, — those who like Foote supported the Compromise as the best* thing for the South, and those like the senators from South Carolina who opposed it from the standpoint of disunionists ; and it was conducted with acrimony and personal recrimi- nation between the two Southern divisions. The Northern sen- ators, whether supporting or opposing the Compromise, kept aloof from the discussion, except Davis x of Massachusetts ;
1 Mr. Davis's term was near its end, and the Legislature, which was to choose his suc- cessor, would be elected before the next session of Congress. This is the probable reason for his entering into the debate. Sumner wrote from the Senate chamber, January 28, to W. S. Robinson : " I have sent you a correct copy of my speech on the practical question of lands My colleague is now speaking on the agitating question of the Compromise. On this subject the time will come for me; but it is not now."
282 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52
and the resolution was laid aside without a vote late in Feb- ruary. From that time the slavery question was not involved in any measure pending in the Senate ; and any senator at- tempting to treat it broadly and at length would have been stopped as out of order. He could proceed by unanimous con- sent, but such consent was most likely to be refused as a cour- tesy to an antislavery senator; and to gain the opportunity by right would require no common vigilance and expertness.
It was Sumner's purpose when he went to Washington to speak at length on the slavery question, or some branch of it, before the close of the session, which was to last till far into August ; but with a view to the best results, as well as from reasons of prudence, he intended to defer his speech till the be- ginning of July. The Compromise and pro-slavery press of the country, taking its key-note from assiduous misrepresentations of the Whig journals of Boston, had spread a general impres- sion of his unfitness for public life, which it was very desirable to remove or modify. To use his own words, he had, as he wrote to Dr. Howe, been " held up as a man incapable of public business, of one idea, and a fanatic, though of acknowledged powers in a certain direction ; " and the correction of that erro- neous impression he considered the first condition of usefulness. The obvious way to remove it was by taking an interest in the general business of the Senate, and by showing himself the peer of other senators in dealing with a variety of public questions. This might take a few months ; but in the long session there was ample time at his command. Any new legislation in the interest of slavery would have interrupted his silence, but none such was proposed ; and, as already suggested, the debate on J'oote's resolution not only ended at an early day, but while it lasted was attended with such personal and factional incidents as to repel senators from the free States who were averse to a discussion which had no serious purpose. Sumner wrote to Dana, Dec. 8, 1851 : " The Southerners are in high quarrel, — Foote and Butler at red-hot words. The scene was threatening. While they talk there is no opportunity for us; nor can I yet see my way to intervene in this debate. I do not feel that it is the occasion for me to utter the mature and determined word which, God willing, I will." It was desirable, also, that in his first demonstration on the question, which was sure to attract universal attention, he should do his best, and therefore a full
^t. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 283
preparation on all points was essential. His habits of thought, always methodical, were such that he could not discuss a sub- ject without exhausting it, and putting his argument in a well- developed and permanent shape; and his chosen theme — the constitutional, legal, and moral aspects of the Fugitive Slave Act — required laborious research, and a most careful and crit- ical treatment. He would be assailed at all points, and must be ready at all points. The Senate, though wanting in men of generous erudition, numbered acute lawyers, who were sharpest of all on points involving the rights of slaveholders.
Circumstances at home, presently to be referred to, made it desirable for Sumner to indicate publicly his purpose to speak on the slavery question at some time during the session. He presented, May 26, a memorial from the Society of Friends in New England, asking for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and while explaining its purport was interrupted by the presi- dent, who was not accustomed to check senators making such explanations on other subjects ; but by general consent he was allowed to proceed. He contented himself with saying that he had been disinclined to interfere with the discussion of Foote's Compromise resolutions, which had been with a single excep- tion carried on between the senators from the slave States ; but he announced his purpose at some fitting time to set forth fully his views in support of the proposition that, " accordiug to the true spirit of the Constitution, and according to the senti- ments of the fathers, freedom, and not slavery, is national ; while slavery, and not freedom, is sectional." 1 His prepara- tion, which he had expected to complete late in June (the time he had fixed for speaking when the session began), was inter- rupted by an illness, not serious enough to prevent his attend- ance on the sessions, but disabling him from work, and enjoining abstinence from special effort and excitement. By the middle of July, seven weeks before the session was to end, he was ready and anxious for an opportunity, and shortly after sought it by a formal appeal to the Senate.
In selecting his own time to speak Sumner was to expose himself to harsh criticism, and even distrust ; and he had occa-
1 Works, vol. iii. p. 64. Mangum treated the petition with respect; but Dawson made a hot outburst at Sumner's announcement that he proposed to speak at an early day on the slaverj' question. Seward wrote at the time, "Dawson raved at him [Sumner], and Mangum behaved like a Christian." Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 182.
284 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
sion to lament that his position had taken from him the free- dom which he had enjoyed in private life. His constituency — meaning by that term in this connection the antislavery peo- ple in Massachusetts and elsewhere, who had been profoundly interested in his election, and had marked it as an epoch — comprised in large proportion persons of strong individuality, exacting by temperament, calling no man master, distrustful of any line of conduct or act which suggested by any construc- tion hesitancy or weakness. They believed in agitation, per- petual agitation, as the only way to contend against slavery ; but right as they were in this, they took little account of the considerations which in public office limit it to seasonableness of time and occasion. So often deceived by fair professions, they had lost confidence in public men, — all the more so since Webster's defection. They had put faith in Sumner as of all men best fitted by his personal force, his burning rhetoric, and his forensic power, to agitate in the Senate, directly in front of the organized slaveholding interest, and with the country for his audience. They believed that whatever gifts Chase and Hale might have, Sumner stood before all others in the power to de- nounce slavery, its wrongs and its progress ; and from the first day he took his seat they were intent on the exhibition of that power. Their horizon might be narrow ; they could not in their intensity of conviction give weight to the considerations which govern statesmen ; but they were profoundly sincere in their aims and methods, and they grew more and more impa- tient with their senator's delay from month to month, while he, conscious of the rectitude of his intentions, and never for a moment faltering in heart or purpose, could not comprehend their disappointment and suspicions.
There was some expectation that Sumner would speak on Foote's resolution, but his failure to do so did not draw out any particular comment. The Free Soilers would, if let alone, have been content to allow him his own way for a long time, but they were first made uneasy by taunts from two opposite quarters, — ■ the Compromise Whigs on the one side, and the non-voting Abolitionists on the other ; the former bitterly opposed to him, and the latter standing aloof from the movement which put him in the Senate, but now as always " nothing if not critical," and assuming the direction of his public conduct. The first allu- sion to his silence was made late in February in the Massachu-
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 285
setts Senate, by Warren,1 a very conservative Whig, in a public speech, to which Wilson, the president, leaving the chair, re- plied that the senator would speak at the proper time.2 The taunt was repeated in the Whig journals 3 at intervals, and by Mr. Winthrop in an appendix to a volume of his speeches.4 The Free Soilers were particularly annoyed by the reproaches of the non-voting Abolitionists. Mr. Garrison, at a meeting of the Norfolk County Antislavery Society, held at Dedham, April 22, introduced a resolution condemning the senator's silence for four months on the slavery question, and his omission for two months to present the petition for the relief of Drayton and Sayres.5 The resolution was opposed by William I. Bow- ditch 6 and Wendell Phillips. The latter in a letter to Sum- ner, April 27, said : —
" I have never, my dear friend, ceased one moment to trust you. Passing over the whole State this winter, lecturing sometimes four nights in the week, I have been asked scores of times by Free Soilers as well as our folks, ' Do you put entire trust in C S. % ' Theodore Parker tells me he has met the same questioning many times. My answer has always been the expression, the frank, cordial expression, of most entire confidence in you. I have then dwelt on the expediency of getting acquainted with your audience before speaking; obtaining a point d'appui by showing a knowledge of, and interest in, other questions, etc., — adding that I knew" you were acting in concert with, and by advice of, all the prominent friends of antislavery in Washington. This I learned from your letters, but did not say so, as they were marked ' confidential,' and I did not wish to compromise you. Last week there was a
1 February 20. Charles H. Warren, at one time a judge, was a clever lawyer, ready in wit, apt in sarcasm, and sharp in finding an adversary's vulnerable points. He was a person without serious aims and with much levity of character, convivial in habits, and in full communion with the society and capital of Boston at this period.
2 February 24. Wilson's speech, which contains a review of the politics of the period, appeared in full in the "Commonwealth," March 1.
3 Boston Courier, May 28.
4 Published late in May. John A. Andrew wrote, June 2, of Winthrop's reference to Sumner's silence : "This retreating arrow from Winthrop can do you no harm, and it needs no attention." Winthrop's sharp reflections at this time were prompted by Sumner's in- cluding in a recent edition of his "Orations and Addresses" his letter to Winthrop, Oct. 25, 1846. (Ante, p. 134.) It should be said, however, that Sumner included the letter as a historical paper, with no purpose to revive a controversy.
5 Mr. Garrison renewed his criticisms on both points at different times in the " Libera- tor," April 23; June 4, 11, 18; August 6, 13. Another non-Voting Abolitionist, Edmund Quincy, also repeated them in letters to the "Antislavery Standard," which were copied by the " Liberator " in August, and in the Boston "Courier," August 14.
6 Mr. Bowditch, in a note to Sumner with reference to Mr. Garrison's course at the meeting, said: "Much as I honor and love him, Mr. Garrison's passion sometimes seems to be to attack single individuals rather than the system of slavery; and it frequently happens that his attacks fall on those who sympathize very fully, though not entirely, in his views."
286 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
resolution offered at the Dedham meeting declaring your course inexplicable. I opposed it; went over your whole reform life. ' A man of more rightful expectations than any of his age in New England spoke Jiat peace address July 4. Perhaps he did not know then all he was sacrificing; the proof of his true devotion was, that, finding the sacrifice possibly greater than he anticipated, he stood by his position, — never retreated an inch; on the con- trary, advanced to the prison discipline struggle, and to a more prominent and radical position on antislavery, etc. Such a man has earned the right to be trusted, even while we do not understand his whole ground or all his reasons. Some men — the more radical among his party, I think — expect more from him than he has ever promised; but I believe Charles Sumner will fulfil every promise he has ever made, every expectation he has ever given any one ground for entertaining. I think his course at Washington impolitic and wrong ; x but that matters not. He has used, I doubt not, his best discretion, and the best advice at hand. He has his way of doing things ; he did not suit us wholly while here ; it 7s no surprise to me that his course should not wholly suit us now. I shall trust him at least till the end of the session, and listen then to his explanations.' ... If you shall always have ten such friends as I have been, your political life will be a happy one, and your fame (were it Sodom) as a fulfiller of all your pledges will be saved."2
Those of Sumner's constituents who knew him best, and had learned the policy upon which he was acting, were satisfied with the integrity of his purpose, and if questioning the wisdom of his delay were content to leave the decision with hint ; but their intimate knowledge of his character and their private informa- tion could not reach the mass of earnest men in his party.
John A. Andrew, writing June 2 in reference to Mr. Win- throp's taunt, said : —
" When by the circumstances a speech is an act for liberty, then I trust that you will make it. But when by speaking you feel that you would only drown your own testimony by the sound of your own voice, then it is not such as I am who "desire you to break your silence."
Joshua Leavitt wrote from New York, June 11 : —
" I like your course, and especially that it is yours, and not any other man's. I told you at the outset to take time, act deliberately, so as to have nothing to take back, and not be in a hurry, and let croakers croak."
1 Sumner felt hurt at this phrase in the speech; but Phillips claimed that being ad- dressed to dissatisfied persons it was in the connection judicious, and not open to objection as unfriendly.
2 Theodore Parker, though deeply regretting that Sumner delayed his speech so long, nevertheless expressed publicly no distrust of him, and made an apology for his silence at a meeting, July 5, in Abington. His very cordial and frank letters to Sumner himself rather imply a fear that his fibre was not quite so strong as it should be, and needed to be stiffened.
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 287
Sumner's college chum, John W. Browne, identified with the radical section of the antislavery movement, who was still fol- lowing his classmate's course " with a friend's eye and heart," wrote June 18 : —
" Don't let the unjust and ill-considered words said here about your tar- diness to speak on this subject press you to speak one moment earlier than your nature and instincts are ready to the utmost to do their own spontaneous work, and upon their own occasion. Take your time, by the force of your own nature, in your own methods; you will have all your strength in effort, and not otherwise. Don't let hasty requirements of those who are eager for your speech move you to utterance one moment prematurely, as your season takes its own procession. Don't speak upon the pressure of any opinion. William Bowditch authorizes me to say that this is his view of the matter also."
R. H. Dana, Jr., as late as August 9, wrote : —
" We have perfect faith in your course. We believe that if you had been permitted to speak,1 a better day for the speech could not have been selected than the time you took. If you had spoken, all would have said so. It was just at the right interval between the settlement of the policy of the old par- ties and the opening of our own. A speech before the conventions of the old parties would have been reckoning without your host. There are some men who think that nothing is doing unless there is a gun firing or a bell ringing. There are superficial persons in whom is no depth of root; they are easily offended. The work we have to do is a long one ; there is no pend- ing question. Patience and judgment and preparation are as necessary as zeal, and more rare."
N. P. Banks, Jr., who was on the floor of the Senate, Au- gust 9, when Sumner delivered his eulogy on Rantoul, said to him personally : —
" If the people of Massachusetts who now distrust you could have heard your voice in the Senate, and witnessed the attention you received, they would leave everything to you, knowing that your course would be for the best."
There were, however, many among the antislavery masses with less patience and philosophy, and less knowledge of him and his line of action, than the wiser ones whose opinions have been cited ; and after seven months' waiting, with the added annoyance of the taunts of Whig politicians, their mut- terings of dissatisfaction became so distinct that leading Free Soilers felt the necessity of frankly reporting them to him.
1 A reference to the Senate's refusal to hear him, July 28.
288 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Wilson wrote to him, June 29 : —
"You must not let the session close without speaking. Should you do so, you would be openly denounced by nine tenths of our people. They say they are daily tormented about your silence by the Whigs all over the State, and many of them think you will not speak at all."
John Jay wrote to him, July 5, a letter from New York, which reviewed at length the situation from a personal as well as public point of view, and enforced the vital importance of not allowing the session to close without a full discussion on his part of the slavery question. Jay was a student of public opinion, with ample time at his command ; and among all Sumner's friends no one at this time seems to have en- tered more sympathetically into his character and career. On Jay's mind there was no shadow of distrust ; but he revealed frankly the distrust which was making its way among anti- slavery men, and reported the talk of Compromise politicians, who were hoping to find in Sumner a man as time-serving as they liad been. Jay thought his failure to speak during the session would lose him his prestige with the antislavery people, and involve consequences momentous to him. Refer- ring to the distrust of public men growing out of Webster's course, he wrote : —
"I know too well the strength and depth of your antislavery principles, and have been too recently assured of your anxiety to utter your full views touching the Fugitive law to the Senate and the country, to attribute your delay in doing so to any other reason than your belief that an expedient occa- sion has not yet arrived. Others, however, who confound you with common politicians, . . . attribute your silence to the Southern atmosphere of the Cap- itol, and profess to believe either that your opinions have become essentially modified, or that you are fearful of encountering the intellectual power of the defenders of Compromise, and incurring the odium and contempt with which the chivalry look down upon an abolitionist. I need not tell you, my dear Sumner, how warmly and indignantly I have repelled, and will continue to repel, all such insinuations against your honor and your integrity, and how confidently I have told your defamers to wait a little while for the promised speech that would silence their croakings, and awaken the country anew with strains of eloquence like those uttered by you in Faneuil Hall. . . . Mr. Web- ster's awful treachery and shameless apostasy have so weakened the con- fidence of the people in the power of individuals to hold fast to unpopular truths that the meanness of such lesser traitors as Stanton and John "Van Buren has excited no surprise."
JEt 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 289
Sumner replied to Mr. Jay, July 8 : —
"I thank you for your watchful friendship. Had I imagined the impa- tience of friends, I would have anticipated their most sanguine desires. But, with the ahsolute mens conscia recti, knowing the completeness of my devotion to the cause, I have let time proceed in the full conviction that at last I shall he understood. I fear nothing. I am under no influences which can inter- fere with this great duty. From the time I first came here I determined to speak on slavery some time at the end of June or in July, and not before, unless pressed by some practical question. No such question has occurred, and I have been left to my original purposes. My time has now come. I wish I could speak this week ; but I cannot. For some time I have not been well ; I have lost strength, and owing to this circumstance I have not made the preparation necessary. I am now at work, and to this devote myself whenever out of the Senate. Amidst these heats I am doing as well as I can. Your appeal and the interest expressed by others in my speech fill me with a painful conviction of my utter inability to do what is expected. But I shall try to do my duty. As to the responsibilities of standing alone, and as to any answers to me, to all these I am absolutely indifferent, — of this be assured. But when I speak, I wish to speak completely."
As no bill or resolution upon which his speech would be in order was pending, Sumner was obliged to create his oppor- tunity. He offered, July 27, a resolution instructing the com- mittee on the judiciary to report a bill repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, and the next day during the morning hour moved to take it up. He gave briefly his reasons for not having made the attempt earlier, — his reluctance to speak while yet a new- comer and inexperienced in the scene, and lately ill health. His request, under the rule of courtesy prevailing in the Sen- ate, would have been heeded on any other subject,1 and he had been assured by the leaders of the Senate, from the South as well as the North, of a general desire to hear his views on the subject. It is quite likely that they had no personal objections to hearing him, and might have granted him the opportunity but for the pending Presidential canvass, in which both parties had agreed upon the suppression of agitation against slavery. The motion being objected to on the ground of " want of time," " the lateness of the session," and " danger to the Union," was lost by a vote of ten yeas to thirty-two nays. The affirma- tive votes were those of Clarke of Rhode Island, Davis, Dodge,
1 Clemens of Alabama, who was so insulting when Sumner finally spoke, said when a similar request (in a debate on the Fisheries question) was made a few days later (August 12) that it was the uniform custom of the Senate to grant such a privilege. In the debate of August 26, Chase made the point that the usual courtesy was denied Sum- ner at this time; but Douglas maintained the contrary
VOL. III. 19
290 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Foot, Hamlin, Seward, Shields,1 Sumner, Upham, and Wade. The negative votes were given by the supporters of slavery or Compromise, among them being the Northern names of Fish, Truman Smith, and Norris. The purpose to cut him off from an opportunity to speak during the session was now openly avowed, — Mason of Virginia saying to him personally that he should not speak ; 2 and it seemed in a fair way to prevail. Sumner had expected to succeed in his attempt to speak, and was disappointed. He had counted too much on the courteous treatment he had thus far received and his social relations with senators. Mr. Adams, more distrustful by nature, wrote, August 1 : —
' ' The result at which you arrived is not in the least surprising to me. You are in your nature more trusting than I, and therefore expected more. Where slavery is concerned I have not a particle of confidence in the cour- tesy, honor, principles, or veracity of those who sustain it, either directly by reason of selfish interest, or more remotely through the servility learned by political associations. In all other cases I should yield them a share of con- fidence. I should not, therefore, had I been in your place, have predicated any action of mine upon the grant by them of any favor whatever. They cannot afford to be generous or even just. If you can get even that to which you have a clear right, you will do pretty well ; but to get it you will have to fight for it."
There remained now but one mode of obtaining a hearing, — the moving of an amendment to one of the appropriation bills, which are left to the closing days of the session;3 and of this
1 Shields behaved gallantly. His relations with Sumner remained friendly. See re- marks made by each, May 4, 1854, upon petitions asking for a scientific investigation of "spiritual manifestations." Seward wrote, July 30, 1852: "When will there be a North ? The shutting of the doors against Sumner was wicked and base. Several of our friends voted the same way ; and yet they all said they would have voted for Sumner if their votes would have told. Indignation pervaded me to the finger-ends. . . . His speech will be in order on the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, and he will then speak it. It will be worth ten times more by reason of the baffled attempt to suppress it." Seward's " Life," vol. li. p. 190.
2 Mason said to him, "You may speak next, term." Sumner replied, "I must speak
this term." Mason said, "By % you sha'n't;" and Sumner replied, "I will; and you
can't prevent me." Sumner feared after this colloquy that Mason would delay the appro- priation bill till the last day of the session. Bradbury of Maine, a Democrat, went to Sumner and asked him to print his speech without delivering it. Schoolcraft, the man- ager of the Whig campaign for Scott in the House, begged him not to force a vote which would require Seward and other supporters of General Scott to take a position on the Fugi- tive Slave law. These and some other facts are from an account given by Sumner at a dinner at R. H. Dana, Jr.'s, soon after his return to Boston, and were recorded by Mr. Dana in his journal.
3 Seward wrote, August 7: " Sumner will try to be heard on the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, and he has a clear right. But what are rights in the Senate to such as him and me in this period of demoralization ? "
Mt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 291
last resort Sumner determined to avail himself by moving an amendment repealing the Fugitive Slave Act. He communi- cated his purpose to those who had his confidence, but as far as possible kept it from the public. Fearing that if it were known, the appropriation bill would be held back till the last day of the session, he kept his determination secret, removed his books and papers from his desk, and appeared to be busy with the regular business of the session. He was liable to be stopped by his proposition being ruled out of order as not germane ; or if not arrested by this objection, the proper clause of the bill might be reached in debate at so late an hour in the session that his speech would prevent final action upon the bill, and necessitate an extra session, thus exposing him to the serious charge of obstructing the public business ; but he was not to be deterred by this consideration, and he intended to insist at all hazards on his right to be heard.
Meanwhile the Compromise journals in Massachusetts were charging that his attempt in July was only a feint, and that he expected and desired the refusal which was made ; 1 on the other hand, his friends were alarmed lest he should lose the chance of being heard. Two long letters, dated August 3 and 4, came from Henry Wilson and Theodore Parker, who had noted his failure to get the floor, — telling him how disastrous to the cause and to himself would be his failure to speak ; and while expressing their own absolute confidence in his fidelity, they plainly described the prevailing distrust and alarm among the antislavery people.
Sumner wrote to Howe, August 11, concerning Theodore Par- ker's urgency about his speaking : —
" Parker is too impatient. If by chance or ignorance of the currents here I have got into the rapids, my friends should not abandon me. In any event, my course is a difficult one. A Hunker politician told me that he thought I assumed a greater responsibility than any other person here. I know this ; but I know also my singleness of purpose, and I know that I am in earnest. The ' Atlas ' is false when it says I could have made the speech, — utterly false."2
To E. L. Pierce, August 6 : —
" I value your friendship, and am glad of your frankness. From other sources I learn the prevailing distrust with regard to me. Thus far, in the
i Boston Post, July 30.
2 Sumner wrote to Parker the same day, replying to the latter's objections to his course.
292 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
consciousness of absolute rectitude and with a soul that never fears, I have been indifferent to such reports ; but they come upon me now to a degree that gives me pain. Believe me, I know my rights and duties here, and shall vindicate the one and perform the other. Thus far in Massachusetts I have not spoken often, but my words have been timely and effective. I trust not to lose this character here. All the Democratic leaders and most of the Whigs desired a hearing for me. Cass, Atchison, Soule, Bright, Norris, and many others told me so before I tried. My remarks were conceived so as to give them an opportunity of granting me the privilege. But after the call of ayes and noes, and the springing of the rattle from those new Union members, they did not dare to vote for me. It is difficult for people at a distance to under- stand the scene. Many in ignorance think I did not take the right course, or that I did not maintain my position in the proper way. Here on the spot, familiar with the requirements of the occasion, I am now satisfied that under the circumstances I acted for the best. Had I introduced a bill, I could not have spoken except by unanimous consent. Any single person could have stopped me. My first purpose was to try this ; but I finally preferred to throw myself upon the majority, and to compel them to the ignoble position before the country of suppressing debate. This has been done, and they are exposed. "I could not have made my speech on the motion to take up, though Mr. Keyes * says otherwise. Mr. Mason says I shall not speak this session, — that he will prevent me. I have told him that I will speak, and he cannot prevent me My purpose is to move an amendment to the civil appro- priation, when it gets to the Senate, that no sum shall be applied to the execution of the Fugitive Slave bill, which is hereby repealed, and on this amendment to take the floor as a right. Of course there will be an outcry ; it will be called factiousness, and the bill itself may be endangered ; but I shall proceed. Do not let this be known publicly. There are several sub- jects which I had intended to discuss here, but which time will not allow at this session. But no effort shall be spared to obtain a hearing on slavery. Have faith !
The session was to end August 31. The civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, of which Hunter of Virginia had charge, was on his motion taken up on the 19th. It was not, however, till Thursday, the 26th, that any provision came up to which Sumner's amendment could be attached ; and though only live days of the session remained, the several appropriation bills had not been acted upon. Sumner was watching meanwhile for his chance, when, on the 26th, Hunter, on behalf of the committee reporting the bill, moved an amendment for paying "the extraordinary expense" incurred by ministerial officers in executing the laws. This was intended, though no particular law was mentioned, at least in part if not wholly, to cover
1 Editor of the Roxbury Gazette.
^Et. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 29
• >
expenses incurred in executing the Fugitive Slave law ; 1 and Sumner, to be in readiness for a point of order, had, besides preparing himself on the precedents, traced the provision to its source by consulting the auditor, Mr. Whittlesey, and ascer- tained from him definitely its purpose. To Hunter's amend- ment, immediately upon its being offered, Sumner moved the amendment, " provided, that no such allowance shall be author- ized for any expenses incurred in executing the Act of Sep- tember 18, 1850, for the surrender of fugitives from service or labor, which said Act is hereby repealed." No point of order was raised, and without a moment's delay he took the floor and proceeded with his speech.2 It was the first opportunity since the Compromise resolution was laid aside in February that he could insist upon being heard as a right. He began with re- calling the denial of a hearing in July, when he had requested, without avail, the usual courtesy, saying, —
" Arid now at last, among these final crowded days of our duties here, but at this earliest opportunity, I am to be heard, — not as a favor, but as a right. The graceful usages of this body may be abandoned, but the established priv- ileges of debate cannot be abridged ; parliamentary courtesy may be forgot- ten, but parliamentary law must prevail. The subject is broadly before the Senate ; by the blessing of God it shall be discussed."
Then, after a brief reference to his position in the Senate as one of a small minority, holding for the first time a public office which had come to him unsought, and without pledges of any kind, he made a vigorous protest against the assumption com- mon at that period, and then recently announced by the two great political parties, that the Compromise of 1850 had settled the question of slavery finally, — asserting that this was an attempt to give to a set of legislative acts a sanction higher even than any belonging to the Constitution, and affirming that "nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final," and that "truth alone is final." "For myself," he said, " in no factious spirit, but solemnly and in loyalty to the Con- stitution, as a senator of the United States representing a free Commonwealth, I protest against this wrong. On slavery, as on every other subject, I claim the right to be heard. That right
1 Toucey of Connecticut stated in debate that this provision did not cover expense incurred in executing the Fugitive Slave law; but Hunter, who offered the amendment, knew its purpose too well to make such a statement in good faith.
2 William R. King of Alabama, president pro tern, of the Senate, was iu the chair.
294 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
I cannot, I will not, abandon " Of the attempt to suppress dis- cussion lie said : —
"Sir, this effort is impotent as tyrannical. Convictions of the heart can- not be repressed ; utterances of conscience must be heard : they break forth with irrepressible might. As well attempt to check the tides of ocean, the currents of the Mississippi, or the rushing waters of Niagara. The discussion of slavery will proceed wherever two or three are gathered together, — by the fireside, on the highway, at the public meeting, in the church. The move- ment against slavery is from the Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gather- ing its forces, soon to be confessed everywhere. It may not be felt yet in the high places of office and power ; but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread."
So much had been said by slaveholders and Northern com- promisers with the object of setting public opinion against anti- slavery men, to the effect that they were sectional in spirit and policy and without any comprehensive patriotism, that he em- phasized at the outset the " sectional " character of slavery and the "national" character of freedom, — qualities stamped on the early history of the nation, and determining the principles of construction to be applied to all constitutional questions which pertained to slavery. After this introduction, lasting fifteen or twenty minutes, he entered on his main argument. For the next hour he discussed the true relations of the na- tional government to slavery, showing, by authorities and rea- son, that the institution was in its nature against common right and the universal sense of justice, existed only under positive and clearly expressed provisions of law, and was local and limited in its sphere ; that the framers of the Consti- tution, including Washington, were outspoken against it, and were in sentiment and aim "abolitionists;" and that in har- mony with their declared views was the public opinion of that day, as appearing in literature, in the church, in the early legislation of Congress, and in the memorials of Abolition soci- eties. As the District of Columbia had not been acquired by the government when it was organized in 1789, and the terri- tories were then all under the Ordinance of 1787, he declared : " At this moment, when Washington took his first oath to sup- port the Constitution of the United States, the national ensign, nowhere within the national territory, covered a single slave. Then, indeed, was slavery sectional and freedom national." As conclusions from these premises, he insisted that slavery could
^Et. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 295
not exist in the territories or on the high seas, under the na- tional flag, or in the District of Columbia, or be allowed in new States to be admitted ; and that " nowhere under the Consti- tution can the nation, by legislation or otherwise, support sla- very, hunt slaves, or hold property in man." Referring to the recent political conventions, he said : —
"And now an arrogant and unrelenting ostracism is applied, not only to all who express themselves against slavery, but to every man unwilling to be its menial. A novel test for office is introduced which would have excluded all the fathers of the republic, — even Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin ! Yes, sir; startling it may be, but indisputable. Could these revered demi- gods of history once again descend upon earth and mingle in our affairs, not one of them could receive a nomination from the national convention of either of the two old political parties ! Out of the convictions of their hearts and the utterances of their lips against slavery they would be condemned."
The remaining and principal part of his speech, consuming- two hours and a half, was an arraignment of the Fugitive Slave law, which he called a bill, and never a laiv, thereby intending to stamp it as a nullity. He showed that the provision con- cerning fugitives from service was not, as claimed by its par- tisans, one of the original compromises of the Constitution ; and that it was not deemed at the time of special importance, being introduced late in the session of the convention, and passed without debate. He noted that the same indifference attended the passage of the Fugitive Act of 1793, which drew little attention at the time ; and next he passed to the Act of 1850, of which he thus spoke : —
"At last, in 1850, we have another Act, passed by both Houses of Con- gress, and approved by the President, familiarly known as the Fugitive Slave bill. As I read this statute I am filled with painful emotions. The masterly subtlety with which it is drawn might challenge admiration if exerted for a benevolent purpose ; but in an age of sensibility and refinement, a machine ot torture, however skilful and apt, cannot be regarded without horror. Sir, in the name of the Constitution which it violates, of my country which it dis- honors, of humanity which it degrades, of Christianity which it offends, I arraign this enactment, and now hold it up to the judgment of the Senate and the world. Again, I shrink from no responsibility. I may seem to stand alone : but all the patriots and martyrs of history, all the fathers of the re- public, are with me. Sir, there is no attribute of God which does not take part against this Act."
Encountering the objection that the Supreme Court had de- clared in the Prigg case the power of Congress to legislate for
296 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
the reclamation of fugitive slaves, and conceding that the de- cision might be entitled to weight as a rule for the judiciary, he affirmed that as a legislator performing an independent duty he adopted the rule of President Jackson's memorable veto, avowing his right and duty to interpret the Constitution as he understood it, and not as it was understood by others. He maintained that as Congress had no powers which the Consti- tution had not delegated, it had none to legislate on the sub- ject of fugitive slaves,1 since the only provision referring to it conferred none, and affirmed only an obligation of the States, without adding a power such as was given in like cases Avhere a grant of power was intended. But even conceding that Con- gress had the power, he maintained further that the Act of 1850 conflicted not only with fundamental principles of liberty and justice, as he had already stated briefly, but it was uncon- stitutional in denying the right of trial by jury in a suit at common law, which the Constitution expressly secured. He then ran a parallel between the Stamp Act and the Fugitive Slave Act, showing that our fathers in their treatment of the former were an example to guide in treating the latter. He said : " Within less than a year from its original passage, de- nounced and discredited, it was driven from the statute book. In the charnel-house of history, with unclean things of the past, it now rots. Thither the Slave Act must follow." He produced an original letter of Washington, never published be- fore, and lent to him by Rev. Charles Lowell, showing how the Father of his Country refused to have one of his slaves recovered if it " would excite a mob or riot, or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed citizens;" and then, in contrast with this injunction, he described how the execu- tion of the Fugitive Slave Act, wherever attempted, involved mobs, cruelty in capture and detention, and assaults fatal to the pursuer or the pursued. He spoke of the dehumanizing effects of the law on the agents of the claimants, on commis- sioners and marshals engaged in its execution ; referred in
1 The antislavery statesmen at this time, including Sumner himself, applied to the Constitution a rigid rule of construction which they did not adhere to in the period of the Civil War and that which followed it. Wade went so far as to avow in the Senate, Feb. 23, 1855, his adhesion to the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799; but Chase and Sum- ner never advanced to that position. The pro-slavery men, on the other hand, were strict constructionists whenever they repelled interference with slavery, but changed to a liberal rule when they sought legislation in its support.
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 297
passing to Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin," recently issued, noting that its marvellous reception expressed the true public sentiment outside of the mercantile interest ; and then paid a tribute to fugitive slaves, whose cause, spite of legal commands and penalties, appealed irresistibly to the primary instincts of human nature.
" For them," said he, " every sentiment of humanity is aroused. Rude and ignorant they may he, but in their very efforts for freedom they claim kindred with all that is nohle in the past. Romance has no stories of more thrilling interest : classical antiquity has preserved no examples of adventure and trial more worthy of renown. They are among the heroes of our age. Among them are those whose names will be treasured in the annals of their race. By eloquent voice they have done much to make their wrongs known, and to secure the respect of the world. History will soon lend her avenging pen. Proscribed by you during life, they will proscribe you through all time. Sir, already judgment is beginning; a righteous public sentiment palsies your enactment." l
Near the close he affirmed that the Act not only violated the Constitution, but shocked the public conscience and offended the divine law ; and following the injunctions of moralists and of the fathers of the Church, he denied to it any title to obedience.2
His own summary is as follows : —
"And now, sir, let us review the field over which we have passed. We have seen that any compromise, finally closing the discussion of slavery under the Constitution, is tyrannical, absurd, and impotent ; that as slavery can exist only by virtue of positive law, and as it has no such positive support in the Constitution, it cannot exist within the national jurisdiction ; that the Consti- tution nowhere recognizes property in man, and that, accordiug to its true interpretation, freedom and not slavery is national, while slavery and not free- dom is sectional ; that in this spirit the national government was first organ- ized under Washington, himself an abolitionist, surrounded by abolitionists, while the whole country, by its church, its colleges, its literature, and all its best voices, was united against slavery, and the national flag at that time, nowhere within the national territory, covered a single slave; still further, that the national government is a government of delegated powers, and as among these there is no power to support slavery, this institution cannot be national, nor can Congress in any way legislate in its behalf; and, finally, that the establishment of this principle is the true way of peace and safety for the republic. Considering next the provision for the surrender of fugitives from service, we have seen that it was not one of the original compromises
1 Compare passage in "White Slavery in the Barbary States," Works, vol. i. p. 422.
2 Lord Shaftesbury, by letter, February, 1853, to the London "Times," quotes with commendation this passage. Boston " Commonwealth," March 2.
298 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
of the Constitution ; that it was introduced tardily and with hesitation, and adopted with little discussion, while then and for a long period thereafter it was regarded with comparative indifference ; that the recent Slave Act, though many times unconstitutional, is especially so on two grounds, — first, as a usur- pation hy Congress of powers not granted by the Constitution, and an infrac- tion of rights secured to the States ; and, secondly, as the denial of trial by jury, in a question of personal liberty and a suit at common law; that its glaring unconstitutionality finds a prototype in the British Stamp Act, which our fathers refused to obey as unconstitutioual on two parallel grounds, — first, because it was a usurpation by Parliament of powers not belonging to it under the British Constitution, and an infraction of rights belonging to the Colonies; and, secondly, because it was the denial of trial by jury in certain cases of property ; that as liberty is far above property, so is the outrage perpetrated by the American Congress far above that perpetrated by the British Parlia- ment; and, finally, that the Slave Act has not that support in the public sentiment of the States where it is to be executed, which is tne life of all law, and which prudence and the precept of Washington require."
Further on he said of the duty of obedience to the Act : —
" The Slave Act violates the Constitution and shocks the public conscience. With modesty, and yet with firmness, let me add, sir, it offends against the divine law. No such enactment is entitled to support. As the throne of God is above every earthly throne, so are his laws and statutes above all the laws and statutes of man. To question these is to question God himself. . . . The good citizen who sees before him the shivering fugitive, guilty of no crime, pursued, hunted down like a beast, while praying for Christian help and deliverance, and then reads the requirements of this Act, is filled with horror. Here is a despotic mandate ' to aid and assist in the prompt and effi- cient execution of this law.' Again let me speak frankly. Not rashly would I set myself against any requirement of law. This grave responsibility I would not lightly assume. But here the path of duty is clear. By the supreme law which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian law of brotherhood, by the Constitution which I have sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this Act. Never, in any capacity, can I render voluntary aid in its execution. Pains and penalties I will endure, but this great wrong I will not do. ' Where I cannot obey actively, there I am willing to lie down and to suffer what they shall do unto me,' — such was the exclamation of him to whom we are indebted for the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' while in prison for dis- obedience to an earthly statute. Better suffer injustice than do it; better vic- tim than instrument of wrong ; better even the poor slave returned to bondage than the wretched commissioner."
This was his conclusion : —
" Finally, sir, for the sake of peace and tranquillity, cease to shock the pub- lic conscience ; for the sake of the Constitution, cease to exercise a power no- where granted, and which violates inviolable rights expressly secured. Leave this question where it was left by our fathers at the formation of our national government, — in the absolute control of the States, the appointed guardians of
^Et. 40-41] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 299
personal liberty. Repeal this enactment ; let its terrors no longer rage through the land. Mindful of the lowly whom it pursues; mindful of the good men perplexed by its requirements, — in the name of charity, in the name of the Constitution, repeal this enactment, totally and without delay. There is the example of Washington, — follow it. There, also, are words of Oriental piety, most touching and full of warning, which speak to all mankind, and now es- pecially to us : ' Beware of the groans of wounded souls, since the inward sore will at length break out ! Oppress not to the utmost a single heart ; for a solitary sigh has power to overturn a whole world.' "
The speech occupied three hours and three quarters, and there was no interruption or disturbance of any kind. Though it was unexpected, the galleries and chambers filled soon after he began. The passages in the speech which appealed to human sympathies touched the hearts of many spectators. Mr. Web- ster, who happened to come in early in the speech, remained an hour ; 1 and as far as known it was his last visit to the Senate. It would be most interesting to know what passed in his mind as he listened to his successor affirming doctrines and exhibiting a spirit so opposite to his own recent course in the same place.
It was the desire of the more temperate section of the Compromise party to let the speech pass unnoticed, but the Southerners were too excitable to practise such self-restraint. Clemens of Alabama, whose public life was limited to the single term he was serving, a man of little prominence and ability, rose first, and contented himself with expressing the hope that " none of his friends would make any reply to the speech which the senator from Massachusetts had seen fit to inflict on the Senate ; " and added, without being called to order, " I shall only say, sir, that the ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm." Badger2 of North Carolina undertook a formal reply. He was a well-trained lawyer, and very ready in debate, but never rose to a statesmanlike manner of discussion, and withal was want- ing in personal dignity and seriousness of character. Most of his speech, though a long one, was ad captandum, and did not attempt to meet the argument. He referred to the unseason- able time and occasion of Sumner's " elaborate oration, care- fully written, studied, and committed to memory ; " upbraided him for delaying for eight months " the tirade of abuse "
1 Mann's Life, p. 381. 2 1795-1866.
300 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
which he had come to the Senate for the purpose of making ; read extracts from his speech in Faneuil Hall in 1850 (ex- tracts which Mr. Hale wittily said in reply were the best part of Badger's speech), and declared that only respect for the usages of the Senate prevented his applying " an appropriate epithet" to its author. When interrupted by Sumner with an inquiry as to the authorities for a legal opinion of Judge Story he had cited, he replied that Story's authority was of ten thou- sand times more value than that of the senator from Massachu- setts, " who will please to have the decency not to interrupt me." He intimated that association with the author of such a speech might not be hereafter agreeable to Southern sena- tors, — a remark altogether misplaced, as Sumner had sought no introductions to them and had waited for them to approach him. The speech had been wholly impersonal, and these epithets and sneers and offensive suggestions provoked no retort from Sumner ; but the time was to come when insolence would not escape so easily.
The ill-temper was, however, confined to Clemens and Badger. The senators from Virginia1 and South Carolina, usually the swiftest to defend slavery and to assail all who assailed it, re- mained silent. Rusk of Texas was the only other Southern sen- ator who joined in the debate, and he only in a few words, which, though referring to the senator's " rhetorical flourishes," were neither unparliamentary nor uncivil.2 Three Democratic sena- tors from New England — Bradbury, Toucey, and James — took occasion to express themselves against Sumner's amendment, or any disturbance of the Compromise measures ; but they were entirely respectful to him. Dodge of Iowa insisted on the con- stitutionality of the law which " had been so eloquently and fiercely denounced," and said " it was lamentable to see gentle- men possessed of a high order of talents, of extensive and varied erudition, and who should from their knowledge and experience know much of men and things, engaged in riding this hobby to the extremes to which many of them are going in their grand crusade for liberty, equality, and fraternity," and trying " to introduce black-skinned, flat-nosed, and woolly-headed senators
1 Some years afterwards, during the Rebellion, Sumner, in a speech in the Senate, June 24, 1864, recurred to Hunter's fair conduct on this occasion. Works, vol. ix. pp. 33, 34.
2 Sumner's land speech had been followed by pleasant relations between him and Rusk.
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 301
and representatives." Douglas, without referring to Sumner's speech, set forth briefly the argument in favor of the constitu- tionality of the Act. Weller of California, formerly of Ohio, disavowed all sympathy with the Abolitionists, condemned the speech as " inflammatory, and indirectly, at least, counselling forcible resistance ; " and he held its author personally respon- sible for the blood of persons killed in its execution. He said, however, in a rather pleasant way, that it was the first Abolition speech he had ever listened to, and added : " I did not know that it was possible that I could endure a speech for over three hours upon the subject of the abolition of slavery ; but this oration of the senator from Massachusetts to-day has been so handsomely embellished with poetry, both Latin and English, so full of clas- sical allusions and rhetorical flourishes, as to make it much more palatable than I supposed it could have been made." He showed no ill feeling, and allowed himself to be interrupted sev- eral times by Sumner, who disclaimed any suggestion of a resort to force in resisting the law. Cass, making no reference to Sumner, explained in a pitiable way why he did not vote upon the Fugitive Slave law, and declared his purpose henceforth to stand by it. Bright of Indiana, expelled ten years later for disloyalty,1 abstaining from comments on Sumner's speech, vindicated the Act, and applied the epithet " fanatics " to its opponents. Cooper of Pennsylvania found no fault with Sum- ner for occupying the time of the Senate, even at this late day, and said : —
" It was his right to do it, and I am glad that he has exercised that right, hecause at last we have fully, broadly, and fairly presented to the country the designs and intentions of the party which he represents. Hitherto, bold as the gentlemen who profess to represent that party on this floor have been, they have not come out with the fulness and frankness of the senator from Massachusetts. I thank him for this full and fair exposition of his views, and of the intentions of those of whom he is the leader."
The debate, lasting till seven, drifted near the end into a dis- cussion of the Presidential question, involving thrusts and re- torts between Democratic and Whig senators on matters quite apart from Sumner's speech, and was finally arrested by the chair at the instance of Hunter, who expressed a wish to go on with the pending appropriation bill. Sumner was supported by
1 Works, vol. vi. p. 252.
302 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
the two Free Soil senators only. They united in saying that the speech marked "a new era" in American history. Hale said Sumner had "done enough by the effort he has made here to- day to place himself side by side with the first orators of an- tiquity, and as far ahead of any living American orator as free- dom is ahead of slavery ; " and that he had " made a draft upon the gratitude of the friends of humanity and of liberty that will not be paid through many generations, and the memory of which shall endure as long as the English language is spoken, or the history of 'this republic forms a part of the annals of the world." Chase defended Sumner's choice of time, to which he had been driven by the Senate's refusal to grant him in July the custom- ary courtesy. He said further : —
" The argument which my friend from Massachusetts has addressed to us to-day was not an assault upon the Constitution. It was a noble vindication of that great charter of government from the perversions of the advocates of the Fugitive Slave Act. . . . What has the senator from Massachusetts as- serted? That the fugitive-servant clause of the Constitution is a clause of compact between the States, and confers no legislative power upon Congress. He has arrayed history and reason in support of this proposition ; and I avow my conviction, now and here, that logically and historically his argument is impregnable, entirely impregnable."
The two senators, Clemens and Badger, who violated the pro- prieties of the Senate in their rebukes of Sumner, lived to regard him in a different light. The former, in a letter to Sumner, Nov. 21, 1864, marked " private," and written from Philadelphia, avowed himself a Unionist, and stated his purpose to live in the North, occupied with literary pursuits, unless he returned to Alabama for the purpose of restoring that State to the Union. Six months later he died at Huntsville. Badger was nominated at the next session after Sumner's speech as a justice of the Supreme Court, and to his surprise found Sumner supporting his confirmation by voice as well as vote. After his rejection by the Senate for political reasons, he wrote to Sumner a letter, Feb. 11, 1853, acknowledging that he was the only senator who had any reason to entertain feelings of unkindness towards him- self, regretting the expressions he had indulged in during the debate of the previous session, designed at the time, as he now confessed, to be directly and personally offensive to Sumner, and expressing his sense of Sumner's generous magnanimity. Sumner replied : —
JEr. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 303
" Never insensible to any word of kindness, I have not read your letter without emotion. For a long time your sentiments towards me had been apparent, both in private and in public. While feeling that you did me wrong, I was silent; nor did I anticipate any change on your part. Our relations seemed to be fixed; but time, the reconciler, has brought about what I never foresaw, and the injury of the past is forgotten in the reparation of the present. You allude with sensibility to my course on your nomination as associate- justice of the Supreme Court ; for this I deserve nothing, as I expected nothing. In the discharge of a public trust, after mature reflection, I felt constrained under all the circumstances of the case to support your nomina- tion. This was my duty ; ' nor more, nor less.' "
Judge McLean, who read the correspondence, wrote Sumner a note warmly commending his course as an illustration of elevated patriotism in ignoring a personal injury.
Though Sumner made no reply to his assailants, the inter- ruptions which he made when he thought his positions were misstated showed that he felt himself master of the situation, and not at all disconcerted. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied with the impression he had made. The speech was free from personalities, from the criticism of living public men, and from any description of the incidents of slavery which could offend reasonable men who were supporting it from self-interest or political connection. Viewed from an antislavery standpoint, it was moderate in tone and statements. It was of a style to which the Senate was unused, with a classic finish such as be- longed only to Everett among contemporary orators. Sumner's rich sonorous voice and fine presence were added to charm of style. He impressed senators and spectators with his profound sincerity. His sentiments were lofty, appealing to generous minds; and for the moment, some who listened, hard politicians though they were, must have had their better natures stirred, while they looked beyond the forced and unnatural compact of parties against the agitation of slavery, and recognized in his fearlessness and undaunted purpose the prophecy of a new North, and of the destined fall of slavery itself.1
Such, however, were the political adjustments of the time that only three other senators sustained in the vote his proposi- tion of repeal, — Chase and Hale, his Free Soil associates, and Wade, nominally a Whig, with strong antislavery sentiments
1 The Senate and its president looked intently at the speaker during the delivery of the closing paragraphs. Underwood of Kentucky, as Hale observed, was visibly affected. Sirs. John Bell, who was in the gallery, showed sympathetic interest.
304 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
confirmed by pledges. Sumner's colleague, Davis,1 Foot of Vermont, Norris of New Hampshire, Dodge of Wisconsin, and, most marked of all, Seward2 dodged the vote. In the column of forty-seven compromisers and disunionists who answered in support of the Fugitive Slave law on that day were Hamilton Fish, and four senators from New England, — John H. Clarke, Hamlin, Truman Smith, and Upham. It is difficult at this distance of time to comprehend the degradation of American politics in the years 1850-1854.
In the popular interest it excited, the speech ranks with Cor- win's on the Mexican War, in 1847, and with Webster's on the Compromise, in 1850.3 No speech on the slavery question is even now so readable. It was strong in its enunciation of the local and sectional character of slavery, in this respect appealing to the convictions of people whose sentiments were patriotic and national, and giving a watchword which was adopted, — " Free- dom national, slavery sectional." It put in a clear light the want of any power in Congress to legislate on the subject,4 and the inconsistency of the Fugitive Slave Act with the Consti- tution, particularly in its denial of the right of trial by jury, and relieved the consciences of those who had been constrained to yield it support under a sense of constitutional obligation.5
1 Mr. Davis left the Senate chamber at the close of Sumner's speech, and was absent for a considerable time, — sufficient, as he supposed, for the debate to have closed. He reached his seat, however, just as the call of the roll began; and rising, again went behind the Vice-President's chair.
2 Sumner says, in a note to his Works (vol. iii. p. 93), " Seward was absent, probably- constrained by his prominence as a supporter of General Scott."
3 Among the various editions was one from the office of the "National Era," Wash- ington, D. C, and one from that of the New York "Evening Post," which was included among Democratic campaign documents. There was an Edinburgh edition, with a preface by P. Edward Dove ; a London edition, with a preface by Sir George Stephen; and a New- castle edition.
4 James C. Alvord, Sumner's teacher in the Law School, briefly argued against the ex- istence of the power, in a report to the Massachusetts Senate in 1837. In 1846 Chase took the same view in an undelivered argument filed in the United States Supreme Court in the Van Zandt case, in which Seward was associated with him as counsel ; and he made the same point in his speech in the Senate against the Compromise of 1850. Robert Rantoul, Jr., insisted on the want of power in Congress to legislate on the subject, in a speech at Lynn, April 3, 1851, and in Congress, June 11, 1852. As an original question this doctrine had the sanction of Webster in his "Seventh of March" speech, of the learned jurist Joel Parker, Professor at the Law School in Cambridge, and even of Butler of South Carolina.
5 Horace Mann, in his speech in Congress, Feb. 28, 1851, treated at length this uncon- stitutional feature of the Act. Other points set up against the validity of the Act, which Sumner had not the time to enter upon, were ably discussed by others, — bjr Mann in the speech above referred to and in his speech at Lancaster, Mass., May 19, 1851, and by Ran- toul and C. G, Loring on the trial of Thomas Sims, April 7-11, 1851.
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 305
Whether traversing new fields or gleaning where others had reaped, the argument was put in a form which invited the study of multitudes of thoughtful citizens who are ordinarily repelled by political speeches.1 It was a most potent influence in mass- ing the best thought and sentiment of an enlightened and Chris- tian people against the system which the statute was designed to protect. But elsewhere than in the free States it had signifi- cance and effect. From that day the partisans of slavery recog- nized a new power in the Senate and in the country. Sumner stood before them as the antislavery protagonist. He stood not as a politician, but as the representative of moral and spiritual forces which slavery must overcome, or perish. Other men might escape from the Senate, or pass behind the Vice-Pres- ident's chair to avoid an embarrassing record in an election at hand ; but here was a man who for no personal or political advantage would qualify his opposition or yield a point.2 He spoke no idle words ; every sentence was matured ; and he mar- shalled law, logic, history, facts, literature, morals, and religion against American slavery in a contest which could end only in its extinction.
Sumner lacked, indeed, Chase's judicial style ; but for the work he had to do, he was all the stronger for what might be thought a defect. He did not hide his meaning under euphe- mistic phrases, — never, like Seward, substituting "labor" and " capital " for " free " and " slave " States ; but he always chal- lenged the wrong he withstood by its real name. He never treated a grave question sportively ; but when slavery was the topic, he was as serious in private talk as in the debates of the Senate.3 If the Southern men thought other Northern leaders were playing a part, and would, like Webster and Cor win, yield their position under a sufficient pressure of ambition or self-
1 Dr. I. Ray, the distinguished alienist and author of the treatise on the "Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity," in a note to Sumner mentioned this quality of the speech which had attracted himself, although he usually turned away from speeches in Congress.
2 The peculiar and distinctive character of Sumner's position at this time has been recognized by students of political history, — G. F. Hoar, in his eulogy in the House, April 27, 1874; Von Hoist, vol. iv. pp. 220, 221; biographical sketches in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia and Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, by Wendell Phillips and George W. Curtis respectively.
3 Wade's inaccuracies of statement and looseness of speech suggested correspond- ing limitations in character Hale's light way of speaking of political questions in private conversation sometimes led observers to misjudge him. See A. H. Stephens's "Life," by Johnston and Browne, p. 308; also "Reminiscences of Samuel K. Lothrop," pp. 182-m.
vol. in. 20
306 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
interest, they exempted him from such a suspicion.1 He was not sincerer in conviction or firmer in purpose than Giddings ; but far more than that veteran of the House he could by his wide range of thought and research, and by his confessed powers as an orator, force the attention and respect of a hostile assembly.
Sumner continued at his desk after his speech till the session of the day closed. He spoke briefly in favor of an allowance to the widow of A. J. Downing, the rural architect, partly for arrears of his salary as superintendent of the public grounds in Washington. Clemens, who had not yet recovered his calm- ness, said that Sumner's support of the appropriation " satisfied him that he was entirely right in opposing it ; " and a little later he referred to the other senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Davis), " who has the fortune to be a gentleman, which his colleague has not." There were cries of " Order," and the president said, " The senator must not indulge in such language." Clemens proceeded, but for the rest of the day observed the rules.
Sumner's first note of congratulation was from Mrs. Fish, wife of the senator from New York, whose husband, as shown by his vote, had not been persuaded by the speech : —
" Permit me, my dear Mr. Sumner, to add my humble tribute of admiration to the congratulations you are receiving from your friends upon the successful defence of freedom made by you this morning. . . . You can afford to look quietly on and let the excitement pass by ; the truths brought forward by you to-day must and will make a lasting impression even here, where prejudice holds the common mind fast bound in ignorance and error."
Mrs. Seward wrote from Auburn, N. Y., September 18 : —
"I have read with great pleasure your eloqueut and convincing argument against the Fugitive Slave bill. This fearless defence of freedom must silence those cavillers who doubted your sincerity.2 It is a noble plea for a righteous cause. Hoping and believing — yea, through faith knowing, because His Word hath told us so — that the truth will ultimately triumph, since its abandonment by a majority of the Whig party I have been watching with increased interest the course of those who have not bowed the knee to Baal. May God prosper their efforts ! I am truly glad to see that Mrs. Fish has become so warm a convert to principles which have as yet failed to win her husband."
1 General William Preston of Kentucky, who entered Congress in December, 1852, late in his life, told the writer that the South felt that Sumner was the only Northern man who would never under any circumstances swerve from his position, and the only one whose conversation outside of the Senate corresponded fully to his declarations in it. This state- ment is introduced here, not as a correct estimate of other Northern leaders, but as the Southern view of them.
2 An allusion to criticisms on Sumner for his delay in speaking.
^Et. 40-41] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 307
Mr. Seward himself wrote also from Auburn, September 22 :
"Your speech is an admirable, a great, a very great one. That is my opinion ; and every one around me, of all sorts, confesses it."
The reformers were gladdened. Burritt, toiling in England for " ocean penny postage," " wept with joy and admiration while reading the magnificent speech." William Jay pronounced it " worthy of the gentleman, the lawyer, and the Christian." His son John, as soon as he read the telegraphic report, wrote, " I regard it as a triumph both for yourself and the cause of freedom ; " and a few days later, reading the revised copy, de- clared it " a noble and unanswerable argument." James G. Birney, the Liberty candidate of 1844, expressed his " great gratification," and anticipated " the powerful effect it would produce on the country." William I. Bowditch, the Abolition- ist (his brother Henry, the eminent physician, writing in a simi- lar vein), wrote : —
" I have read your speech with delight and profit. Worthy as it is of your- self, it is also worthy of the noble cause which inspired it. It abounds with new illustrations of old points, and offers many new and important facts which have not been introduced into the discussion. The system has never received such a telling blow in any speech which I have read. The parallel between the Stamp Act and the Fugitive Slave law, and the argument on the uncon- stitutionality of the latter, are unanswerable."
Theodore Parker wrote, Sept. 6, 1852 : —
" You have made a grand speech, — well researched, well arranged, well written, and I doubt not as well delivered. It was worth while to go to Congress and make such a speech. I think you never did anything better as a work of art, never anything more timely. This so far as you are con- cerned will elevate you in the esteem of good men, American as well as European, as a man, an orator, and a statesman. You have now done what I have all along said you would do, though I lamented you did not do it long ago."
Wendell Phillips, though differing on some points, wrote, September 3 : —
"I have read your masterly speech with envious admiration. It is admi- rable, both as a masterly argument and a noble testimony, and will endear you to thousands."
Wilson called the speech " glorious," and said, " How proud I am that God gave me the power to aid in placing you in
308 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
the Senate ! " S. C. Phillips regarded it as " a contribution of inestimable value to our noble cause," and " statesmanlike in all its features." Chase, who had heard it, bore, after reading it, his second testimony to its convincing power. Horace Mann wrote, the day after it was delivered, to Mrs. Mann, that it " would tell on the country, and be a speech for a book and for history." John Bigelow, of the New York " Evening Post," who, though a faithful friend of Sumner, looked at antislavery speeches, and indeed all speeches, with a critical, almost cynical eye, wrote : —
" I have just finished reading your speech, to which I have devoted the best part of the day. Unless I greatly err, it is the heaviest blow which has yet been levelled against the Fugitive Slave bill from the tribune. Others may have done more to make its enactors and champions infamous, but no one has done as much to prove the law itself infamous. The speech has this great and rare merit, that it is not in the ordinary and vulgar acceptation of the term an inflammatory speech. No slaveholder or slavecatcher has any cause for losing his temper in reading it, though if he have any sensibility or brains he would be likely to lose a portion of his self-respect."
Men of scholarly habits and trained intellects enjoyed the finished style, dignified tone, and moral enthusiasm of the speech. Dr. I. Ray, yielding to the force of his argument against the power of Congress to legislate for the rendition of fugitive slaves, though holding previously a different opin- ion, wrote : —
" The lofty tone which pervades your speech, peculiarly appropriate to the subject, quickened the motion of my blood a little, and — I mention it as a matter of fact, not compliment — frequently reminded me of Burke's American speeches. I doubt not it will make its mark on public sentiment."
George B. Emerson thought it " an admirable speech, — one of the noblest that have ever been made in Congress." Pro- fessor Charles Beck commended " its mild and manly tone," — superior to speeches conspicuous for violent language, and en- titling it to a permanent place in the future discussion of the slavery question in all its aspects. J. E. Worcester, author of the Dictionary, wrote with " admiration of its ability and ex- cellent spirit." William C. Bryant said " it was the only thing which preserved the character of the Senate." Timothy Walker, of Cincinnati, a conservative jurist, thought it not only the ablest of Sumner's efforts, but the ablest exposition of that side of the question he had met with, believing this to be also the opinion
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 309
of all candid men, and even of the Southerners, as shown by the reception they gave it. The speech was warmly applauded in letters from eminent divines, — Charles Lowell, John Pier- pont, Con vers Francis, William H. Furness, A. A. Livermore, Samuel Osgood, Rufus P. Stebbins, and James W. Thompson. A senator then far removed in opinion and party action (Cooper of Pennsylvania), whose subsequent change of position may have been due to the speech, wrote : —
11 While I differ with you in many of your views on this subject, I can still admire the ability and manly frankness with which you maintain them. As an intellectual effort, your speech will rank with any made in the Senate since I have been a member of it."
Many years afterwards, Wilson wrote in his history,1 " This speech — learned, logical, exhaustive, and eloquent, worthy of the cause it advocated — placed the new senator at once among the foremost of the forensic debaters of America." Von Hoist bears witness to " its overpowering impression on friend and foe alike," its " fervency of holy, enthusiastic conviction," its " all-overcoming force of moral ideas," and to the feeling which " ran both through the North and the South, that a man ' with a conscience ' had arisen in the legislative body of the Union." 2
The work which Sumner began in 1852*with only three coad- jutors, he finished, as the sequel will show, twelve years later, when he reported and carried the repeal of all laws for the ren- dition of fugitive slaves.8
*»■
He wrote to John Bigelow, August 30 : —
" The kind interest you express in my speech tempts me to the confidence of friendship. I shall be attacked, and the speech will be disparaged. But you shall know something of what was said on the floor of the Senate.4 You will see what Hale and Chase said openly in debate. Others are reported in conversation. I know that some Hunkers have felt its force. Clarke of Rhode Island said ' it would be a text-book when they were dead and gone ; ' Shields said 'it was the ablest speech ever made in the Senate on slavery;' and Bright used even stronger language. Cass has complimented me warmly.
i Vol. ii. p. 355.
2 Vol. iv. pp. 219-221. The speech was reviewed from a pro-slavery standpoint in A. S. Bledsoe's "Liberty and Slavery."
3 Sumner made an attempt to bring in a bill to repeal the Fugitive Slave law, July 31, 1854, but was voted down by ten yeas to thirty-five nays. He made another effort for the repeal, Feb. 23, 1855, which was voted down, — yeas nine, nays thirty
4 A letter of Sumner to Rev. Dr. R. P. Stebbins, from Newport, Oct. 12, 1852, printed in Nason's "Life " of Sumner, p. 162, gives other comments on the speech.
310 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1851-52.
Soule has expressed himself in the strongest terms. Weller, after using strong terms of praise, said ' it would do more mischief than any speech ever made in the country.' Polk,1 who was sober, and who listened for two hours, said ' the argument was unanswerable,' though he could not say this aloud. I write these for your private and friendly eye. I throw the speech down as a gage. I believe it presents the true limits of opposition to slavery within the Consti- tution. I challenge an answer. The attempts in the Senate were puerile and ill-tempered.
" I cannot leave here before the end of the week. Many matters will detain me after the close of the session. I see that I am announced for Faneuil Hall next Tuesday. This I regret. I am weary, and long for vacation. I have been in my seat every day this session. I shall hope to see you on my way through New York, to converse on many things. I regret very much that John Van Buren has gone into this campaign. If he could not oppose Baltimore he should have been silent. Even Weller, with whom he has been speaking in New Hampshire, says he ought to have gone to Europe. My admiration and attachment for him have been sincere, and in the most friendly spirit I regret his course. Pardon this freedom. We are now in the hurly- burly of a last day ; the pressure is immense."
To Dr. I. Ray, Providence, R. I., September 21 : —
" You are right in supposing that I foresaw the difficulties of State action under that clause of the Constitution. But my special aim in the Senate was to beat down the existing Act and assumption of power, knowing full well that when this is done there will be no further question. The South have, by a false move on their part, given us the opportunity of battle on this field, where their ultimate defeat is inevitable. They cannot stand against the argument. In an edition of the speech now publishing in Boston I have in- troduced two or three sentences on the interpretation of the clause, wherein, without assuming any new position, I open some of the difficulties, — impos- sibilities, let me say. It is clear to me that under that clause, when strictly interpreted, no slave can be delivered up. Of this I have no doubt; but in saying this I might have weakened in some minds the force of the attack on the Act."
The Boston journals, which had taunted Sumner and his Free Soil supporters for his silence on the slavery question, and which had devoted long articles to his land speech, abstained from all editorial mention of this speech against the Fugitive Slave Act which was attracting universal attention, not even giving it so much as a paragraph in the news column.2 The reason for this reserve was obvious. Finding nothing in the speech which could
1 A member of the House from Tennessee.
2 The Advertiser, Courier, Atlas, and Post. The writer does not intend to imply that they excluded the summary of the speech from the telegraphic dispatches. The Springfield "Republican," August 25, mingled satire and praise in about equal proportion; but it de- nounced, September 2, without stint, the coarseness of Clemens's remarks.
JEt. 40-41.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 311
be the subject of cavil, they would not, by drawing public atten- tion to it, strengthen the position of its author.
Of English friends who expressed warmly their approval of the speech, were Alderson and Cresswell among judges ; Adol- phus, the reporter, now a county judge ; W. E. Forster, then a contributor to the Westminster Review on the slavery question ; Nassau W. Senior, Joseph Parkes, John Kenyon, George Combe, and the most affectionate of all Sumner's English friends, the Earl of Carlisle. These, as well as other Englishmen, rarely closed their letters without the expression of an earnest desire to see him again in their country.
312 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. — THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTI- TUTIONAL CONVENTION. — FINAL DEFEAT OF THE COALITION.— 1852-1853.
DURING the years 1851-1853, Whigs and Democrats acted in concert for the suppression of antislavery agitation. Forty-four members of Congress, in January, 1851, under the lead of Henry Clay and Alexander H. Stephens, pledged them- selves, as already seen, to resist any disturbance of the Com- promise, or a renewal of agitation upon the subject of slavery.1 At the beginning of the next session, in December, 1851, the caucus of Whig members affirmed, almost unanimously, the Compromise Acts to be " a final settlement, in principle and substance, of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embrace."2 The House, April 5, 1852, by a vote of one hun- dred to sixty-five, declared the Compromise — laying emphasis on the Fugitive Slave Act — to be a final adjustment and per- manent settlement. In June, 1852, in conventions held in Bal- timore, the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce for President, whose only conspicuous merit was subserviency to slavery ; and the Whigs, General Winfield Scott. The Whig convention, controlled by considerations of availability, set aside Fillmore, who better than any one represented the Compromise, and Web- ster, who, notwithstanding the eloquent appeals of Rufus Choate, had only a feeble support among the delegates. Both parties in their conventions, in language quite alike, affirmed in their plat- forms the Compromise to be a final settlement of the slavery question, and declared their purpose to resist any further agita- tion concerning it.3 The candidates before both conventions
i Ante, p. 194.
2 The Whig members from Massachusetts were reported to have voted in caucus as follows : for the Compromise, G. T. Davis, Duncan, and Thompson ; against it, Fowler, Goodrich, and Scudder.
3 Strangely enough, the Massachusetts delegation, including Henry L. Dawes, since senator, voted entire for the platform. Justin S. Morrill, a delegate from Vermont, since senator from that State, voted for it.
Mt. 41-42.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 313
vied with each other in volunteering abject submission to the Compromise. The party journals on both sides either insisted on a cordial support of the " finality " platforms or acquiesced in silence.1 Politicians, even those who had been noted for antislavery professions, assumed the degrading obligations im- posed at Baltimore. The New York Barnburners — W. C. Bryant, B. F. Butler,2 John Van Buren, S. J. Tilden, and H. B. Stanton — turned their backs on those noble protests for free- dom which made 1848 an illustrious year in American annals, and supported the Democratic " finality " candidates. The poli- tical opposition to the Compromise at the North was confined to the Free Soilers. Never did American politics sink to so low a point of degradation as at this time. Sumner wrote to Adams, June 21 : " This is the darkest day of our cause ; but truth will prevail."
Mr. Webster's partisans, deeming him unjustly treated at Bal- timore, nominated him as a candidate for President without protest from himself, and persisted in their independent action while he lived, and even after his death, which took place Octo- ber 24, two weeks before the election. It was a sad close to the life of a great man. With all he had done for the Southern cause, he was left at the end with only the following of a small band of personal admirers. At the last he advised his friends to vote for Pierce, the candidate of the party he had always opposed.
The Free Soilers found themselves in the early months of 1852 in a state of perplexity. The secession of the Barnburners in New York had reduced their strength in the country by nearly one half. Chase had co-operated in 1849 with the Democrats of Ohio, who to a certain extent had taken an antislavery position, and he was withholding an intimation of what his course was to be in the coming election, waiting to see what influences were to control the Democratic party in its national convention. Seward, who meant to remain a Whig whatever course his party might take, was doing his best to promote Scott's nomination, and at the same time to prevent any declaration by the conven-
1 Horace Greeley, in the New York "Tribune," supported the Whig nominations, but refused to accept the Compromise platform as of binding authority. The New York "Evening Post," conducted by W. C. Bryant and John Bigelow, supported the Demo- cratic candidates while rejecting the Democratic platform. Thaddeus Stevens, in Penn- sylvania, a Whig, while voting for the candidates of his party, persevered in repudiating the Compromise.
2 Mr. Butler is not to be confounded with another of the same name who had a political career in Massachusetts and in Congress.
314 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
tion or its candidates in favor of slavery or the Compromise ; and the thought of the New York statesman was, that, in the event of a secession of Southern Whigs, their places would be more than supplied by recruits from the antislavery voters of the free States. If his plan had succeeded, a considerable part, probably the greater part, of the Free Soilers would, while main- taining as well as they could their "third party" organization, have given their votes for Scott, who, by reason of his supposed S}7mpathy with Northern opinions and his confidential relations with Seward, was thought to be less likely than his Democratic rival to promote further schemes for extending and strengthen- ing slavery.
Nowhere at this time was the perplexity among the Free Soil- ers greater than in Massachusetts, where there were cross pur- poses growing out of their co-operation with the Democrats for the two previous years, and the prospect of carrying some of the Congressional districts by another year of such co-operation. Adams looked favorably on Scott's candidacy, and all the more because of its probable effect in breaking up the coalition, which he had always disapproved. Midway between the Democratic and Whig conventions he wrote to Sumner, June 11 : " My opin- ion is that we can make no effective stand on an independent candidate. If Governor Seward can succeed in preventing any resolution at the convention, my inclination is to declare in Scott's favor individually, but not collectively as Free Soilers." With him agreed S. C. Phillips and many others of the party. At a conference of the Free Soil leaders at the Adams House in Boston, June 5, there was developed such a want of common purpose that the party seemed near its end.
In the midst of this perplexity, Sumner, while conferring with Chase and Seward, and keeping up a correspondence with Free Soilers at home, adhered steadily to his independent position, and counselled Wilson and other political friends to keep them- selves entirely uncommitted until the field was made clear by the action of the two conventions.1 He was specially anxious to
1 An account of a conference at Dr. Bailey's office in Washington, D. C, before the election of 1852, is given in the "Reminiscences of the Rev. George Allen," pp. 99, 100, purporting to have been obtained by Mr. Allen from Mr. Giddings on the latter's visit to Worcester, Mass., at some time later than 1852. Conferences were probably held at Dr. Bailey's house ; but Mr. Allen's report of what Sumner and others said is not authentic. Chase's inclinings were not, as stated by Mr. Allen, to General Scott, but rather to a Democratic candidate of Free Soil sympathies.
JEt. 41-42.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 315
keep the Free Soilers from becoming embarrassed by premature declarations in favor of a candidate whom they might find them- selves unable to support without a sacrifice of their principles. From what he wrote it is not likely that he would have been content with Scott except with a guaranty that he would in his Administration treat freedom as national and slavery as sec- tional. He wrote to Adams, April 16 : " My own position is still one of absolute independence without the least commit- ment; and this I have earnestly commended to our friends in Massachusetts." Again he wrote, June 8, just after the Demo- cratic convention : —
" Chase is quite discontented with the convention, and will not support the candidate. This is good. . . . Seward says there will be no resolutious at the Whig convention. His influence is so potential that I am disposed to be- lieve that it will be so. What, then, can we do? Support of the Demo- crats is impossible. There remain several courses: (1) A third candidate; (2) Positive support of Scott ; (3) Inaction on the Presidential question. My own purpose is now, as always, to keep myself absolutely uncommitted, until I can act with knowledge and with the concert of friends. The sena- torial question [in Massachusetts] gives the coming canvass a peculiar im- portance. I shall welcome any arrangement by which we can secure a new senator for freedom."
And later in the same month he wrote again : " I feel the advantage of keeping our force in Massachusetts together ; and I am ready for any course by which our principles can be best sustained."
The action of the two conventions simplified the situation. Chase at once announced his opposition to the Democratic can- didates, and made his unheeded appeal to B. F. Butler, of New York. The Free Soilers of Massachusetts met July 6 in mass meeting at Worcester, where they announced adherence to their organization, and their opposition to candidates and parties bear- ing the badge of compromise. A letter from Sumner was read, in which he denounced the fresh apostasy of the old parties, and called upon the friends of freedom " to support her supporters, and to leave the result to Providence." He closed with the words : " Better be where freedom is, though in a small minority or alone, than with slavery, though surrounded by multitudes, whether Whigs or Democrats, contending merely for office and place." a The next day Wilson wrote to Sumner of this meeting
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 70-72.
316 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
with resolution and good cheer, hoping that with Chase as the candidate the Free Soilers might affect the result in a sufficient number of States to insure the election of Scott. But he was not wise for once in observing political currents. Seward, dis- appointed at the rejection of his counsels, saw clearly that the Whigs, by defying the antislavery sentiment, had made their success impossible. He had, as Adams thought, been looking forward to the leadership of his party in 1856 ; but its present rout, rather than defeat, clouded his future in that direction.
The Free Soil national convention at Pittsburg in August, of which Wilson was president, and Adams and Giddings were members, nominated John P. Hale for President, and George W. Julian for Vice-President. Adams on his way home wrote to Sumner, August 15, from Niagara Falls : " My Pittsburg visit has done me good, by convincing me that the movement is more stern and earnest than ever, whilst it is growing more practical every day."
The canvass, as compared with others before and since, was languid. As between the two leading parties, there were no principles or policies at stake ; and the only inspiration of the Free Soilers was an undoubting faith in the justice of their cause and in its ultimate triumph. In November they numbered at the polls in the whole country 155,000 votes, dropping to that figure from 293,000 which they cast in 1848 ; but their chief loss was the withdrawal of 100,000 Barnburners in New York. In Massachusetts their numbers were reduced from 38,000 to 28,000. The canvass had not gone far before Scott's defeat appeared certain ; and he lost all except four States, — Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Notwithstanding a certain absurdity of speech at times, he was, as soldier and pa- triot, immeasurably the superior of his successful opponent ; and the Free Soilers, though not voting for him, preferred his elec- tion to that of Pierce. It was the last struggle of the Whigs for existence as a national party, and when the next contest came they were a disbanded host. To show how little public men, who are accounted sagacious and forecasting, see into the future, an extract from a letter to Sumner is given.
Seward wrote, Nov. 9, 1852 : —
" I have your note asking what I say of recent events. I answer that just now there is nothing to say only that recent events are what were or might have heen foreseen, and that they do not disturb me in the least. No new
jEt. 41-42.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 317
party will arise, nor will any old one fall. The issue will not change. We shall go on much as heretofore I think, only that the last effort to convert the Whig party to slavery has failed."
Sumner lingered at Washington, as became his custom, and briefly pausing in New York, arrived home September 9. He attended the Free Soil State convention at Lowell, Septem- ber 15, in which S. C. Phillips occupied the chair, Adams re- ported the resolutions, and Horace Mann was nominated for governor. Among the speakers were Wilson, Mann, and Bur- lingame. On the platform, in a conspicuous seat, was Captain Drayton, the liberated master of the " Pearl." The enthusi- asm which uniformly greeted Sumner on such occasions seemed now greater than ever, and mingled with it were " three times threes," the raising of canes, and waving of handkerchiefs.1 These outbursts expressed the satisfaction with his course in the Senate. He spoke briefly, beginning and ending with, and interrupted often by, the heartiest applause. The point of his speech2 was a vindication of the reason and utility of third parties against the dogmatic assertion that there can be but two in a country, with several illustrations from English and French history. Seward wrote : " I have read your argument to prove the possibility of third parties in this country, which is unanswerable except by experience, — the test of hypothesis always." Soon after Sumner made an excursion to Canada, where he met again Lord Elgin, and thence went to his brother Albert's at Newport, prolonging his absence from the State till after the middle of October. His own convictions were in full accord with his party, both in national and State policy ; but though urged by its leaders and by popular calls, he refrained from any further participation in the campaign.
The State election at that time followed the national by a week. The union between the two parties opposed to the Whigs was now in State affairs less practicable than before, as a na- tional election was pending, and the Democrats of Massachu- setts, by their national platform and candidates, although their individual convictions might be the contrary, were committed to a pro-slavery policy. Nevertheless, the Free Soilers still hoped by the aid of Democratic votes to choose a Legislature which should give them another voice in the Senate on the expiration
1 Boston Commonwealth, September 16. 2 Works, vol. iii. p. 199-207.
318 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
of John Davis's term, and to elect three or four members of Congress. Besides the pro-slavery position of the national Dem- ocratic party, certain local difficulties — some blunders of the State administration, Governor Boutwell's appointment of Crush- ing as judge of the Supreme Court, and most of all the passage of the Maine Liquor law at the last session, a movement in which the Free Soilers took the lead — proved disastrous to the coalition. Even these disadvantages might not have been fatal if Robert Rantoul, Jr., had lived, whose name as candidate for senator to be chosen by the next Legislature would have given vigor and inspiration to the Free Soilers and liberal Democrats. As it was, the Legislature was lost by about ten majority, and with it the State offices and senator, although Horace Mann as candidate for governor received nine thousand more votes than were given to Hale for President. The Maine Law defeated the coalition candidates for the Legislature in the large towns ; and that measure, many times since a fatal stumbling-block, would have wrecked the coalition spite of even greater efforts to save it. Banks, a Democrat, and De Witt, a Free Soiler, were chosen to Congress ; while Weston and Hood, one Free Soiler and one Democrat, each came within two hundred votes of an election, Wilson within one hundred, and Adams fell behind his Whig competitor only four hundred.1 The Free Soil leaders felt much aggrieved by Sumner's abstinence from the campaign, and smarting under defeat when success was so near, some of them attributed to him the disaster. His course was the subject of comment in two or three journals,2 and was the occasion of hard words at the party headquarters. All this was freely com- municated to him bv Dr. Howe and others ; and indeed Sumner deserved the criticism. One who accepts office from a party, and is in harmony with its policy, owes to it in all exigent seasons the support of his voice and name. If at a critical moment his ability, eloquence, character, and official prestige are thought necessary to save it, they should be available for the purpose. The full reason for Sumner's reserve does not appear even now.
1 Sumner regretted deeply the defeat of Adams and Wilson, who lost their election at the second trial. He wrote to E. L. Pierce, Dec. 9, 1852: " I cannot too strongly urge the importance of placing Mr. Adams and Mr. Wilson in Congress. All our candidates would do good service; but these especially would make their mark here, though each in differ- ent waj's."
2 Lowell "American," edited by William S. Robinson, and the "Commonwealth." These criticisms were confined to the leaders, and did not extend to the masses.
JEt. 41-42 ] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 319
His letter to citizens of Nantucket,1 written after the election, as- cribes it to other engagements, pursuit of health, and additional constraint since Webster's death, — reasons which alone are not quite satisfactory. Another and better explanation is to be found in his nature, and in his view of a public man's position. He had recently spoken at length. Nothing fresh had come to his mind, and he did not care to repeat what he had recently said. Unlike many extemporaneous speakers at the bar, in the pulpit, and on the hustings, who can vary with ease their vocabulary and arrangement of materials, so that the same speech repeated at a hundred meetings appears each time a different one, — Sumner, when he had put his thought in the shape which suited him, was averse to putting it afterwards into any other less sat- isfactory. His position was one which, according to usage, might in his view exempt him from continuous speaking in a campaign. Webster, Everett, and Choate were accustomed to treat public questions at length in a convention, or other meet- ing specially called for the purpose of hearing them, without being subjected to the drudgery of passing night after night from one audience to another, repeating in substance what they had said twenty-four hours before ; and they followed in this respect the English practice. But the condition of things in Massachusetts was at this time novel, and the emergency press- ing. To say nothing of the obligations of good fellowship recog- nized in politics as elsewhere, the Free Soilers had at command no voice like Sumner's ; and its power had been increased in manifold degree by the position in which after a long and memorable struggle they had placed him. Later, when he be- came more used to men and a life of action, he was more heed ful of such obligations, and no occasion again occurred for the repetition of the kind of criticism which he encountered at this time.2
He wrote to the Earl of Carlisle, Nov. 9, 1852 : —
" I will say that nobody but Mr. Webster could have made the Fugitive Slave bill in any degree tolerable at the North, and he is now dead. In his tomb that accursed bill lies buried. The Lawrences have returned full of warm regard for you aud England. Mr. Ingersoll, his successor, is an amia-
1 Dated November 5. Boston Commonwealth, November 24.
2 Rev. R. S. Storrs, of Braintree, and Erastus Hopkins, of Northampton, justified his abstinence from the campaign in letters to him. Explanations were made for him in news- paper articles, — Dedham " Gazette," Dec. 4, 1852, by E. L. Pierce, and Boston " Common- wealth," Dec. 2. 1852.
320 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
ble gentleman, and a friend of mine. I trust his hardness against antislavery may be changed in England."
To Miss Wortley, London, November 10 : —
11 Two events of importance have happened here, — Mr. Webster's death, and General Pierce's election. The first has caused in this part of the coun- try a profound sensation, vying even with that caused in England by the death of the Duke of Wellington. It is evident that he did not die too soon. The business of his office had of late been neglected, and several matters seri- ously compromised by mismanagement, — among which was the affair of Lobos and the fisheries question. Mr. Everett, who has taken his place as Secretary of State, has been moved partly by the desire that a friendly hand should close the business of his office. I am glad that Everett is there ; x he shrinks from no labor, and is full of knowledge, to say nothing of genius. Mrs. Everett's health will not permit her to accompany him to Washington.
" I think that your father2 anticipated General Pierce's election. So did all here, except the more active partisans against him, and General Scott himself, who continued to the last sanguine of success. I remember at the dinner at the Calderons, where we met. that he said to me that he should be 'hard to beat.' Remember me kindly to your father and mother, and to your Uncle James." 8
The session of Congress, beginning Dec. 7, 1852, and end- ing March 3, 1853, was undisturbed by any debate concerning slavery. Chase, Hale, and Sumner, the three Free Soilers, were omitted from the list of committees which was agreed upon by the Democratic and Whig senators, with the explanation that they were " outside of any healthy political organization." Va- cancies were left for these senators, but on a ballot being taken to fill them, though each received some votes, there was no quo- rum and no election. The President, being authorized to fill them, assigned a place to Hale, but not to the other two.4 Sum- ner, though then as always faithful in attendance, was inactive during the session, — a fact true of other senators who were not charged with important committee work. He spoke briefly, February 23, in favor of giving the President a discretion to appoint civilians as superintendents of armories.5 In the spe- cial session he spoke briefly, April 6, against secrecy in the ses- sions and proceedings of the Senate, except for special reasons, and concluded his remarks 6 as follows : —
1 Sumner took pleasure in being the first to announce to Mr. Everett his unanimous confirmation by the Senate.
2 Lord Wharncliffe.
3 James Stuart Wortley. Ante, vol. i. p. 304.
4 At the special session, beginning March 4, 1853, Sumner was restored to the com- mittee on roads and canals.
5 Works, vol. iii. p. 208. 6 Works, vol. iii. p. 212.
Mt. 41-42.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 321
" The limitation proposed seems adequate to all exigencies, while the gen- eral rule will he publicity. Executive sessions with closed doors, shrouded from the public gaze and public intrusion, constitute an exceptional part of our system, too much in harmony with the proceedings of other governments less liberal in character. The genius of our institutions requires publicity. The ancient Roman, who bade his architect so to construct his house that his guests and all that he did could be seen by the world, is a fit model for the American people."
He steadily adhered to the views then expressed, and late in his service in the Senate made his protest against secrecy in the deliberations of that body.1
Sumner came slowly into the general debates of the Senate, and he lacked at this time the facility for them which he after- wards acquired. His friends at home were troubled at his absti- nence from them, and thought he should make himself felt in matters of business. Particularly they regretted that he did not improve the opportunity afforded by a debate on the Monroe doc- trine as applied to the acquisition of Cuba, then as always cov- eted by the pro-slavery and filibustering spirit. His friends in the Senate also were solicitous for greater activity on his part in matters outside of the slavery question. Seward wrote, May 19, 1853 : " I trust that you will seize some practical questions, and vindicate, as you can, the claim disallowed to us all of compe- tency to general affairs of government. Do this, and defy the malice of the disappointed." Chase, when governor of Ohio, wrote, March 18, 1856 : " I wish you would take my old advice, to take off your coat and go into the every-day fight. You would easily gain for yourself a reputation in this necessary part of senatorial duty as great as you have gained by your elaborate efforts as an orator and logician." Sumner's hesitation in this respect gradually passed away, but not fully until his party came into power in 1861.
He wrote John Bigelow, Dec. 13, 1852 : —
" To-morrow for Webster ! 2 The South would never give him their votes, — look for their voices. To-day has exposed the pettiness of the old parties in excluding Hale, Chase, and myself from committees."
1 March 17, 1870. Works, vol. xiii. pp. 339, 340. See vol. iv. p. 76.
2 The eulogies in the Senate on Mr. Webster were delivered by John Davis, Butler, Seward, and Stockton; Sumner did not speak. He wrote later to Mr. Bigelow: "The brave Southern voices failed on the Webster da}'. Badger skulked in the lobby; Clemens and Mason were both silent."
vol. in. 21
322 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
To Theodore Parker, December 17 : —
" I was pained more than I cau tell by Seward's course in swelling the Webster tide.1 I pleaded with him not to do it; so did his colleague. It is incomprehensible to me. From day to day, in conversation with me, he had hoped that we ' might be spared any such day of humiliation.'
" I await the corrected edition of your sermon,2 which has produced every- where a profound impression. The writers for the Washington ' Union ' have all read it; and Pryor,3 the young Virginian who has been placed in the es- tablishment as the representative of Mason, Hunter, and Meade, read it through twice, and then announced to his friends that there was but one course for them, — namely, ' to maintain that slavery is an unmixed good.' ;'
To Mrs. Horatio Greenough, December 21 : —
" Sincerely and deeply I mourn with you. The death of Horatio Green- ough i is a loss not only to wife and children, but to friends and the world, to art and literature. With sorrow unspeakable I learned the first blow of his fatal illness; now I am pained again by the tidings of to-day. Only a few days before I left home he read to me for an hour or more some portions of his book on the Beautiful ; and particularly his criticism of Burke. I was then struck by his mastery of the subject, and admired him anew, not only as an artist, but as an expositor of art. I doubt if any European artist has ever excelled him with his pen. He cannot be forgotten in our history, or in the grateful memory of friends. His name will be an honor to his family, and a precious inheritance to his children. My sympathy at this moment I know full well will be of little avail, but the heart speaks from its fulness; I could not refrain. God bless you and your children ! "
To Mrs. Lydia Maria Child,5 Jan. 14, 1853 : —
"Many years ago I remarked, more than once, that among all antislavery pens I found most sympathy with yours. The tone in which you wrote was most in harmony with my own mind. You will believe, then, that it was with peculiar satisfaction that I learned your sympathy with what I had recently done in this place. The tone which you helped me adopt so early is most in unison with my present position. On the floor of the Senate I sit between Mr. Butler of South Carolina, the early suggester of the Fugitive Slave bill, and Mr. Mason of Virginia, its final author, with both of whom I have con- stant and cordial intercourse. This experience would teach me, if I needed the lesson, to shun harsh aud personal criticism of those from whom I differ. But ours is a great battle, destined to be prolonged many years. It has a place for every nature ; and I believe every man who is earnest against slavery.
1 By his eulogy in the Senate.
2 On Mr. Webster.
3 Roger A. Pryor.
4 He died, Dec. 18, 1852, at the age of forty-seven. Mrs. Greenough died in 1892.
5 1802-1880. Mrs. Child, by her intellectual and moral power, holds the first place among American women who took part in the contest with slavery. The only one to be named as her rival for that eminence is Maria Weston Chapman.
^t. 41-42.] THE NATIONAL ELECTION OF 1852. 323
whatever name of party, sect, or society he may assume, does good. I wel- come him as a brother."
To William Jay, January 31 : —
" I have hoped to see in the treaty on the fisheries now negotiating with England a clause providing arbitration instead of war. Mr. Everett is willing ; so is the British minister ; l but it is feared that the necessary instructions can- not be obtained in season from England. But there is another treaty of less importance, constituting a commission on certain outstanding claims, to which it may be attached, if it should be thought advisable. Mr. Everett doubts if the latter treaty is of sufficient importance to bear so important a provision. My reply has been, ' The provision at all costs and anywhere.' If once estab- lished, it will become a precedent of incalculable value, and will mark a new era in the law of nations. I think Mr. Everett would be glad to illustrate his brief term of service by such an act. My special object now is to invite you to prepare such a clause as you think best for adoption. Perhaps it would be well to present it in several different forms. Mr. Everett expressed a desire to have the advantage of your counsels."
To Theodore Parker, March 28 : —
"I mourn the feud between brothers in antislavery.2 If Phillips, whom I love as an early comrade and faithful man, or Pillsbury,3 rail at me for my small work in antislavery, I will not reply. To me the cause is so dear that I am unwilling to set myself against any of its champions. I would not add to their burdens by any word of mine. In proportion as the position of our pioneer frieuds seems more untenable and less practical, they cliug to it with absolute desperation. If the skill aud eloquence of Phillips as evinced in his late speech4 had been directed, not against allies but against slavery and its enormities, against its influeuce on our government, against Hunkers, he would have struck a good blow like yourself on that occasion."
When the term of Mr. Davis, Sumner's colleague, was about to expire, there was a general disposition to leave him in re- tirement. His party was again in power, and Whig opinion turned to three leaders among whom the selection of his suc- cessor should be named, — Winthrop, George Ashmun, and Edward Everett (then Secretary of State). Winthrop, now less active as a Whig leader than before, withdrew his name. Ash- mun had the support of the western part of the State : but his vote in the caucus fell considerably below that of Everett, who was nominated and elected early in the session of 1853. To
1 Mr. Crampton.
2 Controversy between Wendell Phillips and Horace Mann on the voting question.
3 Parker Pillsbury.
4 Jan. 27, 1853, on " The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement."
324 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
Sumner, and indeed to the Free Soilers generally, this result was very agreeable. It was easy for him to keep up friendly relations with Mr. Everett, which it would have been difficult for him to have with either of the other two.
There was at this time apathy in the public mind as to the slavery question, a prevailing sense that since the election of Pierce further protests against the Compromise were hopeless. Wilson wrote to Sumner, Dec. 21, 1852 : " These are dark days for us and for our cause. Many will yield to the pressure, I fear, that is now upon us, . . . but we must hope on, and labor for a better day." Adams wrote, December 22, more hopefully, expecting recruits from the disorganized Whig party, and recom- mending the use of every chance to expose the arrogant and domineering character of the political oligarchy then in power. Neither dreamed that their opportunity was to come in the fur- ther advance which the slave-power was to attempt a twelve- month hence. F. W. Bird, with an insight beyond that of others, wrote as the year was closing that while Free Soilers had been devoting all their strength to the Fugitive Slave law, which he thought practically dead, the enemy had been pushing its plans of propagandism, and that the extension of slavery was the im- pending issue. He only erred in pointing to Cuba instead of Kansas.
A public dinner was given in Boston, May 5, 1853, to John P. Hale, the candidate of the Free Soilers for President at the last election ; and fifteen hundred plates were laid in the hall of the' Fitchburg Railroad station. Cassius M. Clay came from Kentucky, and John Jay from New York ; and there was an abundant flow of eloquence from the antislavery orators of the State, — Palfrey the president, Sumner, Adams, Mann, Wilson, Burlingame, Dana, Keyes, Leavitt, Pierpont, and Garrison.1 Each speaker passed from a brief tribute to the guest to thoughts and inspirations suggested by his presence and career. If the party was inferior in numbers to its opponents it surpassed them in its capacity to provide such an intellectual entertainment, and its wealth in this regard was a potent influence in keeping up the morale and vigor of its forces. Sumner was received with enthusiasm and interrupted with repeated cheers. Called up by a toast to the Union, he declared it to be " a necessity, not
1 On the platform, besides the speakers, were Dr. S. G. Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson.. Theodore Parker, Dr. Charles Beck, T. W. Higginson, Charles Allen, and Amos Tuck.
JEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 325
merely constitutional, but social, commercial, geographical, his- torical ; to be preserved, not by compromise with slavery, but by rigid adherence to the principles of liberty and justice ; " and he insisted on the duty of every man under all discouragements to testify and act against slavery.1 Seward wrote, May 19 : —
" I read your speech at the Hale dinner with real admiration, as I did Hale's with delight, and the whole with sincere satisfaction. We are on the risirjg tide again, and the day of apology for principles of political jus- tice draws to a close."
Sumner declined in May an invitation to deliver an address before the Story Association, composed of past and present members of the Law School at Cambridge, an appointment which Mr. Choate filled two years before. Wendell Phillips wrote to Sumner, March 21, 1853, when the illustrated edition of " White Slavery in the Barbary States " 2 came out : —
" It is a good thing, and now most fitly adorned ; but I value it the more just now, as its arrival brings to my mind the saw, l Old times, old books, old friends.1 I am so proud that those I chose when young yet redeem their claim to be so much more thoroughly honest, hearty, and honorable than some whom the world places at their side. The older I grow (in the bustle of Washington you perhaps never feel old), the more I value old friends."
A convention was held in 1853 to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, which was made in 1780, and first revised in 1820. The Free Soilers and Democrats, who had failed in November, 1852, to carry the Legislature, succeeded at the same election by their combined vote of 66,416 against the Whig vote of 59,112 in calling this third convention. Their special purpose was to re-adjust the basis of representation in the House of Representatives, particularly with the view of taking from Boston its disproportionate power. The city chose forty-four members by general ticket, being, as Sumner called them, " a well-knit Macedonian phalanx," and having the advan- tage that the State House was easily accessible to their houses and places of business. The Whigs of the city outnumbered largely their opponents, whether divided or combined, and were also sure of electing a solid delegation ; whereas under the ma- jority rule then established, the Democrats and Free Soilers, not always well united, or if united nearly balanced by the Whigs,
1 This speech is not found in Sumner's Works, but the speeches at the dinner, including his, are printed in the Boston "Commonwealth," May 6, 7, 9.
2 Ante, p. 24.
326 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
were unable in the country towns, where their strength lay, to command a majority, and many of the towns were thus left unrepresented. Towns also falling below a certain population were allowed a representative only a certain number of years in a decade, and were disfranchised during the remaining years, with the effect of still further increasing the relative power of the Whig localities. The reform of the representation was the main motive for the convention ; but in some other respects the State was believed to have outgrown the form of government which had been established nearly three quarters of a century before.
The delegates to the convention, four hundred and twenty- two in all, were chosen March 7, 1853. Each town, however small in population, was allowed a delegate, while the cities and large towns were allowed the number to which they would be entitled in the election of representatives. The Free Soilers and Democrats were not in this election subject to the same political embarrassments as in more strictly political elections, and they outnumbered the Whigs in the convention by more than one hundred. While, however, this composite majority might act as a unit on the basis of representation, there was not likely to be the same cohesion on the lines of parties with regard to most of the other questions which were likely to be the subject of contention.
The Free Soilers entered into the campaign for the election of delegates with energy and enthusiasm. Wilson, as usual, was their leader in organization. He did his best, taking ad- vantage of the exceptional right given to towns to elect non- resident delegates, to bring into the convention eminent Free Soilers, even some who had not looked in a kindly way upon him. He wrote to active men in towns sure to elect anti-Whig delegates, suggesting for candidates the names of distinguished Free Soilers or Democrats who could not be chosen in their own towns or cities. Most of the constituencies preferred to elect one of their own number, and only nine towns accepted non-resident candidates ; among whom were R. H. Dana, Jr., G. S. Boutwell, Anson Burlingame, E. L. Keyes, B. F. Hallett, and Whiting Griswold. The voters of Marshfield, the home of Mr. Webster, were radically antislavery, and the names of Sumner and Horace Mann were suggested to them. They pre- ferred the former, as more sure to carry the Democratic vote ;
JEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 327
and he was chosen by a large majority, receiving one hundred and thirty-nine votes to fifty-five cast for Fletcher Webster, son of the deceased statesman. It was noted at the time that his election was a disapproval of Webster's support of the Com- promise by his townsmen, and that it occurred on the third anniversary of the latter's celebrated speech. Charles Allen wrote : " Marshfield has living principles which she would not bury in the tomb of her hero. All honor to her ! " Adams refused to be a candidate for any town but his own, and was defeated in Quincy by the refusal of the Irish voters to sup- port him. No town was disposed to adopt Palfrey, probably because of his aversion to Democrats and his want of sympathy in previous years with the coalition. The exclusion of Adams and Palfrey from the convention was thought to have affected their subsequent treatment of its work. Sumner wrote to Wil- son, March 24 : —
"I am obliged by your kind letter. Most sincerely do I wish that you or some other good man were representative from Marshfield. You know my little desire for public distinction, I might almost say for public favors, and I assiu-e you I should have had sincere pleasure in seeing this honor bestowed upon another; but I hope never to fail where I can hope to do any good service to liberal principles. My desire was to visit the West, which I have never seen, during the coming spring, and afterwards, in the autumn, with fresh voice, to vindicate the new constitution before the people. The new duties imposed upon me will cause a change in these plans. T rejoice in the success of our friends. With prudence and firmness liberal principles can be permanently secured in Massachusetts. Your energy and counsels are val- uable, and I am glad that they will be felt by the convention."
The convention was a representative body well worthy of the State. The Boston delegation included, among lawyers, Rufus Choate, Sidney Bartlett, F. B. Crowninshield, George S. Hillard, Thomas Hopkinson, Samuel D. Parker, George Morey, and Judge Peleg Sprague ; among physicians, Jacob Bigelow and George Hay ward ; among clergymen, Samuel K. Lothrop and George W. Blagden ; among editors, Nathan Hale, William Schouler, and J. S. Sleeper ; and among merchants, William Appleton, Samuel A. Eliot, John C. Gray, J. Thomas Stevenson, and George B. Upton. Cambridge sent two jurists, Simon Greenleaf and Joel Parker, a former and a present professor in the Law School. Salem sent Otis P. Lord, later a judge ; and Pittsfield, George N. Briggs. Against this array of Whigs was an equally formi- dable list of Democrats and Free Soilers. Among the former
328 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
were Banks, Boutwell, Hallett, B. F. Butler (since known as General Butler), W. Griswold, and J. G. Abbott ; and among the latter were Wilson, Dana, Sumner, Burlingame, Charles Allen, Marcus Morton (two of the name, father and son), Amasa Walker, E. L. Keyes, Charles P. Huntington, F. W. Bird, and John M. Earle. Five of the members had been or were afterwards governors, — Briggs, Boutwell, Gardner, Banks, and Talbot. Three afterwards became United States senators, — Rockwell, Boutwell, and Dawes. One (the younger Morton) became chief-justice of the State. The convention began its session May 4, and closed August 1. Robert Rantoul, father of the distinguished statesman of that name, and member of the next earlier convention of 1820, called it to order. Banks, already eminent as a presiding officer of the State House of Representatives, and since Speaker in Congress, was chosen the president. Nothing was wanting to the dignity of the as- sembly ; its only drawback was the circumstance that its mem- bers had been chosen on strict party lines, and the majority had a distinct political end in view.
The two political leaders were Wilson on the Free Soil side, and Griswold on the Democratic, — both intent on the reduction of the power of the centres of population, but neither of them en- dowed with a natural or acquired aptitude for the general business of such a convention. With them acted in full accord Bout- well, who combined with his position as a former governor a faithful study of all the questions at issue, assiduous devotion to the proceedings, and remarkable facility and power in debate. Butler, their coadjutor, brought to the partisan disputes the pug- nacity which was hereafter to be displayed in national scenes.1 Wilson had a larger following than any one, — a leadership which was due to his acquaintance with all the Free Soil and Democratic members, his relation to the coalition from the be- ginning, and his restless activity. He was the one to rally and inspire with a common purpose the allied forces ; and a hun- dred delegates looked to him for the signal to move in any given direction. It is not so easy to name the Whig leaders. Their work was one of criticism and obstruction. Schouler, the edi- tor, was perhaps the most watchful. Generally the Boston dele- gates were vigilant whenever any conservative bulwark of the
1 One day when Butler was on the floor, Sumner said in conversation : " He is a gallant fellow. What a splendid man he would be if he had more of the moral in him! "
^Et. 41^2.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 329
Constitution seemed in danger. Choate's defence of the judi- ciary surpassed in eloquence and political philosophy all other productions of the assembly ; and his characteristic traits as an orator appear hardly less in his speech on the basis of represen- tation. No member contributed more real power and insight, as well as independence of thought, to the debates than Dana,1 whose intellect and character, however, derived no added force from personal associations and political influence. Sumner in a speech said of the treatment of one question by the convention, "that the State, our common mother, may feel proud of the ability, the eloquence, and the good temper with which the de- bate has thus far been conducted. Gentlemen have addressed the convention in a manner which would grace any assembly that it has been my fortune to know at home or abroad." 2 But it would have been ungracious in him to have added in their presence what was equally true, — that the convention was wea- ried almost every day by lengthy and ill-digested homilies from certain members, who at last had obtained a long-coveted oppor- tunity to make public their theories of government and the social state, and to prescribe their remedies for all the miseries and misfortunes of the human family.
Sumner was chosen a delegate without being consulted, and regretted, as has been seen, his election. His service as member postponed his plan for a journey to the West, which he had not before visited ; and it confined him during the heats of the sum- mer, with only a few days' interval of refreshment, after his return, April 21, from Washington. He, however, did his duty faithfully by attendance on the sessions, and as chairman of the committee on the preamble and declaration of rights, which held twenty meetings while engaged in preparing its work.3 He took no part in the debates till June 21 and 22, when he spoke upon resolutions concerning the militia,4 particularly upon the respec- tive powers of the United States and of the States in relation to it, — the former exclusively controlling the national militia, and the latter having the power to organize and direct the volunteer
1 Sumner spoke of Dana afterwards "as the man of by far the greatest legislative promise, criticising only his tendency to over-debate, due to excessive readiness and fa- cility." Adams's " Biography " of R. H. Dana, vol, i. p. 233.
2 Speech on the representative system, July 7. Works, vol. lii. p. 230.
3 He submitted the committee's report, July 8. He occupied, May 31, the chair in com- mittee of the whole.
4 Works, vol. iii. pp. 216-227.
330 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
or State militia.1 He spoke briefly, July 15, against a provision limiting the power of the Legislature to lend the State credit for works of internal improvement, maintaining generally that the power had hitherto worked no harm, and specially that the pro- posed restriction might defeat the enterprise of the Hoosac Tun- nel, the promoters of which had already begun to lay siege to the public treasury.2 His wisdom in this action may well be questioned, as the absence of this provision in the Constitution opened the way to a heavy expenditure and a burdensome debt.3 His speech of July 25 explained the action of his committee, and the principles upon which it had made some changes and forborne to make others, — tracing the history of bills of rights in this and other countries, and indicating their proper scope and limitations. It is a compact and instructive statement on the subject.4
His principal speech was made July 7 on the representative system and its proper basis.5 The Democratic and Free Soil leaders, for the purpose of reducing the undue power of the cities, without at the same time impairing the corporate unity of the towns, had devised a compromise which retained and modi- fied the existing system of town representation. It discarded the general-ticket system, and required a division of the cities into districts for the choice of representatives, — changes gener- ally admitted to be wise ; but it allowed the cities less than their numerical proportion of representatives, and perpetuated the non-representation of small towns during a part of a decade, except where they arranged among themselves for a union as a
1 Ante, p. 33.
2 Debates in Massachusetts Convention, *'ol. iii. pp. 20, 21. On June 6 he offered a resolution for codifying the law and simplifying practice in courts. He was one of a mino- rity of six of his committee of thirteen which submitted, July 18, a report making the jury the judge of the law and the facts in criminal cases. The arbitrary rulings of the judges of the United States courts in prosecutions for resisting the Fugitive Slave Act led him to this position.
3 He presented, June 20, 1854, in the Senate a memorial for a grant of lands to the en- terprise, commending it as one which " in its very conception reflects credit upon our age, and which, if accomplished, will constitute an epoch in the achievements of science."
4 Works, vol. iii. pp. 258-268. The latter part of the speech, as printed in the Works, was not delivered, as he was cut off by a fifteen-minute rule which was made late in the session. The correspondent (Robert Carter) of the New York "Evening Post," July 14, describes the points of the speech and its effect on the delegates. (Debates, vol. iii. pp. 373- 375.) Later, Sumner explained briefly certain phrases in the Bill of Rights ; namely, the one relating to the limitation of legislative powers (Debates, vol. iii. p. 381), — the words "subject," "man," and "person" (pp. 417, 418, 422); and the clause relative to freedom of religious opinions (p. 417)
5 Works, vol. iii. pp. 22U-257.
JEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 331
district.1 The numerical inequality which under the old system favored the cities was under the new one to favor the smaller towns. Upon this subject Sumner spoke at greater length and with more earnestness than upon any other, and he was not in harmony with most of the leaders of his party. His speech was marked by clear and methodical thought and sobriety of style. His loyalty to principles, which was characteristic of him through life, led him to reject the temporary or accidental advantages which a departure from those principles offered. He desired an equal distribution of power among the legal voters to be deter- mined by " the rule of three ; " and as that was not practicable under a system which adhered to the corporate representation of the towns however modified, he advocated a district system, which alone could secure such a distribution. While not claiming the elective franchise to be a natural right " common to all, without distinction of age, sex, or residence," he insisted upon maintain- ing an equality of power among citizens or aggregates of citi- zens, and traced the tendencies of the representative system from its crude and arbitrary adjustments in its beginning to the principle of equality. While recognizing " the commercial feudalism whose seat is in the cities," he objected to any device for depriving them of their proportional power, or any attempt to degrade them in the scale of representation.2 Finding, how- ever, that the people, or at least the delegates, were not ripe for his views, he assented to the proposed plan as an improvement of the existing system, particularly in the division of cities into districts. On this point he said : —
"A change so important in character cannot be advantageously made un- less supported by the permanent feelings and convictions of the people. Insti- tutions are formed from within, not from without. They spring from custom and popular faith silently operating with internal power, not from the imposed will of a lawgiver ; and our present duty here, at least on this question, may be in some measure satisfied if we aid this growth."
Sumner was appointed a member of a special committee to revise the propositions to be submitted to the people, and was the author of a provision which was reported and passed, requir-
1 This system was no more wanting in symmetry than the English system as reformed in 1884-1885, or the apportionment still adhered to in Ehode Island and Connecticut.
2 Sumner, as well as the two Mortons, voted, July 8, against their party and with the Whigs for the district system; but it was rejected by the convention, under the leadership of Wilson, Griswold, and Boutwell, by more than one hundred majority. The district system was adopted a few years later without party contention.
332 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
ing the Legislature to provide for submitting to a popular vote the question whether a convention should be called to revise the Constitution whenever requested by the towns or cities contain- ing not less than one third of the legal voters.
Many interesting discussions took place in the convention, — ■ involving the substitution of the rule of plurality for that of majority in elections ; the term of the judiciary ; the qualifica- tions of voters ; the relation of Harvard College to the State, — indeed almost every provision of the existing Constitution or of the proposed plan ; during all of which Sumner was silent.1 Irksome as was the confinement, his service in the convention was. an advantage to him by bringing him into more familiar relations with the active men of the State ; and to the extent that he had mingled in the debates and business, he impressed the members with his ability, candor, and good sense. Many hitherto antipathetic to him, and regarding him solely as an antislavery agitator or scholar living apart from men, were sur- prised to find him accessible and genial, and ready for conversa- tion with any who came in his way.
The convention adopted the division of the State into single districts for the election of senators and councillors ; legislative discretion in determining the rule of elections, majority or plu- rality ; the election by the people of a considerable number of officers hitherto appointed by the governor or the Legislature ; the limitation of the judicial term, after the present incumbents, to ten years ; the election of judges of probate by the people ; various minor changes which were not the subject of contention ; also, certain propositions submitted independently as to habeas corpus, the right of the jury in criminal cases, the appropria- tion of public money for sectarian schools, and other matters. Several of the changes were shortly after made by amendments proposed by the Legislature, and approved by a popular vote.
On the final day of the convention, August 1, Sumner at- tended at Plymouth the celebration of the embarkation of the Pilgrim fathers at Southampton. His tribute to the English Puritans, known as Separatists or Independents in English
1 Dana gave his estimate of Sumner's part in the convention in his diary: "Sumner has held his own as an orator. He has made two beautiful, classical, high-toned orations, commanding the admiration of all. As a debater, a worker, an influential member, he has not succeeded. He takes but little active part, and seems to have a fear of taking the floor except on leading subjects, and after great preparation. But he is a noble, fine- hearted fellow." Adams's " Biography " of R. H. Dana, vol. i. p. 247.
uEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 333
history, was a thinly-veiled tribute to the pioneers of the anti- slavery cause.1 At this period of heated controversy it was difficult for either side to avoid allusions, open or covert, on festive or literary occasions to the question of slavery ; and others besides Sumner, even on this occasion, assumed the right to make them.2 Mr. Everett, in thanking him for the printed copy of his "Finger Point from Plymouth Rock," regretted this habit, which he feared would break up patriotic celebrations by turning them into a party channel. Sumner said : —
'' Standing on Plymouth Rock, at their great anniversary, we cannot fail to he elevated by their example. We see clearly what it has done for the world, and what it has done for their fame. No pusillanimous soul here to- day will declare their self-sacrifice, their deviation from received opinions, their unquenchable thirst for liberty, an error or illusion. From gushing multitudinous hearts we now thank these lowly men that they dared to be true and brave. Conformity or compromise might, perhaps, have purchased for them a profitable peace, but not peace of mind; it might have secured place and power, but not repose ; it might have opened present shelter, but not a home in history and in men's hearts till time shall he no more. All must confess the true graudeur of their example while, in vindication of a cherished principle, they stood alone against the madness of men, agaiust the law of the laud, against their king. Better the despised Pilgrim, a fugitive for freedom, than the halting politician, forgetful of principle, ' with a Senate at his heels.' "
Whittier thought the speech at Plymouth " a gem," and wrote : —
" I can think of nothing more admirably conceived and expressed than the sentence, 'Better the despised Pilgrim, a fugitive for freedom, than the halting politician, forgetful of principle, with a Senate at his heels.' "
Receiving an invitation to attend the Fourth of July cele- bration by the city government of Boston for this year, Sumner sent to the mayor a toast in favor of a railroad from the At- lantic to the Pacific Ocean,3 — an enterprise whose fulfilment seemed then far in the distance. Congress had taken the first step in the preceding March by providing for a survey, but the line was not open across the continent till sixteen years later.
Sumner wrote to W. W. Story at Rome, August 2 : —
" I take up this old sheet on which nearly a year ago I commenced a letter to you : if I have not written it has not been from indifference. Only yester-
i Works, vol. iii. pp. 269-275.
2 For instance, Governor Clifford in a reference to the Constitutional convention, and R. Yeadon of South Carolina in praise of Webster's course on the Compromise.
3 Works, vol. iii. p. 228.
334 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
day the convention for revising our Constitution closed its labors. I was a member for the borough of Marshfield, and have been much occupied in vari- ous ways during the session. This is our first day of rest, and I fly to you and Rome.
11 Of all the members of the convention, during our three months' work, Richard Dana has gained most in character and fame. He has shown tal- ents which I had long been familiar with, but which have taken many by surprise. He speaks with great ease and clearness, and always with good sense and logic. As a debater he is remarkable ; I have enjoyed his success greatly. On slavery, you know, he is decided and constant with us ; but on other things he is strongly and sincerely conservative.
" You may be curious, dear William, to know how I regard my senatorial life. Very much as I anticipated. My earnest counsels to all would be to avoid public life, unless impelled by some overmastering conviction or senti- ment which could best find utterance in this way. Surely, but for this I would not continue iu it another day. To what the world calls its honors I am indifferent ; its cares and responsibilities are weighty and absorbing. I no longer feel at ease with a book ; if I take one to read, my attention is dis- turbed by some important question which will tramp through my mind. How often I think with envy of you at Rome, enjoying letters and art ! No such days for me ! At Washington I have found much social kindness be- yond anything I have known of late in Boston. With most of the Southern men my relations have been pleasant, while with Soule I have been on terms of intimate friendship. Here iu Boston Hunkerism is very bitter ; Webster's friends are implacable. The ' Courier,' which is their paper, has attacked Dana and myself; and others like to show their spite also. The Webster dementia has not yet passed away.
" I have seen something of our new President,1 and have found him an agreeable gentleman, affable in manners, and prompt in apprehension. The orders to our diplomats to abandon their foreign liveries were issued at my earnest instigation ; I trust you approve them. On this subject, as on others, both the President and Mr. Marcy listened to me with attention. I mention these things for your eye, as I know you will take an interest in any- thing which illustrates my position. I do not think General Pierce a great man, but I do not undertake to prophesy with regard to his Administration. His Secretary of State, Mr. Marcy, is a person of wisdom and experience, igno- rant of foreigu affairs j but he knows his ignorance, aud in this self-knowledge is his strength. I doubt not he will master most of the questions. Caleb Cushing is a dangerous character, who believes in war. He thinks that the country needs the occupation of a war, and I fear he will try to secure it for us. Guthrie, the Secretary of the Treasury, is a tall, large-limbed, stroug-minded Kentuckian. . . . The papers occasionally announce Crawford's progress in his great work, and I always read everything of the kind with interest. Give him my regards ; also his wife. Where are you now? I imagine you on the Alban heights, in some spacious apartments, enjoying fresh breezes,
1 Pierce. Seward, March 30, 185-3, after calling with Sumner on the President, wrote : "I will barely say now that Sumner is by no means sure that there is not a deep depth under the graceful exterior." Seward's " Life," vol. i. p. 202.
JEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 335
and the beautiful lake, with books and pencil, with pleasant friends, perhaps under the same roof, and with that simple delectable Orvieto for a sherbet. Tell me of Rome, of yourself, wife, and children; of art, and particularly the statue of your father. Give my love to your wife, and kisses to the children."
To Theodore Parker,1 August 6 : —
" With the exception of a meagre address, which is preserved in the ' Jurist ' of twenty years ago, Shaw's productions are his judgments, in the Reports of Pickering, Metcalf, and Cushing, — a goodly number, — and all having a uniform stamp. He is always verbose, but instructive, and deals with his cases strongly. I do not agree with Mann in his admiration of his powers ; nor do I agree with the late Benjamin Rand when he insisted upon calling him ' muddy-mettled.' You will see his powers in the case of the slave ' Med.' His opinions, like Story's, are too long ; but they are less interesting than Story's, have less life, and lack his learning. Parsons's decisions are in the early volumes of the Massachusetts Reports. In his day judges were less full in their opinions than now; but his are instructive still. I think he was the earliest of the great lawyers of dur country ; but he was more than a law- yer. Read the sketch of him at the end of one of the Massachusetts Reports, and you will see what was claimed for his scholarship. He affected Greek, and wrote a Greek grammar. That most remarkable document, the ' Essex Revolt,' inferior to nothing in the political history of Massachusetts, and far beyond anything from Shaw, shows him to have had powers of a high order. Some of the ideas were borrowed from John Adams's letter to R. H. Lee, of Virginia, and others are rejected now ; but it contains political truths, couched in language of great power and clearness. I once had in my possession all the law manuscripts of Parsons, and from time to time made selections from them in the ' Jurist ; ' they were not of much importance. I write now without any opportunity of consulting books. I would not undervalue Shaw; but I should give the palm to Parsons."
Soon after the convention adjourned, Wilson addressed his constituents at Natick in a speech which explained in detail the advantages of the new Constitution,2 and Boutwell made a similar address at Berlin ; but the discussion before the people did not become active for some weeks. The Free Soil State convention was held at Fitchburg, September 15. Wilson, now the acknowledged leader of his party in the State, received on a ballot nearly all the votes as candidate for governor. Horace Mann, on his way to Ohio, where he was to be the Presi- dent of Antioch College, paused for an hour in the town, and coming to the hall bade his old coadjutors a God-speed. Sum- ner was not present ; but a letter from him was read, in which
1 An answer to Mr. Parker's letter of August 4, inquiring as to the comparative merits of the two chief-justices of Massachusetts.
2 August 29 ; in Boston Commonwealth, August 31.
336 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
he approved the new Constitution as changing for the better the old one, and providing for other reforms in the future. " Its adoption," he wrote, " by the people will mark an era of progress in Massachusetts. The liberal cause in every form will derive from it new power." The letter did not omit to put in the fore- ground the primal object of the party, — to make freedom na- tional and slavery sectional, and the continuing duty of devotion to this consummation without equivocation or compromise, say- ing at the conclusion of this part of it, " We may die soon ; but this principle will live."
The friends of the new Constitution made a vigorous canvass by means of addresses and pamphlets. Wilson, Boutwell, Bur- lingame, Dana, Hallett, and Griswold, during the six weeks pre- ceding the election, set forth its merits before the people, some of them addressing audiences almost every evening ; and until quite near the election they were sanguine that it would be approved by the people. They expected also to carry the Le- gislature, and this result was most likely to secure Wilson's election as governor.
Sumner made his first speech at Greenfield, October 25, and from that time till the election spoke every evening, making seventeen speeches.1 Hitherto his topics had appealed directly to moral and religious emotions ; but now his theme was one which admitted only of sober treatment, and addressed chiefly the critical faculty and common experience. He was to be tried in a new field, where persons addicted to philanthropic discussions have often failed ; but he bore the test remarkably well. Indeed, he never went through a political campaign in his own State so successfully, — leaving an impression on all of his intellectual power, and of his comprehensive knowledge of politics and government. The halls where he spoke were thronged, not only by his Free Soil constituents, but as well by Democrats, many of whom took little interest in his anti- slavery opinions; but unlike the other Free Soil speakers, who thought it not wise in this exigency to go beyond the point in which Democrats and Free Soilers were agreed, he would not forego the opportunity to make new converts to his doctrine
l Fitchburg, October 26 ; Northampton, 27; Westfield, 28; Springfield, 29; Waltham, 31; Lynn, November 1; Taunton, 2; Nantucket, 3; New Bedford, 4; Fall River, 5 ; Lawrence, 7; South Danvers, 8; Lowell, 9; Worcester, 10; Marshfield, 11; Boston, 12. At Westfield he called at the State Normal School, which he had aided a few years before. Ante, vol. ii. p. 327.
JEt. 41-42.] MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 337
that " freedom is national, and slavery sectional," which at the outset he affirmed with an appeal to patriotism and the moral sense. His speech lasted two hours and a half, sometimes ex- ceeding that limit, and was everywhere listened to by most attentive audiences crowding the halls to their utmost capacity, and numbering in cities like New Bedford and Worcester two thousand persons, and in Boston considerably more.1 He treated in detail the changes proposed not only in a technical but a large way, drawing liberally on his resources as a student of history and political philosophy. Though advocating the dis- trict system of representation as the best, he defended the plan submitted by the convention as far better than the existing one ; and this part of his speech was thought to be the ablest argu- ment from any quarter, — logical, convincing, and unassailable.2 His refined hearers were impressed with his elevation of thought and breadth of view, while all were charmed with his chaste diction, his evident candor and sincerity, and the ease with which he handled the points of controversy. While his subject excluded the profound earnestness which imbued antislavery discourses, it invited a lively and varied treatment, and he adapted himself well to the changed conditions. His miscel- laneous hearers were drawn to him sympathetically as they saw him in a new light, — not now the stern prophet of a cause, but more like one of themselves, human and busied with common interests.
Wilson, not usually enthusiastic in such matters, was greatly impressed with the speech ; and two months later, when the issue involved was a past one, he expressed an earnest desire to have it written out and published as the best vindication of the work of the convention. An eminent lawyer of southern Massachusetts, T. G. Coffin, who had been familiar with the efforts of public speakers in Massachusetts for thirty years, writing nearly four months after he had heard Sumner at New Bedford, assigned to the address the highest place among all to which he had ever
l Robert Carter's letter, published in the New York "Evening Post," November 15, said : " Mr. Sumner has perhaps reached more men than any other speaker, having spoken seventeen or eighteen times to audiences averaging at least twelve hundred. He has ad- vantages as an orator over any other public speaker in the State, and his speech on the Constitution is the ablest I have ever heard him deliver." The Springfield " Republican'," October 31, noticed the address from a Whig standpoint. It said that the Free Sorters had many orators, but "only one Sumner."
'2 Boston Commonwealth, October 31 ; New Bedford Standard, November 5.
vol. in. 22
338 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53-
listened, both on account of its intellectual power and its dic- tion, and also for its tone of honorable sentiment, giving dig- nity and elevation to a subject which in the hands of others had seemed ephemeral and partisan.
When the convention closed its session its work appeared al- together likely to secure popular approval. The Democrats and Free Soilers, who had co-operated in making the new Constitu- tion, had at command a majority of ten thousand and more votes. Some of the changes were so reasonable that a portion of the Whigs were indisposed to a contest. The party, however, in its convention in the autumn declared against it in formal resolutions, but without any expectation of defeating it. Abbott Lawrence and one or two other speakers commented unfavor- ably upon it in Whig meetings, but they were quite unequal to the array of public speakers who in carefully prepared arguments were setting forth its merits in almost every village of the State. Late in October, however, the Whigs found new allies, and at once the face of affairs was changed. Two eminent Free Soil- ers, Palfrey and Adams,1 who had submitted to rather than opposed the coalition, and who had lost seats in the convention, came out publicly against the scheme, — the former in a pam- phlet, October 28, signed " A Free Soiler from the Start," 2 and the latter in an address, November 5, at Quincy. They drew away a few of their old friends from its support ; but their influ- ence was chiefly felt in the new spirit and vigor which they gave to its opponents. The Whigs at once put forth every effort to carry the State. They sent speakers to almost every town, and distributed Palfrey's pamphlet in every direction. They set forth to the cities and large towns the loss of power which assailed them, alarmed conservatives with the radical changes proposed, particularly in the judiciary, and quieted progressives with the promise that they would at once initiate by special amendments all desirable reforms ; but their most effective as well as fairest, point was that the Constitution was made by a party, and on some points expressed partisan aims rather than the permanent and common convictions of the people.
1 A letter to the New York " Evening Post," Nov. 7, 1853, signed "Essex," reviewed th% political record of Palfrey and Adams, and undertook to explain the personal reasons for their action.
2 Judge E. R. Hoar, who was very averse to the proposed change in the judicial tenure and mode of appointment, prompted Palfrey to this action.
Mt. 41-42.] FINAL DEFEAT OF THE COALITION. 339
The publication of Palfrey's letter was immediately followed by the letter of Caleb dishing, attorney-general of the United States, to Richard Frothingham, Jr., which, assuming to speak for President Pierce, forbade any further political association of the Democrats with the Free Soilers, and declared the purpose of the Administration " to crush out the dangerous element of abolitionism under every guise and form." l Peremptory in form as well as in spirit, it threatened proscription from office as the penalty of disobedience. Its style savored of imperialism, and was suited rather to Russia than the United States. It was known at the time as Cushing's " ukase." This interference was effective in disturbing the co-operation of the two parties, not only in the election of members of the Legislature, but also in the support of the new Constitution. It was resented by all Democrats who retained any manly spirit ; but a considerable number of editors and active politicians, aspiring to the many places in the national service made vacant by a change of Administration, at once withdrew from all co-operation with the Free Soilers. The Cushing letter was doubtless the most serious blow which the coalition received.
The foreign or Irish voters (perhaps ten or twelve thousand), hitherto held by the Democrats, were turned almost in a body against the new Constitution, — partly for the reason that it reduced the representation of Boston, where their power was centred and was rapidly growing, but more because one of the amendments, to be separately voted on, expressly forbade the appropriation of public money for sectarian schools.2 The Catholic newspaper of Boston in its weekly issues, and 0. A. Brownson in addresses, appealed to them to vote against it. It was charged also that at various points ecclesiastical influence was directly and openly exerted. This was the first time that the foreign or Catholic vote was appealed to in the State as a special interest and carried as a distinct body. The liquor in- terest was stimulated into active opposition to the new Con- stitution by the proposed reduction in the representation of Boston, where its power lay, and by antagonism to the Free
1 October 29. Cushing's previous complicity with the coalition is described by C. C. Hazewell in a letter with the signature of "Algoma," published in the New York "Herald," Nov. 12, 1853. The Washington " Union," about the same time, speaking for the Administration, announced that every Democrat continuing in the coalition would be promptly removed from office.
2 Adams's "Biography" of R. H. Dana, vol. i. p. 250.
340 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53
Soilers, who had been with few exceptions the promoters of the Maine law.
Against this combination of influences the supporters of the new Constitution struggled with diminishing hope till the last day of the canvass. They could have stood successfully against one or more of them, but all together accomplished a secession from their ranks which proved fatal.1 The new Constitution failed by five thousand votes,2 though receiving a majority out- side of Boston ; and the Whigs, who carried the Legislature at the last election, were now far stronger in it than before. The Free Soilers held their own in the popular vote, giving Wilson as their candidate for governor nearly thirty thousand votes.3 The result in connection with Cushing's letter was fatal to any further union of Democrats and Free Soilers, or any hope of wresting the State from the Whigs under existing party condi- tions. It put Palfrey and Adams for a time out of relations with the Free Soilers ; 4 it engendered a spirit of hostility to foreign voters which was soon to take shape in a secret political organization.5
Sumner wrote to Whittier, November 21 : —
"The day after our election I left for New York, where, among other things, I enjoyed the Crystal Palace, and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' at the the- atre, and on my return, Sunday morning, found your letter. The loss of the Constitution is a severe calamity to the liberal cause in this State. I deplore it from my heart. It seems to me that it may be traced to three causes : first in order of time, the defection of Palfrey and Adams, which stimulated the Whigs and neutralized many of our friends; secondly, Cush- ing's letter, which paralyzed the activities of the Democratic leaders; and, thirdly, the positive intervention of the Catholic Church. With any one of
1 The causes of the defeat are fully explained in a letter to the "National Era," De- cember 15, signed *, written by Henry Wilson (the editor striking out Wilson's criticisms on Adams and Palfrey); by a full account in the New York "Evening Post" in a letter, November 15, by R. Carter, and a leader, November 16; in the Boston "Commonwealth," November 22; in the Norfolk "Democrat" (Dedham), Nov. 25, 1853, where one of the writers was Henry L. Pierce.
2 The vote was 62,183 for and 67,105 against it.
3 Washburn (Whig) had 60,472 votes; Bishop (Democrat), 35,254; Wilson (Free Soiler), 29,545; and Wales (pro-slavery Democrat), 6,195, — leaving the Whigs more than 10,000 short of a majority; but their candidate was chosen by the Legislature.
4 In 1858, when Adams was first nominated for Congress by the Republicans, he ex- pected to lose his nomination, largely because of the wound his course at this time had left; but the objection was overcome by his admitted fitness for the place.
5 The Whigs were defeated even in their stronghold, the city of Boston, the next month by the election of J. V. C. Smith, the Citizens' Union candidate, who was supported bj' the secret order and by the Free Soilers. This was the beginning of the "Know Nothing" or Native American party in Massachusetts.
JEt. 41-42.] FINAL DEFEAT OF THE COALITION. 341
those sinister influences out of the way, we should have established the new Constitution. With it would have come many beneficent changes ; but be- yond all else it would have broken the backbone of the Boston oligarchy, — the stumbliugblock of all reform, and especially of all antislavery. I honor Palfrey much for his life, and for what at other times he has done ; but I hardly venture to believe that he can, by any future service, repair the wrong he has done to our cause. I have not been a party to any counsels of our frieuds since the election. My hope is that the Whigs may yet be defeated in their efforts to secure the control of the House, so that our friends may press their reforms with hope of success. My desire is for the plurality rule, that we may submit our cause directly to the people, — yea or nay."
The Whigs were insolent in their success, altogether reject- ing the genial and magnanimous tone which is becoming in a winning party.1 In their journals, in various meetings for mu- tual congratulations, and in private intercourse, they exulted in their triumph ; vaunted their security in power for ten years to come ; taunted their opponents with this decisive defeat ; threw at them the epithets " backsliders and traitors," " ambi- tious and unprincipled demagogues," "dishonest," "profligate," "mischievous;" satirized their leaders in doggerel verses, and subjected them to the annoyance of anonymous letters.2 But they visited their venom most of all on Wilson. His honest poverty, his rise from the humblest life, where a spirit less aspiring than his would have always remained, and his amia- ble temper were no protection against incessant contumely and derision; but to human foresight it did not then seem possible that this man was in little more than a twelvemonth to take his place by Sumner's side in the Senate, stand at the head of the committee on military affairs in that body during the Civil War, and rise to the second place in the gift of the American people.3
Not only the leading men in the State, but the undistinguished persons whose activity was local, were made to feel the pressure.
1 Atlas, November 16, 21, and December 1 ; Courier, November 16.
2 Banks received as many as twenty.
3 The " Commonwealth," December 9, contrasted the temper of the Whigs in victory with the decent and even magnanimous treatment which they had received from the Democrats after the recent national election, and said: "The organs of the dominant majority in this have shown more ill manners, more intolerance, more insolence, and more meanness towards their opponents than any party has ever manifested in any election in the coun- try." This general statement is easily verified by an examination of the Whig newspapers of the State in November and December, 1853; it is proved also by contemporaneous pri- vate letters and by the testimony of living persons. Wilson was accustomed to hard looks, but he encountered more now than he could bear with equanimity; and for some weeks after the election he sought unfrequented streets on his way from the station to his warehouse.
342 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
A private letter written immediately after the election by a young man in Dorchester, who was in daily intercourse with the mer- chants of Boston, since holding a seat in Congress, said : —
" Whiggery as usual in victory is domineering and insolent, and I am be- set on all sides. I pity Wilson. The Whigs are taunting, sneering, and levelling all their envenomed shafts at him. Truly a politician's path is beset with thorns. It seems to me as if all the honors he has received would not compensate this one defeat and humiliation. . . . Insolence, impudence, and arrogance are at a premium with the Whigs just now. Wherever we go — in the street, in the train, and everywhere — we are told that our party is dead, that we are an unprincipled set. One man told me I was ' a damned fool.' Whichever way we go we are jeered, hissed, pointed at, and spit upon by Whiggery."
The Free Soilers were disheartened. Their leaders admitted they had received the heaviest blow which ever befell a party, and the more it was considered the worse it seemed. They fore- saw that with the final rupture of the coalition, which it would be futile to attempt again, and with no hope hereafter of imme- diate results to cheer their followers, there was to be a long con- test in which, with numbers diminishing, they could count only on the most steadfast in conviction. Saddest of all was Wilson, who enjoyed political position for its excitement, and who had no private means of support, but who was far from being a self- seeker, loving his party as few have loved it, and ready to make sacrifices for it, — his chagrin now sharpened by the conscious- ness that Palfrey's and Adams's demonstrations had been in part inspired by undeserved misconceptions of his purposes and methods.1
The Free Soilers, however, soon gathered courage, and be- came consolidated by the arrogance and intemperate exultations of the Whigs. To their convictions of right was added a deep sense of personal wrong, and smarting under the obloquy they bided their time. Their leaders without delay, to the number of one hundred, held a conference, in which they resolved to per- fect their organization, and put forth immediate efforts to ad- vance their antislavery principles by means of lectures and the distribution of documents. All, while adhering to these prin-
1 "Warrington's (W. S. Robinson) "Pen Portraits," p. 204. Wilson now sought the means of support by delivering lectures before Lyceums, and by returning to the manu- facture of boots at Natick, in which he had been unsuccessful before he became an editor. He employed forty workmen in his factory ; but he was no more fortunate in this second venture than in his first. See his letter in the Boston "Atlas," Oct. 17, 1854.
JEt. 41-42.] FINAL DEFEAT OF THE COALITION. 343
ciples, were determined in the future to miss no opportunity for dislodging the Whigs. Charles Allen expressed the prevailing sentiment when he said he had never known that party before so vindictive, insolent, overbearing, and impudent, and he would give them no quarter and receive none. All agreed that the coalition had done good service, but that its work was now ended, to be resumed again, however, if the times ever should favor. That dejected company of noble and earnest men were in a few days to be cheered by light from an unexpected quar- ter,— the madness of the pro-slavery politicians. The last con- test between the Whigs and Free Soilers of Massachusetts, with those names and organizations, had been fought, and in a twelve- month both parties had disappeared.
No one regretted the defeat of the new Constitution more than Sumner, as no one regarded with more concern the perpetuation of Whig supremacy in the State in connection with all the inci- dents it involved. The State was no longer politically at his back, as when he entered the Senate. The Whigs were united for the Compromise by hearty assent or formal acquiescence ; while the Democrats, greedy for national office, were submissive to dictation from Washington. He could rely only on the thirty thousand Free Soilers, who under discouraging conditions were likely to fall to twenty thousand in the next State election, with the power left to elect not more than a dozen members of the Legislature. The Whig journals, taunting him with a want of popular support, called on him to resign his seat.
Never was Sumner so strong with the Free Soilers as now. He had assumed cheerfully his share of the labor, and had maintained their cause stoutly and fearlessly both against their natural opponents and also against his two familiar friends, Palfrey and Adams. There was no longer any intimation of indifference or inactivity, but everywhere most cordial devo- tion to him. Robert Carter wrote, December 24 : —
" Your popularity was never greater here than now. Everybody applauds your efforts in the late campaign ; and the men who were most angry with you in 1852, are foremost in praising your course and your speech on the Constitution."
Chase, who followed closely the politics of Massachusetts, wrote from Ohio : —
" I mourn our loss in Massachusetts ; but you individually acquitted your- self most nobly. That is a great consolation to your friends."
344 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1852-53.
Even Adams, who had led in wrecking the new constitution, writing to explain a public reference to Sumner which the lat- ter had thought unkind, said, in good and friendly temper : —
" Yet regret this as much as I will on rny own account, I am glad to hear that it has not heen without some compensation in drawing to you still more our old political friends. They think you unjustly attacked, and they pour out all their indignation against me for it. I shall never again put myself in their power, so that it matters not what they think of me. But the feeling thus engendered may stand you in stead in the career you have hefore you. You have my wishes and prayers for its success, now as always."
JEt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 345
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. —REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. — THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. — ADDRESS ON GRANVILLE SHARP. — FRIENDLY CORRESPONDENCE. — 1853-1854.
CHASE and Sumner were the only two Free Soil senators in the Thirty-third Congress, the first in the Adminis- tration of Franklin Pierce, which began its session Dec. 5, 1853. They missed the readiness and wit of Hale of New Hamp- shire, who had been succeeded by a Democrat. The Demo- crats being in a majority in the Senate, designated in caucus from their number a majority of each committee, assigning places to Chase, and leaving the vacancies to be filled by the Whigs, with the expectation that they would assign places to Sumner. Seward's motion in the Whig caucus to put him on certain committees was withdrawn in consequence of the oppo- sition of Everett, who after stating his friendly relations with his colleague, which he wished to have continued, was averse to any action which would " recognize him as a Whig." * The proposed assignment would have carried with it under the cus- tom no such implication, the Democrats finding no difficulty in giving places to Chase ; and if it were to be opposed, it would have been more seemly that the opposition should come from another quarter. It is another instance of the intolerance then controlling the dominant party in Massachusetts. The Whigs, however, left intentionally two vacancies at the foot of the com- mittees on pensions and enrolled bills, which the Democrats filled with Sumner's name. The exclusion of members of " an unhealthy organization" was given up, but the responsibility of placing them was still a perplexity. None then foresaw that
1 Everett's action in the Whig caucus was discussed in the Boston papers, — the "Com- monwealth," Dec. 26, 29, 30, 1853; and the "Courier" and "Journal" the same month. The "National Era," Jan. 5, 1854, contrasted Everett's treatment of his colleague with D. S. Dickinson's magnanimous conduct towards Seward. Sumner wrote to E. L. Pierce, Jan. 13, 1854: "Mr. Everett, it seems to me, made a mistake; but I do not judge his motives."
346 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
the two senators whom their associates were then careful to avoid were within a few weeks to become the political leaders of a new North.
This session prayed to be the most remarkable in our history. It promised, as it began, to be like the last, — prosaic and un- eventful. Nothing presaged the great struggle at hand, with its immediate upheaval of parties and its remoter consequences. The Whigs and Democrats, rivals for power and antagonists in domestic policy, had pledged themselves in synonymous terms to maintain the Compromise of 1850 ; and masses as well as leaders cordially accepted, or weakly acquiesced in, the policy of silence and submission. The President in his first message assured the country that the prevailing repose should suffer no shock during his official term if he had the power to avert it. The only political force against slavery, the Free Soilers, were helpless as an opposition, receiving no recruits and diminishing in numbers. The Administration, in Cushing's letter, threat- ened proscription to all who allowed any political fellowship with them. Hale, without hope of being called again into public life, had opened a law office in the city of New York.1 Chase was to be succeeded at the close of this Congress by a Demo- cratic supporter of the Compromise. Three years and a half of Sumner's term remained ; but the Whigs, rampant in their restoration to power in Massachusetts, were clamoring for his resignation as a senator without a constituency ; and it appeared inevitable that his successor would be a supporter of the Com- promise of Everett's type. Seward, whatever might be the im- pulses of his better nature, had descended to the level of his party. He openly declined to discuss further the Fugitive Slave law in popular assemblies, and withheld his vote when its repeal was moved in the Senate.2 Chance or exceptionally favorable conditions might now and then put an antislavery member into the House of Representatives ; 3 but his individual remonstrance against overwhelming numbers pledged to the suppression of agi- tation would be of little avail. To human foresight the struggle with American slavery was to be one of generations, with only
1 He was again elected senator from New Hampshire in 1855, and served till 1865.
2 Seward's Works, vol. iii. p. 432. His letter of Jan. 28, 1854, contains a singular ex- planation of his silence, referring his abstinence from discussions concerning slavery to his desire not to injure a just cause by discussions which might seem to betray undue solici- tude, if not a spirit of faction !
3 As in the election of Gerrit Smith.
JEt. 42-43.J REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 347
a single hope in the future, — that the Providence which had watched over the new birth of Liberty on this continent might yet overrule the madness of men for its preservation ; and the fruition of that hope was at hand !
The slave-power was not content with its recent victory. It knew the temper of its adversaries, timid and submissive before threats of disunion, and it saw another and greater conquest before it. Legislation in the nature of a compact stood in- deed in the way of the next step ; but the equality of slavery with freedom in the occupation of the national domain had been admitted by an obsequious North, and this principle was as applicable to territory acquired from France as to territory acquired from Mexico. If wise and just to leave one territory to the chances of " squatter " dominion, it was equally wise and just to leave the others to the same fate. The repeal of the prohibition of 1820 was the natural sequence of the Compromise of 1850.
The session was not a month old when a conspiracy was re- vealed for the extension of slavery into the vast territory now comprising the great States of Kansas and Nebraska, and rival- ling in extent Spain, France, and Italy combined. The coun- try, North as well as South, had for a third of a century rested under the conviction that this territory was to remain free, and in due time be divided into free States under the compromise and compact by which in 1820 Missouri was, after prolonged resistance from the free States, admitted as a slave State upon the condition that slavery should be forever prohibited in the rest of the territory acquired from France under the name of Louisiana, so far as it lay north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. No partisan of slavery — neither Calhoun, who guarded the institution with a comprehensive and far-reaching vision, nor Atchison,1 who overlooked the territory from the bor- der State of Missouri — had ever been audacious enough, even when the slave-power was putting forth its utmost pretensions, to propose in Congress the abrogation of the compact known as the Missouri Compromise. With the extinction of Indian titles, the progress of national surveys, and the pressure of emigration, the time had come for the organization of a civil government.2
1 1807-1886.
2 Already steps had been taken in this direction. During the preceding session of Con- gress a bill passed the House by a large majority, creating a government for the territory without touching the existing prohibition of slavery. Near the end of the session it was
348 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
The condition of the territory, as free or slave, was now to be unalterably fixed, and the slaveholding politicians were alive to their last opportunity. They saw clearly that a free territory which in due season would become a free State must affect injuriously the value and security of slave property in Missouri, and generally imperil the institution as a national power. They counted surely, after their experience in 1850, on the co- operation of the Democratic aspirants for the Presidency from the North ; and through the influence of these leaders they were assured of the general adhesion of the Democratic party. They obtained without difficulty the hearty support of the President and his Cabinet;1 and they found in Senator Douglas of Illinois, then seeking Southern votes for the Presidency, an adroit, unscrupulous, and aggressive leader.
Douglas, chairman of the committee on territories, made a report January 4, and submitted a bill for organizing the Terri- tory of Nebraska. The report, after discussing the opposite views of the validity of the prohibition, declined to interfere with it; and the bill as first printed in a city journal on the 7th corresponded with the report ; but when it appeared again in print, three days later, it was found to contain a section conflicting with the report, which in subtle phrases affirming the sovereignty of the people of the Territory, and pledging its admission " with or without slavery " at their option, was in- tended to annul the prohibition without expressly repealing it.2 Every day and at every step the conspirators grew in audacity. Dixon of Kentucky, a Whig, gave notice on the 16th of an
laid on the table in the Senate, though cordially recommended by Douglas, the chairman of the committee on territories. Curiously enough, the names of Chase, Seward, and Sum- ner do not appear on the call of the yeas and nays ; they are said to have been engaged elsewhere on public business. But they as well as other senators did not at all apprehend the momentous issue at hand. In the debate the interference with Indian rights was urged as a principal argument against the bill ; but considerations relative to slavery were doubt- less in the minds of some senators. Atchison deplored the prohibition, but admitted that there was no hope of its repeal. In the interval, however, between this and the next session he declared publicly that he should oppose any subsequent bill which did not include a repeal of the prohibition. It is therefore not wholly true, as sometimes stated, that the South in joining in the repeal only accepted a free-will offering from the Northern Democracy. See Boston "Commonwealth," March 28, 1853; and May 23, 1854.
1 Except Marcy, Secretary of State, who maintained a studied reserve.
2 This clause was a repetition of the clause in the Territorial Acts of 1850, which left the decision as to slavery to the inhabitants at the time of the admission of the Terri- tory as a State. The New York " Tribune's " correspondent in a letter published Jan. 7, 1854, and the "National Era," January 12, noted that the bill did not touch the pro- hibition until the Territory was admitted as a State, — a construction which probably prompted Dixon's amendment. New York "Evening Post," January 25.
Mi. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 349
amendment which without disguise repudiated the prohibition and legalized slavery in the Territory. Sumner met this propo- sition the next day by giving notice of another amendment which in positive terms excluded any abrogation of the pro- hibition. Douglas, finding it necessary to go further in order to satisfy the South, and emboldened by the apparent indiffer- ence of the North, a week later reported a new bill, which cre- ated the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and declared the prohibition " inoperative," for the reason that it had been " superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850." 1
The antislavery newspapers gave the alarm even before the bill was printed by the Senate.2 The other Northern journals, however, were slow to recognize its import, and they delayed for several weeks — some for a month or more — to take definite ground against it.3 Those who had insisted on submission to the Compromise of 1850 as essential to the national peace, who had denounced Free Soilers as fanatics and traitors, and made light of all apprehensions of the progress of the slave- power, did not find it easy to change front at once. Some
1 Douglas, February 7, added the term "void" to "inoperative," changed the phrase "superseded by" to "inconsistent with," and further amplified the clause. Benton, in the House, called the repealing provision "a little stump speech injected into the belly of the bill."
2 New York "Tribune," Jan. 6, 9, 10 ; New York "Evening Post," Jan. 6, 7, 17, 24, 25, 26, 28, 1854; Boston "Commonwealth," Jan. 9, 11, 16, 21; "National Era," Jan. 12, 19, 26, and Feb. 2, 9, 16, 23, 1854. There are brief references to the scheme in the New York "Evening Post," Dec. 10, 15, 1853. The " National Era," as early as April 14, 1853, in reviewing at length the failure to organize the Territory during the session which had just closed, unfolded the designs of the slaveholding interest, and called for a positive affirmation of the prohibition in any subsequent bill. The Boston " Commonwealth," March 28, 1853, was vigilant at that time in the same direction, and noted that the par- tisans of slavery had obstructed the organization of the Territory at the preceding session. That journal gave a warning of their purpose to make it a slave State, Oct. 24, Nov. 5, and Dec. 31, 1853. The earliest letters Sumner received in relation to Douglas's bill were from John Jay, Jan. 16, 1854, and from Henry Wilson, January 18. C. F. Adams's letter, January 18, reviewing the political situation, makes no reference to it. To Mr. Jay be- longs the credit of starting the earliest protest in New York, — the public meeting held in Broadway Tabernacle, January 30.
3 The Boston "Atlas's" first notice of the scheme was January 11, and its first article was on January 19; the "Journal's" first article on Januarj' 25; the "Advertiser's" on January 30; the "Courier's," a very brief one, on February 9. All the editorial matter concerning the measure in the last-named journal during the whole controversy would not equal in space one of its several articles on the Eastern Question. The Springfield "Republican," January 6, objected to the bill in a brief paragraph, but its first full arti- cle on the subject did not appear till February 8. The "National Intelligencer's" first article against the bill was published February 7, and others followed February 21 and 28, — the three articles filling many columns. The "National Era," October 19 of the same year, noted, in a review of the early proceedings connected with the measure, the tardy awakening of public sentiment.
350 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
sincerely thought that the bill was a mere personal scheme of Douglas to win the favor of the South, with no possibility of success.1 It is fair to say also that few at the time, even among well-informed persons, realized the geographical rela- tions and vast capabilities of the Territory in question. The conspirators, when they saw that the Northern protest came chiefly from those who had persevered in opposing the Com- promise of 1850, advanced with more confident steps ; and Dix- on's amendment and Douglas's second bill were the result of the apathy of the free States.
Douglas, January 24, the day after the introduction of his second bill, pressed its consideration ; but opposition being made, it was postponed to the 30th, and made the special order from day to day till disposed of. The Northern Whig and Democratic members, who were from their own convictions or the convictions of their constituents opposed to the extension of slavery, were from one cause or another averse to any bold and prompt demonstration ; and the few Free Soilers were obliged without other support to take the lead in the interval of six days.2
Chase and Sumner and four representatives, the Free Soil or Independent Democratic members, issued an Appeal to the country. It was drawn by Chase, and was well adapted in sub- stance and style to its purpose. It explained clearly the purport and effect of the measure, its reversal of the settled policy of the nation, and its design to establish slavery in an immense terri- tory guaranteed to liberty by solemn compact. It arraigned the bill " as a gross violation of a sacred pledge ; as a criminal be- trayal of precious rights ; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves." It implored the interposition of Christians and Chris- tian ministers, and closed thus : —
" For ourselves we shall resist it by speech and vote, and with all the abili- ties which God has given us. Even if overcome in the impending struggle, we shall not submit. We shall go home to our constituents, erect anew the standard of freedom, and call on the people to come to the rescue of the country from the domination of slavery. We will not despair, for the cause of human freedom is the cause of God."
1 Springfield Republican, February 8. 2 National Era, Oct. 19, 1854.
Mr. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 351
Chase's power of statement and moral fervor were never more conspicuous.1 The quality of the Appeal itself was manifest in its effect on the author and manager of the plot. Douglas opened the debate on the day assigned with a speech abounding in insolence and vituperation. Whenever he referred to the signers he applied to them epithets, " abolition confederates," 2 " a few agitators," or " a set of politicians." With a coarse- ness of speech of which he was master, he imputed to them un- principled ambition, Sabbath-breaking,3 deception, slander, and want of truth. He stigmatized the document itself as " an aboli- tion manifesto," " a negro movement," " a wicked fabrication," " a gross falsification," " an atrocious falsehood,*7 " a base false- hood ; " and proceeding with his personalities, he was at length called to order by the chair. He refused, in bitter and unseemly language, to be interrupted by Chase, denying that the latter had any title to courtesy. In recklessness of assertion, in moral in- sensibility, and indifference to common instincts of propriety, no speeches of a Northern man aspiring to leadership ever equalled those which came from this senator during the debates on the repeal of the Missouri prohibition. Chase followed, replying with much spirit to the personal matters introduced by Doug- las, but reserving his full argument for another day.4 Sum- ner reaffirmed the positions taken in the Appeal, and protested against the haste, " the driving, galloping speed," with which a measure involving a radical departure from traditional policy had been pressed. Wade indorsed as correct every word of the Appeal, though he had not signed it ; but Seward, taking no part in the discussion, moved an adjournment when Sumner had resumed his seat.5
The debate was postponed, and Chase made his formal reply to Douglas, February o. The interval was brief, and he had
1 Chase was the author of the last sentence of Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation.
2 This epithet he repeated ten times, saying also, "This tornado has been raised by Abolitionists, and Abolitionists alone."
3 The Appeal by an error of date appeared to have been signed on Sunday, although in fact it was signed a day or two before. Notwithstanding Douglas's pretension to Sabbatic scruples in open Senate, he had called on Jefferson Davis and the President Sunday, January 22, to counsel with them concerning his scheme. (Jefferson Davis's "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," p. 28.)
4 Chase refused after this speech to have personal intercourse with Douglas, until, when leaving the Senate in March, 1855, the latter came to him with an explanation, which Chase said to him he might better have made in the Senate.
5 Seward was careful not to assume any responsibility for the Appeal whenever it was referred to.
352 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
engagements in court, but he knew his subject thoroughly. He was less elaborate in preparation than Sumner or Seward, and used brief notes only, according to Webster's habit. In a speech of two hours and a half, he exposed Douglas's inconsistencies and subterfuges, followed him from point to point, and treating the question also largely in its historical and moral aspects, vin- dicated the prohibition upon grounds of policy and compact. He spoke with great earnestness, and with the dignity of manner and style which was his wont. He stood at the time the most impressive figure in the Senate. As Wilson has well said : " He sounded the keynote of the opposition, and sketched with great force and point* the line of argument afterwards presented by the friends of freedom."1 To this eminent statesman belongs the honor of leadership in this historic debate.
When Mr. Everett entered the Senate in March, 1853, he was buoyant in spirit. He considered it, as he said at the time, the highest honor of his public life that he had been permitted to have a seat in that body.2 He took occasion, about three weeks later, in the discussion of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, to make a " Young America" speech on Central American affairs, in which he went out of his way to pay court to Douglas, — a politician with opinions, manners, and tastes the opposite of his own, — speaking of him as one who was destined, without a superior, to impress his views of public policy on the American people, and to receive in return all the honors and trusts which they could bestow. It was noticeable with what amiable and com- plimentary phrases during this session, and at the beginning of the next in December, he spoke of all senators to whom he hap- pened to refer. In the recess he was named in important Whig journals as the probable Whig candidate for the Presidency. He came again to the Senate in December, 1853, with hope and activity undiminished. He interposed in the Whig caucus, as already noticed, against his colleague being placed by the Whigs on any committee in the manner Chase had been assigned by the Democrats. On the fourth day of the session he paid a me- morial tribute to the deceased Vice-President King. A question,
1 "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. p. 385. Douglas considered Chase rather than Sumner or Seward to be "the leader" in the opposition to his measure. See Douglas's statement in "Constitutional and Party Questions," by J. M. Cutts, p. 123. Douglas was reported to have said that but for Chase and Sumner he should have encountered no obstruction. "Syphax" in the Boston "Commonwealth," March 13, 1854.
2 March 21, 1853, in debate.
^Et. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 353
however, was impending, the most portentous in our history, for which he had no heart. As a member of Congress at an early period, and as governor of Massachusetts, he had spoken of sla- very and its opponents in a tone below even the Northern senti- ment of the period ; and he had supported the Compromise of 1850, giving his full countenance to all Webster had said and done in its behalf. As far as he could see, when the session began the dread question was settled for a generation, and cer- tainly he had no thought that he was at once to be required to take part in the greatest and last struggle of the slave-power for supremacy in the government. It was a contest indeed for which neither his temperament nor his career fitted him.
As a member of the committee on territories, Mr. Everett made no written dissent against Douglas's report, nor did he signify at the time it was submitted, by any personal explana- tion, that he objected to it.1 It does not appear that his convic- tions were then against it. He maintained cordial relations with its author during the whole controversy. Three days after the report was made Douglas gave a dinner, at which, as guests, he placed Everett on his right, and Dawson of Georgia, a Whig sup- porter of the measure, on his left. Another guest, General Wool, gave a toast to the two Whig senators as the Whig candidates for President and Vice-President in 1856.2 Mr. Everett appears for some weeks to have been uncertain as to what course he should take ; and he sought from friends at home, who shared his confidence, " information as to the light in which it [the bill] would be regarded in Massachusetts by the judicious part of the community." After noting in a letter of January 10 the action of the previous Congress, and the form in which the bill had been reported, he mentioned only as his objection to it that it " would evidently bring up a discussion of the whole subject of slavery, — a circumstance greatly to be deplored."3 The answers he received were explicit in advising resistance to the measure.4
1 If he made an objection in committee it was a mild one, and he was careful not to give it publicity. Seward wrote, January 4: " Everett was on the Douglas committee, and says he objected. I would not have been allowed to be there." (Seward's " Life," vol. ii. p. 216.) Everett first signified in the Senate his opposition, February 7.
* New York Tribune, Jan. 9, 1854.
3 Mr. Everett's doubtful position at first, and his request for advice, were stated pub- licly at the time. " Commonwealth," February 15 ; April 6.
4 Governor Clifford replied, January 20, in a manly letter, in which he said : "My own judgment is clearly fixed and settled, independent of any effect it may have upon our ex-
vol. in. 23
354 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
Mr. Everett made a speech, February 8, against the bill. He contended that the Compromise of 1850, which he had approved, was not intended to impair, and did not impair, the prohibition of the Missouri Act ; but beyond this position his speech had little point. In the presence of a transcendent issue, he gave disproportionate space to the effect of a territorial government on the rights of Indian tribes. He indulged in compliments to Douglas and his coadjutors altogether undeserved ; seemed to recognize no great interest in peril ; set aside the one vital argu- ment against the measure by assuming that the region in ques- tion would not by reason of its physical character ever become slaveholding ; * declined expressly to say aught concerning the great question of slavery, — the only one at issue, — lest he should kindle unkind feeling between the sections ; put on an equal footing the Christianity, the patriotism, and the moral excellence of the pro-slavery and antislavery forces ; deprecated sectional agitation as calculated to retard emancipation ; and looked forward to the final settlement of the historic controversy by the removal of the African race to the land of their fathers.2 Of indignant protest, of solemn appeal, of earnest remonstrance, — all demanded by the occasion, — this speech of New England's foremost orator contained nothing. Not with such reluctant and spiritless resistance can a great cause ever be maintained against passion, ambition, and the greed for dominion. It was well that Massachusetts had then in the Senate another voice than Ever- ett's to speak for her.
isting political organizations, that the moral element involved in this question is too seri- ous to be made any further or any longer subordinate to the political exigencies arising out of it." Choate's answer is given in his "Life," by Brown (p. 291), in which, while rec- ommending opposition to the bill, he expressed solicitude lest Mr. Everett should be drawn into "a position which would impair his large prospects," — an allusion to the latter's can- didacy for the Presidency. Everett, it may be mentioned, sent no reply to the invitation to address the first anti-Nebraska meeting held in Broadway Tabernacle, January 30.
1 This passage was seized upon by the advocates of the bill to prove that it did not in- volve the extension of slavery. The only prominent journal in Massachusetts which sup- ported the measure, the Boston "Post," kept the passage in type, and repeated it in several numbers, as a sufficient answer to the principal argument of its opponents. Wade said in the Senate, Feb. 23, 1855, referring to this position of Everett: "I remember him who made that soothing declaration; and I know that for making it, and for partially shrinking from the responsibilities which he ought boldly to have assumed, able as he was, and old statesman as he was, possessing ability hardly equalled in the country, he has been driven by the intelligent people of Massachusetts into private life, there to remain forever; and, sir, the verdict is most just."
2 A spectator wrote at the time that Everett failed to answer the expectation of the large audience which listened in breathless attention. He spoke in a low tone, and without any glow, except when he dwelt on Webster's support of the Compromise of 1850. (Mrs. Pau- lina W. Davis, "Liberator," March 31.)
^Et. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 355
Everett's speech, wanting in spirit as it was, was nevertheless effective with a large body of conservatives at the North, who were by habit braced against any arguments or appeals which savored of antislavery sentiment. Douglas had made a studied effort to excite prejudice against the opponents of the measure by taunting them as only " abolitionists ; " but Everett's career relieved him of all suspicion in that regard. His contention, also, that the Compromise of 1850 was not designed to tamper with that of 1820 came with peculiar authority from him. At the close of his speech Sumner, crossing to his seat, said to him, " You have dealt slavery a blow between the eyes," 1 though ex- pressing regret at the passage in which he had given his opinion that slavery could not exist in Kansas. This congratulation, which rather exceeded the occasion, was prompted by Sumner's desire to say the best that he could of the speech, and partic- ularly its effect on one point, — the intent of the compromisers of 1850.
Everett's speech was severely criticised by the antislavery papers,2 and was thought by those naturally friendly to him to be below the tone which the occasion required, and to expose him to the suspicion of want of sincerity and earnestness.3 Whatever were the merits of the Massachusetts conservatives of those days belonging to Everett's type, — and great merits they had, — this is at least certain, that by nature and habit they were unfitted to deal with a question so radical and far- reaching as that of American slavery. It was not in such lead- ers to recognize the political and moral forces at work, and to meet them like men.
Seward's speech, February 17, was earnest and strong in his peculiar power ; but he assumed the style of philosophical dis- quisition, and avoided any direct issue with the promoters of the scheme, appealing to them as honorable men acting from no unworthy motives ; and he treated the question largely as a stage in the eternal struggle between conservatism and progress. His part in the debate was more that of historian and prophet than antagonist. Even in his second speech at the close of the contest, after all the insolence of the repealers, his language towards them was friendly ; and he seemed to move above and
1 Quoted by Everett in a letter to Sumner, June 16, 1856.
2 Boston Commonwealth, February 15; New York Evening Post, March 8, April 15. A public meeting in Northampton, Mass., formally disapproved the tone of the speech.
8 Boston Transcript, March 7; Springfield Republican, March 6.
356 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
apart from the human struggle whicn was going on about him. It is not at all likely that at this time he had any glimpse of the political upheaval which was at hand.
Sumner made his speech February 21 -1 He declined at the outset to enter on the personalities with which Douglas opened the debate, being unwilling to divert attention from the great question at stake. He disposed, by a statement of points, of the pretence that the Compromise of 1850, either in purpose or effect, interfered with the prohibition of the Missouri Act. He put in the foreground the wrong and wickedness of slavery itself, and the national guilt involved in any measure which extended it ; upheld the equality of rights asserted by the De- claration of Independence ; repelled the delusive suggestion that the extension of slavery did not increase the number of slaves ; and dissented kindly but strenuously from the part of Everett's speech which disparaged the importance of the prohibition on the assumption that physical causes of themselves stood in the way of slavery ever acquiring foothold or vigor in the territory.2 Arraigning the measure as a breach of faith, he gave a history of the Missouri Compromise, of the proceedings in Congress, and of the agitation in the country, showing how the prohibi- tion itself was proposed by the South, which, having received the full consideration stipulated in its favor, now repudiated the bargain, and refused to perform the obligation which it had as- sumed. ' In this review he presented more clearly than had been done the character of the original transaction. The rest of the speech covered, to a considerable extent, ground he had hereto- fore traversed, — the antislavery policy of the Fathers, the power and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories, and an exposure of the sophistries which were urged in behalf of the institution, or of concession to its demands.
Appealing for the maintenance of good faith, pledged in the Missouri Compact, he said : —
" I appeal to senators about me not to disturb it. I appeal to the senators from Virginia to keep inviolate the compact made in their behalf by James Barbour and Charles Fenton Mercer. I appeal to the senators from South
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 285-332. Seward wrote, February 21 : "Mr. Sumner's fame has gathered a bright array of ladies in the gallery, and we are waiting for him to begin." And on February 22: " Sumner's speech was very brilliant, magnificent, and effective; he came to dine with me after it." Seward's " Life," vol. ii p. 223.
2 Later in the speech he referred regretfully to Everett's suggestion that the antislavery agitation had aggravated the condition of the slave. Works, vol. iii. p 329.
Mr. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 357
Carolina to guard the work of John Gaillard and William Lowndes. I appeal to the senators from Maryland to uphold the Compromise which elicited the constant support of Samuel Smith, and was first triumphantly pressed by the unsurpassed eloquence of Pinkney. I appeal to the senators from Delaware to maintain the landmark of freedom in the Territory of Louisiana early pro- posed by Louis McLane. I appeal to the senators from Kentucky not to re- pudiate the pledges of Henry Clay. I appeal to the senators from Alabama not to break the agreement sanctioned by the earliest votes in the Senate of their late most honored fellow-citizen, William Rufus King. Sir, I have heard of honor that felt a stain like a wound. If there be any such in this Chamber, — and surely there is, — it will hesitate to take upon itself the stain of this transaction."
The speech was listened to with the closest attention from the beginning to the end : and the galleries applauded the descrip- tion of " a Northern man with Southern principles." l The seats of senators were filled, and Sumner received congratulations from many of them, even from Badger and Butler.2 Even the extreme Southern men made no objection to the style and tem- per of his treatment of the question.
C. F. Adams wrote, February 26 : —
" I am much obliged to you for an early copy of your speech, which I have read with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction. After the miserable speci- men presented by your colleague, — a copy of which I am confident he was ashamed to send me, though Mr. Edmunds 3 has not been afraid to do it, — I am glad that Massachusetts has had a voice to redeem her character in the Senate and before the country^ It is cause of congratulation that his labors have not satisfied the public mind here. . . . Keep up a good heart, and do not mind the profligacy around you ; your position is infinitely improved by the present state of things."
Wilson, who had read Sumner's speech while engaged in an election campaign in New Hampshire, wrote, February 26 : —
" You may be assured that I read it with pleasure and pride. Since my return home I have again read it ; and 1 am sure that it is the noblest effort
1 New York "Tribune," February 22; New York "Evening Post." February 24; "Commonwealth," March 1. The President of the Senate forbade the applause when given to Sumner; but on a succeeding day allowed it without rebuke when given to Douglas. (Pike's "First Blows in the Civil War," p. 218.) Douglas in his speech, March 3, treated this description of a Northern man with Southern principles as intended for himself. R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote to Sumner, February 26 ; " Your magnetic mountain is a thing that can neither be hid nor removed; it will be one of the everlasting hills." (Works, vol. ill- pp 327, 328.) The Whig papers of Boston did not print the speech; but it reached the people of Massachusetts through the "Commonwealth" newspaper, and a pamphlet edition issued by John P. Jewett & Co.
2 Butler in a speech, June 12, 1856, referred to the compliments which he gave Sumner at the time. Soule sent Sumner congratulations from Madrid, where he was then our minister.
3 J. Wiley Edmunds, member of Congress.
358 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
of your life, worthy of you and the cause. When I read it in New Hamp- shire, I felt thankful that I had been able to do something for the cause of freedom by aiding our friends in placing you in the Senate, where you can speak to the nation. All our friends are delighted ; and even our Whig and Democratic friends speak of your speech in the highest terms. All are pleased to find that you rebuked Everett. His speech is generally condemned by all parties. He has run his race, — flushed out."
Again, March 15 : —
" Your speech is the theme of universal commendation; all admire it, and above all your work. Your devotion to your duty receives the praise of all
Whittier wrote : —
" I am unused to flatter any one, least of all one whom I love and honor; but I must say in all sincerity that there is no orator or statesman living in this country or in Europe whose fame is so great as not to derive additional lustre from such a speech ; it will live the full life of American history."
Frederick Douglass sent thanks for the noble speech for free- dom and the country. Kobert Carter wrote from Cambridge :
" Your speech is worthy of your reputation, or of any man's reputation. I hear but one sentiment expressed about it, and that is admiration of its force and eloquence, and thankfulness that Massachusetts has a seuator in Congress so ready and so able to represent her opinions and defend her rights. Mr. Ev- erett has fallen lower than I ever dreamed possible. The change of tone in this vicinity on the slavery question has brought me into intercourse with many of what seemed to be the most hopeless of the Hunker set ; and even they to a man condemn him, while they as uniformly praise you and your speech. The revolution that a month has effected is incredible. Were you to appear to-day in State Street, I am confident you would be received with a cordiality that would astonish you."
Rufus W. Griswold wrote from New York, February 22, ex- pressing his admiration of the speech, and his gratitude for it, and reporting the general favor with which it was received in that city, particularly in contrast with Everett's, which, how- ever unobjectionable, gave very little satisfaction to his friends or to the public.
Rev. Leonard Woods wrote, April 19 : —
" Perhaps I am partial in my judgment, but I think your speech on the Nebraska bill was the best one on the subject; and so of your speeches on any subject when you take pains to be well prepared, as 1 believe you always do. Your speech on the Fugitive Slave law, and on the bill of Douglas, gave more important information on the respective subjects than has come out in any other way. So it was also in your speech in the convention on the
Mr. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 359
question of equal representation. And I cannot but think you are doing good by such efforts in the way of enlightening the community. I say this from the heart, and for your encouragement." 1
Rev. R. S. Storrs, of Braintree, wrote : —
" I do thank you most cordially for the addresses of Mr. Chase, Mr. Wade, Mr. Houston, and your own, — the best of all, I have often said to others, though delicacy may seem to forbid saying it to you. It has given me great pleasure as well as much instruction on points previously ill understood. May the Senate long be adorned by your presence, enlightened by your counsels, and awed by the sternness of your high integrity ! . . . Sooner or later you will share the gratitude of the country, — the whole country from the St. Croix to the Rio Grande ; and in the homage already paid to your talents and virtue, devoted to so great and glorious a cause, none rejoice more sincerely nor enter more deeply than your much obliged friend and humble servant."
The speech found' generous approval with many who had been much opposed to Sumner's political course. Conservative Whigs expressed in letters their full satisfaction with its doctrines and spirit, and their confidence in him as the representative of the opinions and policy of Massachusetts, with the regret that Ever- ett had failed to represent them in a critical hour. Among those who wrote their full approval was Linus Child, who had sup- ported Winthrop in the Whig convention in 1846. Prescott wrote, " I don't see but what all Boston has got round ; in fact, we must call him [Sumner] the Massachusetts senator." George Liver- more, of Cambridge, a merchant and a conservative Whig, wrote, May 4 : —
" I asked an old Whig friend to-day (one who wondered last year that I could say a word in favor of Sumner when I thought you unreasonably as- sailed) if he had read your last speech on the Nebraska bill. l Yes,' said he, ' I have read it ; and I wish every man in the country had read it. It ought to be printed in letters of gold.' These are the words of a Hunker Whig, a Webster Compromise Whig. They are but the true expression of a general feeling which gladdens my heart and justifies my assertion that a brighter day begins to dawn. ... I have written to you, for I know a word of sympathy from one not of the party to which you belonged may cheer you. You have my head, my heart, my conscience, and my cordial thanks."
Hillard wrote, March 15 : —
" I purposely abstained from reading your speech till I had it in a pam- phlet form. It is a truly excellent speech, — on the whole, the best thing
1 This was the last letter which the venerable divine addressed to one whom he valued for his own worth, and as the son of a classmate. Dr. Woods died at Andover, Aug. 24, 1854, at the age of eighty.
360 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
you have ever done. You have been faithful to your own convictions, and yet abstained from anything at which any conservative opponent could take umbrage. I read it with admiration, and generally with assent. It is received with great and general favor. ... In all this matter you have borne yourself well, and gained credit everywhere at the North."
Speeches full of manly spirit, and worthy of the occasion were made by other senators, as by Wade of Ohio and Fessenden of Maine ; 2 but the responsibility and leadership in the debate fell on Chase2 and Sumner. Unlike other senators who were resist- ing the bill, they were unhampered by political associations with its partisans, or pledges to maintain the " finality " scheme of 1850. They were foremost in rousing the Northern masses to a sense of the peril, and in bringing them to the point of deter- mined resistance. Douglas in his final speech was coarse and bitter, venting his coarseness and bitterness chiefly on Chase and Sumner, who had drawn their chairs closely together, and were keenly watching the debate, — pointing at them whenever he repeated his favorite epithet, "the abolition confederates."3 Just before five on the morning of March 4, after a continuous session of seventeen hours, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of thirty-seven yeas to fourteen nays.4 The majority consisted of a united South, except Bell and Houston, and of all Northern Democrats except four. But this majority was divided in the grounds of its support. Douglas and Cass maintained that the people of the territory, by virtue of "popular sovereignty" (" squatter sovereignty ") had alone the right to settle the ques- tion of slavery for themselves ; while the extreme Southern party maintained that the Constitution secured to slaveholders
1 This was Fessenden's first speech in the Senate. Sumner remarked, " We felt that a champion had come." Pike's "First Blows of the Civil War," p. 220. Sumner in his tribute to Fessenden, Dec. 14, 1869 (Works, vol. xiii. pp. 189-191), describes the speech and the scene. An ally from an unexpected quarter was found in Houston of Texas, who opposed the bill as sure to stir up agitation and endanger the Union.
2 Chase's amendment, affirming the power of the people of the Territory to prohibit slavery, being opposed to the Calhoun doctrine, was voted down, March 2, by ten yeas to thirty-six nays.
3 Springfield Republican, March 8.
4 Von Hoist, vol. iv. p. 406, says, " In this vote the enslavement of the minds and con- sciences of the Northern politicians by slavery had reached its lowest depth." Everett left the Senate an hour and a half before the vote was taken, and at the next session of the Senate explained that his absence was caused by a severe indisposition, and that if present he should have voted against the bill. Seward and other Northern Whig senators pub- lished a certificate confirming his statement as to his illness. All Northern Whig sena- tors present voted against the bill, including Fish, who, however, took no part in the debate at any stage.
Mt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 361
the right to hold slaves in the territory till its admission as a State, with no power in Congress or the territorial legislature to prohibit it. Douglas's measure, carried without unity of ar- gument, settled nothing. Proposed with the pretence of estab- lishing peace between the sections, it proved the opening of a controversy which was shortly to rage in Congress and in bloody strife in Kansas.
Sumner intended to speak again on the bill, but was dis- suaded by Seward, whose influence with him was then consid- erable as to questions of time and occasion. Twice, however, during the last night of the debate he was on his feet, — once to deny the charge made by Norris of New Hampshire that he had counselled forcible resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in his Faneuil Hall speech in 1850,1 and again to repel the insinu- ation of Douglas that he had come to the Senate by partici- pation in a dishonorable combination.
Sumner wrote to Dr. Howe, Dec. 8, 1853 : —
" I am glad you are to influence the ' Commonwealth.' It will be a source of pleasure and confidence to me here to know that you are connected with it. Of all the papers which visit me at breakfast, I open that Boston sheet first ; then comes the ' Evening Post' of New York. This Congress is the worst — or rather promises to be the worst — since the Constitution was adopted; it is the ' Devil's Own.' "
Again, Jan. 18, 1854 : —
" You observe that the Nebraska bill opens anew the whole slavery ques- tion. Cannot something be done to arouse our Legislature to resolutions affirming their original position in 1819 ? Here all is uncertain. I have a hope that it may be tabled at once. The threat is to push it to a vote with- out delay."
Again, February 13 : —
" Things begin to brighten. Houston to-morrow will take the true ground. This will strike terror into the doughfaces. My desire is to get as many to speak as possible on oar side rather than speak myself. My turn will come, — perhaps on the very day of your meeting, perhaps a little later."
To E. L. Pierce, March 9 : —
" I cannot forbear, even under the pressure of other things, thanking you for your sympathy, sent so promptly. I have been oppressed by the wicked-
1 This point of controversy was the subject of a letter from Sumner printed in the Washington "Union," March 15, 1854. Seward ("Life," vol. ii. p. 225) advised him not to notice that journal's attack.
362 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
ness at last consummated in the Senate. Upon Chase and myself the whole brunt of the contest has fallen. He has shown throughout prodigious power and perfect constancy. I had intended to speak again for about an hour on the last night, but was dissuaded by friends from speaking under the circumstances."
The movement of the public mind, particularly in Massachu- setts, should be noted in this connection. At first, as already- suggested, it seemed as if the Free Soilers, with a small num- ber of antislavery Whigs and Democrats hanging loosely on the old parties, would have to fight the contest for freedom alone. No one saw more clearly the calamities involved in the measure than Horace Greeley ; and though sincerely a Whig, no one cared less for his party when higher interests were at stake ; but he had seen the slave-power so uniformly tri- umphant that he had lost faith in the popular instinct for free- dom.1 Charles Francis Adams, though doing his best to awaken and organize public sentiment, almost despaired of any effective resistance being made to the measure.2 As they felt, so felt thousands of true men everywhere. Thoughtful men at their firesides and in family correspondence confessed sadly that the public mind had been debauched by Webster and the Compro- mise of 1850, so that it would now yield to any demands of the slaveholding interest ; and they saw in prospect the repeal of the Missouri prohibition and the advance of slavery to the Pacific Ocean. But the American people proved to be of better stuff than Douglas on the one side or Greeley on the other had thought. Public opinion was aroused, slowly indeed, but surely ; and it grew in volume every day. The momentous character of the issue came to be realized. The seizures of fugitive slaves were indeed pitiful sights, painful to the natural feelings ; but they did not widen the area or prolong the period of slavery. A new conspiracy now sought to establish the institution in a vast territory set apart to freedom a generation before ; and at last citizens who had hitherto been submissive and quiescent, recognized an appalling calamity big with fearful results to posterity.
1 Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power." vol. ii. p. 407.
2 Letter to Sumner, March 17. " I am very fearful that nothing will come of all this. The opposition is tame and disorganized. The battle is all left to our friends. Where are the Whigs and the 'Soft' Democrats? — committing themselves to how much that they cannot disavow at a moment's warning. Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom, said Chatham. I feel in the experience of this contest as if I was a thousand years old."
JEt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 363
During the month of January the people of the free States, outside of the Free Soilers, hardly realized the nature of the issue ; but February had not advanced far before the alarm and indignation were general.1 Nowhere did the feeling become more intense and pervasive than in Massachusetts. The Whig journals, allied to the commercial interest, though reserved in any discussion of the evils and wrong of slavery itself, contended in elaborate and earnest articles that the Nebraska bill was a breach of faith, and that the Compromise of 1850, instead of su- perseding, as Douglas pretended, only strengthened and affirmed the Missouri prohibition.2
The Free Soilers were the first to realize the exigency, and the earliest to organize formal protests. Having first sought, without success, to have Mr. Abbott Lawrence and Whig mem- bers of the Legislature take the lead,3 they called a State con- vention to meet at Faneuil Hall February 16 ; but though open to all, only Free Soilers took part in its proceedings. The speak- ers were Wilson, Burlingame, and Theodore Parker. A letter from Sumner was read. The mention of his name, according to the report, " was greeted with deafening applause." Wilson, re- ferring to Everett's unsatisfactory speech, said that Massachu- setts had not yet spoken in the Senate, but that Sumner would utter her voice. Mr. Adams, who had been a witness of the debates in Congress in 1820 on the Missouri Compromise, sent a letter to the convention, in which he explained fully the issue, addressed a meeting the next day for the Congressional district at Dedham, and shortly after contributed to the press a well considered paper advising as to methods of resistance.4 The Legislature, then in session, by a vote unanimous in the Senate and with only few dissents in the House, recorded the protest of the State against the measure. A large number of the towns — one -half of them, it was estimated — at the spring
1 The first important popular protest came from a meeting of the business men of New York, January 30, most of whom had supported the Compromise of 1850, held in the Broadway Tabernacle. Among the letters read at the meeting was one from Sumner. Another large meeting was held at the same place March 14, which was addressed by John A. King, Robert Emmett, William Curtis Noyes, and William C. Bryant.
2 The "Advertiser" and "Journal" had supported the Compromise of 1850, while the "Atlas" opposed it, though subsequently acquiescing. The "Advertiser's" articles against the Nebraska bill were the most elaborate. The "Courier's" opposition was from first to last only perfunctory.
3 Commonwealth, February 14.
4 Commonwealth, February 20, March 7 ; New York Evening Post, March 4.
364 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
meetings held for municipal purposes revived the custom of the Revolutionary period long since fallen into disuse, and after a discussion upon an article inserted in the warrant for the purpose, declared the solemn conviction of the people, with only here and there a stray vote in the negative, that the re- peal of the Missouri prohibition was a perfidious and wicked act.1 Public meetings, thronged by citizens irrespective of party, were held in sparsely settled districts as well as populous towns. The pulpit diverged from customary topics, and by concert on Sunday, March 5, summoned the people, as a moral and religious duty, to resist the great wrong. The clergy in their conferences and the religious press echoed the appeal. Remonstrances were everywhere signed by thousands, hardly any but the officials of the national administration withholding their names.2 Business was well-nigh suspended in the absorbing agitation. At firesides, in shops, and on the street men and women talked of little else than the impending outrage at Washington. Only in the Civil War has there ever been such unity among the people. Some there were who fell back from the enthusiasm and high resolves of this hour ; but now Massachusetts from the ocean to her most western hill stood as one man for the sacred cause.
In Boston there was a demonstration, February 23, perhaps the most notable in all her history. The mercantile Whigs, keeping aloof from the antislavery men, met in Faneuil Hall, which was filled in every part. The chairman was Samuel A. Eliot, already familiar to these pages. On the platform, in con- spicuous seats, were the merchants and lawyers who were origi- nal supporters of the Compromise of 1850, or afterwards joined in condemning the agitation for its repeal. The principal ora- tors, Hillard and Stevenson, spoke like men who had been duped by the slaveholding interest, and yet were loath to own it. They had paid, as they hinted, too high a price for what they surren- dered four years before, — a confession to which thousands before them gave audible assent.3 The temper of the multitude present
1 For illustration, only two negative votes were given in Concord and Stoughton; while in Bridgewater, Dedham, Westboro', South Reading, Fitchburg, and "Northampton there was no dissent.
2 One of the earliest remonstrances was from Andover, with eleven hundred names, including the eminent theologians of the Seminary.
3 The " Advertiser," May 29, said that the supporters of the Compromise of 1850 were entirely disgusted and disheartened. The "Atlas," in an early protest against the bill, February 21, wrote that its passage would "justify all that the Free Soil party have been saying for the past four years."
Mt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 365
was apparent when the pastor of the Old South Church, a per- sistent apologist for slavery, inopportunely undertook again its defence with certain texts of Leviticus, but was forced to desist amid cries of " shame." Winthrop's declaration that he did not as a senator " find himself able to give a conscientious support to some of the measures of the adjustment" of 1850 was re- ceived, as one who was present wrote at the time, " with a tempest of applause, hearty and long-continued." The speakers were chary of phrases and points which would confound them with the antislavery pioneers, and emphasized the argument that the Compromise of 1850 did not impair the Missouri prohibition; but nothing said by them was so effective as any incidental inti- mation that the day of compromise had forever passed. The most inspiring presence of all was the venerable Quincy, now eighty-two years of age, with no pro-slavery or Compromise record at his back, and coming uninvited and hardly welcomed by the managers, who, with all the ardor of youth, rallied his countrymen to the great contest. The speeches, except his, fell below the tone and spirit of the masses in the body of the hall, mingled with whom, in considerable numbers, were the Free Soilers, who witnessed with no common satisfaction their re- vilers and persecutors now ranged on their side. Despised, proscribed, and threatened so recently with social and legal penalties, they saw their old adversaries, the supporters of Web- ster in 1850, at last confessing the failure of Compromise, and repeating the declarations and resolves which in them had been denounced as unpatriotic and treasonable. They were the dem- onstrative part of the audience ; while the commercial Whigs, who had been toned down by the Compromise policy of 1850, 1851, and 1852, were less responsive. The antislavery veterans walked with heads erect, meeting on all sides the salutation "You were right" in State and Milk streets, where before they had encountered only averted faces.1 They might be pardoned if in this hour some human feeling mingled with their patriotic devotion ; and while ready to co-operate actively and in good faith with all opponents of the extension of slavery, they were determined that in some way there should be a public recogni- tion of the services of Henry Wilson, who more than any one had encountered obloquy for their cause. It was remarked that
1 Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 285, 286.
366 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
his appearance in any public meeting was the signal of applause more general and hearty than was accorded to any other speaker. He was at the time tireless in pressing and organizing the agita- tion, and made a laborious canvass in the first State election which followed the introduction of the Nebraska bill, — the elec- tion in New Hampshire, the President's own State, in which the Administration was defeated.1
A most interesting incident of the contest in Congress oc- curred March 14, when Everett presented the remonstrance from three thousand and fifty clergymen of all denominations and sects in New England, solemnly protesting, " in the name of Almighty God, and in his presence," against the passage of the Nebraska bill, as " a great moral wrong, ... a breach of faith eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community, . . . a measure full of danger to the Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty." 2 An organized pro- test of the clergy against a political measure was an extraordi- nary procedure ; but this one showed how solid against the repeal had become the public opinion of New England.
In order to avoid the imputation that the petition was an abo- lition manifesto, it was arranged in Boston that it should be offered by William Appleton, the member for the city, in the House, and by Everett in the Senate.3 Rev. Henry M. Dexter took the scroll, two hundred feet in length, to Washington ; and arriving early on March 14, called at once on Sumner, who was in full sympathy with his errand. The two sought Everett at his house, but he was not in. They went later to the Capitol, and there found Appleton, who received them cordially. He offered
1 The statement of the condition of public sentiment at the time, and the narrative generally have been materially aided by private letters of the period which have been accessible to the writer.
2 The idea of the petition originated in an interview between Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe and Rev. H. M. Dexter, the former assuming the expense, and the latter undertaking the executive detail. Mr. Dexter, having made a draft of the prayer, submitted it to a meet- ing of Congregational ministers held in the Old South Chapel in Boston. Rev. Nehemiah Adams, with the approval of Rev. George Blagden, proposed and interlined the amend- ment "in the name of Almighty God and in his presence." It is a curious fact that the phrase which gave so much offence to the supporters of the bill was inserted at the instance of two divines distinguished for their Southern sympathies. Mrs. Stowe, in a letter to Sumner, February 23, stated the interest which her father, her husband, and her brothers, as well as herself, had taken in the petition, and urged a well-arranged plan at Washington to give impressiveness to its presentation.
3 Sumner thought the caution of those in charge of the petition ill-advised in intrusting ' it to Everett rather than to some one who was in full sympathy with its object and disposed
to make the most of it. Wilson was of the same opinion.
JEt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 367
the petition in the House, where unanimous consent was re- quired ; and objection being made, Mr. Dexter forthwith took it to the Senate. Everett received him civilly, but betrayed a want of interest and heartiness in the matter. He, however, at once presented the petition, stating briefly the number and character of the signers, and expressing the hope that it would receive the attention due to the great weight of opinion displayed in it ; and on his motion it was laid on the table. Nothing further would have been heard of it if Douglas had not called it up a few min- utes later, and asked to have the memorial read. It was his action only that saved it from the fate of an ordinary petition, and made it an important factor in the popular agitation. He at once assailed " the political preachers," as he called them, in a bitter and offensive speech, denouncing their remonstrance as " an atrocious falsehood, and an atrocious calumny against this Senate, desecrating the pulpit, and prostituting the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics ; " and as a response to the circular of "the Abolition confede- rates " in the Senate. Mason and Butler upbraided the re- monstrants for usurping spiritual functions for the purposes of agitation. Manly words were spoken in their behalf by Houston of Texas. Everett had now an opportunity which one of his career and position ought to have welcomed ; for having himself been a clergyman, he knew well that they represented the best of New England's intelligence and worth. His speech, however, was an apology, not a vindication. Its tone was deprecatory where it should have been that of chivalrous defiance. To Doug- las's assertion that the memorial was personally offensive to himself as well as disrespectful to the Senate, his answer was that he had had no opportunity to read it, although a moment would have sufficed to run his eye over the prayer, and its pur- port was already well known to the readers of Massachusetts journals before it was brought to Washington. He bore testi- mony to the high character of the remonstrants as a body ; disclaimed for them any desire to kindle angry passions or to engage in political controversy ; regretted that the memorial, which under the circumstances he had felt it his duty to present, should have awakened any feeling on the part of any member of the Senate, and instanced the precedents for presenting such pa- pers ; but he refrained from repelling in the manner the occasion required the accusations and epithets which had been heaped on
368 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
the clergymen of New England. His constituents, as well as the clerical signers, were generally dissatisfied with his course in the debate. He appeared cautious not to identify himself with the assailed document, and anxious to disembarrass him- self from responsibility for it. It was complained that he failed to speak with manly spirit and patriotic feeling, and to give his sanction to the petition as bearing the testimony of the morality and religion of New England against the Nebraska project.1
Pettit of Indiana followed Everett with an assault on the me- morialists marked by his usual coarseness and indecency, and moved that it be referred to the chaplain of the Senate for ex- amination and report. Douglas, taking the floor again, berated the clergy for introducing religious sanctions into their protest, and for appealing to the Supreme Being ; while he discharged Everett, in view of his explanation and uniform conduct, of all blame in presenting it. Houston rising again, put the respon- sibility of the agitation on the repealers instead of upon the pro- testing clergymen, where it was being sought to place it. The memorialists were then defended by Seward and assailed by Badger. Everett remained silent after his first explanation. Sumner took no part in the debate. He had scruples against interfering with his colleague, to whose charge the memorial had been committed. He would, if he had spoken, have felt compelled to adopt a different tone ; and he was careful, per- haps unduly so, not to court, even in appearance, comparisons and contrasts between Everett and himself as representatives of Massachusetts in the Senate. Houston also appealed to him to be silent, wishing himself to conduct the controversy with Doug- las without any embarrassment from antislavery senators.
Sumner wrote to Mr. Dexter, March 17 : —
"I' desire you to bear in mind that in committing the memorial to Mr. Everett he was marked as its guardian and defender in the Senate. Any in- terference from me, his colleague, particularly in a tone contrasting with his, might have seemed indelicate and unkind. There is another fact which I did
l The " Congregationalist," March 24, April 28, May 12 and June 2, contains Mr. Dex- ter's report and statements; "Commonwealth," March 15, 25, 31, and April 6; "National Era," March 23; "New Bedford Mercury," in March; "Boston Traveller," March 20. The "Evening Post," March 8, was severe in its criticisms upon Everett. See also dates of March 3,4, 17; April 10, 11, 15; May 20, 23. The Springfield "Republican," March 20 and May 20, noted the general dissatisfaction with him. The private correspondence of the time was emphatic in the same direction ; but there is no occasion to repeat here the strong epithets which were then freely applied to Mr. Everett.
JEt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 369
not mention to you, I believe. When Douglas commenced his attack, General Houston cried out to me, ' Sumner, don't speak, don't speak ! leave him to me ! ' ' Will you take care of him 1 ' said I. ' Yes, if you will leave him to me,' was the General's response. He said that he was ' desirous that Douglas should have no opportunity to sustain his charge that this memorial was the work of the Abolition confederates.' But notwithstanding these things, I have my regrets that I allowed the debate to close without a few words that would identify me completely with the remonstrants. At the earliest possible day I shall present the supplementary remonstrances without apology and proudly."
Immediately after the debate of March 14, Everett made a visit to Boston for a week. When the House Nebraska bill passed the Senate in May, he was again in Boston, and his ab- sence on account of illness was explained by Sumner in the Senate. The same month, while at home, he resigned his seat on account of ill health and domestic circumstances, the resig- nation to take effect June 1. This was the end of his public life. The Free Soilers were unsparing in their censures of his course, and even his Whig supporters had no regrets for his re- tirement.1 His distaste for a contest on the slavery question was thought at the time to enter largely into his decision to sur- render a post which he had recently taken with high expecta- tions.2 He was not broken in health, for his subsequent life was full of activity, comprehending long journeys in the delivery of his oration on Washington, and the production of addresses and papers which fill a large share of his published works.3 His failure to meet public expectations in contests which attracted universal interest materially strengthened Sumner's position in Massachusetts, particularly with those not heretofore his sup- porters. Fortunately for his fame, Mr. Everett survived till nearly the end of the Civil War, during which, at critical pe- riods, he did great service to the national cause by his example and eloquence.
C. F. Adams wrote, March 17, 1854 : —
" Your colleague has not bettered himself here by his last movement. He has entirely verified what I predicted of him to you the year of his election, —
1 Springfield "Republican," May 20. The Governor appointed Julius Rockwell to fill the vacant place till the election of a successor
2 Choate noted Everett's desponding views at this time, and the turning of his personal hopes away from politics. Brown's "Life" of Choate, p. 297.
3 Everett did not include in his "Orations and Speeches," published in four volumes, his speeches on the Nebraska bill and the Clerical Protest, although including his tribute to Vice-President King, which could be of little interest to readers at that or any subse- quent period.
vol. in. 24
370 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
stuff not good enough to wear in rainy weather, though bright enough in sun- shine. I conjectured your reason for not speaking, although I think I should have done differently. The opportunity was too good to remind Douglas and the country that he was alienating the best friends of the great Compromise of 1850 by his assault upon these clergymen. Even my minister's name1 is upon the paper, in spite of his sermon which earned for him so many laudations at Washiugton a couple of years ago. . . . Never mind, one of the best things about the business is, that it has put you in a strong place. This will materi- ally enlarge your sphere of usefulness"
The passage of the bill in the Senate by a well-nigh unani- mous South, and the body of the Democratic senators from the North, was assured from the beginning ; hut its fate in the House was uncertain. A vote in the latter body, March 21, referring the Senate bill to the committee of the whole, indicated a ma- jority of fifteen against it ; but roll-calls, May 8 and 9, disclosed a change of front on the part of several Northern Democrats. The Administration brought a pressure to bear upon its North- ern supporters, and secured a majority. A mass of business having precedence stood in the way of reaching the Senate bill ; and another bill identical nearly in terms was introduced and finally passed, just before midnight, May 22, by thirteen ma- jority, after stubborn resistance, under the resolute and skilful management of Alexander H. Stephens. The bill, only changed by striking out Clayton's amendment, which confined suffrage to citizens, was promptly sent to the Senate, where Sumner's ob- jection stopped it for a day. Other business being laid aside, it occupied the Senate during the 24th and 25th till an hour after midnight, when it passed finally by a vote of thirty-five to thir- teen. The two days' debate ran largely on incidental and per- sonal matters. The result was predetermined, and on neither side was there a disposition to go over the ground already tra- versed. Bell held the floor for hours with a wordy explanation, extended from one day to the next, of his embarrassment in separating himself by his vote from the body of Southern Whig- senators and representatives. Wade, Seward, Chase, and Sum- ner, standing alone for the free States in the debate, renewed in earnest speeches their protests against the bill, and each found cause of hope in an awakened North. Sumner spoke last of the four at midnight, just before Douglas was to close the debate. The galleries were crowded to the end. Sumner offered as he
i Rev. William P. Lunt.
JEt. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 371
began several remonstrances, chiefly from New England clergy- men, which had been intended for the larger remonstrance pre- sented by Mr. Everett, but which had failed to arrive in season to be included in it. No longer constrained by the presence of his colleague, to whom the original document had been in- trusted, he began with a vindication of the clergymen, both as to the form and substance of their appeal and their united ac- tion. The speech, lasting only for a few minutes, was full of spirit, and never probably in so few words did he produce so much effect on the public mind. Of the clergy he said : —
" With pleasure and pride I now do this service, and at this last stage in- terpose the sanctity of the pulpits of New England to arrest an alarming outrage, believing that the remonstrants, from their eminent character and influence as representatives of the intelligence and conscience of the country, are peculiarly entitled to be heard ; and further believing that their remon- strances, while respectful in form, embody just conclusions, both of opinion and fact. Like them, sir, I do not hesitate to protest against the bill yet pending before the Senate, as a great moral wrong, as a breach of public faith, as a measure full of danger to the peace and even existence of our Union. And, sir, believing in God, as I profoundly do, I cannot doubt that the open- ing of an immense region to so great an enormity as slavery is calculated to draw down upon our country his righteous judgments.
" ' In the name of Almighty God, and in his presence,' these remonstrants protest against the Nebraska bill. In this solemn language, most strangely pronounced blasphemous on this floor, there is obviously no assumption of ecclesiastical power, as is perversely charged, but simply a devout observance of the Scriptural injunction, ' Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord.' Let me add, also, that these remonstrants, in this very language, have followed the example of the Senate, which at our present session has ratified at least one important treaty begiuuing with these precise words, ' In the name of Almighty God.' Surely, if the Senate may thus as- sume to speak, the clergy may do likewise without imputation of blasphemy, or any just criticism, at least in this body.
" I am unwilling, particularly at this time, to be betrayed into anything like a defence of the clergy ; they need no such thing at my hands. There are men in this Senate justly eminent for eloquence, learning, and ability ; but there is no man here competent, except in his own conceit, to sit in judgment on the clergy of New Englaud. Honorable senators, so swift with criticism and sarcasm, might profit by their example. Perhaps the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler], who is not insensible to scholarship, might learn from them something of its graces. Perhaps the senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], who finds no sanction under the Constitution for any remonstrance from clergy- men, might learn from them something of the privileges of an American citi- zen. And perhaps the senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] , who precipitated this odious measure upon the country, might learn from them something of political wisdom. Sir, from the first settlement of these shores, from those
372 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
early days of struggle and privation, through the trials of the Revolution, the clergy are associated not only with the piety and the learning, but with the liberties of the country. New England for a long time was governed by their prayers more than by any acts of the Legislature ; and at a later day their voices aided even the Declaration of Independence. The clergy of our time speak, then, not only from their own virtues, but from echoes yet surviving in the pulpits of their fathers."
He welcomed the uprising of the North, already manifest, and in prophetic words forewarned the Senate of the coming of civil strife : —
" Sir Philip Sidney, speaking to Queen Elizabeth of the spirit in the Netherlands animating every man, woman, and child against the Spanish power, exclaimed : ' It is the spirit of the Lord, and is irresistible.' A kin- dred spirit now animates the free States against the slave-power, breathing everywhere its involuntary inspiration, and forbidding repose under the at- tempted usurpation. It is the spirit of the Lord, and is irresistible. The threat of disunion, too often sounded in our ears, will be disregarded by an aroused and indignant people. Ah, sir, senators vainly expect peace. Not in this way can peace come. In passing such a bill as is now threatened you scatter, from this dark midnight hour, no seeds of harmony and good- will, but broadcast through the land dragons' teeth, which haply may not spring up in direful crops of armed men, yet I am assured, sir, will fructify in civil strife and feud. From the depths of my soul, as loyal citizen and as senator, I plead, remonstrate, protest against the passage of this bill. I struggle against it as against death ; but as in death itself corruption puts on incorruption, and this mortal body puts on immortality, so from the sting of this hour I find assurance of that triumph by which freedom will be restored to her immortal birthright in the republic."
To him the measure about to pass was at once the worst and the best on which Congress had ever acted, — the worst, as it was a present victory of slavery, with woes and crimes in its track ; and the best, as annulling all past compromises with slavery, and making any future compromise impossible, and putting the opposing forces face to face in a grapple where the triumph of freedom was assured. Closing, he said : —
" Thus, sir, standing at the very grave of freedom in Nebraska and Kansas, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection by which freedom will be assured, not only in these territories, but everywhere under the national government. More clearly than ever before, I now penetrate that great future when slavery must disappear. Proudly I discern the flag of my country as it ripples in every breeze, — at last in reality as in name, the flag of freedom, undoubted, pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the best on which Congress ever acted? Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you commit, — joyfully I welcome the promise of the future."
^Et. 42-43.] REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 373
Mason followed with an objection to the reception of the re- monstrances and animadversions on the clerical signers. Sum- ner replied briefly, maintaining the right of clergymen to come as a class or body, according to the custom of other citizens, and their duty to do so when a wicked measure full of peril and shame to the country is impending. Douglas, in closing the debate, betrayed sensitiveness on two points, — the action of the New England ministers, whom he accused of " hypocriti- cally assuming to be the followers of our Saviour, . . . converting the pulpit into the hustings, and profaning the holy Sabbath by stump speeches from the sacred desk;" and Wade's and Chase's prediction of the withdrawal of the Northern Whigs in a body from their Southern associates, and their absorption in a new antislavery party, which would consolidate the free States, — a movement which he denounced as " contemplating civil war, servile insurrection, and disunion." Indeed, there were already tokens of the revolution in politics which Wade and Chase had foreshadowed. The Administration had lost New Hampshire, the President's State, by a union of the forces opposed to it ; and the Whig Legislature of Connecticut had chosen as senator Gil- lette, a Free Soiler of the Chase and Sumner type, who had that morning taken his oath, and was that night to give his vote against the bill. Sumner's speech on the night of the final passage of the bill commanded unusual attention. It was briefer than most of his efforts, and found a place in many newspapers which had not before printed his speeches. As a vindication of the New England clergy by a New England senator, without re- serve or apology, it was the discharge of a duty which his col- league had left unperformed ; and from ministers of various denominations came testimonies of grateful admiration.1
Whittier wrote of the speech : " It was everywhere com- mended. Indeed, all things considered, I think it the best speech of the session. It was the fitting word ; it entirely satisfied me ; and with a glow of heart I thanked God that its author was my friend." Hillard wrote, June 2 : " Your last brief speech on the Nebraska bill is capital, — I think the best speech you have ever made. The mixture of dignity and spirit is most happy." The Springfield " Republican," June 7, called it " brief, eloquent, and to the point ; " and later, while expressing a preference for a man of a different type for sena-
i Works, vol. iii. p. 336.
374 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
tor, it said : " Where lives the man who has more thoroughly proclaimed and vindicated the sentiment of the North during the past winter than Charles Sumner ? " Even the " Atlas," June 12, commended his " consistent and unwavering fidelity to freedom."
The seizure of a fugitive slave in Boston intensified the agita- tion in New England. While the Senate was engaged in the discussion of the bill, Anthony Burns was arrested on the even- ing of May 24, on the claim of one Sutter, a Virginian, and taken to the court house, where he was held by the United States marshal under an armed guard for a hearing before Edward G. Loring, a commissioner. On the evening of the 26th a body of citizens, leaving Faneuil Hall, where an immense meeting had been addressed by Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, F. W. Bird, and John L. Swift, proceeded to the court house, and endeavored to force an entrance. The attempt at a rescue failed ; but in the defence, Batchelder, a truckman, one of the guards temporarily appointed by the marshal, was killed by a pistol-shot. The commissioner held that the negro, who was defended by R. H. Dana, Jr., was the claimant's slave, and gave the order for his rendition,1 — which was speedily carried into effect by the marshal and his deputies, supported by United States soldiers and marines, and aided by the city police and State militia acting under the mayor's orders, and in the guise of keeping the peace.2
The excitement in Boston surpassed any known in its previ- ous history. Various circumstances conspired to this end. It was an unfamiliar spectacle, as the last fugitive-slave case was that of Sims in 1851. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had sundered the tie which bound conservatism to slavery, and arrayed the mass of good citizens against the further extension of slavery. The spell of compromise had been broken, and the sentiment was widespread that there must be no more activity in executing the Fugitive Slave Act. The time of the trial and
1 Loring was removed by legislative address in 1858 from the office of Judge of Pro- bate for persisting in holding, in violation of a statute of the State, the two offices of United States commissioner and judge of a State court. President Buchanan, in recog- nition of his service in the rendition of Burns, promptly appointed him a judge of the United States Court of Claims. He held that office till 1877, and died in 1890.
2 Seward, while deploring the return of the slave to bondage ("Life," vol. ii. p. 232), "found satisfaction for it in the humiliation it has brought upon Boston and Massachu- setts. It is a severe cure for their misconduct in 1850, which betrayed us all through the Union."
Mr. 42-43.] REPEAL, OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 375
rendition was "Anniversary Week," when the people of New England, especially their spiritual leaders, were assembled in Boston to advance by prayer, conference, and appeal great causes of religion and humanity. The Antislavery Society, always attracting a large audience, was holding its annual session, and a Free Soil convention was meeting under a call issued some weeks before for considering the political situa- tion. Poor creature as Batchelder was, and no baser than the rest, his death gave a sort of dignity to a fruitless outbreak, which was not without its melodramatic points. The citizens in this hour seemed to have a new birth. A petition calling for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, placed in the Mer- chants' Exchange, received nearly three thousand names, largely of merchants hitherto swift to support compromise and slave rendition. Such was the change of feeling in this class, that, though they would not have personally assisted in a rescue, they would have rejoiced to see it accomplished by others. It is worthy of note, as showing the revolution in public senti- ment, that among the signers was Pierson, who had before cor- dially supplied vessels for the transportation of fugitive slaves when recovered by their masters.1
The hearing of the Burns case, with the popular resistance and the death of Batchelder, produced an excitement in Wash- ington not less than that in Boston. The sensation was pro- digious ; and the first thought among pro-slavery men was to attribute the homicide to some antislavery leader holding a public position. By an anachronism it was ascribed to Sum- ner's midnight speech, which was not known in Boston till the day after the affair at the court house, and particularly to his prediction, " You scatter from this dark midnight hour no seeds of harmony and good-will, but broadcast through the land drag- ons' teeth, which haply may not spring up in direful crops of armed men, yet I am assured, sir, will fructify in civil strife and feud." The language was prophetic of future mischief, though in no respect an exhortation to violence. But there was no disposition to observe points of time or weigh words ; and the excited slaveholders in Washington undertook to hold Sumner personally responsible for what was called the assassi- nation of an officer of the government in the discharge of his
1 Ante, pp. 130, 193. Pierson in his letter (Boston " Courier," November 13), while stating that he had signed the petition, justified his former action.
376 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SILMNER. [1853-54.
duty. The Administration's two organs, the " Union " and the " Star," teemed with articles designed to incite individual and mob violence against him. They charged him with " giving the command," and " the word which encourages the assassin, . . . in- citing his constituents to resist federal laws, even to the shedding of blood," and "daily violating his official oath;" and demanded that "Sumner and his infamous gang" should no longer be tole- rated in society. The meaning of this language was well under- stood. The correspondents of Northern journals on the ground recognized in it a strenuous and concerted effort to raise a mob against the Massachusetts senator in retaliation for Batchel- der's fate, and so advised the public. The slaveholding popu- lation of Alexandria was aroused, and uttered against him threats of seizure, personal indignity, and murderous violence. The tidings of the mob spirit at the Capital brought a response from the North. George Livermore, a merchant of even temper and moderate views, expressed the general thought of Massachu- setts when he wrote, June 3 : " Let the minions of the Adminis- tration and of the slavocracy harm one hair of your head, and they will raise a whirlwind which will sweep them to destruc- tion." Joseph R. Hawley, then an editor at Hartford, since dis- tinguished in war and peace, offered to go to Washington and stay by with revolvers, ready to play at the same game if any- body there or in Alexandria really meant to trouble the senator, or any other Free Democrat. Sumner, however, though receiv- ing friendly cautions to be on his guard, and even to leave the city, did not deviate from his usual round, and walked always unarmed from his lodgings through the main thoroughfare, Pennsylvania Avenue, to the Capitol. Once at the restaurant, where he dined, he was menaced and insulted ; but nothing- more was then attempted. To use his own words, " The violence was postponed, but the malignant spirit continued active." 1
Sumner wrote to Theodore Parker, June 12 : —
"The great petition for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave bill ought to be presented in the Senate, when its character and history can be recorded, and a debate upon it provoked. In the House it must be presented under the rule, without opportunity for even a word. Bear these things in mind, but with- out mentioning my name. To present it would be a grateful service for me ; but I would not seek the opportunity. I should follow it at once by notice
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 347—350, where the newspaper articles are in part given. See also Boston ' Atlas," June 14 ; New York " Evening Post," June 1 and July 5.
Mr. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 377
of a bill to repeal the Fugitive Slave bill. My first impression was to give this notice to-day; but I have concluded to wait the movement of the Boston petitioners, and to put myself in the position of carrying out their desires. I am glad you liked those few words of mine. I had intended to make an elaborate speech of a different kind, but the determination to close the debate that night induced me to change my purpose. The rulers of the country are the President, with dishing, Davis, and Forney.1 Nobody else has influence. These are hot for Cuba and war.
" The howl of the press here against me has been the best homage I ever received. My opposition to all that iniquity is not merely by speech, but in every available way ; and they know it. The threats to put a bullet through my head, and hang me, and mob me, have been frequent. I have always said, ' Let them come ; they will find me at my post/ "
Hitherto Sumner's relations with the Southern senators had
4
been those of mutual courtesy, and with some of them quite cordial. He was often engaged in friendly talks with Butler and Mason, who sat one before and the other behind him,2 though of late a growing reserve between him and them had been noticed.3 He had been scrupulous in observing the rules of decorum, and had given no occasion for a personal griev- ance, confining himself in the treatment of the slavery as well as other questions to a discussion of measures and policies, even in his main speech on the Nebraska bill, and abstaining from any impeachment of motives or any altercations with sen- ators.4 This was the testimony of observers, even of those not sympathetic with his views. It will be remembered that during his first session he received in silence the epithets applied to him at the close of his speech against the Fugitive Slave Act. Except in one or two instances, he had been decently treated in debate ; but his interchange of courtesies and pleasantries with most of the Southern senators was now to end. As he after- wards wrote : " From the Kansas and Nebraska bill came forth
1 Caleb Cushing, Jefferson Davis, and John W. Forney.
2 His friendly relations with Butler appear in the debates on the Nebraska bill, Feb- ruary 24 and 25 and May 25, 1854.
3 New York Tribune, June 28.
4 Douglas in debate, March 3, 1854, admitted Sumner's "bland manners and amiable deportment" up to the time of the Nebraska contest. The "National Intelligencer," Oct. 5, 1854, while contending against his positions, wrote : "But we are bound to admit that in his most excited discourses in the Senate on this subject, — that is, on questions affecting these rights, — as well as in his general personal intercourse (so far as we are informed), he has not been in the habit of transgressing the bounds of parliamentary law or the require- ments of courtesy and good breeding." A similar tribute was given in the New York "Evening Post," June 1, and the Wheeling (Va.) "Gazette," quoted in the "Common- wealth," September 4.
378 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
a demon." The intemperate and violent spirit which raged in the slaveholding class ruled likewise in the Senate. It recog- nized in him its foremost antagonist, and resolved to silence him by insults, social ostracism, and if need be by violence. In what manner it was met by him the sequel will show.
The Boston petition for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, with its weighty array of names, was presented June 22 in the Senate by Rockwell, the successor of Everett, who moved its reference to the committee on the judiciary. Unlike the uncere- monious treatment which similar documents had received be- fore, it was debated at length and duly referred. Naturally it stirred unusual feeling on account of its connection with the Burns-Batchelder case, as one of the earliest demonstrations of a change of feeling in the conservative and mercantile classes growing out of the repeal of the Missouri prohibition. Jones of Tennessee, who opened the debate June 26, directed his remarks chiefly to a recent address issued by the anti-Nebraska members of Congress ; but he took occasion to denounce " such misera- ble miscreants as Parker, Phillips, and such kindred spirits ; " joined Batchelder and Joseph Warren as martyrs of liberty and law falling in the same great cause ; and denounced the memorial as " teeming with treason and reeking with the blood of an innocent victim." He spoke again after a reply from Rockwell, and signified disunion as the fixed purpose of the South if the Fugitive Slave law should be repealed and the Mis- souri prohibition restored. Sumner then took the floor.1 He put aside peremptorily the suggestion of the senator from Ten- nessee that the Union was dependent on the Fugitive Slave Act ; set forth summarily the points in which the Act conflicted with the Constitution and with common right ; reviewed the history of the resistance to the Stamp Act as a precedent for dealing with its modern counterpart ; and welcomed, in the main body of the petitioners, a most important accession to the antislavery movement. His remarks, which were free from any matter tending to excite personal feeling, contained this reference to the recent slave-case in Boston : —
"In response for Massachusetts, there are other things. Something surely must he pardoned to her history. In Massachusetts stands Boston ; in Bos- ton stands Fanenil Hall, where throughout the perils which preceded the Rev- olution our patriot fathers assemhled to vow themselves to freedom. Here in
l Works, vol. iii. pp. 355-367.
JEt. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 379
those days spoke James Otis, full of the thought that ' the people's safety is the law of God.' Here also spoke Joseph Warren, inspired hy the sentiment that ' death with all its tortures is preferable to slavery.' And here also thun- dered John Adams, fervid with the conviction that ' consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust.' Not far from this venerable hall — between this temple of freedom and the very court house to which the senator [Mr. Jones] has referred — is the street where, in 1770, the first blood was spilt in conflict between British troops and American citizens, and among the victims was one of that African race which you so much despise. Almost within sight is Bunker Hill; further off, Lexington and Concord. Amidst these scenes a slave-hunter from Virginia appears, and the disgusting rites begin by which a fellow-man is sacrificed. Sir, can you wonder that our people are moved ?
'Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.'
It is true that the Slave Act was with difficulty executed, and that one of its servants perished in the madness. On these grounds the senator from Ten- nessee charges Boston with fanaticism. I express no opinion on the conduct of individuals ; but I do say that the fanaticism which the senator condemns is not new in Boston. It is the same which opposed the execution of the Stamp Act, and finally secured its repeal ; it is the same which opposed the Tea-tax ; it is the fanaticism which finally triumphed on Bunker Hill. The 6enator says that Boston is filled with traitors. That charge is not new. Bos- ton of old was the home of Hancock and Adams. Her traitors now are those who are truly animated by the spirit of the American Revolution. In con- demning them, in condemning Massachusetts, in condemning these remon- strants, you simply give proper conclusion to the utterance on this floor that the Declaration of Independence is ' a self-evident lie.' "
Butler came into the chamber while the debate was going on. He had not prepared himself for it, but he could never keep silent when slavery was the topic. He rose when Sum- ner finished, and without replying to his argument, commented offensively upon his rhetoric, — " vapid rhetoric," as he called it, — and commended "the calmness, gravity, and dignity" of "the other honorable gentleman from Massachusetts."1 Avow- ing his own opinion that primarily the duty to return fugitive slaves rested upon the States only, he turned, while speaking, to Rockwell, and inquired whether, in the event of the duty being left to them, Massachusetts would execute the Constitu- tion, and after a trial by jury or in any other mode send the
1 Later in the debate (June 28) Mallory of Florida made a similar contrast between the two senators from Massachusetts. This mode of meeting Sumner's arguments was not a new one. A similar contrast between him and Everett was drawn in the debate on the Nebraska bill, and between him and John Davis in 1852 in the debate on the motion to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. In these personal comparisons the Southern senators recog- nized that they had a new kind of antagonist to deal with.
380 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54
fugitives back. Custom allowed Rockwell to answer or remain silent, as he saw fit ; and not caring at that time to take defi- nite ground on the point of inquiry, or to enter on a discussion of the general question, he kept his seat.1 Butler then turning to Sumner, demanded in an impetuous manner : " Will this honorable senator tell me that he will do it?" Sumner in- stantly replied, " Does the honorable senator ask me if I would personally join in sending a fellow-man into bondage ? Is thy servant a dbg that he should do this thing ? " Butler became at once very much excited, and was more than ever exasperated by Sumner's " rhetoric," which he again fell upon with fresh epithets, and then restated the question : " I asked him whether he would execute the Constitution of the United States without any fugitive-slave law, and he answered me, is he a dog — " Sumner here interrupted : " The senator asked me if I would help to reduce a fellow-man to bondage. I answered him." Butler resumed : " Then you would not obey the Constitution. Sir [turning to Sumner], standing here before this tribunal, where you swore to support it, you rise and tell me that you regard it the office of a dog to enforce it. You stand in my presence as a coequal senator, and tell me that it is a dog's office to execute the Constitution of the United States." Sum- ner answered : " I recognize no such obligation." Butler then finished by saying : " I know you do not. But nobody cares about your recognitions as an individual ; but as a senator, and a constitutional representative, you stand differently re- lated to this body. But enough of this." Mason followed, and spoke with the overbearing tone and manner habitual with him in such debates. Rather absurdly he alleged that Sumner had, " either ignorantly or corruptly," he did not know or care which, assailed " rudely, wantonly, grossly, the dignity of the Senate," by asserting that the Fugitive Slave law denied to persons arrested under it the writ of habeas corpus. He said that Sumner in applying the term " slave-hunter " to the claim- ant of Burns had made use of vulgar language, which " betrayed the vulgarity of his associations at home," and asked whether it should " be tolerated in the American Senate," and charged him and his associates in that body with having " roused and in- flamed the Boston mob to the verge of treason, subjecting them
l This question, casually put to Rockwell first and to Sumner next, in connection with the latter's answer, gave to the debate its personal direction.
Mt. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 381
to traitors' doom." Pettit of Indiana then began a ribald speech of which even his fellow-Democrats must have been ashamed. He defended his assertion that the Declaration of Independence is a " self-evident lie," and illustrated his notion of human equal- ity by saying that Sumner could no more be the equal of Web- ster than " the jackal was the equal of the lion, or the buzzard the equal of the eagle." He thought that " in a moral point of view the senator from Massachusetts could not, in view of his declaration that day, find any one beneath himself." He kept on personally addressing Sumner, and the president twice in- terposed, requiring him to address the chair. He treated Sumner's reply to Butler as a repudiation of a senator's oath justifying expulsion ; and what the latter as well as what Mason said in debate indicates that this measure was being seriously considered.
The debate went over to the 28th, when the assaults on Sum- ner were renewed. The pro-slavery party now showed increased venom ; and Pettit, Mallory,1 and Clay of Alabama were prepared with the most opprobrious epithets. Pettit began the day with a personal explanation concerning the official report of the pre- ceding debate ; and on Sumner's stating that he himself had used the language there given, Pettit cried out, " Utterly false ! " when the president directed him to keep himself within the rules of order. Dixon made a prepared speech in defence of the law, which was earnest though not ill-tempered ; but other- wise its supporters were intensely bitter and personal, and all their shafts were centred on Sumner. The grossncss of Clay's epithets — of which " miscreant," " serpent," " spaniel," " a sneaking, sinuous, snake-like poltroon," acting " with unblush- ing presumption and insolence," and " meriting the nadir of social degradation," were some of the more decent — has never been exceeded in Congress ; and he would have been stopped if a point of order had been raised.2
It would not have been human in Sumner to remain silent under the tirade of personality which was poured upon him, and at length he turned upon his assailants. He had been hitherto forbearing under severe provocation ; but the time had
1 Afterwards Secretary of the Navy in the Confederate cabinet.
2 It should be noted that most of the senators kept aloof from the debate, and the offences against propriety were confined to four Southern senators and their ally from Indiana. Rusk of Texas did not find the debate "edifying," and the accord of others with his feeling may be implied from their silence.
382 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
come when forbearance could mean only a want of manly spirit. Alluding, as he began, to their coarse and unparliamentary speech, he declined to imitate them, or " to interfere with the enjoyment which they find in such exposure of themselves." Keeping strictly within the rules, he called attention to "the plantation manners " of the senators from South Carolina and Virginia, applying to them Jefferson's description of the pas- sions and habits natural to masters of slaves, and warned them that "no ardor of menace or tyrannical frown could shake his fixed resolve." Defending the term " slave-hunter," which he had applied to the Virginia claimant of Burns, he said : " Sir, I choose to call things by their right names. White I call white, and black I call black ; and where a person degrades himself to the work of chasing a fellow-man who under the inspiration of freedom and the guidance of the North Star has sought a free- man's home, far away from coffle or chain, that person, whoso- ever he may be, I call ' slave-hunter.' " He refuted the charge that Massachusetts was ever "a slaveholding " State in any just sense, showing that slavery was at no time a distinctive feature of her progressive civilization, and that it disappeared at an early day under the humane sentiments of her people and the benign spirit of her laws.1 Of his two more respectable assailants he said : —
" Such, sir, is my answer on this head to the senator from South Carolina. If the work which I undertook has been done thoroughly, he must not blame me. Justice demanded that it should be thorough. But while thus repelling insinuations against Massachusetts, and assumptions for slavery, I would not unnecessarily touch the sensibilities of that senator, or of the State which he represents. I cannot forget that amidst all diversities of opinion we are bound together by ties of a common country ; that Massachusetts and South Caro- lina are sister States, and that the concord of sisters ought to prevail be- tween them ; but I am constrained to declare that throughout this debate I have sought in vain any token of that just spirit which within the sphere of its influence is calculated to promote the concord whether of State or of individuals.
"And now for the present I part with the venerable senator from South
1 Later he justified his position on this point, maintaining that the term "slaveholding States" meant properly only "those in which slavery has been an established policy and professedly an essential element in their civilization." Seward, when called upon as to slavery in New York, contented himself with the admission that every twelfth man in New York was at the time of the Revolution a slave, without explaining that the general policy of the State was in favor of the extermination of slavery. His reticence was the occasion of criticism.
^Et. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 383
Carolina.1 Pursuing his inconsistencies, and exposing them to judgment, I had almost forgotten his associate leader in the wanton personal assault upon me in this long debate, — I mean the veteran senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], who is now directly in my eye. With an imperious look, and in the style of Sir Forcible Feeble, that senator undertakes to call in question my statement that the Fugitive Slave Act denies the writ of habeas corpus ; and in doing this, he assumes a superiority for himself which, permit me to tell him now in this presence, nothing in him can warrant. Sir, I claim little for myself; but I shrink in no respect from any comparison with that senator, veteran though he be. Sitting near him, as has been my fortune since I had the honor of a seat in this chamber, I have come to know something of his conversation, something of his manners, something of his attainments, something of his abilities, something of his character, — ay, sir, and something of his asso- ciations ; and while I would not disparage him in any of these respects, I feel that I do not exalt .myself unduly, that I do not claim too much for the posi- tion which I hold or the name which I have established, when I openly de- clare that, as senator of Massachusetts, and as man, I place myself at every point in unhesitating comparison with that honorable assailant. And to his peremptory assertion that the Fugitive Slave Act does not deny the habeas corpus I oppose my assertion, peremptory as his own, that it does ; and there I leave that issue."
Of other assailants, whose style in debate put them beneath notice, he said, turning at the end towards Mallory and Clay :
"Such, Mr. President, is my response to all that has been said in this debate, so far as I deem it in any way worthy of attention. To the two associate chieftains in this personal assault — the veteran senator from Vir- ginia, and the senator from South Carolina with the silver-white locks — I have replied completely. It is true that others have joined in the cry which these associates first started ; but I shall not be tempted further. Some there are best answered by silence, best answered by withholding the words which leap impulsively to the lips."
In repelling the charge that he was false to his official oath, Sumner affirmed that he had sworn to support the Constitution as he understood it, not as it was understood by others or in- terpreted by any authority, and cited as explicitly sustaining his position the declarations of President Jackson and James
1 Parts of Butler's speech justify the impression that he was of a generous nature, and under different conditions would have deserved esteem. At first he confessed a reluctance to pursue the matter to a personal issue with Sumner, on account of their former friendly relations, particularly on account of the latter's revision of his classical quotations and other literary service ; but as the first day's colloquy left the advantage with Sumner, he felt obliged to renew the controversy on the 28th. This is related on the authority of Mr. Rockwell. Butler stated in his speech June 12, 1856 (Congressional Globe, App. p. 626), that up to the delivery of this speech of Sumner he spoke with him, but that he then gave him notice that he should have no further communication with him, and that after that he had none.
384 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
Buchanan, and turning to Mason and Butler, asked them if they dissented from it. But though he paused for a reply, none came. He then said : —
"Now, in this interpretation of the Constitution I may be wrong; others may differ from me. The senator from Virginia may be otherwise minded, and the senator from South Carolina also ; and they will, each aud all, act according to their respective understanding. For myself, I shall act accord- ing to mine. On this explicit statement of my constitutional obligations I stand, as upon a living rock ; and to the inquiry, in whatever form addressed to my personal responsibility, whether I would aid, directly or indirectly, in reducing or surrendering a fellow-man to bondage, I reply again, ' Is thy ser- vant a dog, that he should do this thing ? '
" And, sir, looking round upon this Senate, I might ask fearlessly, how many there are, even in this body — if indeed there be a single senator — who would stoop to any such service ? Until some one rises aud openly con- fesses his willingness to become a slave-hunter, I will not believe there can be one [here Sumner paused, but nobody rose] ; and yet honorable and chival- rous senators have rushed headlong to denounce me because I openly declared my repudiation of a service at which every manly bosom must revolt. ' Sire, I have found in Bayonne good citizens and brave soldiers, but not one execu- tioner,' was the noble utterance of the governor of that place to Charles IX. of France in response to the royal edict for the massacre of St. Bartholomew ; and such a spirit, I trust, will yet animate the people of this country when pressed to the service of ' dogs.' "
He denied Butler's right " to ejaculate a lecture " at Massachu- setts or himself on constitutional obligations, coming as he did from a State which had expelled the venerable Samuel Hoar, " an unarmed old man, with hair as silver white almost as that of the senator before me," when visiting it on a constitutional errand ; which had rifled the national mails of antislavery pub- lications ; which was " seamed all over with the scars of nulli- fication," and " threatened nullification as often as babies cry." Hitherto, unwilling to wound, he had avoided reference to the obvious contrasts between free and slave States, specially shun- ning all allusion to South Carolina ; but now he accepted the challenge, and in response to the claim of " the senator with his silver-white locks " that " the independence of America was won by the arms and treasure of slaveholding communities," he showed by statistics and state papers how small in proportion was their contribution to that great result, as admitted by them- selves and stated by unimpeachable authorities, on account of their weakness and fears growing out of their slave population. He declined to commit Massachusetts definitely as to what her
Mt. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 385
Legislature would do if left to carry out the clause of the Con- stitution, and said only that she " at all times has been ready to do her duty under the Constitution, as she understands it, and I doubt not will ever continue of this mind. More than this I cannot say."
After Sumner finished, Clay, Butler, and Pettit bandied again their familiar epithets. Both before and after his speech there was a discussion as to the precise form of his answer to Butler's inquiry, — his assailants asserting that he had disclaimed the obligation of his oath to support the Constitution, and that his language had been altered by the official reporter at his in- stance, and he denying that any change in sense had been made. Fessenden's recollection, which was clear, was as follows : —
" The answer made by the senator from Massachusetts was in these pre- cise words : ' I recognize no such obligation.' I did not understand that sen- ator as meaning to say that he would not obey the Constitution or would disregard his oath ; nor, allow me to say, was he so understood by many gen- tlemen on this side of the chamber ; but he simply meant to say (I certainly so understood him) that he did not consider that the Constitution imposed any such obligation upon him ; that is all."
Fessenden's version was in substance confirmed by Rusk of Texas. The discussion closed with the question from Toucey of Connecticut, " Does he recognize the obligation to return a fugitive slave ? " Sumner replied, " To that I answer distinctly, no." The petition was then referred. When Sumner at the close of his speech resumed his seat, Chase said to him : " You have struck slavery the strongest blow it ever received ; you have made it reel to the centre."
Such was the intense feeling, that Pettit's suggestion of Sum- ner's expulsion was seriously entertained ; but a canvass of the Senate showed that a sufficient vote could not be obtained for it.1 Clay's proposition to send him to Coventry was thought more practicable. It had Sumner's co-operation to this extent, that he had not from this time of his own accord any personal rela-
l Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. p. 358. The " Courier and Enquirer," July 3, the "Express" and the "Herald" of New York, June 30, 1854, and other journalsof like temper, repeated the charges of perjury and treason against Sumner, and called for his expulsion. Clingman, member of the House, said two years later (July 9, 1856) that Sumner " merited chastisement" for the speech. Sumner described, on his return home, to his friend Dana, the Senate in executive session, as it seemed at that period, like "the cabin of a pirate," where the only test of fitness for office was " fidelity to the slave-power." Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. pp. 288, 289.
VOL. III. 9.5
386 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
tions with his five assailants. Without any dread of another en- counter, the next day he offered another petition for the repeal of the obnoxious Act, and took pains to elaborate its purport, giving prominence to the statement of the leading petitioner in a letter forwarding the petition that he was " a Hunker Dem- ocrat of the olden time." He moved its reference to the com- mittee on the judiciary. Adams of Mississippi at once moved that the petition, being disrespectful, lie upon the table ; but upon Sumner's calling for the yeas and nays, Adams withdrew his motion, in order, as he said, " to get rid of the subject," and the petition was referred without further objection. The right of antislavery petitions to respectful consideration was at last admitted.
Sumner came out of this debate with his position in the Sen- ate and in the country greatly strengthened. Single-handed he had encountered a body of assailants and proved himself more than a match for all of them. He had observed strictly par- liamentary decorum, which they had not ; he had met ribaldry with polished shafts of satire, which his adversaries knew not how to wield ; he had shown that he had at command the lighter and keener as well as the heavier weapons of debate. Those who had thought him too much addicted to a sentimental treatment of practical themes now recognized his real power, and confessed that he had shown nerve and muscle beyond what they supposed to be in him. Those who had distrusted his capacity for affairs or for forensic encounters saw revealed his good sense and discretion in dealing with his antagonists alike in his reserve as in his spoken words. More than all, the public admired the fearless and defiant spirit with which he con- fronted the slaveholding senators. For the first time in our his- tory he had won for the cause of free debate in the Senate what John Quincy Adams and Giddings had won for it in the House. The change of feeling towards him was most marked* Differ- ent types of men, conservative as well as radical, Compromise men of 1850 as well as Free Soilers of 1848, came into sym- pathy with him. Journals of various types bore witness to his courage, his power, his mastery of the weapons of controversy, and his complete discomfiture of his assailants. His name was mentioned with honor and enthusiasm in circles where hitherto it had only provoked an oath or a sneer. All who loved Massa- chusetts were proud of him as her vindicator. From those
JEt. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 387
hitherto chary of praise came warm and generous approbation. From every quarter of the free States and from good men of every type came, in newspapers, addresses, and private letters, testimonies to his fearlessness, his skill in debate, and his undaunted spirit, — placing him as the historical successor of Adams, and invoking a " God bless you " on him and his career. Among the forces of the new struggle against slavery none was stronger than the inspiring example of his courage so singularly tested. More than ever before or after, it was Sumner's trium- phant hour in the Senate.1 The mercantile press of Boston was obliged at last to yield to the public demand for his speeches, hitherto accessible only through the Free Soil and the New York newspapers and pamphlet editions ; but while giving them to their readers, they said more in the way of criticism upon his construction of his official oath than in commendation of what he had done to maintain freedom of debate and the honor of his State.2 In this respect they were behind public sentiment. From this time, however, they ceased to ignore him, and treated him with respect.
A multitude of letters, often fifty a day, poured in on Sumner with every mail for some weeks, full of the strongest expres- sions of admiration. They commended his manly and fearless tone, his imperturbable dignity and self-restraint, his pointed and well-aimed satire, his self-respect in putting his opinion and word against Mason's, his rebuke of insolence by fitting retort and of blackguardism by silence, and his noble and triumphant
1 Descriptions of the scene and comments maybe found in the Boston "Advertiser," July 11; Boston "Journal," June 30; Boston "Transcript," June 30; New Bedford "Mer- cury," July 1; Springfield "Republican," June 30, July 7 and 11; New York "Tribune," June 28, 29, and 30; New York " Evening Post," June 29 and July 5 ; New York " Times," June 30; Wheeling (Va.) Gazette (quoted in Boston "Commonwealth," September 4); "Liberator," July 28.
2 The "Advertiser" printed tardily, July 10, Sumner's speech of June 26,— its first publication of any of his speeches. It did not publish his speeches on the Nebraska bill, though publishing Everett's speech on the bill, and even his later remarks on the cleri- cal petitions. The "Atlas," "Journal," and "Traveller," while giving to their readers Sumner's speeches made late in June, practised before that time the same exclusion as their contemporaries. The "Transcript," being social rather than political in its char- acter, did not publish speeches ; but from Sumner's first session in Congress it was uni- formly kindly and generous in its brief paragraphs concerning his public conduct. The Springfield "Republican" did not publish his first speech against the Nebraska bill, though publishing Everett's and Seward's ; but it published his second speech of May 25, and from that time, while dissenting from some of his positions, treated him fairly. The course of these journals in relation to Sumner has been referred to from time to time, not as indicating the personal feelings of their managers, but rather their estimate of the wishes and opinions of their patrons, who were generally of the commercial or con- servative classes.
388 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54
bearing throughout.1 Henry Wilson recognized in the speech the heaviest blow its author had struck the slaveholding oli- garchy, and again recalled with pleasure his own part in placing him in the Senate. Charles A. Dana, of the New York " Tri- bune," approved it " as a splendid excoriation and incineration of those fellows." Rev. A. A. Livermore gratefully acknowl- edged "the noble, lofty, and successful power with which he had fought the good fight ; " and Rev. F. A. Farley praised his " grand forbearance amid unusual and unjust provocation." Theodore Parker wrote that he had never before been so proud of him. John P. Hale had heard all classes express unmingled gratification with the speech, in New York and Boston, and on public conveyances. John A. Andrew regarded his " recent rencontre with the wild beasts of Ephesus as a brilliant success." Wendell Phillips, as an old friend, wrote with an earnestness of approval which he rarely gave to any man. Richard H. Dana, Sr., recognized " the manly dignity, the calm, conscious superiority of the reply." John Jay wrote of the speech as " a glorious, a most triumphant effort," commending the occasional strokes, — as the calm scorn of the opening, the apt quotation from Jeffer- son, the reference to South Carolina as " threatening nullifica- tion as often as babies cry," and the response to Mason's insolent assumption of superiority. Charles G. Loring, a lawyer highly conservative by temperament and associations, bore witness to the general and great admiration which the speech had elicited in Massachusetts. Joshua Leavitt, the veteran editor, read it with intense satisfaction, and recalled Tristam Burgess's replies to John Randolph as not equal in force and far inferior in schol- arly taste and gentlemanly dignity. Two friends of the senator in his youth, Judge Richard Fletcher and Mrs. R. C. Waterston, wrote letters warm with admiration and gratitude. Whittier in an ode commemorated the speech, in which he found —
" Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined,"
and recalling the rock by which they had sat by the seaside four
years before, saw in it
" the type of one Who, momently by Error's host assailed, Stands strong as truth, in greaves of granite mailed, And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all The tumult, hears the angels say, ' Well done ! ' "
1 Works, %Tol. iii. pp. 414-423, where some of these testimonies are given.
JEt. 42-43.] REPLY TO BUTLER AND MASON. 389
Rev. George E. Ellis, since president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote, September 14 : —
" I cannot forbear the expression of the respect and admiration with which I h'ave watched your course in public life, in reading all that comes from your lips and pen, and in imagining you as often amid the surroundings of a coarse and unprincipled crew, maintaining principles that require the highest moral courage for their championship. It is my firm belief, from many chance re- marks that I hear, that multitudes of those who rank themselves politically, socially, and editorially in antagonism with you are in the core of their hearts persuaded that you are right, and yield to you a consideration which they with- hold from every other public man now on the stage. The general voice of praise and gratitude which followed your speech on the clerical protest and upon your noble self-vindication was fully as much an utterance of honest feeling previously cherished towards you, through whatever influences kept back from expression, as it was of a feeling then first excited in your favor by knock ings at the heart that could not be resisted."
William Jackson, many years before a member of Congress, now an old man, wrote, July 1 : —
"Your contest in the Senate brought vividly to my recollection similar scenes which many years since I saw J. Q. Adams passing through. And now how miserably insignificant and mean in the eyes of the intelligent and honorable of the whole civilized world do those rascally pigmies look ! and how ' the old man eloquent ' looms up ! Truth is mighty ; never fear, — some time or other she will take care of you ; nay, she is doing it now with all who can see, and even with multitudes of your opponents who see plainly euough but dare not speak. In one respect you have beaten ' the old man ' even. You have kept your temper better than he used always to do. . . . God bless you and keep you, and enable you to come off ' conqueror and more than conqueror,' is the constant prayer of your assured friend ! "
R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote, July 2 : —
" You have done gallantly. It was just the right sort of fight. Especially we all like your placing your own character against that of Mason. It was telling, spirited, and at the same time dignified. It showed that you felt your- self his superior. You don't know how rejoiced I am that a Northern gen- tleman and scholar has met them in the true spirit of a cavalier. Our rough men, like Giddings, have met them ; but rarely if ever have our gentlemen and scholars joined battle with them. It is atrocious that Pettit, Clay, But- ler, and the others were not called to order ; but I suppose the rules of order, like all the other laws of our republic, are never executed against the slave- power."
Mr. Dana, in communicating Prof. Edward T. Channing's expressions of admiration for his pupil's recent triumph in the
390 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
Senate, reminded Sumner of what Dr. W. E. Channing's senti- ments would have been if he were living : —
"Would not his brother have felt at least as much if he had lived to see the day when his pupil aud friend fought for the right in high places? Httve you ever thought of the satisfaction you would have received from meeting him on your return from this session ? "
James Russell Lowell wrote, March 23 : —
"I am very glad to thank you for sending me in a more preservable form a speech which does you so much honor, and in which our Massachusetts senator (for we have only one, it seems) has shown himself worthy to repre- sent the moral sentiment, the moral courage, and the traditions of New Eng- land. As far as I am able to judge, you have gained immensely by it among the people whose opinions are worth anything, — I mean the people who have any opinions at all. You have put yourself en rapport with the moral sense of Massachusetts; and after all, though a man may find a sufficiently firm foothold in the mud of popular ignorance, prejudice, and animal instincts, to wade over to the White House, it is on this primitive granite of conscience that he must plant his foot if he would climb to that fame which may count surely on the ' perfect witness of all judging Jove.' . . . There has been a charming artistic arrangement in our senatorial representation this winter. It would seem as if the Destinies, who are by no means without a sense of fun, had arranged the flat, dead surface and neutral tints of Everett on purpose for a background on which your portrait might be seen to better advantage."
Dr. 0. W. Holmes wrote from Pittsfield, August 20 : —
" I read all your speeches, always admiring their spirit, their temper, their scholarship, whether I go with them on all points or not. I had just been asking all about you of quiet and amiable Mr. Rockwell, your colleague, when I took your token of remembrance from the post-office. And so our pleasant relations of old came out, as the figures of the camera start from the silver in the daguerreotypist's subtile vapor bath ; and I said I will send him a line of thanks which may sound pleasantly among the discordant echoes with which his ears must be infested."
The Fugitive Slave Act came up again on later days in the session. On July 14 Dixon took exception in a courteous way to Sumner's construction of his official oath and his application of Jackson's celebrated phrase. Sumner repeated the doctrine, adding John Quincy Adams as an authority, that his oath was to support the Constitution " as he understood it." Four days later he presented a memorial from the ancient Abolition Soci- ety of Pennsylvania for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and stated with considerable fulness its purport. Clay made some opprobrious remarks, which Sumner only noticed by say-
JEt. 42-43.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT. 391
ing that he was always ready to answer anything in the shape of an argument ; but he did not consider any senator who did not keep within the rules as his peer. Other Southern senators who referred to him — Dawson, Bayard, and Benjamin — were entirely respectful. The last named senator, to whose kindness of manner and conformity to the proprieties of debate Sumner bore testimony, pressed him closely on the point whether he and those whose opinions he represented really recognized any constitutional obligation on the part of the free States, or of Congress, to provide for the return of fugitive slaves. Sumner declined to answer the question without a prior answer from Benjamin as to whether he was ready to support legislation to enforce the rights of Northern colored citizens in the slave States. Benjamin made the point, and a fair one it was, that Sumner, who had claimed that his sentiments had been miscon- strued, was bound to answer the question, and that he evaded the issue by interposing a series of inquiries.1
Sumner's assertion of his right in his votes as a senator to construe the Constitution as he understood it, and his conse- quent denial of any obligation on his part, personally or offi- cially, to return fugitive slaves, disturbed many conservative minds now coming into general agreement with him. Some journals, still under the spell of old antagonisms, gave a promi- nence to his position in this respect altogether out of propor- tion to its relative importance. Those who criticised him most elaborately were, however, as often happened, only a few steps behind him. Three years later, when the Supreme Court de- nied to Congress the power to prohibit slavery in the territories, there was not a Republican in the United States, legislator or citizen, who thought himself bound to accept that construction of the Constitution.
The antislavery party were not disposed, in parliamentary fencing, to be explicit on the point as to what they conceived to be their constitutional duty in relation to fugitive slaves. Though pushed by their adversaries, they did not consider themselves required, in advance of the repeal of the existing Act, condemned as it was by the Constitution and humanity, to state what they would do. The truth is that the return of fugitive slaves had become revolting to the moral sense of
1 Benjamin answered one of Sumner's questions by admitting the legislation of South Carolina as to colored seamen to be unconstitutional.
392 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
the free States, — at least those most enlightened and humane. It was, as the elder Quincy expressed it, " an insupportable burden." American politics now presented the anomaly, not be- fore seen in history, of a people divided by a conventional line, with an institution on one side maintained by public opinion as just and humane, and claiming protection and support on the other among those whose sense of right forbade them to help it in any way. If Congress for want of power did not legis- late on the subject, and the States failed to give any effective remedy to the master, he might still have a right of recaption, without legal process, which would not, however, avail him in jurisdictions where the popular feeling was adverse to his claim. If he thus found himself with a right, for the loss of which the law gave no adequate remedy or compensation, he was no exceptional sufferer. Proprietary rights of various kinds lose their value in the progress of civilization ; and this result may come to pass as well by the development of moral ideas and instincts as by new customs and inventions.
Sumner was cautious not even to admit that the clause in the Constitution relative to persons " held to service " comprehended fugitive slaves, though not expressly adopting a theory which rejected contemporaneous history as a guide in construction, and confined the clause to apprentices and other free persons escaping from service under a contract.1 In saying that he admitted no obligation on his part to return fugitive slaves, he may have had in mind not only his exemption from any per- sonal duty as a citizen, but also a distinction between an obliga- tion to return, — that is, to take positive action of some kind, — and the duty of mere passive acquiescence.
The Senate committee on pensions reported a bill at the same session making a provision for Batchelder's widow. Sumner and Seward, members of the committee, dissented in a minority report, July 13, drawn by Sumner, on the ground that the pro- posed grant was based on no competent evidence, concerned a matter still under judicial investigation, and was a provision for the family of a person who had not rendered any military or naval services such as pensions had hitherto been exclusively confined to ; and further, was a recognition of a service ren-
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 139, 378. The senator had, perhaps, in reserve a construction like that adopted in the argument for "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery," by Lysan- der Spooner, a writer of original power, but without rank among jurists.
JEt. 42-43.] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT. 393
dered under an Act which was unconstitutional and justly con- demned by the moral sense of the communities among whom it was sought to be enforced.1
The provision for Batchelder's widow was moved, July 31, as an amendment to a bill for the relief of the widow of a person who had died of wounds received in the war of 1812 ; and the amendment was adopted after various objections. Sumner then moved an amendment repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, which was ruled out of order as not germane to the bill. The same day he asked leave to introduce a bill repealing that Act. A prolonged parliamentary contest ensued, in which various points of order were raised and debated, calling him to the floor sev- eral times.2 The leave was refused by a vote of ten yeas to thirty-live nays. The vote for the repeal, since he made his motion two years before, had increased from four to ten, while the vote against repeal had decreased from forty-seven to thirty- five. He had now in Rockwell a colleague who voted with him. Seward and Foot, who withheld their votes then, now voted for the repeal. Walker of Wisconsin, who then voted against the repeal, now voted for it; while Fish, who then voted against the repeal, now withheld his vote.3 Fessenden gave his vote for the repeal, while Hamlin remained discreetly silent.
As a member of the committee on pensions, Sumner attended faithfully to matters referred to it, as appeared from the re- ports he submitted and the bills he pressed to a passage. He took an interest in questions of procedure, and his incidental remarks at different times showed close attention to public business.1
Sumner's course during the session, in connection with his character and position, brought to his support the mass of the clergy of his State. He had already among them many friends and admirers, who recognized in his arguments for peace and freedom the moral elevation of his aims. Such were Woods and Storrs, the seniors of those names, among Trinitarians ; and A. P. Peabody, Livermore, Francis, and Clarke, among Unita- rians. But now, with rare exceptions, the clergy as a body gave
i Works, vol. iii. pp. 426-432. The leader in the New York "Tribune," of July 12, suggested by the decision of Judge Smith, of Wisconsin, was written by Sumner.
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 435-450. In this debate, Clay, when referring to Sumner, was as foul-mouthed as ever, and was stopped by the chair without suggestion from the floor.
8 A few moments before, Mr. Fish voted on an appeal from the decision of the chair.
4 The session ended August 7, and Sumner arrived home on the 13th.
o
94 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
to him a sympathetic and steadfast support. In sermons, reli- gious newspapers, and by formal vote in their meetings, they bore witness to his fidelity to the sacred cause and his manly defence of their memorial. They, as well as laymen of like spirit, sent him letters full of personal tenderness, as also of political confidence, and invoked on him the divine favor in this life and a rich reward in the next. This force, attracted by no selfish ends, and unmoved by any carping criticisms on minute points, stood him in good stead through his career. What Everett had lost he had gained.
Any statement of Sumner's relations to public opinion would be incomplete which omitted the mention of another force, now as heretofore an important element in his political position.3 New England, in her towns, has always had a large body of women who take an earnest and intelligent interest in political questions which have a moral aspect. These were not so much the highly intellectual and refined class found in a few favored places, but they embraced those who had been well educated in common schools, and had been inspired with moral and humane sentiments in churches and lyceums. They were fascinated by Sumner's literary style and elevated tone ; and the charm was increased by his person and voice with those who had listened to his addresses and lectures. They had watched the tourna- ment in the Senate, and felt the enthusiasm for him which chiv- alrous devotion always inspires with the sex. His speeches were more readable at firesides than those of other public men trained only in political debates ; and in many a household the whole family gathered at evening to hear them read. As an incident of the times, it may be stated that on his return from Washington the women of Plymouth presented him, as a token of their respect for his manly and noble course, a seal ring, containing a stone from Plymouth Rock.1
Mrs. Seward wrote, June 10 : —
'5
u I read your speech on the final passage of the Nebraska bill with tears of gratitude that so much ability and eloquence were devoted to the advance- ment of truth and freedom. I must confess to some fears for your safety, but am glad to learn that the proscriptive spirit does not now as in times past pervade all classes at Washington. May our Heavenly Father still continue to guide and bless you ! "
1 The interest of clergymen and thoughtful women in Sumner at an earlier period has been referred to. Ante, p. 13.
Mt. 42-43.] THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 395
Closing her letter, November 14, she wrote : —
" May the blessing of God go with you, and keep a pure and noble spirit unsullied ! "
Sumner's first appearance before his constituents after his return from Washington was at the Republican State conven- tion held at Worcester, September 7.1 Its managers were very urgent that he should take part in it, confident that his presence would insure a large and enthusiastic attendance, and save from failure a movement which from untoward circumstances did not at the time give promise of success. John A. Andrew, chairman of the committee in charge, wrote to him, July 22, most earn- estly, setting forth the strength of his position, which would be of advantage at a critical moment : —
u Your recent battles in the Senate have shut the mouth of personal oppo- sition, wrung applause from the unwilling, excited a State's pride and grati- tude such as rarely it is the fortune of any one to win."
A month later he wrote : —
" The whole Free Soil party, proud of your recent achievements, and grateful for the many exhibitions of your devotedness to our principles at all times of hazard and necessity, and the people of all parties, who feel you to have been the most conspicuously representative man to whom Massachusetts has intrusted her interests in Congress since the death of John Quincy Adams, are alike anxious to greet you." 2
There was as expected an immense audience at Worcester, drawn there by the prodigious interest in Sumner, growing out of his recent conflicts in the Senate. Never did a public man receive a heartier and more enthusiastic welcome. The conven- tion was already in session when he appeared. The vast audi- ence rose at once, and the hall resounded with cheers while he was passing to his seat on the platform. At the call of the multitude he came forward amid shouts and cheers, in which all joined.3 Never had he been so near the heart of Massachu- setts as then. His speech, occupying an hour and a half, was interrupted every few moments, and in some parts (at the end of each sentence) by loud and prolonged applause coming from the whole audience. It was for the most part free from the
1 An account of the circumstances out of which the convention grew is given later.
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 452-453.
3 Commonwealth, September 8; Traveller, September 8; Liberator, September 15.
396 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
diversions and long quotations in which he was apt to indulge. Its pointed and emphatic sentences were uttered with a voice then at its best, powerful in volume, most earnest in tones, and fitted, in combination with his action, to carry popular indigna- tion to its highest pitch. As he himself afterwards wrote, he had two objects in view : " First, to vindicate the necessity of the Republican party ; and, secondly, to destroy the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act in Massachusetts, — showing espe- cially that citizens are not constrained to its support." He stated briefly the methods by which the Nebraska bill was car- ried ; portrayed " the dismal tragedy " of Burns's rendition ; set forth the necessity of a party combining all who were for free- dom in place of the old Democratic and Whig parties. But the strength of his speech was in the latter part, in which he denied the power of judicial tribunals to dictate to Congress an inter- pretation of the Constitution, or to direct the individual con- science, while admitting the binding force of judgments upon inferior tribunals and executive officers, and their claim to be respected as precedents by legislators and citizens. One passage was a vivid description of the proceedings in the rendition of Burns, in which he was " guarded by heartless hirelings, whose chief idea of liberty was license to do wrong ; escorted by intru- sive soldiers of the United States ; watched by a prostituted militia," — in all which " the laws, the precious sentiments, the religion, the pride and glory of Massachusetts were trampled in the dust." Another passage was intended to set public opinion against the judges and commissioners whose conduct in the treatment of fugitive-slave cases had been often partial and sometimes brutal. It set forth with Sumner's characteristic eloquence instances of judicial tyranny drawn from ancient and modern history, — from the condemnation of Socrates to the sanction given to " the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Act." Happily an arraignment, then deserved by judges who succumbed to the pro-slavery spirit of the period, no longer applies to tribunals essential to civil society and ordinarily observant of the principles of legal and moral equity.1
The popular enthusiasm for Sumner was now so great, and the interest in what he said so general, that journalists hitherto unfriendly or indifferent could not, with a view to the circula- tion of their uewspapers, afford to ignore him. One of them
1 Works, vol. iii, pp. 453-475.
JEt. 42-43.] THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 397
hazarded the expense of hiring a special train from Worcester to Boston to run the distance of forty miles in an hour (unusual speed at that time), in order to give his speech to the public the same afternoon in advance of its rivals.1 The leader of the conservative press of Boston published it the next morning.2 The Whig journals, slow to realize that their party was at an end, parried his argument for a new party; but while disavow- ing his theory of the official oath, they bore witness to his per- sonal sincerity, as also to the surpassing eloquence and power of the speech, and its prodigious effect on the audience.3 The Republican State committee distributed it widely among the people in a pamphlet edition. Some of the New York jour- nals placed it in their columns. Chase read it " with delighted admiration." Seward thought it a noble one, and its merits as an argument unsurpassed. Gales, of the " National Intelli- gencer," took exception, in an elaborate criticism, to Sumner's construction of his official oath, and maintained the duty of a member of Congress to abide by the construction announced by the Supreme Court 4 Sumner replied at length, October 22, to the effect that the court did not consider itself bound beyond the judgment in the case pending ; that the decision was only a precedent subject to being overruled even by the same court, and should not have an obligatory force on other departments of the government, when they had occasion to interpret the Con- stitution in the exercise of a power incidental to other principal duties, which it did not have upon the court itself.5
A brief review of the political situation in Massachusetts, as affected by the conflict between slavery and freedom in Con- gress, is necessary to an understanding of Sumner's political position at this time. An effectual resistance to the extension of slavery into the territory now open to emigration required a new organization of parties, — the union of Free Soilers and of Whigs and Democrats opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compro- mise. Such a fusion, under the name " Republican," the origin of the national party of that name, came naturally and quickly
1 Traveller, September 7.
2 Advertiser, September 8.
3 Springfield Republican, September 8, 13; Advertiser, September 8.
4 October 14, 21.
5 National Intelligencer, October 31. Sumner's reply may be found also in the " Na- tional Era," November 9, and the "Liberator," November 10.
o
98 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
in many Northern States, especially at the West. Favored in New York by Greeley, it was arrested there by the adverse counsels of Seward and Weed. Notwithstanding the bitterness of recent contests, public sentiment in Massachusetts pressed strongly for a union, which would have taken place but for the resistance of Whig leaders who had recently regained power in the State. They generally admitted1 that co-operation with the Southern Whigs who had supported the repeal was at an end ; but they insisted that as their representatives from the North had voted in a body against the repeal, their party in that section was still a safer rallying point than any new combination which was practicable. But they had another reason, rather, personal and partisan than patriotic, which was in the way of union. They had acquired positions of influence which would be risked in a new combination, — certainly, as they thought, in one in which the Free Soilers, with their greater activity and earlier in- terest in the issue, were likely to come to the front. They were loath to come into fellowship with men whom their leading jour- nals had within a few weeks been denouncing as " profligate and corrupt," as traffickers in offices, and enemies of human soci- ety.2 With the public peril demanding a union, and the masses pressing for it, they were in resisting it as wanting in political sense as in magnanimity. Shortly after the final passage of the Nebraska bill, a movement was started in Massachusetts for forming a new party with the name " Republican." The Free Soilers, heartily and unanimously for it, invited the Whigs in a formal communication to take the lead.3 Several of the AVhig papers in the country gave it an earnest support,4 but all the Boston Whig journals opposed it from the beginning ; and the State committee of the party, refusing to call a fusion conven- tion, issued an address, June 26, which, while denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, looked to the maintenance of the Whig party as " the vanguard of the great army of con- stitutional liberty." Meantime a popular movement for a union began at Concord, in a meeting held June 22, where a committee of correspondence, with Samuel Hoar and Ralph Waldo Emer- son as members, was appointed. This committee invited a large
1 Except the Boston Courier.
2 Atlas, Jan. 2, 1854.
3 Commonwealth, August 21.
4 Springfield Republican, June 8, 12, 17, 26; July 2, 13, 15.
Mr. 42-43.] THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 399
number of the leading men of the three parties to meet at the American House in Boston July 7 ; but less than thirty attended.1 Among the Free Soilers at this conference were Samuel Hoar, P. W. Bird, S. C. Phillips, C. P. Adams, Henry Wilson, R. W. Emerson, George F. Hoar, and Marcus Morton, Jr. Less than half-a-dozen Whigs came, and most of these were obstructive. No definite action was taken, for the reason that a call for a fusion mass convention had been issued by other persons interested in the movement, which obtained eight or ten thousand names, and received in some towns the signatures of nearly all the vot- ers.2 It appeared for a time as if the movement would succeed, and Massachusetts become the founder of the new party.3 The Boston influence, however, asserted itself vigorously against it, both through the press and the advice of Abbott Lawrence and other Whig leaders. The Whig journals of the city appealed to the Whigs to keep away from the mass convention and to stand by the Whig organization ; and they did their best to revive old animosities by applying the odious epithets to the Free Soilers which for six years had been familiar to the public, — the vol- ume of abuse falling as usual most heavily on Wilson.4 This style of warfare, unworthy as it was, met with a success which it did not deserve. It kept the city Whigs a solid force against the new party, and distracted the country Whigs, who had been well disposed towards it. The Whig journals in the country, finding it impossible under such pressure to carry the body of the Whig voters with them, withdrew from the movement, and rallied their partisans for a contest on the old lines.5 This de- feat of popular aspirations was a great disappointment to the best people of the State. It kept alive old griefs, and divided
1 Atlas, Jul}' 10; Commonwealth, July 8, 11.
2 Commonwealth, Jul}- 14, 15, 17; August 1.
3 Sumner wrote E. L. Pierce, April 14, 1854: "I receive cheering news from Massachu- setts; but party lines are so tight that I almost despair. Oh, when will the North be united ? "
4 Advertiser, July 17, 20; August 2, 5, 8, 15, 31; September 5, 8. Atlas, July 1, 22, 24, 2G, 27, 28 ; August 10 ; September 4, 15, 18, 20 ; October 14. Journal, June 30 ; July 19, 22; August 14, 22, 31; September 6, 8, 9. The "Atlas " (September 8) called Wilson "the ambitious and unscrupulous leader of the Free Soilers." Even after the Know Nothing victory in the autumn, the Whig journals, in defending their opposition to a fusion, called the Free Soil leaders "unwise, insincere, hypocritical, and unprincipled." Advertiser, November 29; Atlas, November 17.
5 The Springfield "Republican," which had zealously advocated the fusion, now gave up the effort as hopeless, but from time to time upbraided the Whig journals and partisans whom it held accountable for the failure, — July 26, 27; August 5, 19, 24, 26; October 24; November 13, 15, 27.
400 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
into rival and hostile factions those whose duty it was to work together for a great cause. For once Massachusetts failed to hold her place in the leadership of a great movement. The re- sult was that the mass convention held at Worcester July 20, and the nominating convention held there September 7, which Sumner addressed, were, though adopting the name Republican, composed chiefly of Free Soilers.1 The spell of party which controlled the Whig journals and politicians no longer held the masses of the people. The popular yearning was for a new movement ; and foiled in one direction by political animosities, it sought temporary expression in one of the most singular epi- sodes of American politics.
A secret order of obscure origin, starting in the city of New York, and calling itself "American," though afterwards best known in political nomenclature as "Know-Nothing," aspired through its branches to control national as well as local politics. Its purpose was to resist the influence of foreign-born voters, especially the Catholic. It attracted in great numbers native- born laborers who were jealous of the competition of emigrants. Its leaders and masses had taken hitherto little interest in poli- tical controversies, and they were untaught in political methods and expedients.2 Thus composed and led, the order offered an opportunity to others who, having no special sympathy with its original purpose, saw fit to turn it to account for personal or political ends of their own. What is also most important to observe, it offered an escape for great numbers who had lost interest in existing parties ; and to this fact is due its remark- able success at the time. From New York it came to Boston, where it decided the city election in December, 1853. Many Free Soilers in that city, who resented the interposition of the Catholic Church against the new Constitution, entered it at once after their defeat in 1853, and made their influence felt in its early proceedings in Massachusetts. Others of them, after the failure of the attempted fusion in July, 1854, joined it,3 and
1 John A. Andrew was made chairman of the executive committee. The Free Soilers formally dissolved their party organization at a meeting held in Springfield, October 17. The "Republican" described the scene the next day with amiable satire.
2 The Boston "Journal," Nov. 15, 1854, described the new type of voters who were for the first time becoming a political force.
3 Many Whigs who had been disappointed by the failure of the proposed fusion joined St. The Springfield "Republican" (November 10) attributed the growth of the order to the failure of the effort to unite the opponents of the extension of slavery. "Life and Times of Samuel Bowles," vol. i. pp. 125-127.
JEr. 42-43.] THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 401
earnest and active as they were, exercised a predominant influ- ence in its councils. Their most trusted leaders — Sumner, Adams,1 Allen, S. C. Phillips, Palfrey, and Andrew — had no sympathy with its aims and methods, and kept aloof from it. Others, however, had less sternness of principle or less scruple as to propriety. Burlingame entered the order as early as March, 1854, and sought the nomination for Congress from Boston, — the very seat of Whig power. Wilson, while openly keeping up his connection with the Republicans, whose nomina- tion for governor he accepted, joined the order in the late sum- mer or early autumn, and assumed thereby, as those who had put him in nomination complained, inconsistent obligations;2 and charges of bad faith were freely made against him. A large proportion of the Free Soil workers in the towns and cities joined the order. Its numbers were not reported by authority, but they found their way irregularly to the public, — estimated at fifty thousand voters in the summer, and before its close at seventy thousand or more, and outnumbering all other parties. It was still, however, with outsiders a matter of conjecture to what extent the enrolled members would on the day of election be found voting against their former political allies. Wilson, who was well advised as to the strength of the order, felt confi- dent of its success ; but Whig leaders less informed did not be- gin to recognize any danger until late in August ; and their first serious alarm was in October, when its nominations for members of Congress and State officers (Henry J. Gardner, a young and active Whig, for governor) became public. What most troubled these leaders was the predominant influence of Free Soilers in the order, which foreshadowed, in the event of success, the election of Henry Wilson as Everett's successor in the Senate.3 They admitted, however, partial defeat as the worst result that was probable, and were, as well as nearly all outsiders, astounded at the result.
The Know Nothings polled eighty-one thousand votes, far be- yond the number any party had ever before mustered in the State, — reducing the Whigs from fifty-nine thousand to twenty- seven thousand, the Democrats from forty thousand (with two
1 Later, in January, 1855, Adams assailed the order in a speech in New York.
a See his letter in Boston "Atlas," October 17. About five hundred Free Soilers, who thought "Wilson had compromised their party, voted for Charles Allen.
3 Boston Advertiser, November 8, December 28; Atlas, October 28; Journal, October 27; Springfield Republican, October 24, November 10. vol. in. 26
402 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54
candidates) to less than fourteen thousand, and the Free Soil- ers from twenty-nine thousand to less than seven thousand ; and electing Gardner and the entire State ticket, all the mem- bers of Congress, all the State senators, and almost every mem- ber of the House. The Free Soil element in the Legislature was so large, and the antislavery sentiment so predominant, as to make Wilson's election as senator, though his connection with the new party was little more than nominal, altogether probable, — an event which took place in February by a very large majority in the House, but with only the required majority in the Senate.
The Whig leaders who had resisted the fusion paid dearly for their perversity. They might have put one of their own number in the vacant seat in the Senate instead of opening to Wilson the way to it. In no other State except Delaware did the Know Nothings obtain control, and they soon passed away before the vital question of the day.1 Their methods were unrepublican, and they failed in all their schemes ; but they did good service in breaking party ties and preparing the way for a union of all opposed to American slavery.
This final dissolution of the Whig party in Massachusetts, whatever may have been its advantages at one time as a con- servative force, was an event in every way auspicious. With its organization directed by the social and commercial interests of Boston, and its policy inspired by the journals of that city, there could not while it lasted be any effective union of the people of the State against the aggressive and advancing slave-power. To be sure, nothing suited to the exigency, or answering to patri- otic hopes, had in the recent election taken its place ; but a political chaos had come which left the conscience of the people free to act, and the way open for the formation of a Republican party in the State.
Nominally Sumner had now no party at his back except the handful of Free Soilers who had voted for their ticket after their candidate Wilson had left them ; but no obstructive organiza- tion now stood between Mm and the popular sentiment, which was in full accord with him. Even the Legislature, which con- tained only one or two members chosen under the name of
1 Henry A. Wise's election as governor, in May, 1855, broke their power in Virginia. Their national council, meeting at Philadelphia the next month, was rent with the slavery question, and after that the order rapidly declined.
Mr 42-43 ] ADDEESS ON GRANVILLE SHARP. 403
Republicans, would, it is altogether likely, have re-elected him as senator if his term had been then expiring.
On account of the peculiar direction which the politics of the State had taken, Sumner did not after his speech at Worcester make any political address during the recess of Congress ; but his time was well occupied. He delivered, November 13, the evening of the State election, before the Mercantile Library Association, a lecture on " The position and duties of the mer- chant, illustrated by the life of Granville Sharp." He was re- ceived with enthusiasm by the audience which filled Tremont Temple.1 The lecture, though given in a literary course, had, as usual with him, a moral and political aim, — to stimulate peace- able and lawful resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in imitation of the British philanthropist, whose antislavery labors, notably in the liberation of Somerset, in connection with the opposition he encountered from merchants and lawyers, suggested parallels in the recent slave cases. It is an interesting monograph on Sharp's life and work and the memorable judicial transaction in which he bore the most conspicuous part.
Mrs. Seward wrote, November 24, of the lecture, addressing him, as always, " Dear Charles Sumner " : —
"The elevated tone of its moral teaching cannot fail to do good, though this result may not be immediately manifest. You will go soon to Washing- ton. I shall learn something of your external life while you are well and prosperous. This would do well enough. Should the sky grow dark and your spirit be troubled, will you not tell me something more? ... I am stronger, but still write with difficulty. May God continue to guide you ! Sincerely and affectionately yours."
Oliver Johnson wrote, November 18 : —
" I have read your lecture with deep interest and admiration, not alone in view of its merits as a literary performance, but on account of the genuine courage manifested in seizing upon such an opportunity to illustrate and en- force the great principles of righteousness and freedom. From my very heart I thank you. The larger portion of the lecture will appear in the next 'Anti- slavery Standard.' "
Sumner wrote to Dr. Howe, Jan. 15, 1854 : —
"With your note came one from my dear sister, giving me the first tidings of her engagement and of her illness. Tears of emotion and anxiety fill my eyes as I think of her. More than ever I feel the eminent excellence of her
1 The Liberator, November 17; Boston Telegraph, November 14.
404 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
nature, ami long for her happiness. I have written to her my sympathy, hut I feel how poorly I have done it. I have also sent a welcome to Dr. Hastings. Do tell me of them hoth. Have you learned to know him 1 And what is her health ? I write to you freely. To my mother I cannot write without Julia's knowledge; and George is much absorbed in his'own plans."
To Theodore Parker, March : —
" Your sermon on Nebraska is powerful and grand , but that on ' Old Age ' is touching, — very. I took it up after midnight, and before moving to bed read it faithfully and tearfully.1 Howe was here like a perturbed spirit for a few days, and then suddenly departed."
Sumner's mind while a senator was always diverging to con- genial studies. Reading in the "National Intelligencer" an anonymous article on Comte, which touched on the idea of a regular and progressive course of events in history, — a topic which he had treated in a college address,2 — he sent, to the care of that journal, a note of sympathy and thanks to the author, who proved to be Dr. J. C. Welling, then a regular contributor to the " Intelligencer," later one of its editors, and afterwards President of Columbia College, Washington, D. C. This was the beginning of a friendship based on common tastes in litera- ture rather than on agreement in the political controversies of the time. The following is Sumner's second note to Dr. Welling, dated March 16, 1854 : —
"As a faithful reader of your articles in the ' National Intelligencer,' I am glad of an opportunity to express to you the pleasure which they have given me. As an humble student, in moments taken from other things, of depart- ments illustrated by your elegant pen, I have been glad to renew early im - pressious and to live again the true life. Allow me to suggest the inquiry, since you refer to Vico, whether his work at this time can be regarded as an important guide ? He taught the unity of humanity, and illustrated it from history and literature ; but he was filled with the idea of the vicious circle in which society was supposed to have moved, proceeding to a certain stage and then falling back, and did not see its sure and irresistible march. Bacon, per- haps, in saying that moderns stand on the shoulders of the ancients, suggested the whole thought. But there are several writers of France who seem to me to have struck the subject to the quick, more even than Vico, though down to the time of Condorcet no one had considered it at length. I might begin with Descartes, though I forget now the title of the work. There is also a chapter of Pascal in his ' Pensees,' suppressed in the early editions for a century, which
1 Parker replied, April 12, 1854: " I thank you for your kindly words about my sermon on ' Old Age.' I wrote in tears, as many another sermon, — nay, as almost all, even what sound to other men like the war-horse of a soldier."
2 At Schenectady, July 25, 1848, on "The Law of Human Progress;" vol. ii. pp. 89- 138.
JEt. 42-43.] FRIENDLY CORRESPONDENCE. 405
is very pregnant- The discussion in France at the close of the seventeenth century on the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns struck out some things bearing on this subject, in the writings of Perrault and also of Fon- tenelle. As a student ot Vico, you are doubtless acquainted with the work of his admirer, Cataldo Jannalli, — Cenni sulla natura e necessita della Scienza delle cose e delle storie umane. This writer was a librarian at Naples some thirty years ago, and held Vico to be in the same list with Newton, Leibnitz, and the great masters. But the work of Dove,1 to which I first called your attention, is wrought out of a severely logical and reflective mind, without the learning of Vico, and indeed with little knowledge of the literature of the sub- ject; but it seems to me to have a strong grasp, and to open more clearly than any other book the future of science and life. The substantial harmony be- tween his views and those of Comte is curious, when it is known that he wrote without any knowledge of the Frenchman. His book, more than any- thing else in my studies or speculations, has made me hope for a science of politics, exact and reliable. In my own mind I had foreseen this distant mil- lennial result; his book has made it palpable. Still, I may err; and I know full well that this grand consummation can be reached only through cycles of history. But that it will be reached I have now a full assurance ; and to live for that future, to strive for it, with the eye ever fixed upon it, seems to me the only thing which can worthily tempt a person into public life. But I speak of things familiar to you ; though, while the Senate proses, there is a pleasure in drawing about one these pleasant memories.''
To Louis Agassiz, October 10 : —
" This forenoon, walking through the market, I stopped, as is my custom, at the fish stall, particularly to take a look at the eel, which old Izaak Walton calls ' the Helena of fishes,' and also to enjoy the various stripes on the backs of the mackerel, when my attention was arrested by a small fish which I at first took to be a flounder, but which I soon saw differed from anything fishy within my experience. On inquiry I was told that it was caught yesterday by a net in the Mystic River ; and that though a large number of persons, amounting, it was said, even to a thousand, had seen it, nobody knew what it was, or had ever seen anything like it before. For your sake and for the sake of science, I secured V innominato, and now send him to you in a straw- berry box ; and I have promised the dealer in the market to let him know your report upon the monster. What is it?''*
To the Earl of Carlisle,3 October 26 : —
" To-day came your very pleasant and kindest letter, and a night shall not pass without at least a word of gratitude and friendship. I often think of you
1 "The Theory of Human Progression."
2 Agassiz answered that the fish belonged in Southern waters, though at remote inter- vals appearing at the North, and was of a species described in his earliest book on fishes published in 1829; but he did not give the name.
3 The Earl had written, October 12 : " You do seem to me to fill a ver}r remarkable posi- tion, and you show no sj'mptoins of not being fully equal to the occasion. It makes me very proud of you, and of the estimate I long ago formed of your understanding, heart,
406 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54
and of your family. Prescott from time to time has let me know something of them; hut though this is agreeable, I had rather hear directly from your- self. You have had your adventures on strange soils, 1 which I envy much, and now you have repose at home, which I also envy much.
"To your inquiries I hardly know what to say. I make no complaint with regard to anybody, and my experiences are such only as belong to every public man who differs with his associates on a critical question. You know too well the personal rancors engendered by the Catholic Emancipation and the Corn Laws not to understand the origin and nature of such feelings. There are persons in Boston who have behaved badly ; and if I were with you, and it were worth while to talk of such small affairs, 1 might edify you by some glimpses of American experience ; but they are not worthy of ink. 1 am proud of your sympathy, and 1 trust you will believe me as meaning completely what I say, when I tell you that it has been to me a precious en- couragement, i have never for a moment hesitated in my course ; but I have often felt the weight and bitterness of the opposition which I was called to encounter. At such moments I have been reassured by the thought that there were friends away from this scene who would approve what I was doing ; and I seemed to feel your generous hand and hear your cordial voice.
''This last session of Congress has kept me hard at work and full of re- sponsibility ; but my course seems to have found great favor. I write to you with frankness, and therefore I say that I find myself ' a popular man.' Per- haps this feeling may be short-lived, though the tendency of affairs will be to call still more into play the exertions which have secured me so much good- will. I learn from all sides, and am disposed to believe, that if my election to the Senate were now pending before the million of educated people whom 1 now represent, I should be returned without any opposition. This of itself betokens a great change. People seem to have been pleased with my deter- mination and constancy, and sometimes their pride has been excited by my speeches. The second speech in defence of Massachusetts, and in reply to the leading Southern senators, awakened a fury of applause which I have never seen equalled here. People had grown angry under the perfidy and bullying of the South, and they leaped forward to me sympathetically as 1 uttered what seemed the timely word. The change towards me is rather with the great bulk of the people than with the old leaders, particularly those who still swear by Mr. Webster ; but it is apparent wherever 1 go, — in the streets, and also m the newspapers. No papers in Massachusetts now mention my name ex- cept with kind words. I write these things in plain response to your inquiry ; never before have I written them to any one ; but you have tempted me, and I commit myself to your friendly discretion.
" There is pleasant society at Washington, and my lot is with the pleas- antest; but the prevailing tone is vulgar, and often revolting. Slavery is a harpy which befouls every place where it is. Nor do I think it easy, hardly possible, for a defender of slavery to be a gentleman. My opportunities of
and character. ... Do the Ticknors and Appletons smile on you again yet ? How is the gentle Hillard ? I hope not among the estranged. Apart from fame and duty, do you like j-our Washington life V " 1 In the Levant.
JEt. 42-43.] FRIENDLY CORRESPONDENCE. 407
observation have been considerable ; and I know no one who in this vile cause does not forget honor, manhood, and manners, — all. And this is natural. How can a person have these who sanctions a denial of obvious rights? The hardihood with which the slaveholding oligarchy now puts forth its schemes is calculated to shock the public sense. Openly it is prepared to open the accursed slave-trade, and I must confess that this is logical. If sla- very he a good, as is represented, we ought to help more Africans to its bless- ings. In secret session of the Senate, I was able to stop a proposition to withdraw our African squadron and place it on the coast of Cuba. But the effort will be made again at the next session, and again I shall oppose it.
" The portentous question now is connected with Cuba.1 To secure that island money to any amount will be lavished, and war will be braved. This Administration is a cross between the pirate and the scorpion, and I shall not be surprised by any audacity. At present we have grand omens. The elec- tions show that the Congress which will come together a year from now will be strongly antislavery. The danger now is that the Administration will make use of the present rump Congress, which lasts till March 4, to con- summate its mischief. The present predicament of England and France, already occupied by the war with Russia, is regarded as propitious to some bold stroke for Cuba. With Falkland I cry ' Peace, peace ! ' and especially that you may be at liberty to help keep the peace in this hemisphere. You are aware, doubtless, that the Southern statesmen sympathize with Russia; and they already speak of " Our Southern islands," meaning the whole group of the Caribbean Sea. Pray think of these things. Fur myself, I shall fight all their machinations at every stage, and lay bare their policy; and it does seem as if at last we should have a North.
" I have never let you know how grateful 1 was to your family, and par- ticularly the Duchess of Sutherland, for efforts in quickening our laggard public sentiment. Be sure you did a good work. Its influence was, perhaps, not commensurate with reasonable expectations; but it has entered power- fully into that combination of circumstances by which our world has been moved. Allow me to suggest two things which may be done in England, and will serve us mightily: First, we need a complete and authentic vindication of your own great Act of Emancipation in the West Indies, showing its opera- tion, the errors that may have been made, but the priceless good achieved ; . . . and, secondly, English literature can aid the cause of antislavery. Here, again, the reviews and journals may do more than they have done. A fav- orable notice from a leading English review will have a powerful influence on our public. Pardon me for troubling you with these matters. I know your interest in the cause ; and it has occurred to me that, personally, you may be able to touch some persons who will appreciate the hint.
" Not long ago I dined with Prescott at his pleasant house by the sea, and he kindly showed me a letter from you which he was very happy to have. He is hard at work on the two volumes which ho hopes soon to publish.2
1 Buchanan, Mason, and Soule, under instructions from Pierce, met in October, 1854, at Ostend and Aix-la-Chapelle, to plot for the acquisition of Cuba, and issued the famous "Ostend Manifesto."
2 History of the Reign of Philip II.
408 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1853-54.
Moffat, M. P., was there, — an amusing character, with a pleasant mixture of literature, fashion, and radicalism. It is refreshing to meet an English gentle- man. At Washington fur a little while I had great pleasure in Lord Elgin,1 whom I have also seen in Canada ; and within a few days here in Boston we have had Sir Edmund Head, the new Governor-General of Canada, a most excellent person, as is also Sir Charles Grey, from Jamaica.
" One of my visions is another visit to England. When there before I saw many persons and things ; but I was young. I long to see it now with ma- ture eye ; to meet again a few old friends, and to see others who now take the places of those whom I knew. I would also see Paris and Switzerland. But 1 fear that all this must be postponed indefinitely. My brother George, after being at home for a year and more, has lately left again for Paris, but prom- ises to return in the spring. My only sister is now married and in Italy, where she will pass the winter, if she does not follow your track in the East. My lot seems to be of work at home. Thus have I passed garrulously from topic to topic, touched by your letter and by the memory of your friendship. Do not be silent so long again. I will not. Let me hear from you very soon, and tell me of yourself and your family. I note your retirement from active public life ; but I trust you will yet exert a commanding influence on your country, for your influence must be beneficent. Farewell, my dearest Morpeth, and believe me, with sincere affection."
1 Lord Elgin, accompanied by his brother, Colonel Bruce, had been in Washington for the purpose of negotiating a reciprocity treaty for trade between the United States and Canada.
^Et. 43-44.] THE DEBATE ON TOUCEY'S BILL. 409
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE DEBATE ON TOUCEY'S BILL. - VINDICATION OF THE ANTISLAVERY ENTERPRISE. — FIRST VISIT TO THE WEST. — DEFENCE OF FOREIGN- BORN CITIZENS. — 1854-1855.
THE second session of the Thirty-third Congress, which began in December, 1854, and ended in March, 1855, was, excepting a single day, undisturbed by excitement. There was a disposition on both sides to avoid a renewal of the discussion on slavery, which had absorbed the preceding session, and to attend rather to the ordinary public business. Sumner offered at different times resolutions on several subjects, — as the ex- emption of sailors from an enforced contribution of hospital money,1 the amendment of the laws concerning the fisheries, and mediation in the Eastern war between Great Britain, France, and Turkey on the one side, and Russia on the other. He spoke against the exclusion of Massachusetts soldiers, whom the gov- ernor refused in the War of 1812 to place in the service of the United States, from the provisions of the bounty-land bill for the benefit of soldiers serving against Great Britain. He made a brief speech upon a bill introduced by himself to secure to seamen in case of wreck the wages already earned, although the vessel might not have earned freight.2 The speech illustrated the hardships involved in the application of a technical rule of maritime law.
An indictment against Theodore Parker was pending in the United States Circuit Court, Boston, in the winter of 1854- 1855, in which he was charged with resisting the process for the rendition of Anthony Burns, the alleged act of resistance being a speech he had delivered in Faneuil Hall. It was ex- pected that the trial would take place before Judge B. R. Curtis.
1 He renewed this proposition Feb. 2, 1860.
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 520-526. He renewed this effort at later sessions, — Jan. 17, 1860; and again April 15, 1872, when he presented the resolutions of the Legislature of Massa- chusetts in favor of the bill.
410 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
Sumner was pleased that his friend was to have an opportunity, in a personal defence, to maintain before a high tribunal the antislavery cause, and reversing positions, to put the pro-slavery prosecutors on trial. He gave Parker suggestions for his argu- ment, and pointed out historical analogies. Had it proceeded to a final issue, it would have been a cause celebre ; but unhappily the indictment was quashed on a technicality, and the prosecu- tion went no further. Those who started it were quite content with its failure at this stage, for they shrunk from facing an adversary so intrepid and so well armed. Sumner wrote to Parker : —
"I am glad you have been indicted, — pardon me! — for the sake of our cause and your own fame. Of course you will defend yourself, and answer the whilom speaker 1 at Faneuil Hall face to face. . . . Upon the whole, I regard your indictment as a call to a new parish, with B. R. Curtis and B. F. Hallett2 as deacons, and a pulpit higher than the Strashurg steeple. ... Of course you must speak for yourself before Pontius Pilate. I think you should make the closing speech, and review the whole movement in Bos- ton which culminated in your indictment, and arraign the intent and action, of course touching upon the courts. The opening counsel might argue the constitutionality of the Act, though I hesitate to give the judges another opportunity to drive a nail into our coffin. Whoever you have to speak, at any stage, should be able to do something historical, for the time will belong to history. God send you a good deliverance ! "
Near the end of the session the truce on the slavery question was suddenly broken. At noon, February 23, Toucey of Con- necticut, a Democratic Compromise senator, called up a bill reported by the judiciary committee less than a week before, which provided for the transfer to the federal courts of suits pending in State courts against federal officers and other per- sons for acts done under any law or color of any law of the United States. The bill, with no express mention of fugitive- slave cases, was well understood to be designed to protect per- sons assisting in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Act from suits for damages in State courts, particularly by withdrawing the cases to more friendly tribunals, in order to counteract the effect of the personal liberty laws of the States. The spirit of the federal courts at the North was at the time pro-slavery,
1 An allusion to an encounter between B. R. Curtis and Parker in November, 1850, in Faneuil Hall, when the latter offered to answer a question put by the former to the latter, who was not supposed to be present.
2 United States District Attorney.
Mt. 43-44.] THE DEBATE ON TOUCEY'S BILL. 411
and the judges and marshals were supporters of the Fugitive Slave law ; and this was regarded as a favorite jurisdiction for the defence of persons who in their zeal for the reclamation of slaves had exceeded their authority or violated State regulations. The motion to take the bill up prevailed against Chase's plea for further time. The day was Friday, set apart for private bills, — " our day of justice," as Sumner called it. Toucey made a brief statement of its provisions, without any allusion to its specific purpose. There was an evident reluctance to enter upon a full discussion of its purport, and it seemed likely to pass without question. Chase, however, who was familiar with points of practice and jurisdiction, took the floor, and began his remarks with a comment on the favor and prece- dence always accorded in the Senate to every proposition which was supposed to favor the interests of slavery. He objected to the bill as a novelty in our judicial system, an invasion of State rights, and a step, or rather a stride, towards despotism. His clear exposition brought the whole question before the Sen- ate, and the debate at once took a wide range, covering the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the significance of the re- cent defeats of the Administration, the political associations of senators, and other features of the conflict between freedom and slavery. Wade spoke at length, discursively and some- what loosely, but with great energy. He upbraided the Com- promise senators for continually reviving, by new measures and harangues, the agitation which they had undertaken to sup- press, and pointed to the spirit of resistance in the free States awakened by the aggressions of slavery. This reference to the Northern uprising called up Douglas, who spoke with the au- dacity which never failed him, and ascribed the Democratic defeats to the secret Know Nothing order. Fessenden, the master of an incisive style, contested Douglas's assumption as to the significance of the elections. Benjamin and Bayard spoke for the South. Butler betrayed the frequency with which he had partaken of his usual refreshment. He was called to order by Sumner for accusing Wade of falsehood ; and though the point was then decided in his favor, he was shortly after declared out of order by the chair. The evening had now come, and the chandeliers were lighted. Gillette, the new anti- slavery senator from Connecticut, who had been waiting for an opportunity to deliver a speech on slavery in the District of
412 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
Columbia, took a manuscript from his desk and occupied an hour or more in reading it. All were amused when Jones of Tennessee treated Gillette's prepared speech as proof that the antislavery senators knew of the contest in advance, and had conspired to bring it on. Pettit declaimed with his habitual vulgarity on the inferiority of the African race. Wilson made his first antislavery speech in the Senate ; and being the first senator elected by the Know Nothings, his remarks attracted unusual attention, and he was closely questioned by the Com- promise senators. Thus the evening went on. It was eleven when Seward rose. He spoke in his characteristic style, and made the most impressive speech in the debate. With great emphasis he disavowed all connection with the secret order and all sympathy with its principles and methods.1 Then followed Bayard, and at last Sumner, who denounced the bill as " an effort to bolster up the Fugitive Slave Act," — a measure which was " conceived in defiance of the Constitution," and was " a barefaced subversion of every principle of humanity and jus- tice ; " and he closed his speech with a motion for its repeal, which obtained nine votes.2 Butler could not refrain from re- newing to Sumner his old questions about constitutional obliga- tions, and being baffled, said he would " not take advantage of the infirmity of a man who did not know half his time what he was about." As Sumner was scrupulously correct in his habits, and as Butler often and at the very time appeared to have been drinking to excess, the remark provoked general merriment. Sumner's answers were to the effect that he would not himself recommend, or take part in, any State action for the rendition of fugitive slaves. The debate ended at midnight, and the Senate then adjourned after a continuous session of thirteen hours.3
1 Seward had just been re-elected senator against the opposition of Compromise Dem- ocrats and Know Nothings.
2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 529-547. Fessenden, Seward, and even Cooper, now voted with Sumner, but Fish and Hamlin were still silent. Sumner had in this vote a new ally in his colleague, Wilson.
3 The writer was present in the gallery during the debate. Wilson beckoned to him from his seat shortly before speaking, and they conferred in the lobby as to the effect of his proposed speech on his Know Nothing connections, which at the time he was loath to disturb. Two friends of the Massachusetts senators, F. W. Bird and H. L. Pierce, entered the Senate gallery while Wilson was speaking. They and the writer after the adjournment walked down the steps of the Capitol in company with Seward, who was enjoying a cigar after the long confinement ; and the three congratulated him heartily for his decisive ex- pressions against the Know Nothing order. Mr. Bird's description of the debate is printed in the Boston "Telegraph," Feb. 28, 1855- Other descriptions were by William S. Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," and E. L. Pierce in the Detroit "Advertiser."
Mi. 43-44.] VINDICATION OF THE ANTISLAVERY ENTERPRISE. 413
An incident occurred a few days later, just at the close of the session, which shows that Sumner had the respect of Butler, although they were no longer on speaking terms. An amend- ment to the appropriation bill was under discussion, which au- thorized the purchase of copies of the papers of General Nathan- iel Greene to be edited by his grandson, George W. Greene, who has already been mentioned in this biography. Sumner spoke briefly in favor of the grant, and vouched for the qualifications of the editor. Butler thought the gentleman from Massachu- setts a good indorser, and his authority as to the competency of the editor quite sufficient. Apparently fearing that some pleasantry of his concerning an interview between General Lafayette and a daughter of General Greene might prejudice the proposed grant, he at once wrote on a letter envelope a memorandum explaining his remarks, which he handed from his seat to Sumner. At the end of it he said : " God forbid that I should say anything that would touch the reputation of General Greene's descendants ! "
Sumner was happy to assist at this time in completing a transaction which resulted in the liberation of a family of slaves. Mr. Andrew, afterwards governor, as the friend of Seth Botts (or Henry Williams, his adopted name), a fugitive slave,1 had been interested for two years in procuring the free- dom of Botts's wife and their three children (two girls and a boy), then held as slaves in Prince William County, Virginia, the title to whom had been finally determined after protracted litigation. He had raised the necessary funds to pay for them, and was in correspondence with the owner's attorney, Judge Christopher Neale, of Alexandria. Sumner assisted in the ne- gotiation by conferences with Judge Neale, and subsequently when it was completed took charge of the negroes upon their arrival in Washington, and saw them to the station safely on their way to the North. He received the deed of them, and was thus for a few hours technically a slaveholder. The chil- dren were nearly white, and the eldest so Caucasian in color and features as to be called Ida May, after the heroine of a re- cent antislavery novel. Photographs of them, taken after their arrival in Boston, were distributed ; and many were affected by the sight of slaves apparently white, who were unmoved at the
1 He had escaped from Judge Neale, of Alexandria, six years before, and had bought his freedom after his escape.
414 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
contemplation of negroes in bondage.1 Sumner, in sending a daguerreotype of one of the children to Boston, suggested that it be exhibited, as an illustration of slavery, among members of the Legislature, where bills for the protection of personal liberty were pending. He wrote : " Let a hard-hearted Hunker look at it and be softened ! Such is slavery ! There it is ! Should such things be allowed to continue in Washington, under the shadow of the Capitol?" Mr. Andrew wrote, March 10:
" After all the negotiation with the two contending parties in their hehalf, and all the anxieties, disappointments, and delays of two or three years of effort, with the husband and father constantly calling on me, and relying on my encouragement and aid in raising his funds, keeping up his hopes, and looking out for the protection of his family in any way I could, you may he assured that I contemplated the happy and complete establishment of this poor family restored to each other, not now as slaves, but in full freedom and peace, with more thankfulness than I can tell. For all your constant kind- ness to them while in Washington, and your attention and aid to me, I need not say that I am heartily grateful."
In January, 1855, Sumner was made an honorary member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics' Association. The elec- tion was one of the indications of the gradual change of public sentiment. A friend, A. G. Browne, wrote : —
" My belief is that one short year since, had your name been proposed, so strong were the prejudices against you, that I fear you could not have been voted in. The fear of such a result deterred me from proposing your name."
Lydia Maria Child wrote, February 12, with thanks for flower- seeds which had come by post, and added : —
" But far above all things do I thank you for the true nobility of talent and character which you manifest in your public career. You once wrote to me that my writings had done somewhat to interest you on the subject of slavery. I lay that up as a precious reward for my efforts. Wentworth Hig- ginson says the same. In desponding states of mind, when my writings seem to me so very imperfect, and all the efforts of my life so miserably fragmentary, a pleasant voice sings in the inner chamber of my soul, ' But you have not lived in vain ; Charles Sumner and Wentworth Higginson are working glo- riously for humanity, each in his own way, and they both say you have done something to urge them onward.' "
As soon as Sumner arrived home from Washington, at the close of the session in March, 1855, he began the preparation
1 Two of the children sat on the platform in Tremont Temple when Sumner delivered his lecture March 29.
Mr. 43-44] VINDICATION OF THE ANTISLAVERY ENTERPRISE. 415
of an address on " The necessity, practicability, and dignity of the Antislavery enterprise, with glances at the special duties of the North." 1 This address concluded, March 29, the antislavery course2 in Tremont Temple, which he had been, on account of a cold, prevented from opening in the previous November. The public interest in the address was so keen that he re- peated it in the same hall the next evening. Afterwards he delivered it during the same and the next month in several towns and cities of Massachusetts and New York.3 At Auburn he was the guest of Mr. Seward, who introduced him to the audience with generous praise.4 Such was the interest in the address and in the orator which prevailed in New York city that under the pressure of the public demand he gave it in the Metropolitan Theatre, May 9, and repeated it in Niblo's Theatre and in Brooklyn. He had not spoken before in the metrop- olis, and the halls where he spoke were crowded with enthusi- astic audiences. He was introduced on the different evenings by William Jay, Henry Ward Beecher, and Joseph Blunt. An invitation to speak in Philadelphia was pressed on him, but he declined it. Similar invitations came during the summer from most of the free States. The address was warmly praised in the newspapers, and it was printed in full in the New York " Tribune " and the " National Era." As Sumner came, later on, to care chiefly for the effect of his popular addresses as they were read by the public, he never after appeared to so much advantage on the platform as in the delivery of this address. It treated the antislavery movement largely and com- prehensively in its moral and political aspects, laying emphasis on the practical duties which it imposed, and answering the objections and sophistries urged against it.5 In passages it is
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 1-51. The title recalls that of Dr. Wayland's sermon on "The Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise."
2 Sumner was present, March 23, at Wilson's lecture in the same course, which was interrupted by the latter's illness.
3 Woburn, Lowell, Worcester, New Bedford, Lynn, and other places in Massachusetts; also in Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Auburn, For notices of the address and the reception it met, see Boston " Telegraph," March 30, 1855, " Atlas," March 30.
4 Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 250. Mr. Seward, supposing Sumner was about to visit the West, wrote March 26, and pleasantly besought a sojourn in Auburn. " Pray stop and spend a week, or some days or a day with us. Mrs. Seward would command, Mrs. Worden enjoins, and I solicit that pleasure."
6 Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, D. D., of Kentucky, in a public letter to Sumner, June 11, 1855, made the lecture the subject of elaborate criticism, the spirit of which is in con- trast with that divine's support of emancipation in Kentucky at an earlier day, as well as with his patriotism in the Civil War.
416 MEMOIE OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
eloquent, and the tone of the whole impressive. It was at once instructive, persuasive, and inspiring. The fair-minded listener, spite of adverse preconceptions, could not but confess as well the practical aims as the sublimity of the cause. This address, and the senator's speech, five years later, on " the Barbarism of Slavery," make together the most complete forensic argu- ment for the antislavery enterprise which was made during the entire contest.
Mrs. Seward, who never failed in affectionate interest, in sending to him some poetry written in an Auburn paper con- cerning his antislavery address, wrote, April 29 : —
" Once more let me entreat you to take care of your health. Great powers are given for beneficent purposes ; but the highest mental endowments avail little comparatively without physical strength. Do not think me importunate."
George William Curtis, who was present at the delivery of the address (probably at Providence), and now heard Sumner for the first time, wrote, April 6 : —
" There is but one opinion of your address. It will be a sword in the hands of all who heard it for their future battles in the cause."
Rev. Convers Francis wrote, April 2 : —
" Thanks to you — most hearty thanks — for that masterly lecture of last Thursday evening. It is not easy to tell you how much I, in common with the great multitude, was enlightened and gratified. No one left the house that evening, I venture to say, without a conviction, never to be removed from his mind, that the antislavery enterprise was most truly necessary, practicable, and dignified. Coming out I met Mr. Garrison, who said, ' Well, Mr. Sum- ner has given us a true, old-fashioned antislavery discourse.' "
Rev. C. E. Stowe wrote, April 9 : —
"You are happy in having stood for the cause at the lowest point of depression and in the imminent deadly breach. The Lord give you many days and the strength corresponding ! "
Oliver Johnson wrote from New York, July 9 : —
" People here have not forgotten the triumph of last May. You made a deeper impression in this city, I believe, than it was ever the good fortune of any other antislavery speaker to make, — an impression that will last till the final jubilee. Oh, how I wish we might hope that you might strike another blow for us the next session ! "
.Et. 43-44.] FIKST VISIT TO THE WEST. 417
Sumner wrote to John Jay, March 3 : —
" I send you a copy of a bill1 now pending in Massachusetts, out of which you may draw ideas for your bill. Let me refer you also to the Michigan law ; also to those of Connecticut and Vermont. In my speech the other night you will find these laws briefly vindicated. I am glad you have your hand on this work. Now is the day and now is the hour. The free States must be put in battle array, from which they will never retreat. I know you will do your part of the work."
Late in May Sumner left Boston on a journey to the West, his first visit to a section of the country which he had greatly desired to see. At Yellow Springs, Ohio, he called on Horace Mann, then president of Antioch College. At Cincinnati he was glad to meet Chase, then preparing for the State election, in which he was to be the Republican candidate for governor. The two friends drove to the beautiful suburbs and to the cem- etery at Clifton, destined to be the last resting-place of one of them. At Lexington, Ky., Sumner visited the home and grave of Henry Clay. He was Cassius M. Clay's guest at White Hall, in Madison County, in company with whom he examined the former's breeds of cattle, sheep, and horses, for which that State is famous. They drove together over fine roads to the well-equipped farm of Mr. Clay's brother, Brutus J., near Paris. This was the first and only time in his life that Sumner could freely inspect the condition of slaves on a plantation. Thirty years later, Mr. Clay gave the following account of the visit :
" Mr. Sumner's acquaintance I first made, I believe, in 1853, at the banquet given to John P. Hale in Boston. Subsequently I invited him to visit me in Kentucky at my present home in Madison County, which he did. I was a breeder of pure-blooded short-horns and Southdown sheep, in seeing which he seemed much interested. The Kentucky trees and landscape grounds about my house (thirty acres), with every indigenous tree of my own State and some exotic evergreens, seemed also to please him. In these things, however, he did not seem to be permanently concerned, as his conversation returned to politics and literature. After spending a few days with me I took him through Lexington, when having shown him some noted places we went on in my buggy over fine macadam roads, through Paris to the stock farm of my brother Brutus J. Clay, four miles from that town. He had the finest farm in the State, in its proportions and natural soil, but mostly noted for its supe- rior culture and equipments. It was, outside of the cultivated fields, a natural park of great trees and blue-grass sward, without weeds. In addition to short- horns and Southdown sheep, he bred horses, mostly the English Cleveland bays, the well-known coach-horse. In these horses Mr. Sumner was more
1 To protect personal liberty. vol. in. 27
418 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55
interested than in the other stock, — lingering long and asking many ques- tions about them ; for with these he was of course more familiar. That sur- prised me the rnore because at Dr. E. Warfield's, where we spent a few hours, he seemed but little interested in race-horses, though many of them fine ones and of the Lexington strain. But I had taken him to my brother's purposely, where I could take the liberty of showing him how the slaves fared. Here the negro cabins were built of hewn logs and poiuted with lime, generally one room below and one above, though some of them had made additions themselves in a rude way. Each cottage was fenced with posts and rails, a yard in front, and a small garden in the rear. The winter wood was piled conveniently in summer, and all things were very snug and comfortable, — at all of which Mr. Sumner seemed somewhat surprised. As he and I were alone, he asked freely many questions, which I frankly answered. He how- ever made but Uttle comment ; but when a small boy ran ahead and opened the gates for us with a broad grin upon his face, Mr. Sumner remarked, ' Poor boy!' and threw him a piece of silver coin; from which I inferred that his thoughts were, 'What is all this physical comfort? The child and others are still slaves.' Mr. Sumner and I divided on the reconstruction measures, which were discussed as early as 1862-1863 ; but I cannot fail to do justice to a bold and philanthropic statesman, whom the followers on power failed to appre- ciate as he deserved."
Suinner went by rail from Lexington to Frankfort and then to Louisville, where he renewed with Mr. and Mrs. William Preston the pleasant relations he had begun with them in Washington. He was taken by Mr. Preston to drive on the Indiana as well as the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.1 He went from Louisville to the Mammoth Cave and to Nashville, — most, if not all, of the way by stage-coach. The hotel accommodations on this part of the route were very primitive. He was obliged to share his room with strangers, but he successfully resisted a landlord's pressure to put one into his bed. At Bowling Green he called on Judge Underwood, a public man of liberal views, with whom in the Senate he had maintained friendly intercourse. At Nash- ville he visited the home and grave of Andrew Jackson. From Mammoth Cave he wrote, June 18, to Albert G. Browne, Jr.,2 a youth studying in Berlin, son of an old friend : —
i Preston, who was then running for Congress against Humphrey Marshall, the Know Nothing candidate, stated to the writer that Sumner said during the drive that " the American people would never formulate such nonsense as Know Nothingism."
2 1835-1891. Browne was a youth of fine promise, which was fulfilled by performance. He was private secretary of Governor Andrew during the Civil War, and aided greatly in the despatch of public business at that period. He became reporter of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and was afterwards of the editorial corps of the New York "Evening Post" and New York "Herald." He married Mattie Griffith, of Kentucky, — a noble woman, who had emancipated her inherited slaves.
vEt. 43-44.] FIRST VISIT TO THE WEST. , 419
" My dear Albert, — Here I am now in this distant solitude, weary with a tramp of twenty-five miles beneath the ground ; and I dedicate an early moment to you. I have been glad to hear of your studies and happi- ness. I doubt not you are laying up a goodly store for future use. Of course you will master the German, and I hope before you return you will do the same with the French. If you get nothing else, you will not have journeyed in vain; but to these I know you are adding experience, knowledge, and learning, all of which will enable you to enter upon life with commanding influence. On your return we will need all that you can contribute. The country is approaching a crisis on the slavery question, when freedom will triumph in the national government or the Union will be dissolved. At mo- ments latterly I have thought that the North was at last ready for a rising, and that it would be united in the support of a truly Northern man for Presi- dent. Perhaps the wish is father of this thought. It is evident that the Know Nothings cannot construct a national platform on which they can stand at the North and South ; their failure will make way for a Northern com- bination. I have spoken much since the meeting of Congress, iu Massachu- setts and New York, and have everywhere found the people prepared as never before to welcome our great truth. Your sketch of Humboldt was admirable. I have already seen something of Kentucky ; have enjoyed its magnificent farms, its thoroughbred cattle, its woodland pastures. I have seen a slave sold on the steps of the court house at Lexington, and have passed a day as a guest on an estate where there were one hundred slaves ; so that I have been gaining experience ! The more I think and see of slavery, the more indefen- sible does it seem. I hesitated between the journey I am now taking and one to Europe. For myself I have chosen wisely ; but nevertheless I envy you the Rhine, Heidelberg, the Alps, and all that is before you."
In Kentucky and Tennessee Sumner had an opportunity to ob- serve out-door political meetings, and to hear four stump speeches. He went by steamer down the Cumberland to the Ohio, and then on the Mississippi to St. Louis, where it is probable that he met his kinsman, Colonel E. V. Sumner, then commanding at that post. He continued his journey by steamboat up the Mississippi to St. Paul, stopping at points on the way.1 While driving at Davenport he met with an accident. The horse be- came unmanageable ; he was thrown out, severely bruised, and narrowly escaped serious injury. Descending the river as far as Dubuque 2 and going to Chicago, he went north to Milwaukee to seek Mr. Booth, who had recently contested the validity of the Fugitive Slave law, and with him went to Windsor to call on
1 He met in Iowa Governor James W. Grimes, afterwards senator, who thought that Sumner was not intellectually like Webster or Chase, but that "what is wonderful in a politician, he has a heart." Grimes's "Life," pp. 74, 75.
2 At Dubuque, July 10, lie called on the editor of the "Tribune," the Republican jour- nal of the city.
420 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
Mr. Durkee, the newly chosen Republican senator from Wiscon- sin, whom they did not find at home. Sumner then journeyed as far as the capital. Madison, and thence returned to Chicago. At the end of July he was at Detroit, whence he made a tour on the lakes, going as far as Lake Superior.1 On board a steamer, August 11, he wrote a letter denouncing Judge Kane's imprison- ment of Passamore Williamson, the friend of fugitive slaves, on the charge of contempt of court.2 On his rapid return home he made brief pauses at Saratoga, Lake George, the White Moun- tains (where he ascended Mount Washington), and Portland, and was in Boston September 6, — having in his absence, as he wrote, "traversed eleven free States and three slave States." The journey was followed by his usual visit to his brother Albert at Newport. In a speech made a few weeks after his return, he spoke of certain incidents witnessed by him in the slave States,3 which were not calculated to shake his original convictions.4 He wrote to William Jay, October 7: —
" My longing is for concord among men of all parties, in order to give soli- dity to our position. For this I am willing to abandon everything except the essential principle. Others may have the offices if the principle can be main- tained. I suppose Banks will be the Northern candidate for Speaker; he has a genius for the place as marked as Bryant in poetry. You will observe an advantage which the South will have in the next House from the experi- ence of Stephens and Cobb, re-elected from Georgia, and the whole late dele- gation of Virginia, while most of our Northern men will be fresh. We seem to approach success ; but I shall not be disappointed if we are again' baffled. Our cause is so great that it can triumph only slowly; but its triumph is sure."
To John Jay, October 18 : —
" The K. N.'s here behave badly. Our contest seems to be with them. What a fall is that of John Van Buren ! The ghost of '48 must rise before him sometimes."
In the summer and autumn there was another effort in Massa- chusetts to combine all who were opposed to the aggressions of
1 He wrote, August 6, from Lake Superior, to his classmate, Dr. J. W. Bemis, regretting that he had been unable to attend the meeting of his class at Cambridge on their twenty- fifth year from graduation.
2 Works, vol. iv. pp. 52-57. Mr. Conger, M. C, of Michigan, was a fellow-passenger, and in his eulogy in the House, April 27, 1874, stated the circumstances under which this letter was written.
3 At Lexington, Ky.
4 Works, vol. iv. p. 64. The Boston "Post" accused Sumner of expressing in Ken- tucky opinions on slavery different from those he expressed in Massachusetts, — a charge to which he replied by letter to that journal, Nov. 16, 1855.
JEt. 43-44.] DEFENCE OF FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS.- 421
slavery under the name of the Republican party; and lor a time it bid fair to succeed. Its candidate for governor was Julius Rockwell, recently Sumner's Whig colleague in the Senate. The antislavery members of the Know Nothing order joined in it, as well as a considerable body of voters hitherto Whigs. A Whig editor, Samuel Bowles, hitherto not friendly to Sumner, urged him to take a very active part in the election, writing to him as follows, October 13 : —
" You can do more than any other man to shape the result aright. Your position, your character, your eloquence, the moral power your efforts always carry, lead all parties to listen with respect and favor. I feel as if you could decide the result. The field is well arranged, the lines fairly drawn, the issues plain, strong, and direct, the trenches are built, the walls erected; but we need a captain whose moral power has not been weakened by participation in the preliminaries of the campaign, who has not suffered himself to be de- bauched by the local politics of the last twelve months. You are such a man ; and with you now actively in the field until the election, our cause and our candidates will surely triumph."
Late in the canvass Sumner spoke at nine important places, — first at Fall River, where his audience was two thousand; the next evening at New Bedford ; and November 2 at Faneuil Hall.1 At Springfield2 he spoke in the largest hall of the city, which was crowded to its full capacity, with several hundred seeking admis- sion without avail. The Springfield " Republican," hitherto not partial in his favor, wrote, October 27 : —
"The outbursts of applause by which Mr. Sumner was frequently inter- rupted told the irrepressible enthusiasm of the audience, and their hearty indorsement of the sentiments of the speaker ; and we may say without exag- geration that a better or more cheering demonstration was never made in Springfield. Nearly or quite twelve hundred persons were present during the whole evening, and hundreds on hundreds went away unable to get in."
Sumner began his address,3 which occupied two hours and a quarter in the delivery, with a treatment of the issues growing
i Other places where he spoke were Springfield, Worcester, Fitchburg, Lynn, Lowell, and Salem.
2 The Boston "Telegraph," October 29, gives extracts from newspapers showing Sum- ner's success at New Bedford, Springfield, and Worcester. The local paper at Lowell gave a similar description.
3 Works, vol. iv. pp. 62-82. The speech was published in full in the Boston "Tele- graph," November 3. The parts omitted in the Works are largely a repetition of matter contained in former speeches. Dana wrote in his diary, November 4: "Sumner made a nobie speech at Faneuil Hall, Friday night, before a crowded assembly, at which I pre- sided." Adams's "Biography" of Dana, vol. i. p. 348.
422 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55.
out of the slavery question, including recent outrages in Kansas, and then discussed the relations of parties, insisting upon the necessity of a political organization (the Republican party) based only upon opposition to slavery. The stress of his argument was on this point. At the same time he took occasion to reject the irrational methods of the Know Nothings, — those of secrecy, — and to condemn the religious and class prejudices against foreign- born citizens, out of which the order had sprung. His tribute to distinguished persons who have served other countries than their own was often quoted at the time, and is a good specimen of his style : —
"It is proposed to attaint men for religion, and also for birth. If this object can prevail, vain are the triumphs of civil freedom in its many hard- fought fields, vain is that religious toleration which we profess. The fires of Smithfield, the tortures of the Inquisition, the proscriptions of Non-Con- formists, may all be revived. Mainly to escape these outrages, dictated hy a dominant religious sect, was our country early settled, — in one place by Pilgrims, who sought independence ; in another by Puritans, who disowned bishops ; in another by Episcopalians, who take their name from bishops ; in another by Quakers, who set at nought all forms ; and in yet another by Catholics, who look to the Pope as spiritual father. Slowly among the strug- gling sects was evolved that great idea of the equality of all men before the law, without regard to religious belief; nor cau any party now organize a proscription merely for religious belief without calling in question this well- established principle.
" But Catholics are mostly foreigners, and on this account are condemned. Let us see if there be any reason in this ; and here indulge me with one word on foreigners. . . . All will admit that any influence which they bring, hostile to our institutions, calculated to substitute priestcraft for religion, and bigotry for Christianity, must be deprecated and opposed. All will admit, too, that there must be some assurance of their purpose to become not merely con- sumers of the fruits of our soil, but useful, loyal, and permauent members of our community, upholders of the general welfare. With this simple explana- tion, I cannot place any check upon the welcome to foreigners. There are our broad lands, stretching towards the setting sun ; let them come and take them. Ourselves children of the Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the Pilgrims of the present. Let the home founded by our emi- grant fathers continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of to-day.
" The history of our country, in its humblest as well as most exalted spheres, testifies to the merit of foreigners. Their strong arms have helped furrow our broad territory with canals, and stretch in every direction the iron rail. They fill our workshops, navigate our ships, and even till our fields. Go where you will among the hardy sons of toil on land or sea, and there you find industrious and faithful foreigners bending their muscles to the work. At the bar and in the high places of commerce you find them. Enter the retreats of learning, and there too you find them, shedding upon our country
Mt. 43-44.] DEFENCE OF FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS. 423
the glory of science. Nor can any reflection be cast upon foreigners coming for hospitality now which will not glance at once upon the distinguished living and the illustrious dead, — upon the Irish Montgomery, who perished for us at the gates of Quebec ; upon Pulaski the Pole, who perished for us at Savannah ; upon De Kalb and Steuben, the generous Germans, who aided our weakness by their military experience ; upon Paul Joues, the Scotchman, who lent his unsurpassed courage to the infant thunders of our navy; also upon those great European liberators, Kosciusko of Poland and Lafayette of Prance, each of whom paid his earliest vows to liberty in our cause. Nor should this list be confined to military characters, so long as we gratefully cherish the name of Alexander Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies, and the name of Albert Gallatin, who was born in Switzerland, and never, to the close of his octogenarian career, lost the French accent of his boyhood, — both of whom rendered civic services to be commemorated among the victories of peace.3 ... A party which, beginning in secrecy) interferes with religious belief, and founds a discrimination on the accident of birth, is not the party for us."
Most public men in Sumner's position, with his term nearly- expired, and the native-American sentiment still active in the State, would have kept aloof from a controversy with the Know Nothings at this time ; but Sumner, in his loyalty to his convic- tions, took no account of considerations which affected only his personal fortunes. He believed it the duty of a public man to withstand a popular frenzy, not to pay court to it. He knew well in this instance the risk he took, but courage was a quality which never failed him in presence of a duty. This part of his address might have made more difficult his re-election by the Legislature chosen a year later but for an unforeseen event which was to unite the people of the State in his support.
The native- American sentiment and old Whig prejudices were still obstructions to the union of all opposed to slavery ; and the American, or Know Nothing, party taking the same position as the Republican on the slavery question, prevailed at the election, and their candidate for governor, Henry J. Gardner, received a large plurality. The Boston Whigs (the remnant of the party long dominant in the State) again resisted the fusion, and gave a third of the fourteen thousand votes which were received by the Whig candidate, Samuel H. Walley, who was supported in speeches or letters by Choate, Winthrop, Hillard, Stevenson, F. C. Gray, and N. Appleton, — names already familiar to these pages. Their newspaper organ, the "Advertiser," with unchanged pro-
1 The omitted passage gives instances in which other countries have been served by foreigners.
424 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1854-55
prietorship, appealed to old prejudices, and rallied Whig voters with the charge that the Republican party was a geographical and sectional party, with aims and tendencies hostile to the Union and the Constitution. So virulent was its partisanship that on the morning after the election it counted triumphantly, using capitals, the aggregate vote of Know Nothings, Demo- crats, and Whigs as "the majority against nullification,'' — thus treating the Republicans as " nullifiers." 1
Gillette, the antislavery senator from Connecticut, whose brief term had expired, wrote, December 5, from Hartford, that he " regretted leaving the Senate only for losing the pleasure of being associated with my dear friend [Sumner], who is much in my thoughts. God gird him for the coming fight ! "
Rev. Charles Lowell, father of the poet, wrote, October 30 :
"I cannot forbear saying how much comfort it gives me that you are able to say and do so much for the cause of truth and righteousness and mercy ; and it is my earnest hope and prayer that you may long be honored as the instrument in the hands of Providence for the promotion of this great and good work."
Seward wrote, November 9 : —
''I see that Massachusetts and New York have gone together into the meshes of this impudent and corrupt secret combination.2 But it is quite enough for me that in both States we have kept our own great cause free from pollution by it. ... 1 have read your speech. It is a noble one, me judice ; and what it failed to do in the recent canvass, it will do in the next."
An intrigue for electing prematurely Sumner's successor by the Legislature of 1856, in which the Know Nothings had a ma- jority, was started early that year : but it found favor with only a few persons, and was dropped.3 The uniform practice, as well as constitutional objections, stood in the way. The duty properly belonged to the Legislature to be chosen in November, 1856.
1 In 1856 this journal was unfriendly to the election of a Republican Speaker, and op- posed the Republican party as " sectional " (July 24) till a short time before the election, when it announced its support of Fremont.
2 The Know Nothing or American part}'.
3 It was noted in the newspapers. Boston "Advertiser," March 10, 1856, and "Tele- graph," March 15.
Mt. 44-45.] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 425
CHAPTER XL.
OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. — SPEECH ON KANSAS.— THE BROOKS
ASSAULT. - 1855-1856.
CONGRESS met Dec. 3, 1855. The Republican senators now numbered nearly one fourth of the Senate, and their ex elusion from committees was no longer attempted. Sumner, receiving thirty-two votes, was again placed on the committee on pensions, of which the other members were Jones of Iowa (chairman), Clay of Alabama, Seward of New York, and Thomp- son of New Jersey. On Cass's motion he was appointed one of the two members of the committee on enrolled bills.1 He spoke at length against the proposition to originate appropriation bills in the Senate, contending that it contemplated a practice which according to the best interpretation was not allowed by the Con- stitution.2 In two speeches on the mode of abrogating treaties he maintained, that, as under the Constitution a treaty is the supreme law of the land, it could be abrogated only by act of Congress.3 The occasion which led him to introduce a reso- lution to this effect was President Pierce's notice to Denmark for terminating the treaty in relation to the Danish Sound dues given in pursuance of a resolution of the Senate. It was sus- pected at the time that Southern senators, who were urging the power of the Senate to abrogate the treaty, had in view the making of a precedent for the revocation of the treaty with Great Britain requiring a naval force on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade. Sumner had already in ex- ecutive session opposed successfully Slidell's proposition to abro- gate this treaty. His speeches defeated the proposed action in
1 Greeley, writing in the "Tribune," Dec. 14, 1855, of Sumner as one "whose reputa- tion as scholar, orator, and statesman is not confined to this hemisphere," said: "Mr. Sumner dangles at the tail of two unimportant committees. Such is slavery's confession that she feels the point of his spear, — a truth well known already to others, but never so plainly admitted till now."
2 Feb. 7, 1856. Works, vol. iv. pp. 83-92. He stated the same view in debate, Feb. 10. 1865.
s March 6 and May 8. Works, vol. iv. pp. 98-120.
426 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
relation to the treaty with Denmark, and aided in establishing the rule that treaties can be abrogated only by act of Congress. He wrote to Theodore Parker, Jan. 3, 1856 : —
"This evening I dined in the company of several of the judges of the Supreme Court, and in the shuffle for seats at the table found myself next but one to Curtis ] throughout a protracted dinner of two or three hours. I had not seen so much of him for years, and make haste to send you the pleasant impressions which I had. Commodore Morris got between me and the judge ; Governor Brown of Mississippi, who believes slavery divine, on my left. In the course of our conversation Curtis said that he had not voted since he had been a judge, and he professed entire ignorance of politics and parties. I thought also that he showed it. My conversation with him was so agreeable that I shall call upon him, which I have not done thus far since I have been here in Washington."
Again, January 9 : —
"Unjust judges may at least be frightened if not condemned. If I were not a senator, I would organize petitions to the House for the impeachment of all who have trespassed against liberty, from Wisconsin to Massachusetts. Think of this. The presentation of the petitions would remind these judges that a power was growing in the country which would yet summon them to justice.
"What are the chances of the personal liberty law? I had hoped to challenge a discussion of that here in reply to any allusion to Massachu- setts ; but Gardner's message is the beginning of an embarrassing ' fire in the rear,' which compels me to alter my tactics.'"
Again, January 20 : —
"The House is at a dead-lock. The slave oligarchy now says, 'Anybody but Banks.' If the Republicans would seriously unite on another man the enemy would allow the plurality vote and a consequent election ; but this would give victory to (1) the slave oligarchy, (2) the petty squad of dissen- tients, and (3) the American organization in contradistinction to the Repub- licans. My counsel has been to stick to Banks, and leave the future to take care of itself."
The House of Representatives, which had been chosen in the summer and autumn of 1854, when the agitation growing out of the Nebraska bill was at its height, contained a large anti- Administration majority, which however was an unorganized mass, made up in part of Republicans and in part of Know Nothings or Americans, who were divided into different sec- tions,— some Northern and others Southern in their affiliations, and the Northern division being itself separated into several
i Judge B. R. Curtis.
JEt. 44-15.] OUTEAGES IN KANSAS. 427
groups. The contest for the speakership, which excited great interest in the country, lasted two months, and ended Feb. 2, 1856, on the one hundred and thirty-third ballot, after the adoption of a plurality rule, in the election of N. P. Banks, a Massachusetts Republican, — the first national victory of the antislavery cause.1 While the election was pending, slavery was an ever-recurring topic of desultory discussion in the House, which chiefly, however, related to the party relations of mem- bers, and particularly of the candidates. Less bitterness was exhibited than might have been expected under the circum- stances,2 and at the end of the contest Aiken of South Carolina, the rival candidate, who was defeated by only .three votes, grace- fully sought the privilege of conducting Banks to the chair.
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854 opened the new territories to settlement ; and the struggle in Congress be- tween freedom and slavery was continued, without an interval, in the territory itself. The slaveholders of western Missouri, who had been the first to instigate the repeal of the Missouri Compromise prohibition, making no contest for Nebraska, where an effort would have been hopeless, at once pushed into Kansas and took possession of the best tracts, most of them retaining their old homes in Missouri and contemplating only a tempo- rary sojourn in the territory. They had started the scheme of the repeal with the full conviction that it would insure with- out further effort a slave State on their border ; but now, with rumors abroad that the capital and enterprise of the free States were preparing to contest the issue in the territory itself, they found themselves forced to enter upon a larger project of pro- slavery colonization, and to invoke the co-operation of the entire slaveholding interest of the country. Their leaders in Missouri were Atchison, late senator and president of the Senate, who in- spired the movement generally, and Stringfellow, his lieutenant, who was energetic in the details of organization. Secret soci- eties were at once formed in Missouri for the purpose of sending
1 Theodore Parker wrote Sumner, Feb. 16, 1856 : "Banks's election is the fnrst victory of the Northern idea since 1787." See Sumner's letter to a Massachusetts committee, February 25 (Works, vol. iv. p. 96), expressing a similar idea.
2 There were some exceptions to this statement. McMullen, December 21, called Gid- dings " that contemptible member of the House." Edmundson, January 18, advanced towards Giddings, shouting, "Say that again!" But the old man was unmoved and defiant. The report of the Congressional Globe, as usual in such cases, omits a part of the scene. New York "Evening Post," July 15, 1856.
428 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
companies of slaveholders to the territory, and for excluding from it all persons opposed to slavery ; and the plotting ex- tended to the cotton States of the South. Public meetings were held, in which it was proclaimed that Kansas was already slave territory, and that antislavery colonists would not be allowed in it. The free States were equally awake to the issue. While the Kansas-Nebraska bill was pending, the plan of assisted emigra- tion to the territory had taken form in Massachusetts ; and at the instance of Eli Thayer, of Worcester, a charter was granted by the Legislature to a company to be organized for the pur- pose. Though it was not availed of at the time on account of inconvenient provisions, a voluntary association with able man- agers immediately took charge of the work. Under their au- spices a few colonies arrived in the territory in 1854, the first reaching there at the beginning of August, and the second early in September, and founding Lawrence, a town afterwards so celebrated. During the next spring the " New England Emi- grant Aid Company," formed under a Massachusetts charter, succeeded to the conduct of the enterprise. Its chief functions were to supply information, cheapen transportation, and set up saw-mills and flour-mills in the territory.
This legitimate enterprise, which sent to the territory in all not more than fifteen hundred emigrants (the first party arriv- ing in March, 1855), encountered the fierce hostility of the pro- slavery party, which saw slipping from its hands the prize they had thought secure. They now determined to establish slavery in Kansas by force, and began a series of armed incursions for the purpose of carrying the elections and terrifying the Free State settlers into submission. The first of these was late in November, 1854, when seventeen hundred Missourians crossed into the territory, and after voting for Whitfield as delegate to Congress returned to their homes in Missouri. The second was in March, 1855, when to the number of five thousand they came again, marshalled and equipped like a military expedition, with Atchison among them armed like the rest. They distributed themselves at the polling places ; forced judges of election, with bowie-knife and pistol in hand, to receive their votes ; cast eighty per cent of the entire vote thrown ; and when the busi- ness was finished, marched back to Missouri. The result was a legislature worthy of its origin. It assumed the existence of slavery in the territory, adopted a barbarous slave-code, which,
JEt. 44-45.] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 429
copied from the statutes of slave States, declared it to be a criminal offence to deny orally or in writing the legal existence of slavery in the territory, and exacted from citizens extraordi- nary oaths of support of the Fugitive Slave law. A. H. Reeder, a Pennsylvania Democrat, the first territorial governor, had weakly given certificates of election to a majority of the mem- bers of the body ; but later, realizing what a monstrous usurpa- tion it was, he refused to sanction it upon the technical ground that it had removed the seat of government without authority. President Pierce, who was in full sympathy with the pro-slavery party, removed him in August, and put in his place a pliant instrument, Wilson Shannon. The Free State settlers treated the legislature as a spurious body from the beginning. They skilfully avoided all recognition of its enactments, while ab- staining from any forcible resistance to federal authority. After anxious conferences as to what was best to be done in their anomalous position of contending with a usurpation which had a certain legal sanction, they initiated proceedings for the form- ation of a State government, following substantially the methods which had been pursued in Michigan and California. In Octo- ber they chose Reeder a delegate to Congress, and elected delegates to a constitutional convention ; and the constitution framed by that body the same month, at Topeka, was approved by a popular vote in December. The next month (January, 1856) the first election was held for State officers and members of the legislature. The legislature met in March, elected sen- ators, and applied to Congress for admission as a State. Only Free State men, though all legal voters were invited, took part in these proceedings, which were altogether provisional, and awaited the confirming action of Congress to give them vitality and force. As no executive act was attempted, they involved no resistance to legitimate authority.
Meantime, while these proceedings were in progress, the rage of the pro-slavery party growing more violent was specially directed against Lawrence, the centre of Free State activity. Late in November, 1855, armed Missourians, twelve hundred or more in number, gathered before the town, nominally in re- sponse to the summons of a pro-slavery sheriff calling for a posse to assist in executing a process, — really, however, for the purpose of destroying the town and wreaking vengeance on its people ; but finding the place protected by forts and the in-
430 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER [1855-56
habitants armed with Sharpe's rifles which had been sent from the free States, they found it discreet to retire a few days later, yielding, after a parley, to pressure from Governor Shannon. As they came and went, and while encamped on the Wakarusa, they indulged freely in waylaying and marauding. They were still in camp when a new Congress met at the beginning of December.
The President sent, Jan. 24, 1856, a special message to Con- gress on affairs in Kansas. It made pretences of impartiality, but in its speciousness and cunning it was marked by the char- acteristics of its author. He put the blame of the troubles on antislavery men generally, and the emigrant aid societies and the Free State settlers particularly, as provoking " the illegal and reprehensible counter-movements which ensued." In his view it was aggression to promote by legal means Free State colonization, and self-defence to resist it by fraud and violence. He sanctioned fully the legality of the legislature, threatened the use of United States troops to enforce its enactments, and treated the Free State men as engaged in revolutionary and treasonable proceedings. He issued, February 11, a procla- mation conforming in its spirit to the message ; and there- upon the War Department put the troops at the service of Governor Shannon. The member of the Cabinet who was be- lieved at the time to inspire more than any other the Pres- ident's policy was Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War.
The Senate refrained from any full discussion of affairs in Kansas until February 18, when various documents with a mes- sage were received from the President in answer to a call of the Senate. Wilson then reviewed recent events in the terri- tory in a very effective speech lasting two days, in which he detailed the incursions from Missouri and commented on the complicity of the Administration with the violence of the pro- slavery invaders. A few days later, Hale of New Hampshire supported him. Jones 1 of Tennessee, Toombs of Georgia, But- ler of South Carolina, and Toucey of Connecticut defended the Administration, — the last named as well as Jones dealing in offensive personalities, which drew spirited retorts from Wilson and Hale. Butler came thus early (February 25 and March 5) into the controversy. He repelled the accusations which Wilson
1 Jones, February 25, called Hale "the devil's own." Congressional Globe, App. 101. See further remarks of Jones on the same day. Congressional Globe, p 497.
JEt. 44-45] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 431
and Hale had made against Atchison, whom he called his " dis- tinguished friend," and whose recent letters he said he had in his drawer. He described Atchison as a peacemaker and medi- ator in the camp before Lawrence, and intimated that he might yet " pass the Rubicon " and avenge the taunts and insults heaped upon him in the Senate, — an evident warning to North- ern senators to beware how they spoke of this leader of the invading Missourians. As usual with him, he brought forward disunion as the South's ultimate remedy. The discussions, while confined chiefly to the senators named, disclosed the intensity of feeling between the opposing parties.1 This increased bit- terness was noted at the time, as shown in the changed man- ner of senators and the prevailing non-intercourse between the Republican and the Democratic senators.2 Sumner wrote to C. F. Adams, February 5 : —
u There are circumstances at this moment which draw special attention to the Monroe doctrine, and which would give strong interest to any revelation from your father's diary ; hut of course this could not be done without asso- ciating his name with present controversies.3 I doubt not you have judged well, and yet I part with regret from the opportunity of introducing to the country such interesting testimony. While I write Mr Foot is speaking on Seward's lead, saying some things of England which, if said in Parliament about us, would set the Republic in flames. But England pardons such out- bursts, as we pardon what we are obliged to hear from some country bumpkin. Cass has done the same thing. Seward's speech 4 is felt to have killed all idea of war ; by invoking war he has made it impossible for this Administration to press it. I have been on the point of speaking on the question fully, but I cannot now regard it as a reality; it seems to be like a question before a debating club. I first learned from the New York papers that my colleague is to take the floor on it.5 At last Banks is elected. I was present when he was conducted to his chair. It was a proud historic moment. For the first time during years there seems to be a North. I fancied I saw the star glit- tering over his head. His appearance, voice, and manner were in admirable harmony with the occasion."
1 Hale, referring to Jones's contemptuous tone towards Wilson, instanced similar attempts at an earlier time to break down and crush Sumner and himself. Debate Feb. 25, 1856. Congressional Globe, p. 496.
2 Sumner to Parker, Dec. 14, 1855 : "All things here indicate bad feelings. I have never seen so little intercourse and commingling among senators of opposite opinions. Seward, Wilson, and myself are the special marks of disfavor. God willing, something more shall be done to deserve this distinction."
3 Adams declined at this time to make public the passages of J. Q Adams's Diary relative to the history of the Monroe doctrine which Sumner desired to use in the debate on the Clayton-Bulwer treaty.
4 Jan. 31, 1856, on the Central American question.
5 Wilson, February 12.
432 MEMOIK OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Again, February 14 : —
"I think Seward has made a grievous mistake hy his Central American speech. He has given a new argument to those who say that he leaps upon every hobby without regard to principle. I have felt very sore towards Banks for not putting Giddings at the head of the territorial committee. His name there would have been a proclamation to the whole country, North and South, that on slavery in the Territories we are in earnest. There is much private and public gnashing of teeth over the committees."
To William Jay, February 22 : —
"The debate on Kansas has begun, and will drag along for weeks and months, — perhaps throughout the session. The Nebraska bill was pressed with whip and spur, in order to carry forward the plot ; but I do not see any signs of such a course now. My colleague has opeued effectively on the facts. Really, the wickedness of this case is too great for belief. As I meditate it, I feel at a loss how to present it, — by what handle, — for it is all wicked- ness. Have you any suggestion or special points to be pressed ? I foresee that the facts are to be disputed, and the legality of the legislature assumed. This was Toucey's course. Could our facts be established beyond dispute, it would be impossible to maintain the validity of that legislature without self- stultification. The slavemongers are very angry with Wilson, — all which is to his credit. It shows that he has done his work."
To Theodore Parker, February 25 : —
" Wilson has earned his senatorship. He has struck a hard blow, and made them all very angry. It was the great event of his life. Circumstances cast upon him the office of answering Toucey, and he did it with effect."
To John Jay, March 4 : —
" I have watched closely the questions between us and England,1 and never at any moment have they seemed to me to have any vitality. I have thought it a mistake on the part of Seward to take part in them, and thus help mag- nify them, or at least draw to them public attention, which is precisely what the Administration desires. There is no honesty in the way in which these questions have been pressed. The old trick of Alcibiades is repeated, who cut off his dog's tail in order to give the people of Athens something to talk about. Everything is now attempted to divert attention from Kansas. I have the cause of arbitration and of peace so much at heart that I should be glad in any demonstration for them which did not tend to magnify our foreign dan- gers and preoccupy the public mind. Feeling that I could not touch these questions at this moment without giving the enemy an opportunity for a new cry, and that in point of fact there has not yet been any real exigency, I have thus far been silent. Should the danger threaten, you will hear from me. What say you to this objection to the admission of Kansas with her present consti- tution founded (1) on the small population, and (2) on the imperfect returns of votes on the constitution caused by the invasion ? "
1 Concerning Central America and an alleged violation of our neutrality laws.
JEt. 44-45.] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 433
To Gerrit Smith, March 18 : —
" Douglas has appeared at last on the scene, and with him that vulgar swagger which ushered in the Nebraska debate. Truly, truly, this is a god- less place ! Bead this report, also the President's messages, and see how completely the plainest rights of the people of Kansas are ignored. My heart is sick. And yet I am confident that Kansas will be a free State. But we have before us a long season of excitement and ribald debate, in which truth will be mocked and reviled."
To B. L. Pierce, March 21 : —
" I have received your beautiful and complete notice of my book.1 It is more than I deserved. How little did I dream as I pursued my studies at College, and then at the Law School, that such things would ever be said of me, or of anything done by me. For your faithful friendship I am most grateful. My brother George has come, and pleased me much by telling me good news of you. I am glad you are at Chicago, if you must be away from Massachusetts.
" Trumbull is a hero, and more than a match for. Douglas. Illinois in sending him does much to make me forget that she sent Douglas. You will read his main speech, which is able ; but you can hardly appreciate the ready courage and power with which he grappled with his colleague and throttled him. We are all proud of his work."
To C. F. Adams, March 29 : —
" Things look well, — never so well. I am sure that Kansas will be a free State. I am sure that we are going to beat them in the discussion, and I feel sanguine that under the welding heat of the Kansas question we are to have a true fusion with a real chance of success. This is my conviction now. Seward will make the greatest speech of his life ; he is showing new power daily. I heard one of his speeches in caucus, and was quite electrified by it ; it was powerful in its eloquence."
As soon as the House had been organized, the inevitable ques- tion of Kansas came to the front. It was discussed on the question between Whitfield and Reeder, claimants for the seat of territorial delegate ; and at length, March 19, a resolution was carried for sending an investigating committee to the Territory. This, following the election of a Republican speaker, was the second victory of the opponents of slavery. One member of the committee, John Sherman of Ohio, was destined to occupy a large place in the history of his country. The committee arrived at Lawrence, April 18, and after a prolonged investigation made a full report, in which Howard and Sherman joined (Oliver of
1 Notice of Sumner's third volume of speeches in Chicago "Daily Journal," March 17, 1856.
vol. in. 28
434 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Missouri dissenting). The committee found as a conclusion that the territorial legislature was by reason of fraud and violence an illegal body, and all its acts void.
The general debate on Kansas in the Senate was reserved until the committee on territories made its report, March 12, when, contrary to the custom, Douglas himself read the major- ity report, occupying two hours, and Collamer read that of the minority, occupying an hour, — both being read from the desk.1 The majority report followed in the line of the President's treatment of the subject. It was a masterpiece of cunning, abounding in misrepresentations, distortions of evidence, and insinuations, where one with even the author's audacity would not venture a direct assertion.2 He, like the President, arraigned the Emigrant Aid Company as the aggressor and the cause of all disturbances.3 The bill accompanying the report proposed the or- ganization of a State government, when the Territory should have a certain population, under proceedings directed by the existing territorial legislature, whose legality was thereby confirmed. As soon as the reading was finished, Sumner spoke briefly, say- ing that " in the report of the majority the true issue is smoth- ered; in that of the minority the true issue stands forth as a pillar of fire to guide the country ; " and disavowing the purpose of precipitating the discussion until the documents were printed, he took occasion to repel at once, distinctly and unequivocally, the assault which the majority report had made on the Emigrant Aid Company of Massachusetts, — declaring that in assisting emigration to Kansas it had done only what was lawful and right, both in act and motive. He ended by saying : "The out- rages in Kansas are vindicated or extenuated by the alleged misconduct of the Emigrant Aid Company. Very well, sir ; a bad cause is naturally staked on untenable ground. You cannot show the misconduct. Any such allegation will fail ; and you now begin your game with loaded dice." He occupied only a moment ; but what he said at once brought up Douglas, who
1 Sumner described the scene in his eulogy on Collamer in 1865. Works, vol x. p. 41.
2 Von Hoist (vol. v. p. 276) says: "The history of the United States has not a second such masterpiece of mendacious, lawyer-like cunning to show."
3 Douglas some years after repeated his slander against the society or company, saying that "all the troubles of the Territory grew out of this armed and forced emigration." ("Douglas on Constitutional and Part}' Questions," by J. M. Cutts, p. 97.) It should be said that the Southern people formed societies to promote emigration to Kansas, and Preston S. Brooks was active in one of them ; but for want of capital and enterprise, they could not cope with the North in such efforts.
JEr. 44-45.] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 435
threatened against the Free State men in Kansas, and Sumner himself who had espoused their cause, the penalties of treason and rebellion. He said : —
" If he [Sumner] means that he is prepared to go to the country to justify treason and rebellion, let him go ; and I trust he will meet the fate which the law assigns to such conduct. . . . We are ready to meet the issue, and there will he no dodging. We intend to meet it boldly ; to require submission to the laws and to the constituted authorities ; to reduce to subjection those who resist them, and to punish rebellion and treason. I am glad that a defiant spirit is exhibited here; we accept the issue."
Two days later, in a controversy with his new Republican col- league Trumbull, he revelled in personalities, and became so offensive that a Southern senator (Crittenden) called him to order. In this personal debate, during which he was several times on the floor, he uniformly referred to the Republicans as " black Republicans," sometimes varying the epithet with those of " miserable Abolitionists and Know Nothings." Now, as here- tofore, he attributed " baseness " and " base purposes " to Sum- ner and his other opponents. Trumbull met him with spirit, saying, as he finished, " I shall never permit him [Douglas] here or elsewhere to make an assault on me personally without meeting it with the best power that God has given me, feeble though it be." Douglas turned aside from his antagonist to assail Sumner, accusing him of disingenuousness in obtaining two years before a delay of the debate on the Nebraska bill, in order to circulate a "libel"1 on him (Douglas), — meaning the protest of the Free Soil members which Chase had written. Sumner met with a flat denial his statements as to going to Douglas's seat2 to procure the favor of postponement, and as to the motives imputed to himself for asking for delay in open debate, as well as to the character of the protest itself. Douglas broke forth as follows : —
" Whether the address alluded to is a libel or not in the senator's judgment depends on his opinion of what a libel is. It attributed to me the base pur- pose of introducing the measure for personal aggrandizement, and not from a sense of duty. It seems that the senator from Massachusetts does not consider it derogatory to the character of a gentleman to be governed by unworthy motives, by base purposes, by unpatriotic objects. He does not deem this
1 Ante, p. 350.
2 Several years later Douglas repeated in conversation this charge, which, after Sum- ner's denial, he did not insist upon in the Senate. ''Douglas on Constitutional and Party Questions," by J. M. Cutts, p. 95.
436 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56
unworthy of a gentleman ; and hence he thinks that the charge is not a libel. With that understanding of the character and duties of a gentleman, he may be right in saying that he does not regard it as a libel ; but with my under- standing of the duties of a gentleman and a senator, I regard it as a gross libel."
Sumner replied : —
" Mr. President, I have no contest on this floor, or anywhere, with the senator from Illinois as to the character of a gentleman. Sir, this Senate shall decide whether the senator from Illinois is a proper judge in such a case. The senator has alluded to facts; I answer on facts. Look at the debates at that time ; see what I said, and judge me by it. It is true, I asked for a de- lay in the discussion of that bill, — and on patriotic grounds, sincerely, because I desired it for a proper discussion of so great a question. It is not true that I left my seat to speak to the senator from Illinois on the subject, nor did a word fall from me in regard to it except in open debate on the floor, as is reported in the ' Globe.' Now, as to the character of the address. The sena- tor has chosen to revive that ancient matter. He had better go, perhaps, to the siege of Troy, and revive that again. I had supposed that tale had passed away ; but it seems a ' twice-told tale ' may be brought forth here to serve the personal asperities of the senator from Illinois. I have no freshness of recol- lection of the peculiar language of the address. The senator seems to have quoted words or phrases from it; I know nothing of them. I leave that ad- dress, however, to take care of itself. It is on the records of the debates of this body ; it is before the country. "
This contest between the two senators is of interest in con- nection with what occurred two months later. The formal debate opened, March 20, on the two reports and on the two bills, — that of the committee, and the other moved by Seward as a substitute, which admitted Kansas as a State under the Topeka Constitution,1 — and it continued for several months, with intervals for the consideration of ordinary business. Doug- las led, March 20, in a speech which combined his conspicuous qualities, — unscrupulousness, audacity, and insolence. Again, as in his report, he held up the Emigrant Aid Company as the aggressor and instigator of the troubles in Kansas, and denounced the Free State settlers as " daring and defiant revo- lutionists." 2 In his references to Republican senators, he con- tinued to speak of them as " black Republicans." He expressed the wish that the Government would put its power to a hitherto
1 Such a bill passed the House, July 3, by a vote of 99 to 97 ; but it was laid on the table in the Senate.
- Also as "rebels" and "revolutionists," April 10. Benjamin, May 2, called them " conspirators."
^Et. 44-45] OUTRAGES IN KANSAS. 437
untried test, — that of " hanging a traitor." He discharged his venom on Trumbull, describing him as " a traitor," and invok- ing on him the penalties of treason, even that of death. The next month he again took part in the debate, speaking twice, with an interval of ten days between his speeches.1 The main point of his argument was that the Free State party in Kansas was a treasonable body. To the epithet of " black Republicans," he now added the vulgar insinuation that they were for the amalgamation of the black and white races. This drew from Wilson the retort that such taunts were " the emanations of low and vulgar minds, . . . usually coming from men with the odor of amalgamation upon them." He, as well as Col- lamer, administered a rebuke to Douglas for the coarse epi- thets which he uniformly applied to his opponents. Wilson, resenting his insolence, described him and his coadjutors as "mere lieutenants" of Atchison, " the chieftain of the border ruffian Democracy.''
Similar scenes occurred from time to time in the debate. Clay of Alabama imputed to Hale the practice of seeking the society of Southern senators and fawning upon them,2 and signified in the coarsest language that he should inflict personal chastise- ment on him, as he (Hale) was not subject to the code of the duellist.3 Butler of South Carolina made no long speech, but he was irrepressible whenever the Kansas question came up in any shape, and as usually with him talked loosely and without premeditation. In the debate on the memorial for the admis- sion of Kansas, April 10, he was offensive in his references to Seward, and the latter declined for that reason to recognize him by a reply. As well in the House as in the Senate the partisans of slavery often assailed Massachusetts and her people, par- ticularly the Emigrant Aid Company, as responsible for all the disorders in Kansas, as disturbers of the national peace, and instigators of rebellion.4
1 April 4 and 14. Sumner, at Douglas's call upon him for an answer, condemned the clause of the Topeka Constitution which excluded free negroes from voting.
2 May 2. The threat of social ostracism came frequently during the session from slaveholdmg members. The idea was in the Southern mind in Calhoun's time, and was approved by him. (John Allison's speech in the House, July 11. 1856.) Sumner first personally encountered it in Badger's reply to him, Aug. 26, 1852. Ante, p. 300.
3 He said Hale was "ambitious of a kicking," and that "his imagination sported over suits, costs, and damages" as compensation: and that he "skulked behind petticoats on the plea of non-combatancy for protection," etc.
4 Bayard, April 10, and Clay, April 21, in the Senate.
438 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
In the Senate Collamer spoke (April 3 and 4) on affairs in Kansas and the constitutional question of the power of Con- gress over the Territories. Seward spoke on the 9th, when he delivered an elaborate speech already in manuscript. He avoided, as was his habit, all antagonism with senators, or a direct reply to their positions, — not so much as once refer- ring to what any senator had said. A formal arraignment of the President as the chief promoter of the disturbances gave to the speech its chief interest.1 Cass delivered a speech of great length, May 12 and 13, in defence of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and of the conduct of the Administration in Kansas ; and when he finished, Sumner sought to follow him. It was then arranged that the debate should be suspended till the 19th, when he would be entitled to the floor. He had al- ready signified his purpose on May 2, when Douglas was press- ing the bill, to address the Senate upon it ; and for some weeks before, his intention to speak at length was a matter of public knowledge. When he stated his purpose, May 2, Butler was in the* Senate, and continued to participate in debates as late as the 6th.2 He then went home to South Carolina with full knowledge that Sumner was to speak.
This brief notice of the debates and proceedings in Congress must suffice to indicate the spirit which prevailed on both sides. The pro-slavery party, led by Douglas and his Southern allies, were determined to browbeat Northern senators, — to compel them to silence by threatening the penalties of treason ; and the boldest of them were meditating personal violence.
Sumner wrote to William Jay, May 6 : —
"I regret that you are going out of the country during these coming months ; for we shall need here the moral support that comes from the pres- ence, if not the activity, of good men. Indeed, we are on the brink of a fear- ful crisis. The tyranny of the slave oligarchy becomes more revolting day by day. To-day I am smitten by the news from Kansas. That poor people there are trampled down far beyond our fathers. For some time I have tried for the floor, and confidently count on it next week, after General Cass, when I shall expose this whole crime at great length, aud without sparing language."
To Theodore Parker, May 17 : —
1 Seward's habit of dealing in vague generalizations and "soaring speculations :' was the subject of criticism at other times. J. S. Pike's " First Blows of the Civil War," pp. 394-398.
2 Congressional Globe, pp. 1117, 1119.
JEt, 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 439
" I have read and admired your speech. It is a whole sheaf of spears against slavery. Alas ! the tyranny over us is complete. Will the people suhmit ? When you read this, I shall he saying to the Senate, ' They will not ! ' Would that I had your strength ! But I shall pronounce the most thorough philippic ever uttered in a legislative body."
The Missourians were reinforced in the spring of 1856 by recruits from the remote South, for which they had appealed, — notably by those from South Carolina and Alabama, led by Buford. The judiciary of the Territory, at the head of which was Lecompte, began its sessions. Early in May the grand jury, following its instructions, found indictments for treason against the Free State leaders, — Reeder, Robinson, and Lane, — who were obliged to seek safety in flight. An attempt was made to arrest Reeder, even in the presence of the investigating com- mittee of Congress, which had arrived in April. The grand jury, in its fanaticism, was not content with processes against persons, but found bills against Free State newspapers and a Free State hotel. Ruffianism, breaking out in assaults and mur- ders, was rampant throughout the Territory, and everywhere Free State men were in constant peril of life. The Adminis- tration, still inspired by Jefferson Davis, proceeded with its scheme for subjugating the Free State men of Kansas ; and the federal officers in the Territory were its ready instru- ments. The United States marshal for the Territory spread a proclamation in Missouri for a posse to execute a process against a Free State man, and in response the Missourians — among them Atchison, String-fellow, and Buford — came again into the Territory ; and on Monday, May 19, the day when Sumner be- gan his speech, they had been for some days in the neighborhood of Lawrence, armed and committing depredations. The next day they came nearer, and on the morning of Wednesday, the day after he had concluded his speech, they occupied the bluffs overlooking the town. Before the day closed, although the marshal had executed his process of arrest without resistance, they had entered the town with muskets and fixed bayonets, broken up printing presses and thrown them into the river, and opened fire on the hotel belonging to the Emigrant Aid Com- pany ; but being built of stone, and resisting effectually cannon shot, as well as the attempt to explode it, they set it on fire, and then pillaged the stores and homes of the inhabitants. They withdrew and dispersed on the 22d, — a day remarkable in
440 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56
Sumner's life. This was the incipient stage of civil war, to be succeeded by scenes of bloodshed in the Territory, and five years later by the great Rebellion. What was then passing in Wash- ington also foreshadowed the future. Wilson says, in his History : 1 —
" As Charles Suumer was closing his masterly portrayal of the crime against Kansas on the floor of the United States Senate, during the afternoon of the 20th of May7 1856, the armed hosts of slavery were concentrating be- fore devoted Lawrence ; and as the hundreds of thousands were reading the next morning his graphic description, those hosts stood on Mount Oread with cannon pointed upon the hated town, ready to plunder, burn, and kill."
At the time Sumner was to speak, a profound feeling per- vaded the free States. Fresh violence in Kansas had carried to an intense heat the indignation aroused by the Nebraska bill. The Administration was defiant, threatening the penalties of treason against Free State men in Kansas, and against citizens of free States who gave them aid and comfort. Its defenders in Congress — Southern men and Northern Democrats — were insolent in manner as well as in speech, pouring vituperation and fish-wife rhetoric on their Republican opponents. The Free State cause had, indeed, not been weakly defended. Collamer had maintained it with ability, and Wilson with a resolute spirit ; but there was a pervasive sense, which appears in the public journals and private correspondence of the period, that Northern men had spoken with a too bated tone, and that bully- ing and arrogance had not been rebuked as they deserved to be.2 Douglas and the slaveholding party had all along singled out Sumner as the mark of their insolence and bitterness. Candid Southerners admitted that the persistent abuse to which he was exposed was due to a consciousness of his superiority in char- acter and in debate.3
In his defence of the Emigrant Aid Company, he was sup- plied with facts and points by letters from Rev. Edward E. Hale and Dr. Le Baron Russell, who were active managers of the enterprise;4 by R. H. Dana, Jr., with whom they counselled;
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 496.
2 Works, vol. iv. pp. 128-129.
3 Minden (La.) "Herald," quoted by Campbell of Pennsylvania, in the House, July 12, 1856. Louisville " Journal," May 24
4 Sumner had already been in communication with them as to the memorial of the com- pany to Congress in reply to aspersions of Douglas, and had urged that it should reject altogether the tone of apology, and assert plainly its right to assist Northern emigrants.
Mi. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 441
and by two other gentlemen, Eli Thayer and J. M. S. Williams. The last named was present during the delivery of the speech.1 Mr. Thayer in a letter, March 27, 1856, which stated his pur- pose to visit Washington in order to confer with Sumner as to the operations of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, wrote : " It is quite apparent that no one there who has at- tempted to defend us has any adequate idea of the philosophy of the enterprise ; neither have those who have assailed us. I shall expect you to do us justice."
Sumner began his speech Monday, May 19. Notwithstanding the heat, with the thermometer at ninety, nearly all the sen- ators were in their seats, and galleries and lobbies and doorways were crowded with a compact mass of spectators, even the ante- room being opened to ladies after their own gallery had been filled. Every journalist's desk was occupied. The members of the House were present in large numbers, — Giddings conspic- uous among the Republicans, and Stephens among the Southern leaders. Delegates from the South, on their way to the Demo- cratic national convention soon to meet at Cincinnati, went that morning to the Capitol to witness the novelty of an abolition spectacle. Veteran politicians not in public life — as Francis P. Blair, Sr., Thurlow Weed, and Robert J. Walker — were ob- served in the throng.2 While the scene was well fitted to in- spire the speaker, there was a pervading sense in the audience that violence and bloodshed were imminent in Kansas. Before the day closed, intelligence came that the United States mar- shal for the territory was summoning a posse from Missouri, — the beginning of an armed descent on Lawrence.3 The great question at issue, the profound agitation of the public mind, the bitterness of feeling in Washington, the disorders and strife in Kansas betokening civil war, — with the consciousness, too, among senators and spectators that the conflict was now to be set forth with all the power of human speech and without fear, — gave to the occasion an interest which *is seldom equalled in parliamentary history.
The speech was elaborate, and in style and method accorded
1 Sumner gave the manuscript of his speech to Mr. Williams.
2 Missouri "Democrat," cited in Works, vol. iv. pp. 129, 130; New York "Tribune," May 20. According to one report, Douglas was heard to say: " There are too many people here." Boston "Atlas," May 22.
3 Boston Atlas, May 22.
442 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
with classic models.1 It condensed into a phrase a statement of successive outrages and usurpations, beginning with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and continued in the invasions from Missouri, all for the purpose of making Kansas a slave State, — a phrase often repeated, — "The crime against Kansas," "the crime of crimes," " the crime against nature." The division of the argument into different heads, under which the crime itself, and the apologies offered and remedies proposed, were treated, gives to the speech as printed a too formal and studied charac- ter,— a feature, however, which does not appear to have marred its effect in the delivery. In his opening the senator pointed to the position of Kansas in the centre of the continent, — un- equalled as she was in richness of soil and salubrity of climate, and " drawing to her bosom a population of free men larger than Athens crowded within her historic gates, when her sons, under Miltiades, won liberty for mankind on the field of Mara- thon : " now the victim of a crime far exceeding that of Verres, whose name had been blasted for all time in a terrible impeach- ment. The crime, which involved outrage of every kind, — the overthrow of all the rights of American citizens, — was aggra- vated by the motive, which was " the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery, . . . traceable to a depraved desire for a new slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the national government, . . . force being openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution."2
One passage in the opening gave warning of the civil war which followed five years later : —
■'The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while I speak, portents lower in the horizon, threatening to darken the land, which already palpitates with the mutterings of civil war. The fury of the propagandists and the calm determination of their opponents are diffused from the distant
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 137-249. Like Seward, Sumner wrote out his longer speeches in advance, but did not recur to his manuscript in the delivery. This one was already in type, though not put to press, and was to be corrected after delivery. (Wilson's speech, June 13, " Congressional Globe," p. 1403.) Since then it has become a common occurrence for senators to read their speeches.
2 Douglas pretended to think these comparisons "indecent," and Cass thought the metaphor "unpatriotic." The latter, not appreciating Sumner's forbearance on account of old associations to reply to him, recurred to the subject, Dec. 11, 1856, when Sumner was absent, and said that the speech was "a most inflammatory appeal," and that "such an unpatriotic metaphor betokened a prurient imagination." What the two senators thought of the second book of "Paradise Lost" is not known.
^Et. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 443
Territory over widespread communities, and the whole country in all its ex- tent marshalling hostile divisions, and foreshadowing a conflict which, unless happily averted by the triumph of freedom, will become war, — fratricidal, parricidal war, — with an accumulated wickedness beyond that of any war in human annals, justly provoking the avenging judgment of Providence and the avenging pen of history, and constituting a strife such as was pictured by the Roman historian, — more than foreign, more than social, more than civil, being something compounded of all these, and in itself more than war, — ' sed potius commune quoddam ex omnibus, et plus quam bellum.' "
After brief replies to senators, to be noted later, he reviewed 'the contest of the Nebraska bill, which the President had de- fended in his annual message, — a measure which was carried " in breach of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neigh- borhood ; . . . pressed by arguments mutually repugnant ; . . . carried through Congress in defiance of all securities of legis- lation ; ... in every respect a swindle,1 ... a word, if it has not the authority of classical usage, has on this occasion the indu- bitable authority of fitness," alone " adequately expressing the mingled meanness and wickedness of the cheat ; " the passage of the Act followed by the appointment of territorial officers supposed to be friendly to slavery. Then came a narration of the transactions of fraud and violence in the Territory itself, the barbarous enactments of the legislature, and the successive invasions from Missouri, with Atchison in the foreground, — "a familiar character, in himself a connecting link between Presi- dent and border-ruffian," who at the session immediately suc- ceeding the Nebraska bill, " like Catiline, stalked into this chamber reeking with conspiracy," where he had found " in the very Senate itself, beyond even the Roman example, a sena- tor who had not hesitated to appear as his open compurgator." 'z
"Thus was the crime consummated. Slavery stands erect, clanking its chains on the Territory of Kansas, surrounded by a code of death, and tram- pling upon all cherished liberties, whether of speech, the press, the bar, the trial by jury, or the electoral franchise. And, sir, all this is done, not merely to introduce a wrong which in itself is a denial of all rights, and in dread of which mothers have taken the lives of their offspring, — not merely, as is sometimes said, to protect slavery in Missouri, since it is futile for this State to complain of freedom on the side of Kansas, when freedom exists without complaint on the side of Iowa, and also on the side of Illinois ; but it is done for the sake of political power, in order to bring two new slaveholding sena-
1 Douglas was much incensed at the application of this term to his bill.
2 This was Butler, who on several occasions came to the defence of his "friend" Atchison.
444 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
tors upon this floor, and thus to fortify in the national government the des- perate chances of a waning oligarchy. As the gallant ship, voyaging on pleasant summer seas, is assailed by a pirate crew, and plundered of its doub- loons and dollars, so is this beautiful Territory now assailed in peace and pros- perity, and robbed of its political power for the sake of slavery. Even now the black flag of the land-pirates from Missouri waves at the mast-head ; in their laws you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife ; while, incredible to relate, the President, gathering the slave-power at his back, tes- tifies a pirate sympathy."
The President's disclaimer of power to hinder the outrages in the Territory was treated as an " apology imbecile," and con- trasted with his swiftness in interfering on other occasions at the demand of the pro-slavery interest, as in the return of fugi- tive slaves. The remainder of the first day was occupied with a defence of the Emigrant Aid Company and of Massachusetts, from whose citizens it had derived the larger share of its funds and activity. This was the most effective part of his speech not traversed by other senators, and involving a direct denial of the assumptions of Douglas's report and speeches, and of the Presi- dent's message.1 Associated effort, he maintained, in coloniza- tion, as well as in the various business of life, was in accordance with ancient and modern custom, and was justly applied to Kansas as " an effective agency in quickening and conducting emigration thither, and, more than all, in providing homes on its arrival." He defended in detail the methods of the com- pany, which had "violated in no respect the Constitution or laws of the land, — not in the merest letter or the slightest spirit ; " providing no arms for emigrants, as was " complained by the senator from South Carolina, with that proclivity to error which marks all his utterances ; " never questioning emigrants as to their political opinions ; conservative in its direction, so as to include among its managers, not Abolitionists, but those rather who were " more conspicuous for wealth and science than for any activity against slavery ; " adopting as its distinctive policy the planting of capital in the Territory in advance of popu- lation, so as to invite emigration ; and facilitating the journey and settlement by combining parties of friends and neighbors under intelligent conductors; providing tickets at reduced cost, — and all this beginning later than the first organized pro-slavery emigration from Missouri. He asserted the sacred right of emi-
i New York Tribune, May 21. J. S. Pike's "First Blows of the Civil War," pp. 335-337.
JEt. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 445
gration, "the incontestable right of the people to settle any portion of our broad territory, and if they choose, to propagate any opinions there not forbidden by the laws," — a right exer- cised by tract, Bible, and missionary societies, and even by " the senator from Illinois, who is an emigrant from Vermont propa- gating his disastrous opinions in another State." A tribute to Massachusetts, listened to with breathless attention,1 closed the part of the speech delivered during the first day : —
" God be praised ! Massachusetts, honored Commonwealth, that gives me the privilege to plead for Kansas on this floor, knows her rights, and will maintain them firmly to the end. This is not the first time in history that her public acts have been impeached, and her public men exposed to contumely. Thus was it in the olden time, when she began the great battle whose fruits you all enjoy. But never yet has she occupied a position so lofty as at this hour. By the intelligence of her population; by the resources of her in- dustry ; by her commerce, cleaving every wave ; by her manufactures, various as human skill ; by her institutions of education, various as human knowl- edge ; by her institutions of benevolence, various as human sufferiug ; by the pages of her scholars and historians; by the voices of her poets and ora- tors,— she is now exerting an influence more subtile and commanding than ever before, shooting her far-darting rays wherever ignorance, wretched- ness, or wrong prevails, and flashing light even upon those who travel far to persecute her. Such is Massachusetts; and I am proud to believe that you may as well attempt with puny arm to topple down the earth-rooted, heaven- kissing granite which crowns the historic sod of Bunker Hill, as to change her fixed resolve for freedom everywhere, and especially now for freedom in Kansas. I exult, too, that in this battle, which in moral grandeur surpasses far the whole war of the Eevolution, she is able to preserve her just eminence. To the first she contributed troops in larger numbers than any other State, and larger than all the slave States together; and now to the second, — which is not of contending armies, but of contending opinions, on whose issue hangs trembling the advancing civilization of the age, — she contributes, through the manifold and endless intellectual activity of her children, more of that divine spark by which opinions are quickened into life than is contributed by any other State, or by all the slave States together, while her annual productive industry exceeds in value three times the whole vaunted cotton crop of the whole South.
" Sir, to men on earth it belongs only to deserve success, not to secure it; and I know not how soon the efforts of Massachusetts will wear the crown of triumph. But it cannot be that she acts wrong for herself or her children when in this cause she encounters reproach. No ! by the generous souls once exposed at Lexington ; by those who stood arrayed at Bunker Hill ; by the many from her bosom who, on all the fields of the first great struggle, lent their vigorous arms to the cause of all ; by the children she has borne whose names alone are national trophies, — is Massachusetts now vowed irrevocably
i J. S. Pike in New York " Tribune," May 21.
446 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
to this work. What belongs to the faithful servant she will do in all things, and Providence shall determine the result."
In the early part of the speech, before entering on the main argument, he referred to the pro-slavery leadership of Butler 1 and Douglas.
"Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in the championship of human wrong : I mean the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] and the senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder senator from his seat; but the cause against which he has run a tilt, with such ebullition of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost ; and it is for the cause that I speak. The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and cour- age. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him ; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in char- acter, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed. The asserted rights of slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the republic, he misnames equality under the Constitution, — in other words, the full power in the national territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction-block, — then, sir, the chivalric senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union ! Heroic knight ! exalted senator ! a second Moses come for a second exodus !
"Not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was ' measured,' the senator, in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has under- taken to apply opprobious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them ' sectional and fanatical ; ' and resistance to the usurpation of Kansas he denounces as ' an uncalculating fanaticism.' To be sure, these charges lack all grace of originality and all sentiment of truth ; but the ad- venturous senator does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism now domineering over the republic ; and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position, unable to see himself as others see him, or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his
1 The New York "Evening Post," May 23, specially approved as deserved Sumner's use of satire in rebuking Butler's "insane devotion to slavery," — a subject on which he was a "monomaniac."
^Et, 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 447
sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the government to its original policy, when freedom and not slavery was national, while slavery and not freedom was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will not do ; it involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that senator that it is to himself, and to the ' organization ' of which he is the ' committed advocate,' that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them. For myself, I care little for names ; but since the question is raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is in no just sense sec- tional, but, more than any other party, national ; and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high places that tyrannical sectionalism of which the senator from South Carolina is one of the maddest zealots."
Replying to Butler's charge of fanaticism, he named on the one hand benefactors of mankind to whom the epithet might as well be applied as to the opponents of slavery ; and on the other, characters badly eminent who had been zealous for persecution and tyranny. And in this last " dreary catalogue," he said, " faithful history must record all who now in an enlightened age, and in a land of boasted freedom, stand up in perversion of the Constitution and in denial of immortal truth, to fasten a new shackle upon their fellow-man. If the senator wishes to see fanatics, let him look round among his own associates, — let him look at himself." He then replied to Butler's statement that the North had engaged in the slave-trade and helped to introduce slaves into the Southern States, — admitting it in the main, but denying that the acknowledged turpitude of a de- parted generation should become an example for us, and saying of Butler's charge: "And this undeniable fact he proposed to establish by statistics, in giving which his errors exceeded his sentences in number." He then passed to Douglas, of whom he said : —
"As the senator from South Carolina is the Don Quixote, so the senator from Illinois [ Mr. Douglas] is the squire of slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do its humiliating offices. This senator, in his labored address vindi- cating his labored report, — piling one mass of elaborate error upon another mass, — constrained himself, as you will remember, to unfamiliar decencies of speech. Of that address I have nothing to say at this moment, though be- fore I sit down I shall show something of its fallacies ; but I go back now to an earlier occasion, when, true to native impulses, he threw into this dis- cussion, ' for a charm of powerful trouble,' personalities most discreditable to this body. I will not stop to repel imputations which he cast upon myself; but I mention them to remind you of the ' sweltered venom sleeping got,' which, with other poisoned ingredients, he cast into the caldron of this debate. Of other things I speak. Standing on this floor, the senator issued his re- script requiring submission to the usurped power of Kansas : and this was
448 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
accompanied by a manner, all his own, befitting the tyrannical threat. Very well, let the senator try. I tell him now that he cannot enforce any such sub- mission. The senator, with the slave-power at his back, is strong ; but he is not strong enough for this purpose. He is bold ; he shrinks from nothing. Like Dauton, he may cry, ' De Paudace ! encore de l'audace ! et toujours de l'audace ! ' But even his audacity cannot compass this work. The senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the end of his sword he would cram the ' stamps ' down the throats of the American people ; and he will meet a similar failure. He may convulse this country with civil feud ; like the ancient madman, he may set fire to this temple of constitutional liberty, grander than Ephesian dome ; but he cannot enforce obedience to that tyrannical usurpation.
"The senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open threat, but his conduct implies it. How little that senator knows him- self, or the strength of the cause which he persecutes ! He is but mortal man ; against him is immortal principle. With finite power he wrestles with the infinite, and he must fall. Against him are stronger battalions than any mar- shalled by mortal arm, — the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of the human heart ; against him is Nature, with all her subtile forces ; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these."
These were all the personal references to senators on the first day of the speech.
After speaking three hours, he suspended his speech on a motion to adjourn, reserving the remainder till the next day. As he began in the morning, the partisans of the Administra- tion— Douglas, Toombs, and Toucey — assumed an air of indif- ference, and kept themselves, to appearance, very busy at their desks writing letters ; but as he went on this affectation ceased. The pro-slavery senators were at times noisy, gathering in groups and laughing, talking audibly, and were once at least called to order.1 At one time Sumner stopped, and asked the sergeant-at-arms to preserve order. A senator called him to order for not addressing his request directly to the chair, and Sumner replied that he did not think the president (Bright) observed the disorderly conduct, which the latter admitted to be the case.2 The incident shows how closely he was followed, and how fully disposed the senators were to interpose if he passed beyond any rule of the Senate.
The next day, Tuesday, he finished his speech at three in the
i J. S. Pike, in New York "Tribune," May 21; "First Blows in the Civil War," p. 336; "Evening Post," May 22. It was the custom of the pro-slavery party to an- noy the antislavery senators in this way. Letter of Simonton in New York "Times," May 23.
2 Giddings's speech, July 11, 1856.
JEt. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 449
afternoon, occupying two hours, with an audience still crowding the chamber as on the first day. He discussed the proposed remedies, — rejecting the remedy of tyranny espoused by Doug- las, and supporting that of Seward, which was the admission of Kansas as a State under the Topeka Constitution. He reviewed at length the instances in which Congress had declined to insist on any strict rule as to population, and had waived informalities in proceedings for the formation of a State constitution, partic- ularly in the quite analogous case of Michigan, with the sanction of high Democratic authority, — Jackson, Buchanan, and even Pierce himself. Of Butler's absurd proposition to " serve a war- rant on Sharpe's rifles," — seizing, against the plain letter of the Constitution, the weapon which " has ever been the companion of the pioneer, and under God his tutelary protector against the red man and the beast of the forest," — he said : - —
" And yet such is the madness of the hour, that, in defiance of the solemn guaranty in the amendments to the Constitution that ' the right of the people to keep and hear arms shall not he infringed,' the people of Kansas are ar- raigned for keeping and hearing arms, and the senator from South Carolina has the face to say openly on this floor that they should be disarmed, — of course, that the fanatics of slavery, his allies and constituents, may meet no impediment. Sir, the senator is venerable in years ; he is reputed also to have worn at home, in the State he represents, judicial honors ; and he is placed here at the head of an important committee occupied particularly with questions of law ; but neither his years nor his position, past or present, can give respectability to the demand he makes, or save him from indignant condemnation, when, to compass the wretched purposes of a wretched cause, he thus proposes to trample on one of the plainest provisions of constitutional liberty. "'
Near the end of his speech he recurred to the senators who had led the debate on the other side : —
" With regret I come again upon the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler j, who, omnipresent in this debate, overflows with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas has applied for admission as a State, and with inco- herent phrase discharges the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There was no extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate which he did not repeat, nor was there any pos- sible deviation from truth which he did not make, with so much of passion, 1 gladly add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration. But the senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, — some- times of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in details of statistics or diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope his mouth but out there flies a blunder. Surely, he ought to be familiar with the life of Frank - vol. in. 29
450 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
lin ; and yet he referred to this household character, while acting as agent of our fathers in England, as above suspicion, — and this was done that he might give point to a false contrast with the agent of Kansas, not knowing that, however the two may differ in genius and fame, they are absolutely alike in this experience : that Franklin, when intrusted with the petition of Massa- chusetts Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker where he could not be heard in defence, and denounced as ' thief,' even as the agent of Kansas is assaulted on this floor, and denounced as ' forger.' Aud let not the vanity of the senator be inspired by parallel with the British statesmen of that day ; for it is only in hostility to freedom that any parallel can be found.
" But it is against the people of Kansas that the sensibilities of the senator are particularly aroused. Coming, as he announces, 'from a State,' — ay, sir, from South Carolina, — he turns with lordly disgust from this newly formed community, which he will not recognize even as 'a member of the body politic' Pray, sir, by what title does he indulge in this egotism "l Has he read the history of the ' State ' which he represents ? He cannot, surely, forget its shameful imbecility from slavery, confessed throughout the Kovolution, fol- lowed by its more shameful assumptions for slavery since. He cannot forget its wretched persistence in the slave-trade, as the very apple of its eye, and the condition of its participation in the Union. He cannot forget its consti- tution, which is republican only in name, confirming power in the hands of the few, and founding the qualifications of the legislators on ' a settled free- hold estate of five hundred acres of land and ten negroes.' And yet the sen- ator, to whom this ' State ' has in part committed the guardianship of its good name, instead of moving with backward-treading steps to cover its nakedness, rushes forward in the very ecstasy of madness to expose it, by provoking com- parison with Kansas. South Carolina is old ; Kansas is youug. South Caro- lina counts by centuries where Kansas counts by years. But a beneficent example may be born in a day; and I venture to declare that against the two centuries of the older ' State ' may be set already the two years of trial, evolv- ing corresponding virtue, in the younger community. In the one is the long wail of slavery; in the other, the hymn of freedom. And if we glance at special achievement, it will be difficult to find anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic spirit in an heroic cause as shines in that repulse of the Missouri invaders by the beleaguered town of Lawrence, where even the women gave their effective efforts to freedom. The matrons of Rome who poured their jewels into the treasury for the public defence ; the wives of Prussia who with delicate fingers clothed their defenders against French invasion ; the mothers of our own Revolution who sent forth their sons covered over with prayers and blessings to combat for human rights, — did nothing of self-sacrifice truer than did these women on this occasion. Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose — I do not say how little, but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas in that valiant, struggle against oppression, and in the development of a new science of emi- gration. Already in Lawrence alone are newspapers and schools, iucludiug a high school; and throughout this infant Territory there is more of educated talent, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in his vaunted ' State.' Ah, sir,
Mr. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 451
I tell the senator that Kansas, welcomed as a free State, ' a ministering angel shall be' to the republic, when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, ' lies howling.'
"The senator from Illiuois [Mr. Douglas] naturally joins the senator from South Carolina, and gives to this warfare the superior intensity of his nature. He thinks that the national government has not completely proved its power, as it has never hanged a traitor. But if occasion requires, he hopes there will be no hesitation ; and this threat is directed at Kansas, and even at the friends of Kansas throughout the country. Again occurs a parallel with the strug- gles of our fathers; and I borrow the language of Patrick Henry, when, to the cry from the senator of ' Treason ! treason ! ' I reply, ' If this be treason, make the most of it ! ' Sir, it is easy to call names ; but I beg to tell the sen- ator that if the word ' traitor ' is in any way applicable to those who reject a tyrannical usurpation, whether in Kansas or elsewhere, then must some new word of deeper color be invented to designate those mad spirits who would endanger and degrade the republic, while they betray all the cherished sen- timents of the fathers and the spirit of the Constitution, that slavery may have new spread. Let the senator proceed. Not the first time in history will a scaffold become the pedestal of honor. Out of death comes life, and the 'traitor' whom he blindly executes will live immortal in the cause.
"Among these hostile senators is yet another, with all the prejudices of the senator from South Carolina, but without his generous impulses, who, from his character before the country and the rancor of his opposition, de- serves to be named, — I mean the senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], who, as author of the Fugitive Slave bill, has associated himself with a special act of inhumanity and tyranny. Of him I shall say little, for he has said little in this debate, though within that little was compressed the bitterness of a life absorbed in support of slavery. He holds the commission of Virginia; but he does not represent that early Virginia, so dear to our hearts, which gave to us the pen of Jefferson, by which the equality of men was declared, and the sword of Washington, by which independence was secured. He represents that other Virginia, from which Washington and Jefferson avert their faces, where human beings are bred as cattle for the shambles, and a dungeon re- wards the pious matron who teaches little children to relieve their bondage by reading the Book of Life. It is proper that such a senator, representing such a State, should rail against free Kansas.
" Such as these are natural enemies of Kansas, and I introduce them with reluctance, simply that the country may understand the character of the hos- tility to be overcoine."
He closed his speech about three in the afternoon as follows :
" The contest which, beginning in Kansas, reaches us, will be transferred soon from Congress to that broader stage, where every citizen is not only spectator but actor; and to their judgment I confidently turn. To the people, about to exercise the electoral franchise in choosing a chief magistrate of the republic, I appeal to vindicate the electoral franchise in Kansas. Let the ballot-box of the Union with multitudinous might protect the ballot-box in that Territory. Let the voters everywhere, while rejoicing in their own
452 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
rights, help guard the equal rights of distant fellow-citizens, that the shrines of popular institutions now desecrated may be sanctified anew ; that the ballot-box now plundered may be restored; and that the cry, ' I am an Amer- ican citizeu,' shall no longer be impotent against outrage. In just regard for free labor, which you would blast by deadly contact with slave labor ; in Christian sympathy with the slave, whom you would task and sell; in stern condemnation of the crime consummated on that beautiful soil; in rescue of fellow-citizens now subjugated to tyrannical usurpation; in dutiful respect for the early fathers, whose aspirations are ignobly thwarted ; in the name of the Constitution outraged, of the laws trampled down, of justice banished, of humanity degraded, of peace destroyed, of freedom crushed to earth, and in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect freedom, — I make this last appeal."
Sumner was not during the speech called to order for any part of it, either by the president or by any senator. He was, as already noted, closely watched to see if any point of order could be made against him. Evans of South Carolina was in his seat, and took pains to make an inquiry when Sumner men- tioned pro-slavery recruiting in South Carolina, but raised no point as to any words applied to his colleague or his State.1 Nor in the later discussion was any paragraph or sentence claimed to exceed parliamentary limitations of debate.
Sumner sustained himself well to the end. Those in the au- dience who were critical by habit confessed that the speech, in force, manner, and emphatic style, gave them a new conception of the man.2 They likened him, in the combination of ora- torical gifts, to the great masters of eloquence in ancient and modern times. One wrote : —
" That Sumner displayed great ability, and showed that in oratorical talent he was no unworthy successor of Adams, Webster, and Everett, no one who heard him will deny. In vigor and richness of diction, in felicity and fecundity of illustration, in breadth and completeness of view, he stands unsurpassed." 8
Another wrote : —
"In a speech of five hours in length, he has exhibited the most signal combination of oratorical splendors which in the opinion of a veteran sen- ator has ever been witnessed in that hall. Indeed, for the union of clear statement, close and well-put reasoning, piquant personality and satire, freighted with a wealth of learned and apposite illustration, every one of which was subsidiary to the main purpose of the argument, it may safely
1 Campbell's Report. Congressional Globe, p. 1349.
2 J. S. Pike in the New York " Tribune," May 20.
8 Correspondent of the "Missouri Democrat." Works, vol. iv. pp. 129, 130.
^Et. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 453
challenge comparison with the great speeches of Burke, to whom the Massa- chusetts senator in the ripened vigor of his abilities and in his varied accom- plishments bears no small similitude. ... I cannot more than allude to the inspiring eloquence and lofty moral tone which characterized and ran through this triumphant senatorial achievement."1
When Sumner closed his speech the storm broke forth. Cass was the first to rise, calling it " the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body," and " open to the highest censure and disappro- bation." Douglas followed with an invective which, unrelieved by wit, reeked in vulgarity and ribaldry. He attributed to Sum- ner " a depth of malignity that issued from every sentence ; " compared the speech to a " Yankee bedquilt made of old calico dresses of various colors ; " and assuming a virtuous censor- ship, lie described it as " a dish of classics," its " classic allu- sions each one only distinguished for its lasciviousness and obscenity, . . . unfit for decent young men to read," coming from one whose " studies of the classics have all been in those haunts where ladies cannot go, and where gentlemen never read Latin." Descending further into personalities, he pictured Sum- ner " practising his speech every night before the glass with a negro boy to hold the candle and watch the gestures." He was most incensed that Sumner had called the Nebraska bill a " swindle and a crime," saying he had done so " a hundred times." Instead of replying to the speech itself, he recurred to the debate of two years before, and charged Sumner with being false to his oath, and with being " a traitor, ... an avowed criminal," because he answered, " Is thy servant a dog- that he should do such a thing ? " when asked if he would join in returning a fugitive slave. Two passages in Douglas's re- marks were significant in connection with an event at hand, showing his disposition to stimulate others to violence, or to create a sentiment which was likely to break out in violence. Referring to Sumner's description of the Nebraska bill as a "swindle," voted for, as Douglas said, by three-fourths of the Senate, he inquired, " Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement ? " Referring to Butler's absence, he said : " He, however, will be here in due time to speak for himself, and to act for himself too. I know what
i William S. Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," May 22.
454 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
will happen. The senator from Massachusetts will go to him, whisper a secret apology in his ear, and ask him to accept that as satisfaction for a public outrage on his character." Mason came next with a bitter speech, scowling as he spoke, the main point of which was, that, while political necessities required Sumner to be tolerated in the Senate, he would not be acknow- ledged elsewhere " as possessing manhood in any form," his " presence " would be " dishonor," and " the touch of his hand would be a disgrace." He also spoke of Sumner as " a cun- ning artificer or forger, who knows no other use of truth than to give currency to falsehood."
Sumner would have been justified in letting these weak per- sonalities pass in silence, but it was on the whole best that he should show himself nothing daunted. He replied briefly to his assailants, dismissing Cass's censure with a simple refer- ence to old associations which forbade him to speak of that senator except in kindness. Of Douglas he spoke sharply, " pointing defiantly at him and looking him square in the eye," 1 willing, as he said, to yield him " the privilege of the common scold, — the last word ; " but repelling the charge that he had been false to his oath, and recalling the personalities which the senator from Illinois had again and again launched against him. He ended his unpremeditated reply as follows :
" Yet in the face of all this, which occurred in open debate on the floor of the Senate, which is here in the records of the country, and has been exten- sively circulated, quoted, discussed, and criticised, the senator from Illinois, in the swiftness of his audacity, presumes to assail me. Perhaps I had bet- ter leave that senator without a word more ; but this is not the first, or the second, or the third, or the fourth time that he has launched against me his personalities. Sir, if this be agreeable to him, I make no complaint, though for the sake of truth and the amenities of debate I could wish that he had directed his assaults upon my arguments ; but since he has presumed to touch me, he will not complain if I administer to him a word of advice.
" Sir, this is the Senate of the United States, an important body under the Constitution, with great powers. Its members are justly supposed from years to be above the intemperance of youth, and from character to be above the gusts of vulgarity. They are supposed to have something of wisdom, and something of that candor which is the handmaid of wisdom. Let the senator
1 New York "Evening Post," May 22. W. S. Thayer, the correspondent of that jour- nal, wrote: "It was then that Sumner, advancing forward, his face kindled with the feelings of the moment, and apparently a foot higher than before in stature, made an impromptu effort which crowned the triumph of the day, and gave an emphatic lie to Douglas's vulgar insinuation that practising before a glass was a necessary preliminary for his speeches."
^Et. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 455
bear these things in mind, and remember hereafter that the bowie-knife and bludgeon are not proper emblems of senatorial debate. Let him remember that the swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to this body. The senator infused into his speech the venom swel- tering for months, — ay, for years, and he has alleged matters entirely with- out foundation, in order to heap upon me some personal obloquy. I will not descend to things which dropped so naturally from his tongue. I only brand them to his face as false. I say also to that senator — and I wish him to bear it in mind — that no person with the upright form of man can be allowed — " [hesitation].
Mr. Douglas. — " Say it,"
Mr. Sumner. — "I will say it. No person with the upright form of man can be allowed, without violation of all decency, to switch out from his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality. Sir, that is not a proper weapon of debate, at least on this floor. The noisome, squat, and nameless animal to which I now refer is not the proper model for an American senator. Will the senator from Illinois take notice '? "
Mr. Douglas. — "I will, and therefore will not imitate you, sir."
Mr. Sumner. — "I did not hear the senator."
Mr. Douglas. — "I said, if that be the case I would certainly never im- itate you in that capacity, recognizing the force of the illustration."
Mr. Sumner. — " Mr. President, again the senator switches his tongue, and again he fills the Senate with its offensive odor. I pass from the senator from Illiuois.
"There was still another — the senator from Virginia — who is now also in my eye. That senator said nothing of argument, and therefore there is nothing of that for response. I simply say to him that hard words are not argument, frowns are not reasons, nor do scowls belong to the proper arsenal of parliamentary debate. The senator has not forgotten that on a former occa- sion I did something to exhibit the plantation manners which he displays. I will not do any more now."
In all this Sumner was no aggressor. He had from first entering the Senate, as a Washington journalist politically un- friendly admitted, observed uniformly, even in the treatment of the slavery question, parliamentary law as well as the require- ments of courtesy and good breeding in his personal inter- course.1 It will be recalled how during his first session he bore without retort or notice the epithets applied to him at the time of his speech against the Fugitive Slave Act, — for which he had not given the slightest provocation. It was his fixed purpose when he came to that body to discuss laws, poli- cies, and institutions fully and fearlessly indeed, yet without
1 National Intelligencer, Oct. 5, 1854. Banks said at Waltham, Sept, 0, 1856, that Sum- ner " had never spoken a harsh or unfeeling word to his fellow-man in his life." Boston "Telegraph," Sept. 6, 1856.
456 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
personal offence to any one ; : but the course of the pro-slavery party had at last forced him from those lines. Spectators and journalists familiar with the Senate noted his slowness to give offence, his courtesy and kindness, his long forbearance and entire want of aggressive spirit, down to his final manly re- pulsion of offensive personalities.2 Sumner in his speech kept within the limits of parliamentary invective as practised in the houses of Congress and in the British Parliament.3
At the close of the final encounter Sumner received hearty congratulations from political friends, who crowded about him, " their faces beaming with delight at the ability and power of his rejoinder." In his argument as well as in his style he had fully met public expectation. But what most drew enthusi- asm was the scourging applied to Douglas and his pro-slavery allies ; and profound satisfaction was felt that the end of unre- buked insolence had come.4 He received an enormous number of letters approving his speech, mostly written after the event which followed it. Only a few as representative of the mass can be noted in this connection.5
1 It was said of him that he had "elevated the range and widened the scope of senato- rial debate," and that " no man now living, within the last five years, had rendered the American people greater service or won for himself a nobler fame." New York " Tribune," May 24, 1856.
2 New York "Times," May 30, Springfield "Republican," May 24. Two Southern newspapers, the Louisville "Journal" (quoted in the New York "Tribune," June 3, 1856) and Minden (La.) " Herald," treated Butler and Douglas as aggressors, and Sumner as acting in self-defence. (Ante, p. 440 note.) James Watson Webb in the " Courier and Enquirer," May 27, said that Sumner and other antislavery leaders had received ten times the amount of invective they had given in return. See also Boston "Atlas," May 24. A detailed list of the insults to which Sumner had been subjected, from his first speech on the slavery question, was given in the New York "Tribune," June 3, and in Wilson's speech in the Senate, June 13. Congressional Globe, p. 1399; Sumner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 281-301.
3 London " Star," June 21. The London "Times," August 7, in referring to the speech as an alleged "provocation" for violence, said: "The speech was elaborately strong, but not stronger than many delivered within the walls of our own Parliament during the discussion on the Reform and Emancipation bills." James W. Grimes said in a speech at Burlington, Iowa ; "His [Sumner's] speech fell short in invective of the philippics of Randolph, Calhoun, McDuffie, Hayne, Prentiss, and Henry A. Wise. It was diluted when compared to Webster's onslaught upon Charles J. Ingersoll." (Grimes's Life," p. 80.) The style of debate, marked by threats and epithets, which the partisans of slavery in Con- gress had long practised, is treated in Sumner's speech on "The Barbarism of Slavery," June 4, 1860, Works, vol. v. pp. 85-99.
4 New York " Tribune," May 21 ; J. S. Pike in " Tribune," May 22. The correspondent of the New York "Times," May 21, calls Sumner's retort "majestic, elegant, and crush- ing." Thomas H. Benton, meeting Sumner on the same or next day, said: "You had all three of them at once on the point of your spear."
5 Some may be found in his Works, vol. iv. pp. 129-136. He received at this period as many as fifty letters a day.
JEt. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 457
Longfellow wrote, May 24 : "A brave and noble speech you made, never to die out of the memories of men." And again, May 28 : "I have just been reading again your speech ; it is the greatest voice, on the greatest subject, that has been uttered since we became a nation. No matter for insults, — we feel them with you; no matter for wounds, — we also bleed in them ! You have torn the mask off the faces of traitors, and at last the spirit of the North is aroused." Whittier, after reading and re-reading the speech, pronounced it " a grand and terrible philippic worthy of the great occasion ; the severe and awful truth which the sharp agony of the national crisis demanded," itself " enough for immortality." Cassius M. Clay thought the speech "far the best one of the session, . . . standing right alongside with Webster's reply to Hayne," and destined to con- fer upon the author " immortality as a parliamentary debater." E. Rockwood Hoar thought that if death had been the sequel, " no man could have desired a nobler epitaph than the speech," and assured Sumner of " support in everything that head can devise or hand can execute," praying that he might " live to say again in many a form and on many a fit occasion the stinging home-truths to which no reply could be found but this." Edwin P. Whipple " sympathized with its sentiments, and gloried in its genius," calling it " an event " in itself, made all the greater by what followed, the only answer its opponents were capable of making to it. Dr. Francis Wayland thanked him for the speech, expressing the hope that he would deliver many such. Lydia Maria Child thought it " magnificent," meeting " the require- ments of the time with so much intellectual strength and moral heroism," finding nothing in it " which offended either her taste or her judgment." Count Gurowski found it " grand and beautiful in thought," and not less so in form. John Jay wrote : " Thanks for your glorious speech, that will now thrill the American heart to an extent never known before." Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., of Brooklyn, N. Y., sent thanks for the speech, " unanswerable ex- cept by the bludgeon, — a magnificent exhibition not only of mental force and culture, but of Christian and patriotic feeling, of regard for righteousness, and supreme devotion to liberty and to truth. . . . Great powers, great themes, and a magnificent opportunity are rarely combined in the experience of one man ; but still more rarely does that eminent and Christian spirit unite with them which enables a man to consecrate the powers, en-
458 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
noble the theme, and improve the opportunity. The North now testifies through millions of throbbing hearts how it welcomes you as one of the illustrious few ; and the South has testified through the mode of expression most natural to it its equal recognition.'" Miss Mattie Griffith, of Kentucky,1 the owner of inherited slaves, afterwards liberated, wrote from Philadelphia, June 8 : " Afar off in Kentucky I learned to love your name and reverence your heroism. I used to hide away in the woods, or in still corners of the house, to read your speeches, every word of which was heavenly manna to my hungry soul ! There was a life, a strain of soul and power in them that always moved me in the very source of thought and tears ; and I bless you now for having aroused in me a sense of human justice, and a zeal for human rights."
The speech was at once printed in the leading New York journals, and in those of other Northern cities. Large pamphlet editions were issued in Washington, New York, Boston, and San Francisco.2 Of the Washington edition nearly a quarter of a million of copies had been ordered in less than two months after the speech was made, and by that time a million of copies, it was estimated, had been issued in various forms.3 It became a Republican campaign document in the national election of 1856. It was translated into German and Welsh ; and was re- printed in London in a volume edited by Nassau W. Senior, and including the latter's review of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." The ex- traordinary interest in the speech was, however, largely due to the event which followed it.
Sumner aroused the wrath of the pro-slavery party as no other man could have aroused it. He as well as other anti- slavery men in Congress, and more than most of them, had endured continuous insult, not only by vituperation in debate, but in gestures, scowls, supercilious tones, disorderly ejacula- tions, and disturbing conversations while they were holding the floor, — offensive conduct, of much of which there was no offi- cial record.4 Those who had sought to suppress free debate in this way had now found their superior. They were beaten not only in argument, but in sarcasm, invective, and prompt retort, in an encounter where the weapons were of their own choosing. Sumner's style was finished beyond that of his compeers, and
1 Later, Mrs. Albert G. Browne, Jr. 3 New York Evening Post, July 9.
2 Boston Telegraph, June 25, 1856. 4 New York Tribune, May 30.
^Et. 44-45.] SPEECH ON KANSAS. 459
cut with a sharp edge when theirs was hardly felt. Their dull blades were of no avail before his keen one ; and they knew it. He said finely what his antagonists could only say coarsely, and they retired from the encounter discomfited and sullen. They might laugh at his classical diversions and studied rhetoric ; but they knew that when he denounced the slave-extending con- spiracy in the name of history and reason, his impeachment would live as the judgment of posterity. Towards individuals and all unwillingly interested in slavery no one was more consid- erate than he ; but he believed that the time had come to blast with all the power of human speech the bold and wicked con- spiracy for its extension, calling it fraud, crime, harlotry, vile- ness, and to associate with it all that is foul and revolting, in order to array against it the moral instincts of mankind. This thought he gave in a letter to a friend, in which he justified his severity on another occasion : " There is a time for everything ; and when crime and criminals are thrust before us, they are to be met by all the energies that God has given us, — by argu- ment, sarcasm, scorn, and denunciation. The whole arsenal of God is ours ; and I will not renounce one of the weapons, — not one ! That is my opinion, formed in experience and tried by tranquil meditation."
Against the cabal before him, which by its insolence and in- timidation had silenced- so many public men and toned down the spirit of others, he stood determined and defiant, neither fearing nor respecting them, and treating with a contempt they could not endure their lordly pretensions to superiority. With " retorted scorn " he returned their
" hostile scorn, which he sustained Superior, nor of violence feared aught."
They felt now as they had felt before, though now more keenly than ever, the moral power of his character, and as arraigned by him they saw themselves forever pilloried in history.1- His colleague Wilson, writing many years later, said : —
" A speech so hold and unsparing in its utterances, so thorough and fun- damental in its logic, in which things were called by their right names, and which applied the tests of Republican and Christian principles so severely to
1 Von Hoist (vol. v. p. 317) says: " The Sewards and Hales, Fessendens and Trumbulls, Wilsons and Wades did not handle the majority with silk gloves when they spoke of slavery; but it never before had the feeling that it was subjected to morally running the gauntlet before the eyes of the whole world."
460 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
the vexed question, while at the same time it administered to some of the haughty and dogmatic leaders that severe rebuke their insolence deserved, could not fail in the excited state of the public mind to produce a profound impression. Men whose course had been subjected to this terrible arraign- ment were excited to madness; and summary vengeance was agreed upon as the only remedy that would meet the exigency of the hour." 1
Sumner stood on those days as no man had ever stood before, or could thereafter stand, for the cause of free debate, for the absolutely equal rights of Northern and Southern men. The habit had grown up of treating Southern men differently from other men, — making allowance for their proneness to violence, humoring them as spoiled children, as passionate men from whom everything was to be borne for fear of an explosion of anger, or a challenge to a duel.2 The time had come — it had long ago come — for Northern men to assert their full equal- ity, and maintain at every hazard their right to the same cour- tesy, the same range of speech, the same recognition as members and as gentlemen, and not to grant a whit more, either from charity or fear. Any other mode of treatment only made South- ern men the more licentious in speech and insolent in manner, and took from Northern men all manly spirit.
A complete statement of the reception which was given to Sumner's speech at the North requires it to be said that it was not in all respects approved as politic.3 A certain type of men, conservative and moderate, would have preferred a philosophical and passionless argument against slavery, regarding any other as aggravating the sectional feuds, which they dreaded. The practice of submission to " plantation manners " and to the pas- sionate outbreaks of the Southern members had been of so long standing that an insurrection against the dominant arrogance startled timid minds. Seward was accustomed to take insults in silence,4 and some thought it would have been as well for Sumner to have let them in his case pass without reply. Such views^ however, overlooked the stage to which the conflict be- tween slavery and freedom had come, — when audacity on the
1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 481.
2 Giddings, when he entered Congress in December, 1838, observed that Northern members, from fear of the Southern men, were "diffident, taciturn, and forbearing." Julian's "Life" of Giddings, p. 52.
3 The comparison of Douglas in the final rejoinder to "the nameless animal " was not thought to be in good taste by some critics.
4 See dehate of April 10, 1856. Congressional Globe, p. 863.
^t. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 461
one side could be beaten back only by courage on the other, and when the Northern masses needed as an inspiration the specta- cle of a manly and fearless spirit on the part of their leaders in Washington.1
Meantime Sumner, who was constitutionally devoid of fear, had no thought that any one was meditating violence against him ; nor was there any prevailing suspicion of danger among his friends.2 Bingham of the House, however, who was present when Douglas and Mason were speaking on Tuesday, was led to believe from the language and manner of senators, particu- larly from Douglas's expression, " Is it his object to provoke us to kick him ? " and his allusion to what would happen when Butler returned, that an attempt to assault Sumner was being meditated, or that it was intended to produce or encourage an assault ; and before the Senate adjourned on that day he com- municated his apprehensions to Wilson, whom he advised to take precautions against it.3 Wilson thereupon asked Burlin- game and Colfax of the House to join him in walking with Sumner from the Capitol, and then told Sumner that himself and others were going home with him.4 Sumner, who caught his meaning, but, unsuspicious of danger, treated what his col- league said as trifling, answered, " None of that, Wilson ! " 5 He went at once to the reporters' desk to see about the proofs of his speech, and avoiding Wilson, passed out at the side door. Wilson and Burlingame supposed he was to return ; but as he did not, they went out, descended the steps of the Capitol, and waited for him at the porter's lodge until they heard he had gone home.6 Sumner, after leaving the Capitol on foot, hap- pened to overtake Seward, with whom he was to drive that day ; and the latter proposed that they should go in an omnibus to
1 There was the same difference of opinion among English people. Dr. Palfrey was in England at the time, and was present when Lord Elgin expressed his opinion that Sumner had better not have said some things which he did say ; but the Duchess of Argyll defended him fully.
2 No careful analysis of the evidence relating to Brooks's assault on the senator was made at the time, and the effort is now made to supply one. The Congressional Globe (June 2, 1856, Thirty-fourth Congress, first session, pp. 1348-1367) is cited, being more accessible to the public than the volume containing the committee's report.
3 Wilson's and Bingham's testimony. (Congressional Globe, pp. 1357, 1358.) Some others had suspicions. Darling, an employee, testified that he was ''rather expecting something of the sort," p. 1360.
4 Wilson's testimony. Congressional Globe, p. 1357.
5 Sumner's testimony. Ibid., p. 1353.
6 Wilson's testimony. Ibid., p. 1357.
4:62 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
his house, but Sumner excused himself, saying he must first attend to his proofs.1 He then walked alone to the printing- office, and thence to Seward's. As nothing occurred that day, the apprehensions of his friends were allayed.
Preston S. Brooks was then a member of the House from South Carolina, born at Edgefield Court House, living in " Ninety-six," a township of some interest in Revolutionary history, and repre- senting a cotton-planting district in the northwestern part of the State. He first came to Congress late in the session of 1852-1853. He made a speech (March 15, 1854) in favor of the Nebraska bill, and during the same session advocated at length (June 14) a southern route for the Pacific Rail- road. These speeches show him to have been a person of only respectable ability, and his friends hardly claimed more for him. During his service hitherto, hardly three years in length, he had been a modest and orderly member, indulging in no acrimonious speech and keeping aloof from scenes of disorder ; and his pacific manner and temperament had been observed. Once he intervened to arrest a personal difficulty between mem- bers, and offered a resolution (June 21 and 22, 1854) against the bringing of concealed weapons into the House. In his speech on the Nebraska bill he disclaimed any reflection on those who rejected the duel as a mode of settling personal questions. On one or two occasions he appeared more tolerant and less ex- clusively sectional than some of his nullifying colleagues.2 He had a grain of levity in his nature, which appeared in a reso- lution offered by him in jest, and in his vote for Mr. Giddings as chaplain. All agree that he was amiable and friendly in relations with members ; 3 and he even cultivated association with some Republican members, among them Comins of Massa- chusetts.4 The deed which was to make him famous, or rather infamous, seemed to befit his colleague Keitt better than him- self.5 With all this, he had the same intemperate zeal for slavery which distinguished his State ; and he had recently been active
1 Sumner's testimony. Congressional Globe, p. 1353.
2 Dec. 25, 1855. Ibid., p. 77.
3 His father, Whitfield Brooks, appears to have been impulsive and rash. O'Neall's "Bench and Bar of South Carolina," vol. ii. p- 474:.
4 Once he paired with Murray of New York.
s W. S. Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," May 23 and June 2. The plotters of the assault have been reticent as to its origin ; they revealed as little as possible in their reluctant testimony. The way in which the world received their deed did not make them communicative.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 463
in promoting a pro-slave ly emigration to Kansas under Buford.1 He was now thirty-six years of age, and was described as a per- son exceeding six feet in height, of large frame, erect and mili- tary carriage, with black hair and sparkling eyes, juvenile in face and negligent in dress.2 Of courage Brooks had given no proof. During the Mexican War, he raised a company of volun- teers, but did no fighting. He went to Vera Cruz, but being- taken ill returned home ; and when he had recovered he re- joined his company in Mexico after the capture of the city.3
Brooks's relation to Butler, the senator, was remote, being neither that of son, brother, or even nephew ; and he was only the son of Butler's cousin,4 — a consanguinity so distant as according to common ideas not to call for volunteer enlist- ment in a personal issue between Butler and another. He was sometimes called Butler's nephew, but his defenders generally spoke of him as "a near kinsman," prudently abstaining from defining the degree.
Brooks was present for only a short time while Sumner was speaking on the first day, and not at all on the second day ; 5 and he is said to have complained of the speech on the first day to Senator Hunter,6 and it is probable that at this time he was meditating an assault. Sumner during the first day (Monday) made no reflections on South Carolina ; and all he said of Butler on that day, besides a strict reply to his charges against the North, was his comparison of Butler with Don Quixote, " a chivalrous knight, as he believed himself," devoted to his mistress, " the harlot slavery," ascribing to But-
1 W. S. Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," May 23.
2 W. S: Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," May 23, Aug. 2, 1856; Jan. 30, 1857. Toombs's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356. Toombs testified that he was an inch taller than Sumner. At his death he required a coffin six feet and four inches in length, and he was described by the undertaker as "the largest framed and largest man who ever died in Washington." New York "Evening Post," Jan. 29, 1857. A por- trait of Brooks is given in Nicolay and Hay's "Life of Lincoln," Century Magazine, June, 1887, p. 206.
3 Butler said in a speech in June, 1856 (Congressional Globe, App. p. 631) that a sword was awarded Brooks for service in the Mexican War; but this is not stated in the eulo- gies on him at the time of his decease. If it is true, it proves little, as swords and titles were cheaply won in that war.
4 Whitfield Brooks, father of Preston S., and Butler were cousins. O'Neall's "Bench and Bar of South Carolina," vol. i. p. 198; vol. ii. p. 473.
5 Brooks's statement, July 12, interrupting Hall. Congressional Globe, App. p. 886. Brooks then said that the most objectionable part of the speech was the part delivered on the second day; but he had not heard or read it.
6 Edmundson's testimony. Congressional Globe, p. 1362.
464 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
ler a devotion to slavery of which he was proud, and neither then nor afterwards referring to or hinting at anything in his public life except his insane devotion to slavery. This bit of satire, except in its being apt and well done, was tame by the side of epithets bestowed by members of Congress on one another at almost every session without any sequel of violence. Nor does it appear that Brooks heard, or knew of, or cared for this description of Butler so as to make it the cause of offence. During the first day, then, Brooks assumed to take offence, not at anything Sumner said about South Carolina, for he had said nothing on that day about the State ; and thus far he had indulged only in a bit of satire common and legitimate in parlia- mentary tilts. No adequate cause appearing for resentment, Brooks's feeling on the first day must be ascribed solely to a general antipathy to the matter and style of this and other speeches of Sumner, similar to that which two years before prompted threats of expulsion and social ostracism and insti- gations to violence when he replied effectually to Mason and Butler.1 Then as now there was a purpose to silence a voice which could not be met in debate ; and the setting up of a par- ticular injury to a person or a State was a mere cover to the real motive. Other expressions of Brooks to be referred to show this clearly.
Sumner's references to Butler on the second day were brief, and have been already given ; and they were not heard by Brooks, who was at no time present on that day. Sumner, as will be seen, referred to Butler's " omnipresence in debate " (he having taken part in it thirty-five times), his "extrava- gance " and " deviation from truth," his " incapacity of accu- racy," and his proneness to blunders, — and this was all ; and even the terms " deviation from truth " were qualified by as- cribing the habit to passion, which " saved him from the sus- picion of intentional aberration." Sumner went so far as even at this time to recognize Butler's " generous impulses ; " 2 and he made no imputation on Butler's private life, or referred to any characteristic of his which did not appear in debate. But- ler admitted about as much of himself as Sumner charged against him when in a speech, June 13, he confessed his habit-
1 Works, vol. iii. pp. 348, 349, 414. Ante, pp. 375-377, 385.
2 Works, vol. iv. pp. 240, 243. Illustrations of Butler's looseness of speech were given by Wilson in his speech, June 13. Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 286.
Mr. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 465
ual " impatience, excitability, and absent-mindedness." There was something absurd in his taking offence, or any one on his behalf taking offence, at what Sumner had said, considering how freely he treated his opponents in the Senate, calling Wil- son " a liar " in open Senate a few days later.1 In all Sumner said of Butler he fell below what had often occurred in the British Parliament and in Congress without the sequel of vio- lence, as when Burke spoke of Hastings ; or in controversies between Tristam Burgess and John Randolph, Daniel Webster and D. S. Dickinson, Blaine and Conkling. Nor did Sumner's speech on the second day contain any elaborate criticism of South Carolina, but only a single passage illustrating her de- votion to slavery (an historic fact claimed to her credit by her public men), and asserting that her whole history was of less value to civilization than the example of Kansas in that terri- tory's struggle against oppression. This single passage was but an incidental reference ; whereas Sumner's full speech on the topic two years before led to no act of revenge, and received no attention except a reply in debate. Brooks too was a member of Congress then, and made no sign at the ampler exposure of his State and of his kinsman, who assumed the defence of the State and her cherished institution ; and his now setting up a much lighter treatment of the same topics as a just provocation to violence shows that any such alleged grievance was a pre- tence, set up because it could be availed of thereafter in defence or mitigation in proceedings in Congress or the courts.2
It may be remarked that if Massachusetts senators and repre- sentatives had felt called upon to take affront at and revenge the frequent imputations on the honor of the State and its people on account of their efforts for the colonization of Kansas, — far more flagrant than Sumner made on South Carolina, — the Capi- tol would have been the scene of unintermitted violence.
What went on in Brooks's mind during Tuesday, the second day of Sumner's speech, and how far his plan developed, does not appear. It was claimed for him afterwards that he was stung by rumors and comments on the streets and conversations in parlors, in which women joined, where Southern men were
1 May 27. Keitt, colleague and confederate of Brooks, on Feb. 5, 1858, in the House seized G. A. Grow of Pennsylvania by the throat, and called him "a damned Republican puppy." New York "Tribune," Feb. 6, 1858.
2 Alexander H. Stephens is said to have desired that Brooks should issue a card dis- claiming all public grounds for his act. New York "Evening Post," May 30.
vol. in. 30
466 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
reproached for submission to insults to his State ; 1 but these do not appear to have been specially addressed to him ; and it is not likely that he heard anything more in public places than the loose talk of the violent Southern men that some one ought to punish Sumner for his antislavery speech, and silence him for the future.2 It is, however, probable that Keitt and others in the secret did put the business on him, selecting him because he better than they could parry Congressional and judicial proceed- ings by setting up the pretence that he was performing a kins- man's duty in avenging a kinsman's wrong. To what extent there was an understanding among the intense pro-slavery mem- bers as to the assault has never been revealed ; but there can be no doubt that quite a number were privy to it.3 When the pro- slavery party were confronted with the proceedings in Congress and the indignation of the free States, it became important to conceal the fact of a conspiracy.4
What is next known of Brooks is on Wednesday about noon, ten minutes before the session began, when Edmundson, a mem- ber from Virginia, approaching the Capitol, met him casually (as Edmundson testified) at the foot of the lowest flight of steps, which he had just descended on his way from the Capitol. At Brooks's request for a conversation, they took a seat on a
1 Butler's speech, June 13, Congressional Globe, App. p. 632.
2 There appears to have been talk of this kind about the town, without reference to any special cause of offence to Butler or his State.
3 Benton said at the time: "This is not an assault, sir; it is a conspiracy, — yes, sir, a conspiracy. These men hunt in couples, sir. It is a conspiracy, and the North should know it." (J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," June 2; "First Blows of the Civil War," p. 342.) One Southern senator said, on the first day of the speech, that if he could have his way he would hang Sumner on the spot. (J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," May 21.) Kivers, a Southern member, said in presence of other members the day before the assault, that " when Judge Butler came back he would resent it [the speech]; that he would whip him [Sumner], and put his foot upon his face." (Buffin- ton's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1363; Ricaud's testimony, p. 1365.) The easy and informal way in which Brooks communicated his purpose to Edmundson, according to the latter's testimony (p. 1362), and in which Edmundson communicated it beforehand to Senator Johnson of Arkansas (p. 1362), as well as the conversation between Edmundson and Keitt (p. 1363), shows how easily these men admitted one another into their confidence, and that an understanding more or less particular existed among the intense pro-slavery men. When Edmundson and Keitt disavowed previous knowledge of the time and place of the assault, Benton wrote to Sumner: "There ought to be a searching inquiry, never lost sight of in all the examinations, to know if those persons who did not know when and where the attack would be made did not keep within supporting distances when it was to come, and whether they and he had not pistols or dirks."
4 It was stated at the time that the assault was agreed upon at a conference of the South Carolina delegation. (New York "Times," May 24; New York "Tribune," Jan. 28. 1857.) The character of one of the delegation, Governor Aiken, gives assurance that he would have discountenanced it.
Mt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 467
bench near the walk leading from Pennsylvania Avenue to the steps. Brooks then said that " Sumner, had been very insulting to his State, and that he had determined to punish him unless he made an ample apology." He further said that " it was time for Southern men to stop this coarse abuse used by the Aboli- tionists against the Southern people and States, and that he should not feel that he was representing his State properly if he permitted such things to be said ; that he learned that Mr. Sumner intended to do this thing days before he made his speech ; that he did it deliberately, and he thought he ought to be punished for it." Edmundson said further that in this first conversation Brooks repeated what Sumner had said about South Carolina, — "Disgracefully impotent during the Revolu- tion, and still more so on account of slavery." 1 But this is not likely, as this was said on the second day of the speech (Tues- day), when Brooks was not present, and the Congressional Globe containing the passage had not yet been issued. Besides, Brooks at no time claimed that he had read it in the Globe. It will thus be observed that, as appears by Edmundson's testi- mony, from which alone Brooks's state of mind on both days is ascertained, his grievance was not, as afterwards empha- sized, any slander on Butler, who was not even mentioned in the interviews ; and although, according to Edmundson, he did refer on Wednesday to an insult to his State, he had not heard, and could not at the time have read, the passage of Sumner's speech concerning South Carolina. Brooks's real grievance, as he stated it, was Sumner's assault on slavery itself, or, as he put it, on "the Southern people and States." He had consti- tuted himself the avenger of his section and class with the pur- pose of silencing members of Congress who dealt plainly and strongly with the slavery question. This was the view taken by Butler himself, who in his speech, June 24, claimed that Brooks acted from higher motives than taking redress for an insult offered to his kinsman.2
Brooks, as Edmundson testified, wished the latter to be pres- ent merely as a friend to do him justice, as Sumner might have friends with him, but not to take part in the difficulty. Spite of the disclaimer of desiring physical help, it is clear that he de- sired his friend's presence as something more than a witness,
1 Works, vol. iv. p. 241. Ante, p. 450.
2 Congressional Globe, App. p. 664.
4G8 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER [1855-56.
and as a participant under certain circumstances ; and Edmund- son, who said at once that he himself had only a " little briar stick " with him, evidently so understood Brooks.1 Brooks's ref- erence in his talk with Edmundson to the chance that Sumner might have friends with him indicated that he wished Edmund- son at least to resist their interference.
Brooks waited with Edmundson for Sumner on the grounds fifteen minutes, and both then went to the Capitol, parting in the rotunda, — Brooks going to the Senate chamber, and his companion to the hall of the House.2 It was just before the two houses met at noon on Wednesday that Edmundson met Brooks in the Capitol grounds. Brooks had been probably look- ing for Sumner at least an hour or so ; and he said in his letter to the president of the Senate, May 29,3 that he made careful search for him on both Wednesday and Thursday. At this time on Wednesday, when he met Edmundson and his purpose was fully formed, he knew the speech only by hearsay, as, according to his own statement, he heard but little of it on Monday, and none of it on Tuesday ; 4 and the Globe which contained it was not distributed till Wednesday after the session began, some minutes after his interview with Edmundson.5 This shows that it was not any particular expressions of the speech, but rather the speech as a whole, and Sumner's position as an antislavery leader, which were in his mind as an incentive to his deed.
On Thursday at noon, within a few minutes before the two Houses began the daily session, Edmundson met Brooks again near the same spot as on the day before, this time sitting alone in the gate-house, or porter's lodge, at the entrance of the Capi- tol grounds, and looking for Sumner, but looking in vain, as the senator had for some reason, perhaps to consult the library, driven earlier to the Capitol. Edmundson represented this, as well as the first meeting in front of the Capitol, as " casual," as also their presence together in the Senate chamber ; but so many " casual " meetings indicate concert. Brooks told Edmundson that " he could not overlook the insult ; 6 that he had scarcely slept any the night before, thinking of it, and that it ought to
1 Edmundson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1362. 2 Ibid.
8 Congressional Globe, p. 1347.
4 Brooks's remarks, Congressional Globe, App. p. 886.
5 Pennington's speech, July 10, Globe, App. p. 891.
6 Meaning "to his State," as mentioned on the first day, but without describing "the insult" in this interview.
^Et. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 469
be promptly resented." 1 He had taken his position there to attack Sumner if he walked, or to observe him if he drove,— intendino; in the latter case, as soon as he saw Sumner, to pass through the grounds, then up the flight of steps and through the Capitol, to meet the senator in the open space back of the Cap- itol where the carriages stopped, or before he reached the Senate chamber. Edmundson, as he states, dissuaded him from this course, objecting that the necessary exertion and fatigue it in- volved just before a conflict would disable him from coping with Sumner, who was supposed to have superior physical strength. It is interesting to note how nicely these "chivalrous gen- tlemen" counted the odds, and took care that the advantage should be wholly with them before they exposed their persons. Brooks, of course, accepted this counsel, and the two walked to the Capitol, separating in the rotunda as on the day before,— Edmundson going to the House, and Brooks to the Senate. The two mornings had passed, and the liers-in-wait had lost their prey. The House, after hearing eulogies on two deceased mem- bers, adjourned at 12.30, a half-hour session only, and Edmund- son then went to the Senate, which, after a eulogy by Senator Geyer on one of the deceased members of the House, adjourned at 12.45, fifteen minutes after the adjournment of the House. Edmundson is again " casually " with his friend, and gives him advice how to proceed. While Geyer was speaking, Brooks was standing on the side of the main aisle opposite to the side on which was Sumner's seat, No. 9, and was within a few feet from the seat. On the adjournment most of the senators retired, — a few remaining in their seats, or sitting or moving about else- where. Brooks then took the seat of Senator Pratt, just in front of where he had been standing, seat No. 12 on the plan, and a few steps only from Sumner's seat.2 Wilson, whose seat (No. 10) was the back one on the aisle, and next to Sumner's, remained a few minutes after the adjournment to finish a letter, and as he passed out saw Brooks sitting in Pratt's seat, and their eyes meeting, they bowed to each other. Wilson's departure left no further obstacle in Brooks's way except the presence of a lady, and he asked an officer of the Senate to manage to get her out, — a request which the officer, not complying with, thought
1 Edmundson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1362.
2 Nicholson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1366; Edmundson's, p. 1362; Wil- son's, p. 1358.
470 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
" whimsical," but without suspecting his purpose.1 Going out into the vestibule, he proposed, on account of the lady's presence, as Edmundson states, to send for Sumner to come outside of the chamber ; but Edmundson advised against this, saying that the senator, being much engaged, would only send for him to come in.2
Meanwhile, from the time of the adjournment, Sumner re- mained at his desk writing busily for the next mail, probably addressing copies of his speech,3 and excusing himself to sev- eral persons who came to his seat ; and when the last one 4 had left he drew his chair close to his desk, and continued writing, with his attention so withdrawn from other objects that he was unaware of the presence of any one in the chamber.5 His legs were far under the desk, and so close to its bottom that he could not rise unless he bethought himself to push his chair back on its rollers, — a movement not likely to occur to one acting under surprise and excitement. The desk was immov- able, its feet fastened to a plate of iron by screws, and the plate itself firmly screwed to the floor.6 He was thus pinioned, so as to be at the mercy of an assailant coming stealthily upon him.
At about quarter-past one,7 half an hour after the adjourn- ment, Brooks stepped to the front of Sumner's desk. Sumner, with his head bent over close to it and absorbed in writing, did not see him approach ; and his attention was first drawn by hearing his name pronounced, when looking up he saw directly in front a tall person, a stranger to him, who gave no name, and at the same moment caught the words, " I have read your speech over twice carefully ; it is a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine — " (apparently not finish- ing the sentence).8 Instantly, without waiting for a reply, and while the words were passing his lips, he struck with his full
1 New York "Tribune," May 23. Nicholson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1366.
2 Edmundson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1362.
3 Boston Telegraph, May 26.
4 Stated by W. Y. Leader to have been one of the editors of the Chambersburg (Penn.) " Transcript." (Works, vol. iv. p. 269.) But Sumner told the writer a short time after that it was William S. Thayer of the New York " Evening Post."
5 Sumner's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1353.
6 McNair's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1363.
7 Sutton's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1363.
8 Sumner's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1353; W. Y. Leader's statement, Sum- ner's Works, vol. iv. p. 269. Nicholson testified that Brooks was " leaning on and over " Sumner's desk. (Globe, p. 1366.) Sumner had an indistinct recollection that after the first blow Brooks used the words ''old man," p. 1353.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 471
strength 1 a succession of blows with a gutta-percha cane on Sumner's bare head, repeating them with all possible rapidity, so that it was impossible for a witness to count them.2 The first blow so stunned Sumner that he lost sight, and could not see his assailant, or any person or object, and from that time acted almost unconsciously under the instinct of self-defence.3 He did his best to defend himself.4 With his head bent down, and wrenching the desk, he tore it from its fastening in the attempt to extricate himself, and pressing forward came upon his feet. Then other blows falling, consciousness ended ; and partially erect, he staggered and swayed back and forth, throw- ing his arms about aimlessly as if in convulsions,5 while his assailant, seizing him by the collar, continued the blows at the head, which numbered according to different calculations ten, twenty, or thirty,6 — the stick finally breaking, but the blows continuing until the stricken senator sank on the floor at the edge of the main aisle, on the site of Collamer's overturned desk No. 29, and his feet lying in the aisle.7 The positions of the two were reversed during the affair ; and when it ended, Brooks was standing on the site of Sumner's seat and facing
1 Morgan's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357; Toombs's, p. 1356; Gorman's, p. 1354. Morgan testified: "I do not think he could have given them with greater force. I think he was exerting himself to the full extent of his power." To one witness, Sutton (p. 1363), it sounded like "a sharp crack." Toombs testified: "The}7 were very rapid, and as hard as he [Brooks] could hit. They were hard licks, and very effective." Gor- man testified: "Mr. Brooks continued to strike very rapidly, and with a great deal of severity."
2 Foster's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356 ; Gorman's, p. 1354.
3 Sumner's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1353; J. S. Pike in New York "Trib- une," May 23; W. S. Thayer in "Evening Post," May 23. Sumner, though an advocate of international peace, was a full believer in the right of self-defence. Works, vol. iv. p. 333.
4 Governor Gorman, a Democrat, testified: " The very first blow Mr. Sumner rose and attempted to defend himself with a great deal of vigor, putting his hands forward to get at Mr. Brooks, as I thought." (Congressional Globe, p. 1354.) Pearce, senator, saw Sumner clutching at the cane or at Brooks. (Globe, p. 1354.) Brooks is said to have admitted that Sumner tried to defend himself. W. S. Thayer in New York "Evening Post," May 26.
5 Murray's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357; Foster's, p. 1356; Sutton's, p. 1363 ; Nicholson's, p. 1366; Simonton's, p. 1361; Morgan's, p. 1357.
6 Foster's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356; Winslow's, p. 1361; Murray's, p. 1357 ; Simonton's, p. 1361. The statement was made at the time that as Sumner in- stinctively raised his arm on the side he was struck, Brooks, following the method of sword practice, struck on the other, and with such alternating blows had no obstruction in the way. (W. S. Thayer in the "Evening Post," May 28.) Iverson, colleague of Tombs, testified : "When Mr. Sumner would attempt to reach him he would recede, and at the same time strike over his arms and at his head."
7 Pearce' s testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1355; Toombs's, p. 1355; Murray's, p. 1356; Nicholson's, p. 1366; Iverson's, p. 1364-, Douglas's remarks, May 27, p. 1305.
472 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
the president's chair, while Sumner was below him at or near Collainer's seat, which was just in front of Wilson's.1 No word was spoken by either, except Brooks's brief address at the be- ginning. Words and blows occupied only a few seconds, — ten, thirty, or from thirty to sixty, according to the varying im- pressions of the witnesses.2 There were several persons in the chamber, most of whom saw nothing till they heard the first blow. The first to reach the spot were Edwin B. Morgan and Ambrose S. Murray, members of the House from New York, who were standing in conversation by Clayton's seat, No. 1, near the south door, perhaps fifty feet from the scene. Hearing a strange noise, and turning, they saw the blows, and ran rap- idly in different ways toward the spot. Murray went by the passage outside of the bar or rail, back of the desks, and coming behind Brooks caught him by the body and right arm, as with one hand on the collar of Sumner's coat he was in the act of striking with the other, and turned him about and away from Sumner.3 Morgan coming, on the other hand, through the open space in front of the president's desk, and then by the main aisle, reached the spot at the same time with Murray, and caught Sumner as he was sinking, and saved him from falling heavily.4 Crittenden, sitting in conversation with Pearce, another senator, whose seat was No. 23, heard the noise, and was on the spot immediately after Sumner had fallen, and was active in efforts to stop the assault, openly and emphatically condemning it.5 Holland, a doorkeeper, came up at the same time with Crit- tenden, and as an officer of the Senate commanded the peace.6 Foster of Connecticut, sitting in his seat, No. 42, ran as soon as he heard the noise, and did what he could to prevent fur- ther violence.7 Gorman, governor of Minnesota, was standing with Toombs in the space in front of the president's desk ; the
1 Winslow's testimony, Congresssional Globe, p. 1361.
2 Pearce's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1355; Crittenden's, p. 1359.
3 Murray's testimony, Congressional Globe, pp.1356, 1357; Morgan's, p. 1357; Iver- son's, p. 1364; Foster's, p. 1356. Brooks afterwards said in his loose way that he desisted only when he "had punished Sumner to his satisfaction." (Brown's testimony, Globe, p. 1367.) But according to the evidence he desisted when pinioned by Murray.
4 Morgan's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357. Morgan gave an account of the scene after Sumner's death, copied into the Boston "Commonwealth," May 23, 1874. Morgan died at Aurora, N. Y., Oct. 13, 1881, and Murray at Goshen, N. Y., late in 1885.
5 Crittenden's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1359; Toombs's, pp. 1355, 1356; Murray's, p. 1356.
6 Holland's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1358; Simonton's, p. 1361.
7 Foster's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 473
former observed Brooks's approach, and the latter's attention was attracted by the first blow. Gorman went forward, but he was anticipated by Morgan and Murray, though coming from a further point.1 Toombs looked on, commending Brooks's act.2 The affair was so sudden and so quickly over that most of the persons in the Senate chamber — in all perhaps twenty — had no means of interfering,3 though the failure of Gorman and Leader (a young journalist) to reach the spot sooner than Mur- ray and Morgan is not easily understood.4 Want of courage or of presence of mind with some, and a certain sympathy with the outrage on the part of others, retarded efforts to assist or interfere.
Keitt, who had remained in the Capitol in expectation of the assault,5 when it began was standing behind the Vice-President's chair, talking with some one.6 As soon as the blows began he rushed forward, flourishing an uplifted cane, with countenance and gestures showing a purpose to oppose violence to any one who should befriend Sumner ; and encountering Crittenden, who was trying to get between the parties, was apparently about to assail him, when he was diverted by Toombs, who with pru- dent thought did not wish to have the violence extend to an aged Southern senator. He came close to the scene, — to Cass's seat (No. 30), within ten feet of it, — continuing his demonstra- tions, warning off with threats Holland the doorkeeper, as well
1 Gorman's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1354. Gorman testified that he was only twelve or thirteen feet off.
2 Remarks, May 27, Congressional Globe, p. 1355. Toombs had recently, as late as January 24, been in Boston, where he had been entertained by William Appleton, and had been respectfully listened to in his defence of slavery before an antislavery audience, appearing by invitation in an antislavery course. While in Boston he was courteous and quiet in manner.
3 Nicholson's testimony, Congressional Globe, pp. 1366, 1367. The failure of the as- sistant sergeant-at-arms to reach the spot in time was the subject of criticism. (W. S._ Thayer in the " Evening Post," May 23.) Mr. Thayer stated in the same journal, May 28, that Bright, president of the Senate, condemned the assault.
4 William Y. Leader, of Philadelphia, since of Austin, Texas, who made the complaint against Brooks in the District Court, was by his own account nearer than any one, and even heard the words which Brooks uttered, — heard by no one else except Sumner. He regarded the assault as "a cold-blooded, high-handed outrage " (Sumner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 268-270) ; but he abstained from interference, kept back by dread of violence to him- self. He was young, of inferior stature, and untrained in physical contests.
5 Edmundson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1363. Keitt told Edmundson that he could not leave till Brooks did.
6 Gorman's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1354. Keitt, in his speech of July 16 (Globe App. p. 838), said that though he knew the punishment was to be inflicted, for Brooks had told him so, he did not know it was to come just then; and if he had he should have been still nearer the scene of action than he was-
474 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
as Crittenden, crying out, " Let them alone ! " 1 and with, accord- ing to one witness, the emphasis of an oath.2 His purpose was presumably murderous, as he had his hand on a pistol, ready apparently for use in case the senator had overmastered his assailant.3
The cane used by Brooks was in diameter one inch at the large end, three fourths of an inch at the middle, and five eighths of an inch at the smaller end, with a specific gravity equal to that of hickory or whalebone, — a weapon deadly in effect when the blows are applied to the head with full manly strength.4 If death had directly ensued, Brooks's crime would have been murder.5 He indeed disavowed the intent to kill, except in a certain event ; but his intent, as shown by his act, was something more than to humiliate and disgrace. The re- peated blows show a purpose at least to incapacitate for further public service.6
Sumner remained insensible for several minutes after he fell ; and when he recovered consciousness he found himself, as he testified afterwards, ten feet forward from his seat, lying on the floor, with his bleeding head on the knee of a gentleman whom he recognized as Mr. Morgan.7 His only words were a request
1 Gorman's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1354; Foster's, p. 1356; Morgan's, p. 1357; Holland's, p. 1358; Sutton's, p. 1363; Simonton's, p. 1361; Toombs's, pp. 1355- 1356. Keitt and Edmundson, in order to avoid the charge that an indignity to the Senate was intended, and to maintain the point that that body had no jurisdiction, made formal denials that they knew beforehand of the time and place when the assault was to be made. (Brooks also testified to the same effect, May 23, Globe, p. 1392; Brooks's letter, p. 1347; Edmundson's testimony, p. 1362; Keitt's remarks, May 23, p. 1292; Keitt's speech, July 16, App. p. 838.) These denials were evasive. The two accessories were, according to the testimony and their own confessions, waiting about within sup- porting distance to see what Brooks did (Edmundson's testimony, Globe, p 1363); and they admitted their purpose to prevent any interference. (Holland's testimony, Globe, pp. 1358, 1359; Edmundson's speech, July 14, App. p. 1015.) Edmundson, according to
^his own testimony, talked a few moments before with Senator Johnson of Arkansas about the propriety of Brooks's calling on [assaulting] Sumner in the Senate. (Globe, p. 1362.) Keitt is stated to have been seen with a pistol behind him. Giddings's "History of the Rebellion," p. 394.
2 Simonton's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1361.
3 J. S. Pike's "First Blows of the Civil War," p. 379.
4 House Committee's Report, Congressional Globe, p. 1348; Dr. Perry's testimony, p. 1364; Davis's, p. 1365; Pearce's, p. 1355. Pennington, in his speech, July 10, described the material of the cane as " of vulcanized india-rubber, — a composition of which about three fourths are one of the heaviest of minerals."
5 Pennington's speech, July 10.
6 According to Edmundson, Brooks was to give Sumner an opportunity for explana- tion, or "ample apology," as he called it; but his plan was changed in this respect. Edmundson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1362 ; Edmundson's speech, July 14.
7 Sumner's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1353.
jEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 475
to have the papers on his desk cared for.1 Morgan and others held him up as he walked to the anteroom to await there a physician who had been sent for.2 The blood flowed profusely, soaking the collar and neck of his shirt, and penetrating through his coat at the shoulder so as even to appear on the inside of the padding, and spotting also the back and sides of the coat, as well as the waistcoat and trousers.3 The shirt-sleeves of Mor- gan, who had held his head, were saturated with blood ; 4 his head was still bleeding copiously when the physician arrived, the blood flowing upon the latter's shirt while the wounds were being dressed.5 At this time it was thought he could not sur- vive. Dr. Boyle, whom a messenger had met on the way, was brought quickly ; he found that the skull had not been frac- tured, as was feared. There were two gashes on the back part of the head, one above each ear, — one being in length two and a quarter inches, and the other nearly two inches. Both went through the scalp to the bone, laying it bare. One was nearly an inch in depth, " cut in and down" where it is but an eighth of an inch to the scalp, being " cut under, as it were, and very ragged." Both of these gashes were at once sewed up. There were other wounds or bruises, not requiring to be dressed, on the back of the head, on the face near the temple, and on the hands, arms, and shoulders. Fortunately, the blows had fallen on the thick part of the skull, and there was a mass of hair on the head ; if they had happened to strike the temple, a fatal re- sult might have immediately followed. As it was there was the danger of the concussion of the brain, or of erysipelas.6
The dressing of the wounds being finished, Wilson, who hear- ing of the assault had returned to the Capitol, assisted by Buf- finton of the House, took Sumner in a carriage to his lod«;inp;s at Rev. Mr. Sampson's, on Sixth Street.7 He was still in a state of partial stupor while on the way. As soon as he reached his
i Foster's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1356.
2 Morgan's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357.
3 Sumner's testimony, Congressional Globe, pp. 1353, 1354. The blood was also spat- tered on the floor and desks in the Senate. New York " Tribune," May 23.
4 Morgan's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357.
5 Dr. Boyle's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1360 ; Dr. Perry's statement, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. lv. pp. 417-421.
6 Dr. Boyle's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1360; Dr. Perry's, p. 1364 ; Darling's, p. 1360; Dr. Perry's statement, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. lv. pp. 417-421, Dec. 25, 1856; Works, vol. iv. pp. 338, 339.
7 Wilson's testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1357.
476 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
rooms he told Wilson that he should renew the conflict with slavery in the Senate as soon as he could return there.1 There was one man, at least, in Congress of mind unconquered and unconquerable. The next day was the first he had ever been absent from his seat since he became a senator.
The assault produced a prodigious sensation in Washington.2 The Republican senators, still a small body, met the same even- ing at Seward's house, not knowing what other victims awaited slaveholding wrath. It was agreed that Wilson should the next day call the attention of the Senate to what had occurred, con- fining himself, as Seward advised, to a very simple statement, and avoiding any reproach or manifestation of excitement ; and that if no member of the majority moved a committee of inves- tigation, Seward himself should make the motion.3 Accordingly, the next morning, after the reading of the journal, Wilson rose and said : —
" Mr. President, the seat of my colleague is vacant to-day. That seat is vacant to-day for the first time during five years of public service. Yesterday, after a touching tribute of respect to the memory of a deceased member of the House of Representatives, the Senate adjourned. My colleague remained in his seat, busily engaged in his public duties. While thus engaged, with pen in hand, and in a positiou which rendered him utterly incapable of pro- tecting or defending himself, Mr. Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives, approached his desk unobserved, and abruptly addressed him. Before he had time to utter a single word in reply, he received a stun- ning blow upon the head from a cane in the hands of Mr. Brooks, which made him blind and almost unconscious. Endeavoring, however, to protect him- self, in rising from his chair his desk was overthrown : and while in that con- dition he was beaten upon the head by repeated blows until he sank upon the floor of the Senate exhausted, unconscious, and covered with his own blood. He was taken from this chamber to the anteroom, his wounds were dressed, and then by friends he was carried to his home and placed upon his bed. He is unable to be with us to-day to perform the duties that belong to him as a member of this body.
" Sir, to assail a member of the Senate out of this chamber, ' for words spoken in debate,' is a grave offence not only against the rights of the sen-
1 Wilson's speech at Worcester, June 4. Boston "Telegraph," June 5. See Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 272.
2 A large number of the Republican members armed themselves for self-defence. (J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," May 26 ; W. S. Thayer in the New York "Evening Post," May 26.) Wilson carried a revolver for several months, and was carrying one the next winter. The sentiment found frequent expression in the public journals that here- after Northern members of Congress must be fighting men, and carry arms ready for effective service. Boston " Atlas," May 30.
3 Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. pp. 482, 483. Seward's " Life," vol. ii. pp. 271-274. Seward's speech, June 24, Congressional Globe, App. p. 661.
iET. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 477
ator but the constitutional privileges of this house; hut, sir, to come into this chamber and assault a member in his seat until he falls exhausted and senseless on this floor, is an offence requiring the prompt and decisive action of the Senate.
" Senators, I have called your attention to this transaction. I submit no motion. I leave it to older senators, whose character, whose position in this body and before the country, eminently fit them for the task of devising meas- ures to redress the wrougs of a member of this body, and to vindicate the honor and dignity of the Senate."
There was a pause ; and no one rising, the president began to present other business to the Senate, when Seward rose and offered a resolution of inquiry, carefully drawn so as not to provoke debate, and avoiding even the mention of the assail- ant's name.1 A single objection would have carried the reso- lution to another day ; but none was made. Seward accepted an amendment, moved by Mason, that the committee be elected by the Senate instead of being appointed by the president, and the resolution then passed without dissent. The amendment was probably moved, as the president would under the responsi- bility of his position have felt compelled at least to make a show of fairness, and allow both parties in the Senate to be represented. The ballot resulted in the election of a commit- tee consisting (contrary to parliamentary usage) wholly of Sum- ner's political opponents ; to wit, Pearce of Maryland, Allen of Rhode Island, Dodge of Wisconsin, Geyer of Missouri, and Cass of Michigan, — their votes ranging from thirty-three to eighteen.2 Seward, the mover, received only thirteen, and no other Repub- lican received more than four. Cass accepted, though refusing to be chairman, and intimating at first his wish not to serve at all.
The silence of the Republican senators, none of whom rose to denounce the outrage, was not altogether approved in the free States, and was thought to signify a lack of courage. Wil- son's whole conduct exempts him from all suspicion of the kind ; but it is quite true that the terrorism created by the assault, and the threats which followed it, had a temporary effect on some minds.3 The same day, in the House, Campbell
1 Seward's speech, June 24, Congressional Globe, App. p. 661.
2 The composition of the committee was said to have been inspired by Weller, Douglas, and Mason. J. S. Pike in the New York " Tribune," May 26 ; " First Blows of the Civil War," p. 340.
3 J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," May 26; "First Blows of the Civil War," p. 340.
478 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
of Ohio1 offered a resolution appointing a committee of inves- tigation, with a preamble stating the reported perpetration of the assault by Brooks, with other members as principals or accessories, on Mr. Sumner while remaining in his seat in the Senate engaged in the performance of the duties pertaining to his official station. The Southern members, with a body of Northern Democrats, under the lead of Clingman of North Carolina, strenuously contested the resolution, declaring the pre- amble false, and maintaining that there was no question of priv- ilege, as the assault was not committed on a member of the House ; but the Speaker, Mr. Banks, ruled against them, and an appeal from his decision was laid on the table. The reso- lution then passed by a vote of ninety-three to sixty-eight. The Speaker appointed as the committee Campbell of Ohio, Pen- nington of New Jersey, Spinner of New York, Cobb of Georgia, and Greenwood of Arkansas, — the first three Republicans and Northern men, the last two Democrats and Southern men ; not all of one party, like the Senate committee. The Senate committee reported May 28, with a notice of precedents, but without comment on the transaction, that the assault was a breach of the privileges of the Senate, but not within the juris- diction of the Senate, and punishable only by the House, of which the assailant was a member ; and recommended a reso- lution transmitting the report with affidavits to the House. The resolution was at once agreed to without debate or dissent.2 So the subject was disposed of in the Senate ; but public sentiment in the free States was not satisfied with the reserve which sen- ators continued to impose on themselves in refraining from com- ments on the assault.3
The House committee met on Saturday, the day after their appointment, and on the Monday following began the inves- tigation. Brooks, though formally invited to be present and
1 Campbell had taken Sumner's hand immediately after the assault, as he lay in the anteroom. Works, vol. iv. pp. 261, 357.
2 Toombs was afterwards said to have voted no, but the Congressional Globe does not record a negative. Later (June 24), when the subject came up incidentally, Hunter denied the jurisdiction of the Senate, maintaining against the precedents that the assault was only cognizable in the courts. (Congressional Globe, App. p. 656, 667.) Pearce maintained the conclusions of the report and at the same time apologized for Brooks's act. (Globe, App. p. 665.) Mason contemplated a motion to rescind the Senate's resolution, but did not carry out his purpose. Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 279.
3 J. S. Pike in the New York " Tribune," May 24 and 26. The silence of the report as to the outrage itself was the subject of comment in the New York " Tribune," June 4.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 479
suggest questions for witnesses, did not attend. The commit- tee took testimony on four successive days, taking Sumner's at his lodgings on the first day ; and on Friday they agreed upon a report, with a preamble and resolutions, by a vote of the three Republicans, the two Southern members dissenting. The pre- amble adjudged Brooks guilty of an assault with most aggra- vated circumstances of violence, which, was a breach of the privileges of the Senate, of the senator assailed, and of the House itself, in violation of the Constitution, which declares that senators and representatives "for any speech or debate in either house shall not be questioned in any other place ; " and also guilty of an act of " disorderly behavior " punishable under the Constitution with expulsion by a two-thirds vote. The resolutions declared the expulsion of Brooks, and the cen- sure of 'Keitt and Edmundson for the countenance they had given to his purpose. The minority insisted in their dissent- ing report that the act complained of, not being committed on a member of the House, or in the House during a session, the House had no jurisdiction ; and they argued that the ques- tioning for speeches and debates forbidden by the Constitution only protected against legal liability and proceedings, and did not extend to assaults punishable in the courts, and at the most must be limited to the delivery of speeches without pro- tecting the publication. Further, they set up that Congress could not punish for a breach of privilege until it had defined the privilege in a law.1 Some weeks passed before the report was debated in the House.
The reserve which senators imposed on themselves on the day Wilson called their attention to the assault was not to last. On Tuesday, May 27, Slidell, Toombs, and Douglas made explana- tions called out by Sumner's testimony as to where he thought he saw them as he was recovering consciousness. He was mis- taken in his impression that he saw, while he was prostrate, Douglas and Toombs standing on either side of Brooks, and their statements as to where they were and what they did were probably correct. The three senators, however, took occasion to add some comments. Slidell stated that being in the ante- room conversing with Douglas, Fitzpatrick of Alabama, and J.
1 Von Hoist (vol. v. p. 324) says that the minority report, though having "on super- ficial examination the appearance of a calm and thorough constitutional investigation because richly interlarded with quotations," was, "when looked at more closely, a coarse tissue of sophistry."
480 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Glancy Jones of Pennsylvania, a messenger rushed in and said that some one was beating Mr. Sumner. He said : —
" We heard the remark without any particular emotiou ; for my own part I confess I felt none. I am not accustomed to participate in broils of any kind. I remained very quietly in my seat; the other gentlemen did the same; we did not move. ... I am not particularly foud of scenes of any sort. I have no associations or relations of any kind with Mr. Sumner; I have not spoken to him for two years. I did not think it necessary to express my sympathy or make any advances towards him."
It will be remembered that, twelve years before, Sumner had defended SlidelPs brother for his conduct in " The Mutiny of the ' Somers,' " and that afterwards Slidell himself had gratefully recognized his " chivalrous and zealous advocacy." * They had had no personal controversy in the Senate, and the non-inter- course grew solely out of Sumner's antislavery position. Doug- las said : —
" My first impression was to come into the Senate chamber and help to put an end to the affray if I could ; but it occurred to my mind in an instant that my relations to Mr. Sumner were such that if I came into the hall my motives would be misconstrued, perhaps, and I sat down again. ... I never heard that any mortal man thought of attacking Mr. Sumner then or at any other time, here or at any other place. I had not the slightest suspicion that any- thing was to happen."
But he did not explain or refer to his language on the second day of Sumner's speech, which showed a disposition to excite violence, and was so interpreted by persons who heard him. Toombs said : " As for rendering Mr. Sumner any assistance, I did not do it. As to what was said, some gentleman present condemned it in Mr. Brooks ; I stated to him, or to some of my own friends, probably, that I approved it. That is my opinion." Butler, who had arrived from South Carolina that morning, having started from home when he heard of the assault, made a brief explanation, chiefly to the effect that he had not for a long time recognized Sumner in debate, but, restrained by friends, reserved himself for a later day. With Toombs's approval of the assault in open Senate, Northern senators could not longer remain silent. Wade, following Butler, said : —
i Ante, vol. ii. pp. 233-238. The New York "Evening Post," March 12, 1858, com- mented on Slidell's ungrateful conduct towards Sumner in a leader, the text of which was the permanent insanity of Slidell's brother, resulting from a blow on the head which was inflicted by a ruffian at an election in New Orleans.
Mt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 481
" Mr. President, it is impossible for me to sit still and hear the principle announced which I have heard on this occasion. As to the facts connected with this matter, I know nothing about them, and of them I have nothing to say. I am here in a pretty lean minority ; there is not, perhaps, more than one fifth part of the Senate who have similar opinions with my own, and those are very unpopular ones here ; but when I hear it stated on the floor of the Senate that an assassin-like, cowardly attack has been made upon a man un- armed, having no power to defend himself, who was stricken down with the strong hand and almost murdered, and that such attacks are approved of by senators, it becomes a question of some interest to us all, and especially to those who are in the minority. It is very true that a brave man may not be able to defend himself against such an attack. A brave man may be over- powered by numbers on this floor ; but, sir, overpowered or not, live or die, I will vindicate the right and liberty of debate and freedom of discussion upon this floor so long as I live. If the principle now announced here is to prevail, let us come armed for the combat ; and although you are four to one, I am here to meet you. God knows a man can die in no better cause than in vin- dicating the rights of debate on this floor ; and I have only to ask that if the principle is to be approved by the majority, and to become part and parcel of the law of Congress, it may be distinctly understood."
Wilson said : " Mr. Sumner was stricken down on this floor by a brutal, murderous, and cowardly assault — " Butler, inter- rupting him from his seat, said, "You are a liar!" and rising moved about in high rage as if contemplating an attack on Wil- son ; * but at the instance of senators who saw he was getting into trouble, withdrew the words, and they were suppressed in the official report.2 Wilson, replying to Butler's statement as to abstaining from recognizing Sumner in debate, said : '; Any assumption of superiority by the senator from South Carolina, or any other senator, as to recognition, will pass for what it is worth in the Senate and the country." Butler's single ejacula- tion at Wilson, the grossest and most unparliamentary that was possible, shows how assumed was the indignation of Southern men at Sumner's personal descriptions. Foster, who was calm and amiable in temper, and who, being a new senator, as yet rarely took part in debates, asserted the right of free speech in manly words, and his determination to maintain it at every cost. Trumbull sought an opportunity to speak, but the Senate stopped the debate. Seward remained silent; his want of spirit on such occasions was unaccountable. Butler, in a speech of two days, June 12 and 13, when the Kansas bill was pending, took occasion to reply to Sumner's speech, and to comment on the
i Boston Atlas, May 29. 2 Congressional Globe, p. 1306.
VOL. III. 31
482 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
sequel. He said at the outset that if he had been present he should have demanded a retraction or modification, and none being made, he should not have submitted to the speech; but he declined to say what mode of redress he should have resorted to. He should at least, he said, have assumed all the consequences, even if ending in blood and violence ; and if they so ended, Sumner should be prepared to repent in sackcloth and ashes. What this language meant is not clear ; but it looks like mere bravado, as Butler had done nothing but talk loosely two years before when Sumner had said far more about him and South Carolina than in the recent speech. He, as well as other South- ern senators and representatives, showing the want of the chiv- alric sensibility which they were in the habit of asserting for themselves, belittled Sumner's wounds, and pretended to believe that he was " shamming." 1 He spoke of Sumner freely as " criminal aggressor," " calumniator," " rhetorical fabricator," " charlatan," " degenerate son of Massachusetts ; " compared him to Thersites, " deserving what that brawler received from the hands of the gallant Ulysses ; " assumed that by maintain- ing intercourse with Sumner at the first he had given him a currency far beyond what he would otherwise have had, and approved Brooks's entire conduct. The speech was a curious jumble of rambling talk, and justified all Sumner had said of his looseness, extravagance, and inaccuracy of speech. Wilson, taking the floor at once,2 rebuked Butler's assumptions of social superiority, particularly the claim that he had given Sumner social position, calling it " a piny-wood doctrine, — a plantation idea ; " but the strength of his speech was a vindication of his colleague by a list of apt quotations from Butler's speeches at different times, with dates and pages of the official record, show- ing how continually he had been the aggressor ; how early, even before Sumner had said a word on slavery in the Senate, Butler had begun to apply to him offensive epithets, and the language aggravated by the manner in which it was uttered. Of Sumner's speech he said : —
" The senator complains that the speech was printed before it was deliv- ered. Here, again, is his accustomed inaccuracy. It is true that it was in the printer's hands, and was mainly in type ; but it received additions and
1 Orr did the same in the House. July 9, Congressional Globe, App. p. 806. This was the common talk of Brooks's partisans. New York "Evening Post," July 12.
2 June 13, Congressional Globe, p. 1399. Sumner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 281-301.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 483
revisions after its delivery, and was not put to press till then. Away with this petty objection ! The senator says that twenty thousand copies have gone to England. Here, again, is his accustomed inaccuracy. If they have gone, it is without Mr. Sumner's agency. But the senator foresees the truth. Sir, that speech will go to England; it will go to the continent of Europe; it has gone over the country, and has been read by the American people as no speech ever delivered in this body was read before. That speech will go down to coming ages. Whatever men may say of its sentiments, — and coming ages will indorse its sentiments, — it will be placed among the ablest parlia- mentary efforts of our own age or of any age." x
Butler undertook to parry the force of his own record as ex- posed by Wilson, but with less than his usual spirit, pleading that most of it was too remote in time to bear on the present controversy. Some words between Wilson and Clay on the ever- recurring question of social superiority assumed by Southern senators closed the debate for the day. Wilson came out of the contest with honor. It was his first full session in the Senate, but he bore well the test of debate with trained senators. He showed on the floor, as well as outside when called to account by duellists, readiness, self-restraint, wisdom, and, withal, cour- age,— the quality most needed in those exigent times.
Seward, who was throughout most sympathetic with Sumner, seeking him at his lodgings as soon as he heard of the assault, spoke June 24, following Hunter, who had treated the question of jurisdiction. He paid a tribute to Sumner as " a cherished personal friend and political associate," whose life, to his personal knowledge, had been in danger, and who " had fallen senseless — and for all that was first known, lifeless — on the floor of the Senate of the United States, for utterances which, whether dis- creet or indiscreet, whether personally injurious or harmless, were utterances made in the cause of truth, humanity, and jus- tice. . . . The blows," said he, " that fell on the head of the sena- tor from Massachusetts have done more for the cause of human freedom in Kansas and in the territories of the United States than all the eloquence — I do not call it agitation — which has resounded in these halls from the days when Rufus King as- serted that cause in this chamber, and when John Quincy Adams defended it in the other house, until the present hour." He rebuked with great effect the attempt of Brooks to assume the
1 Congressional Globe, p. 1403; Works, vol. iv. p. 299. Seward wrote, June 14: "Mr. Wilson yesterday made a triumphant reply to Mr. Butler, and the best possible vindication of Mr. Sumner." Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 277.
484 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
part of vindicator of the Senate and of the functions of juries and judges ; but the speech abounded in compliments to the Southern party, even recognizing their "chivalry," which were sadly out of place at such a time. Butler was again on his feet, talking at random as before.1
For the first three days Sumner seemed to be doing well, and his speedy recovery was expected by himself and his friends. He expressed a desire to go to the Senate on Friday, the day after the assault ; but he was persuaded not to do so, as well as not to attend on Saturdav the Circuit Court of the District, where, without his privity, a complaint had been made against Brooks.2 Dr. Marshal S. Perry, of Boston, who happened to arrive just then in Washington, being called in as a friend, saw him first on Monday morning, when all appeared well except " a pulpy feeling " on the right side of the head. Giddings, calling on Tuesday, found him sitting in his chair, with little or no fever and a natural countenance. He conversed cheerfully, and in- sisted that he should resume his seat in a few days, — a desire which weighed on his mind. A reaction set in that day. His skin became very hot, his pulse rose to one hundred, and even one hundred and three, and he was feverish and sleepless during the night, with a violent pain in the back of the head.3 The next morning he had a high fever, pulse 104, intense pain in the head ; his eyes were suffused, and he was extremely ner- vous and excited ; the scalp above the right ear was inflamed, with the appearance of erysipelas. This inflammation extended to the glands of the neck, which were " swollen and tender to the touch." The wound on the right side of the head, which Dr. Boyle had closed over the day before with collodion, had suppurated, and being opened, a tablespoonful of pus was dis- charged, and the patient was relieved from the extreme suffer- ing of the night. As he was very much exhausted, opiates were
1 Evans of South Carolina had spoken the day before, chiefly in defence of slavery and South Carolina. Congressional Globe, App. p. 702.
2 Seward, calling on Sunday, was not allowed by the physician to see Sumner. Sew- ard's "Life," vol. ii. p. 273.
3 Wilson's speech, June 13, Congressional Globe, p. 1399, with Dr. H. Lindsly's let- ter; Giddings's speech, July 11, App. p. 1119; Buffinton's testimony, Globe, p. 1363; Dr. Boyle's, p. 1364; Dr. Perry's, p. 1364; Dr. Perry's statement in Boston Surgical and Medical Journal, Works, vol. iv. p. 338. Sumner was always grateful to Dr. Perry, and said to the writer a few weeks later that under God he owed his life to Dr. Perry and a good constitution. This good physician died in Boston, Nov. 19, 1859, at the age of fifty-four.
.Er. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 485
administered. For three days he remained, according to Dr. Perry, in a critical condition from the severe shock to his ner- vous system, and the added danger of erysipelas.1
Sumner's brother George, who had arrived in the mean time, discontinued, on Wednesday the 28th, Dr. Boyle's services,2 — Dr. Perry attending during that day and the next ; and on Thursday Dr. Harvey Lindsly, of Washington, was called in. On Friday, the wound on the right side having again suppu- rated. Dr. Lindslv, with Dr. Thomas Miller in consultation, opened it. This gave needed relief, and the fever which had come again subsided ; but the patient was still pale and reduced in flesh. For a week visitors were excluded, and every effort was made to keep him quiet. Dr. Lindsly certified, June 12, —
" I have visited him [Sumner] at least once every day. During all this time Mr. Sumner has heen confined to his room, and the greater part of the day confined to his bed. Neither at the present moment, nor at any time since Mr. Sumner's case came under my charge, has he been in a condition to resume his duties in the Senate. My present advice to him is to go into the country, where he can enjoy fresh air ; and I think it will not be prudent for him to enter upon his public duties for some time to come." 3
About the middle of June he became the guest of Francis P. Blair, Sr., Silver Spriugs, Md., near Washington. Here he suf- fered a relapse ; the unhealed wound continued obstinate, and singular sensations in the head gave him forebodings of paralysis and insanity. He wrote, June 23, to Dr. Howe: "For nearly four weeks I lay twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four on my back ; and I am still very feeble, but able to totter a mile round the garden, and hoping daily for strength, which comes slowly." He came in from Silver Springs on Wednesday, the 25th, in answer to a summons to appear before the grand jury.
i Dr. Perry's statement in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Works, vol, iv. p. 338; his testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1364.
2 George Sumner, by letter June 20, read in the Senate June 23 (Congressional Globe, p. 1438), in reply to Dr. Boyle's, read by Butler June 16 (p. 1414), disclaimed that the doctor's services were dispensed with on account of his testimony or his offer to become Brooks's bail. Boyle, though no question was made as to his professional fidelity, was in sympathy with the Southern party and with Brooks, whose bail he had offered to be. It was also stated that he was Edmundson's landlord. (New York "Times," June 25.) Pennington charged him with being evasive, indirect, and wanting in frankness and im- partiality as a witness. (Globe App. p. 889; see Buffinton's testimony, Globe, p. 1363.) His selection of Butler as a medium for his letter, which he sent to be read in the Senate, shows his relations with that senator. Globe, p. 1414.
3 June 4 he was keeping his bed, but beginning to see friends, (J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," June 6.) At Mr. Blair's he read Leopardi. Longfellow's "Journal and Letters," vol. ii. p. 281. Among his callers while he was there were Mr. and Mrs. Fish.
486 MEMOIR OE CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
He remained three days, during which numerous calls upon him, the writing of several letters of introduction for his friend R. H. Dana, Jr., who was about to visit England, and the writing and dictation of other letters, were followed by exhaustion ; and after the three days he returned to Mr. Blair's.
Seward, who in company with Foster called on him at Mr. Blair's, July -A, wrote : —
" He is much changed fur the worse. His elasticity and vigor are gone. He walks, and in every way moves, like a man who has not altogether re- covered from a paralysis, or like a man whose sight is dimmed, and his limbs stiffened with age. His conversation, however, was like that of his season of better health. It turned altogether on what the Senate were doing, and the course of conduct and debate therein. When he spoke of his health, he said he thought he was getting better now ; but his vivacity of spirit and his impatience for study are gone. It is impossible to regard him without apprehension." 1
Sumner came to Washington, July 5, in order to go North and escape the intense heat. During the day he had many visi- tors, including Dr. Bailey of the " National Era," Mr. Banks the Speaker, Mr. Comins, and Mr. Giddings.2 After the assault the antisjavery members of Congress called often to inquire as to his condition and express sympathy. This was true also of the diplomatic corps. The Administration men, senators as well as members of the Cabinet, kept carefully away, with one excep- tion,— that of General Cass, who had not altogether forgotten old relations with Sumner in Paris.3
Dr. Perry thus describes Sumner's condition at this time : 4 —
" The woufid on the left side of the head healed by first intention. It was several weeks before that on the right side closed over. During this time he
1 Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 282. When Sumner declared his purpose to make an- other speech before the session closed, Seward replied : " If you do it, it will be the last speech you will make in this world."
2 Mr. Giddings thus spoke of this interview in a speech July 11 : " Lying upon his bed, he described to me the singular sensations which occasionally gave him reason to appre- hend that the brain was affected; and looking me full in the face, with great solemnity of countenance and deep emotion, he said: 'I sometimes am led to apprehend that I may yet be doomed to that heaviest of all afflictions, — to spend my time on earth in a living sepulchre.' The expression, the manner, and the tone of voice with which this was uttered filled my heart with sadness." Greeley, then in Washington, wrote that softening of the brain was feared, and that Sumner wonld never fully recover. New York "Tribune,"
July 2.
s New York Evening Post, Mav 30.
4 Works, vol. iv. p. 339. W. S. Thayer, in the New York " Evening Post," July 9, gives a similar description, remarking "the tottering step" instead of "the long, rapid stride," the loss of flesh, the numbness on the top of the head, with the dull throbbing and the general impairment of the muscular and nervous system.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 487
was very weak, had some fever, especially when excited, and was confined mostly to his bed. He did not at that time complain of much pain in his head ; but as the wound healed after several weeks, he had neuralgic pain in the back of the head, coining on in paroxysms. As these passed away, he had a feeliug of oppressive weight or pressure of the brain, which was increased when excited or engaged in conversation. He described it as a fifty-six pounds weight upon his head. At the same time he lost flesh and strength, his appe- tite was irregular, and his nights wakeful, — ■ sometimes lyiug awake all night, or when sleeping, disturbed. He had also increased sensibility of the spinal cord, and a sense of weakness iu the small of the back. These were developed by walking, and every step he took seemed to produce a shock upon the brain. His walk was irregular and uncertain, and after slight efforts he would lose almost entire control of the lower extremities."
By the advice of Dr. Lindsly, he left Washington July 7, and after stopping for a night at Baltimore with the Barclays, rela- tives of his brother Albert, went on to Philadelphia, where he became the guest of Rev. William H. Furness, and put himself under the medical care of Dr. Caspar Wister. His expectation when he went North was to be in his seat the next month.
In June the Democratic national convention, meeting at Cin- cinnati, nominated James Buchanan for President,1 and the Republican convention meeting at Philadelphia nominated John C. Fremont. In the latter convention, Sumner, though not a can- didate, received a considerable vote for Vice-President, mostly cast by delegates from New York.2 The assault on him was in the front of the political agitation of that year, and appealed to popular feeling more even than the outrages in Kansas.3
Brooks appeared before the Circuit Court of the District, July 7, to answer to the charge of an assault on Sumner. He admitted the act, but justified it in an address to the court, likening it to the cases in which husbands avenge their wounded honor.4 Around him were Butler, Mason, and other Southern friends. The judge, Crawford by name, sentenced him to pay a fine of three hundred dollars.5 This paltry fine, without im- prisonment, shows the pro-slavery temper of the federal courts
1 Brooks was dissuaded from going to Cincinnati, as his presence might be embarras- sing. New York " Tribune," June 6.
a John Bigelow of the "Evening Post" was active among the New York delegates, and considered that the formal withdrawal of Sumner's name by the Massachusetts delega- tion alone prevented his nomination.
3 Julian's "Political Recollections," p. 153.
4 New York Tribune, July 10. One statement made by him showed that he was not above falsehood. It was that his first blow was "a mere tap to put Sumner on his guard."
5 Crawford was said to be a Pennsylvania Democrat of the Buchanan type. Boston ''Atlas," Julv 11.
488 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
in Washington at that day.1 Sumner did not attend the trial, and disclaimed all interest in the proceedings.2
The debate in the House on the report of the committee began July 9,3 and continued four days, lasting on Saturday till nine in the evening. The opponents of the resolutions contested them with elaborate arguments, on the ground of want of power in the House ; and their plea to the jurisdiction, strenuously urged against admitted precedents, revealed their dread of a formal record against them.4 The slaveholding party for the first time found itself outnumbered, and with a changed tone pleaded that consideration should be given to the excesses of a " chivalrous " spirit. Their moderation was in part due to the necessities of the political situation, as a Presidential election with a doubtful result was pending.5 They undertook to treat Sumner's offence as consisting in the publication rather than in the delivery of his speech, a point which Brooks did not make at the time ; and he had besides communicated his purpose to Edmundson before the speech appeared in print.6 The distinction was without sub- stance, as whatever was spoken in Congress was inevitably published in the Congressional Globe by command of the body itself. While the more respectable opponents7 of the reso- lutions sheltered themselves under a technical defence, the bolder spirits went further, and, unrestrained by prudence, represented Southern opinion by fully adopting Brooks's act. Clingman took the lead in defending " the liberty of the cudgel," ostentatiously advertised himself as a duellist, ready for an encounter, and justified the assault in all respects.8
1 The " National Intelligencer," July 9. condemned the sentence as inadequate. Two clergymen of the city, Dr. Pine and Dr. Sunderland, condemned the assault. Aiken, a colleague of Brooks, was one of Dr. Pine's hearers.
2 Works, vol. iv- p. 268. Sumner, in answer to a summons, testified before the grand jurv. but had left for Philadelphia before the trial.
3 The absence of members at the national conventions had delayed the consideration of the report.
< Giddings in his speech disposed effectually of the point that there was no law or rule as a basis of the proposed action, by citing the former proceedings against John Quincy Adams and himself by a slaveholding majority, without pretence of support in any law or rule.
5 New York Evening Post, July 12.
6 Pennington's speech, July 10 ; Congressional Globe, App. p. 891.
7 Orr, Cobb, and Boyce. Concessional Globe. App. pp. 805, 809, 812.
8 Congressional Globe, App. p. 734. Clingman declared that what Sumner said two years before of the Southern people " merited chastisement," showing that his criticisms of Butler were not regarded as the important matter. Savage altogether ignored what Sumner had said of Butler, treating his charges against the Southern people as the real offence.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 489
Savage of Tennessee claimed that Brooks, " instead of deserv- ing punishment, merited the highest commendation;" that Sum- ner " did not get a lick more than he deserved ; " that he as well as some members of the House deserved a " good whipping ; " and he accused Republican members of holding their positions by the tenure " of falsehood, calumny, and slander." 1 Brooks's supporters labored hard to defend his taking Sumner at a dis- advantage, surprising him and rendering him senseless, with no opportunity to defend himself, — a mode of warfare congenial to cowards, but not to brave and honorable men.2
Three Southern men, though apologizing for Brooks, and dis- approving some parts of Sumner's speech, escaped the madness of their section, and maintained the jurisdiction of the House, — Etheridge of Tennessee,3 who, however, voted against Brooks's expulsion, and also Cullen4 of Delaware and Hoffman of Mary- land ; the former voting to censure Keitt, and the latter to expel Brooks. Even Henry Winter Davis voted against the expulsion of Brooks, and withheld his vote as to the censure of Keitt. The report and resolutions were defended by the Republican mem- bers,— by Bingham and Giddings of Ohio, Pennington of New Jersey, Simmons of New York, Woodruff of Connecticut ; and by Massachusetts members, Comins, Damrell, and Hall. They maintained the power of the House to punish Brooks, and de- nounced the assault fearlessly. Giddings, the veteran antislavery leader, spoke temperately, and avowed a certain sympathy for the offender on account of his education and surroundings.5 He con- trasted the indulgence of the House to Brooks with the injustice which in other days had been done to John Quincy Adams and himself by a pro-slavery majority, denying a hearing, threatening assassination, and displaying bludgeons, bowie-knives, and pistols. He justified fully Sumner's speech as strictly parliamentary, and responsive to Butler's thirty-six pro-slavery speeches and inter-
1 Congressional Globe, App. p. 913.
2 Clingman, Congressional Globe, App. p. 736. 8 Congressional Globe, App. p. 822.
4 Congressional Globe, App. p. 1053.
5 Congressional Globe, App. pp. 1117-1121. Giddings, who was at home when he heard of the assault, being informed of it, drew a deep sigh; a shade of sadness over- spread his face, his head dropped forward on his chest, and the tears flowed from his eyes. "I will go back," said he; "I ought not to have left at all, though urged to do so by friends on account of my health. I know how Mr. Sumner would act were I in his place. I will return, and move Brooks's expulsion from the House." Mr. Giddings fell in the House Jan. 17, 1857. It was the second attack of heart disease ; and though he lived till 1864 he did not resume his former activitv.
490 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
ruptions, and declared every word of it true, just, and expressive of the feelings of nine-tenths of the people of the North.1
The House voted, July 14, — one hundred and twenty-one for Brooks's expulsion to ninety-five against it. All but one of the majority were from the free States. The nays from the free States (thirteen in all) were Democrats,2 except John Scott Harrison of Ohio, elected as an " American." Three or four Fillmore men (conservative Whigs) and two Northern Demo- crats voted for the expulsion, and also eight members who voted against admitting Kansas under the Topeka Constitution. There were few absentees, and the anti-Nebraska members kept to- gether better than in any vote during the session. Those nat- urally infirm of purpose were carried along by the popular current.3 The vote to expel did not, however, reach the two- thirds required by the Constitution.
Brooks, who had been silent during the debate, sought the floor after the vote on his expulsion, and was allowed, although the previous question had been ordered, to proceed by unani- mous consent, — Giddings withdrawing his objection by the urgent request of friends, though against his own judgment. Brooks's speech was a medley of insolence, ribaldry, and mock courage. He failed in dignity and decency, and his harangue was merely a coarse defiance. He felt the burden of his posi- tion, — that of one who had done a brutal act in a way that dis- credited his courage. He carried the style of a braggart to a comic point when he said that it was in his power to " com- mence a line of conduct which would result in subverting the foundations of the government, and in drenching this hall in blood," and to strike a blow which would be followed by revo- lution ; but he was prudently silent as to what this extraordi- nary act of his would be. He treated the assault as a purely personal affair, — the vindication of his State and of his blood, — a matter which was no concern of Congress. Admitting full deliberation in his act, and giving as his reason for choosing a
1 Two supporters of the resolutions — Tyson of Pennsylvania and Oliver of New York — expressed disapproval of parts of Sumner's speech; but they were exceptions among Republican members. Campbell, the chairman, closed the debate, but his speech does not appear in the Congressional Globe.
2 John Kelly and Wheeler of New York; Cadwallader, Florence, and Jones of Penn- sylvania; English and Miller of Indiana; Allen, Harris, and Marshall of Illinois; Hall of Iowa, and Denver of California. The Boston "Advertiser," July 16, classified the vote.
3 New York Tribune, July 16.
jEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 491
cane instead of a whip that he was in less danger of losing his grip on the former, he signified his purpose to have killed the senator on the spot if the latter had succeeded in wresting it from him ; l but what weapon he had in reserve, whether a pistol or a dagger, he did not say. In all this he appeared no better than a vulgar assassin, who was careful not to meet his antago- nist on an equal footing. Every few moments he passed from bravado to ribaldry. He spoke of Pennington as " the prosecut- ing member, the thumb-paper member, the Falstaffian member, who, like his prototype, was born about four o'clock in the morn- ing ; and if he has not the bald head, is graced with the cor- poreal rotundity of his predecessor upon his advent into the sublunary world." He referred to Morgan, " the feminine gen- tleman" who had been reported as calling him "a villain;" saying, " He need not be much alarmed ; and if he will hold still when I get hold of him, I '11 not hurt him much." He spoke of Comins, who had armed himself, as " a poltroon and puppy," as " a cock that crows and won't fight, despised by the hens and even by the pullets." Massachusetts had, in his view, in her resolutions condemning the assault, " given additional proof that she neither comprehends the theory of our government nor is loyal to its authority." Thanking " Northern Democrats and J. Scott Harrison " 2 for their support, he paid his respects to the members who had " written him down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion," — a point on which he evi- dently felt sore, — telling them that "for all future time his self- respect required that he should pass them as strangers." He ended his mock-heroic performance by announcing his resigna- tion ; and walking out of the House, he was met at the door by Southern women, who embraced and kissed him.3
The next day the House rejected the resolution concerning Edmundson by a vote of sixty to one hundred and thirty-six, chiefly on the ground that he was not present at the moment
1 "Knowing that the senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it [the cane] from my hand; and then — for I never attempt anything I do not perform — I might have been compelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of my natural life." At this passage a member said aloud : " He would have killed him."
2 It was feared that this pointed commendation might injure those members, and the expression was changed in the speech as printed to " members from the non-slave-owning States." New York " Evening Post," July 16 ; New York '; Tribune," July 15 ; New York " Independent," July 24. Harrison wrote a speech in apology for Brooks, which he was allowed to print. Congressional Globe, App. p. 940.
3 New York Tribune, Jul}' 15. Butler and Mason sat near him while he was speaking.
492 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
the assault took place, — some of the Republican members, in- cluding Campbell, being reluctant, on account of personal rela- tions, to press a censure against him.1 The House passed the resolution censuring Keitt by a vote of one hundred and six to ninety-six. He made a long speech, defending South Caro- lina and assailing Massachusetts, — speaking of the latter State as " hypocritically nestling the rank and sensuous African to her bosom." He justified all that Brooks or himself had done. " My colleague," he said, " redressed a wrong to his blood and his State, and he did it in a fair and manly way." Like Brooks, he then went through the comedy of a resignation in order to secure a vote of approval from his constituents. Both were back again in their seats a few weeks later, re-elected each by a unanimous vote.
In the interval between the report of the committee and the debate in the House, Burlingame of Massachusetts made a speech, June 21, on the slavery question, and devoted the lat- ter part of it to Brooks's assault. He was in the Senate while Sumner was speaking, and now paid a tribute to the style and sentiments of his speech, ranking it with the masterpieces of American eloquence. He defended it as parliamentary in all respects, and justified its severity as called for by the provo- cation which had been given in epithets applied to the senator and his State. Then, after a warm tribute to his early career and to his character, he proceeded : —
" On the 22d day of May, when the Senate and the House had clothed themselves in mourning for a brother fallen in the battle of life in the distant State of Missouri, the senator from Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate chamber engaged in the employments appertaining to his office, when a member of the House, who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother."2
1 Cullen made the point in Edmundson's defence that as Brooks had said to Edmund- son he should make the assault if Sumner did not apologize, Edmundson had a right to assume that an apology would, on being asked for, be given. (Congressional Globe, App. p. 1054.) Edmundson's complicity with the assault is critically reviewed in the New York "Tribune," June 6. He received on this occasion better treatment than he deserved. On Januar)' 18 he had in the House approached Giddings with threatening gestures and words. (Ante, p. 427 note.) Nearly four years afterwards (Feb. 10, 1860), in the Capitol grounds, near the spot where Brooks had conferred with him, he struck with a cane at the head of John Hickman, a member from Pennsylvania, because the latter in a speech in Washington (not in Congress) "had slandered his State." He was stopped in the assault by three Southern men, — Breckinridge (Vice-President), Keitt, the accomplice of Brooks, and Clingman, now a senator, who had defended Brooks.
2 The scene is described in the New York "Independent," June 26.
^Et. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 49
■»
Keitt answered from his seat, " That is false." Burlingame continued : " I will not bandy epithets with the gentleman. I am responsible for my own language. Doubtless he is re- sponsible for his." Keitt answered, " I am." Burlingame said, " I shall stand by mine," and then went on : —
" One blow was enough ; but it did not satiate the wrath of that spirit which had pursued him through two days. Again aud again, quicker and faster, fell the leaden blows, until he was torn away from his victim, when the senator from Massachusetts fell in the arms of his friends, and his blood ran down on the Senate floor. Sir, the act was brief, and my comments on it shall be brief also. I denounce it in the name of the Constitution it vio- lated. I denounce it in the name of the sovereignty of Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the blow. I denounce it in the name of humanity. I denounce it in the name of civilization, which it outraged. I denounce it in the name of that fair play which bullies and prize-fighters respect. What ! strike a man when he is pinioned, — when he cannot respond to a blow ! Call you that, chivalry ? In what code of honor did you get your authority for that ? "
He ended thus : —
" Sir, if we are pushed too long and too far, there are men from the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts who will not shrink from a defence of free- dom of speech and the honored State they represent, on any field where they may be assailed."
Brooks called Burlingame to account for this language, accord- ing to the duellist's code of honor. In an interview between the friends of the parties Burlingame distinguished between Brooks and his act, confining his denunciation to the act itself ; and on the basis of this nice distinction it was supposed a combat would be avoided. The arrangement encountered public criticism ; and Burlingame withdrew from it in a card, taking his position again upon his speech. Brooks at once sent him a challenge. It was promptly accepted, and Burlingame's friend selected the Clifton House, Canada, as the place of meeting, with the rifle as the weapon. Brooks, prudent as always in exposing himself, de- clined to go to Canada, for the alleged reason that he would not be safe from popular violence during the journey through the free States.1 The affair thus ended. Though Burlingame's con- stituents were by conviction and tradition against the duel, he did not under the circumstances lose their confidence.2
i Wilson's "Rise and Fall," vol. ii. pp. 491, 492; New York " Tribune," July 28, 1856, 2 Sumner deeply regretted that Burlingame, by accepting a challenge, recognized the duel as a proper resort in personal difficulties.
494 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Woodruff in his speech imputed to Brooks a " lofty assump- tion of arrogance " and a " mean achievement of cowardice." He was waited upon with the inquiry from Brooks if he would receive a challenge, but answering that he would not, the mat- ter dropped. Brooks was offended by Comins's speech, but took no action concerning it. He challenged Wilson for describing1 the assault as " brutal, murderous, and cowardly." Wilson re- turned an answer reaffirming his words, but repudiating the duel, intimating at the same time that he should defend himself if assailed. He armed himself, and was ready for an assault ; but no violence was attempted. Brooks also took notice of what had been said by Chaffee, a Massachusetts member, and by J. Watson Webb in a newspaper. With all this bluster, Republican members went unharmed.1
Brooks fought no duel, and made no further assault ; nor was any duel fought, or any avenging assault made, on his behalf. Wilson and a dozen members, to say nothing of journalists and correspondents by scores, denounced him in far more oppro- brious and offensive terms than any Sumner had applied to his distant kinsman, calling him not Don Quixote, as Sumner had called Butler, but stamping on him in bold and unquali- fied terms coward, ruffian, and bully ; and yet he had no cane or pistol for them. The true explanation for his conduct was suggested at the time,2 — that he knew now that he should find armed antagonists with wounds to give as well as to receive. His " chivalry " was of a kind which selected victims unsus- pecting, unarmed, and pinioned.
Judged by all the circumstances of his deed, Brooks was a coward. He took his victim at all possible disadvantage, stun- ning and disabling him before he could get the use of his limbs ; he then, with all his might, struck a succession of blows aimed at the head and body of a man without power of resistance and no better than a lifeless mass. He had confed- erates in waiting to withstand any force which might intervene to put the assailed on an equal footing with the assailant ; he was secretly armed with some deadly weapon in reserve for killing on the spot the unarmed senator if he had strength enough to wrest the bludgeon from him. It was not an en-
i Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. pp. 486. 487, 490-493. 2 New York Times, May 30.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 495
counter according to any code of the duellist or even of the bully; it was simply assassination.1
Southern opinion, so far as it was publicly expressed, with rare exceptions chiefly occurring in the border slave States, ap- proved the assault.2 It made no attempt at apology or extenu- ation, and did not seek to confine the responsibility for the act to Brooks, but audaciously sanctioned the act. It everywhere extolled him as a hero and the vindicator of the cause of the Southern people. The journals which were the recognized organs of Southern opinion applauded the assault, declaring it " good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences," 3 and threatening like discipline and punishment to all Northern members of Congress who should dare, as they called it, " to slander the South." This exultation was marked by a coarseness and brutality in sentiment, set off in incoherent and even clumsy language, in which it now seems incredible that a civilized people could indulge.4 It was found not only
1 Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, a brave man, familiar with personal encounters of all kinds, wrote Sumner, June 6, 1856: "The whole affair is a piece of atrocious coivardice ! It came from an unexpected quarter ; it was conceived coolly and aforethought ; plotted in conspiracy with others and superior odds, with superior weapons, when you were unaware, and substantially tied hand and foot, and even then Brooks arose not to the dignity of a ruffian by saying, ' Stand, and defend yourself ! ' I, who have seen so much of violence, so much of foul combination, so much of unfair odds, so much of dastardly [conduct], — I, who have been principal and second m duels, engaged in so many street fights and mobs (however unwillingly), declare I never saw yet anything so utterly and atrociously craven as Brooks's conduct! Such will be the sentiment of posterity." Longfellow wrote in his diary, May 24 : "0 Southern ' chivalry ! ' O ! "
2 See opinions collected in Sumner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 271-280. Von Hoist, vol. v. pp. 328-333. Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 489. The feeling was so strong that clergymen of Northern education who kept silent were required to take their stand; and if they disapproved the assault, they were compelled to leave. This was the case with Rev. George Dana Boardman, then having a parish at Barnwell Court House in South Carolina, since an eminent clergyman in Philadelphia. There were a few excep- tions to the prevailing approval, —the Louisville "Journal," May 24 (edited by a man of Northern birth), reprinted in the New York " Times," May 28; the Minden (La.) " Herald," quoted in the New York "Evening Post," July 9; and the Baltimore "American." In border cities like Louisville and St. Louis there was more or less open condemnation of the assault. Southern feeling ran towards violence at this time. Horace Greeley was assaulted in Washington by a Texas member, and Granger, a member from New York, by McMullin of Virginia, both assaults growing out of slavery.
3 Richmond "Enquirer," June 12. The best known representative of Southern litera- ture, William Gilmore Simms, justified the assault; and his feelings were so strong that he could not withhold them from a New York audience, Nov. 18, 1856; but his indiscretioto at once broke up his enterprise as a lecturer at the North. Simms's "Life," by W. P. Trent, pp. 220-224.
4 These exhibitions were well compared at the time to a dance of savages over a col- lection of scalps, and contrasted with the Northern discussion of the event, which pro- ceeded in the line of reason, law, justice, and morality. (Boston "Atlas," June 6.) They have been regarded as "a frightful justification for Sumner's calling slavery a harlot." Von Hoist, vol. v. p. 330.
496 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
in obscure papers printed in by-ways and at cross-roads, but in Richmond and Charleston, cities which vaunted a pre-eminence for refinement ; and it was repeated with a frequency which showed that it was agreeable to the people who read them. This carnival of brutality was not confined to the newspapers. The students of the University of Virginia, founded by Jeffer- son, and justly distinguished as the centre of culture, devoted a panegyric to Brooks as the representative of Southern chiv- alry, and voted him a gold-headed cane. Similar testimonials were sent to him from other parts of the South.1 Mason, the senator, and Jefferson Davis, member of the Cabinet, wrote let- ters commending his character and deed. At the end of the session, receptions and various tokens of honor awaited his re- turn to South Carolina. The tributes to him all commemorated his deed as a vindication of the slaveholding cause and of his State, without any mention of it as a punishment for words spoken against Butler.2 For the honor of human nature, it is to be believed that in many of the Southern people there was a more rational and humane sentiment than these demonstrations indicated, which was suppressed by the terrorism of the time.3
It is worthy of note that all the Southern leaders who openly in speeches or letters, or covertly by inaction and indifference at the time it occurred, approved the assault, and who survived till the Rebellion, became active in its civil or military service, — Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Iverson, Slidell, Mason, Hunter, Cling- man, Cobb, Or, and Keitt.
A profound feeling of indignation pervaded the free States, already deeply moved by pro-slavery violence in Kansas. Side by side with the latest tidings from that Territory were the de- tails of the assault under headings describing it as "brutal," " ruffianly," " cowardly," " an outrage on Massachusetts." It
1 By June 4 he had received a dozen live-oak canes. New York "Evening Post," June 5. Goblets and canes were presented to him at " Ninety-six," Oct. 3, 1856.
2 Mason in his letter barely mentioned the assumed personal grievance, while all the rest ignored it.
3 Professor Felton, in two letters to Sumner, written Nov. 8 and 10, I860, represented that Southern opinion, even in South Carolina, did not really approve Brooks's act, and that the support openl}' given to him was on the surface, with uo heart in it. He gave Memminger of South Carolina and Hamilton Fish as authority for his statements. There may be some truth in them, but they have not been authenticated by any contemporaneous written evidence. Reverdy Johnson, it should be mentioned to his credit, promptly sent a message, through George Sumner, of "kindest remembrance" to the senator, asking for an immediate answer as to his condition, and expressing "the highest regard for him as a friend, though differing with him on the exciting question of the day."
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 497
was recognized, in view of the approval it received in the South, as the outcome of a conspiracy to suppress free speech and free debate in the national Capitol, and as the beginning of civil war. The general sentiment found immediate expression. The news- papers of national reputation — those which were conservative and moderate as well as those which were advanced in antislavery opinions — were alike emphatic in denouncing the assault as in itself brutal, ruffianly, and cowardly, and in its large signifi- cance the first blow of a conspiracy for the suppression of free debate by violence, and the setting up of a revolutionary tri- bunal to overawe Congress.1 The expulsion of the offender was universally demanded. The Legislature of Massachusetts, then in session, promptly declared the assault to be one " which no provocation could justify, brutal and cowardly in itself, a gross breach of parliamentary privilege, a ruthless attack upon the liberty of speech, an outrage of the decencies of civilized life, and an indignity to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," — approving at the same time the senator's " manliness and cour- age in his earnest and fearless declaration of free principles, and his defence of human rights and free territory." The leg- islatures of Rhode Island and Connecticut,2 both in session, at once responded to the action of Massachusetts in resolutions which were presented to Congress. The Legislature of Ver- mont, when it next met, denounced the assault, and gave an unqualified approval to the sentiments and doctrines of Sum- ner's speech. The governor of New York communicated to him the sympathies of the people of that State.
The public indignation found expression in meetings of citi- zens through the free States, as well in small communities as in great cities. An immense concourse of citizens assembled in the Broadway Tabernacle, in the city of New York.3 Among the officers and speakers were eminent lawyers, merchants, clergymen, — Daniel Lord, Charles King, W. C. Bryant, and Henry Ward Beecher. W. M. Evarts moved the resolutions
1 New York Evening Post, May 23; New York Commercial Advertiser, May 23 and 24; New York Tribune, May 23, 24, and June 4 ; New York Times, May 24, 26, and June 3 ; J. Watson Webb in New York Courier and Enquirer, May 27; Boston Atlas, May 24; Boston Advertiser, May 23. A few Northern journals, Southern in sympathies, as the New York " Herald," "Express," and " Journal of Commerce " and the Boston " Courier," palliated the assault, treating it as provoked by Sumner's severity.
2 The resolutions of the legislature of Connecticut were reported by O. S. Ferry, after- wards United States senator.
3 Those unable to gain admission held a meeting in the space in front of the Tabernacle.
VOL. III. .32
498 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
which, after reciting with accuracy the circumstances of the assault, tendered to Sumner sympathy in the personal outrage ; but as his grievance and wounds were not of private concern only, they recognized and resented " every blow which fell upon his head" as " an insult and injury to our honor and dignity as a people, and a vital attack upon the Constitution of the Union." The series of resolutions thus ended, with a universal response of approval from the vast audience : " We discover no trace or trait either in the meditation, the preparation, or the execution of this outrage by Preston S. Brooks, which should qualify the condemnation with which we now pronounce it brutal, mur- derous, and cowardly." Among similar demonstrations were meetings in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New Haven, Providence, Rochester, Buffalo, Canandaigua, and Chicago. In some of these, eminent divines, like Francis Wayland, Leonard Bacon, and F. H. Hedge, bore a part.
In Massachusetts the public indignation rose to its highest point.1 The sensation among the people was more intense than has attended any event in our history preceding the Civil War. Public meetings were held in the cities and towns, three of which it is sufficient to mention in this connection as representative of the great number. One was held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, where the governor of the State, at the head of a line of distinguished speakers, was followed by Peleg W. Chandler,- George S. Hil- lard, and S. H. Walley.2 Chandler, who had known Sumner
1 Both the excitement and the regard for Sumner felt and expressed for him by people hitherto differing from him are well stated in the Springfield "Republican," Ma}- 24.
2 Two managers of the Boston meeting, Prince Hawes and Jacob A. Dresser, waited on Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Everett, inviting them to address the meeting; but both excused themselves. The former was just going to Nahant with his family; and while desirous to do what he could to relieve Mr. Sumner's suffering, did not think highly of such meetings. Many regretted that Mr. Winthrop did not accept, hoping that his partici- pation in the meeting would bring him into line with public sentiment, and open to him a new career in public life. Mr. Everett, while speaking with kindness and sympathy for Mr. Sumner, declined. Choate also declined; but going to Washington shortly after, he is said to have called on Sumner. (New York "Times." May 28.) Everett's declining was the occasion of comment at the time. (New York "Tribune," June 4; Boston "Ad- vertiser," May 29.) It led the Senate of Connecticut, on motion of 0. S. Ferry, after- wards United States senator, to reconsider the resolution inviting Mr. Everett to deliver before the Legislature his oration on Washington; but later, after what he had said at Taunton, Mass., the resolution was taken up again and passed. On May 30, in that city, in a preface to his oration he treated the assault as a grave public calamity. The passage is given in Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 323. Two years later further explanations ap- peared in his published letter ("National Intelligencer," May 14, 1858; Boston "Adver- tiser," "Atlas and Bee." May 18), in which he said that he declined to attend because he had retired to private life and deprecated additional excitement; but that later, at Taun-
Mi. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 499
intimately, but who, conservative by nature and association, had felt little sympathy with his career, spoke with remarkable elo- quence and power. He said : —
" That gentleman in Washington who now lies upon a bed of pain, whose life it may be is hanging in the balance, needs no sympathy from us. Every drop of blood shed by him in this disgraceful affair has raised up ten thousand armed men ; every gash upon that forehead will be covered with a political crown, let it be resisted as much as it may be resisted here or elsewhere. This matter is raised far above and beyond all personal considerations. It is a matter of trilling consequence to Mr. Sumner ; it makes those who love him love him more, — and no man is more loved or more to be considered, so far as the affections or friendship are concerned. Yet personal feelings are of little or no consequence in this outrage. It is a blow not merely at Massa- chusetts, a blow not merely at the name and fame of our common country; it is a blow at constitutional liberty all the world over, — it is a stab at the cause of universal freedom."
At Cambridge, the addresses were made by Joel Parker, The- ophilus Parsons, and Willard Phillips, three well known jurists ; Sparks, the historian ; Felton,1 Longfellow, Beck, and Worces- ter, scholars ; Buckingham, the veteran editor ; and R. H. Dana, Jr., equally distinguished at the bar and in literature.
At Concord, E. Rockwood Hoar read the resolutions, and Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke. Nothing finer ever came from that earnest and philosophic mind. He applied to Sumner the language which Bishop Burnet applied to Sir Isaac Newton, and said, " Charles Sumner has the whitest soul I ever knew." 2 He said : —
" Well, sir, this noble head, so comely and so wise, must be the target for a pair of bullies to beat with clubs ! The murderer's brand shall stamp their
ton, he made remarks "to impart a more chastened and sober temper to the fiery indigna- tion which pervaded the community." See also New York "Evening Post," May 5, 1858, commenting on Mr. Yeadon's defence of him. Mr. Everett also in the same letter ex- plained his signature, at the time of the assault, to a paper approving Sumner's course, which he had neglected to read, being under the influence of an anodyne, indicating that he did not approve Sumner's "manner of treating the subject." He also made a similar explanation of his signature in a friendly letter to Sumner. The paper he signed unwit- tingly is given in Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 344. Sumner was always hparty in public tributes to Everett (Works, vol. i. p. 245 ; vol. ix. pp. 200, 219). As to Mr. Winthrop's declining to attend the meeting in Boston, see C. T. Congdon's " Reminiscences of a Jour- nalist," p. 89.
1 Felton, who had been separated from Sumner since 1850, at a dinner on the day after hearing of the assault, proposed as a toast, "The re-election of Charles Sumner." (Long- fellow's "Journal and Letters," vol. ii. p. 280.) In his speech he stated his opposition to Sumner at the time of his election, and said that now "if he had five hundred votes, every one should be given to send him back again."
2 This passage was repeated by Judge Hoar to Sumner a few moments before the lat- ter's death.
500 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
foreheads wherever they may wander in the earth. . . . Let Mr. Surnner hear that every man of worth in New England loves his virtues ; that every mother thinks of him as the protector of families ; that every friend of freedom thinks him the friend of freedom. And if our arms at this distance cannot defend him from assassins, we confide the defence of a^ life so precious to all honorable men and true patriots, and to the Almighty Maker of men."
On two occasions the elder Quincy, late President of Harvard College, now in his eighty-fifth year, spoke or wrote with all the fire of youth. In like tone was heard the voice of Charles Allen at Worcester, and that of Oliver Wendell Holmes at a meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society. In these meetings many who had known Sumner from his youth took part; and though some had been divided from him by the antislavery conflict, all bore witness to the genuineness of his character, and the purity and nobleness of his aims. None lost sight of the significance of the assault as an attempt to put an end to free speech and to constitutional liberty. Attention was called to the increased power which Sumner was hereafter to wield, and to the new force which the event had brought to the antislavery movement.
A resolution was offered in the Legislature of Massachusetts, by formal advice of the governor, for the payment of the ex- penses of the senator's illness ; and about the same time a popu- lar subscription was started for a testimonial to him for his defence of freedom in Congress, in which the signers expressed unqualified approbation of his recent speech. Sumner promptly arrested both movements, asking that any such contributions should be applied to the cause of freedom in Kansas.1
Not only in popular assemblies was the outrage denounced ; but also in private associations, in religious bodies, in meetings of clergymen, in colleges and schools, the sentiment of an edu- cated and humane people found vent. The women of the free States were deeply affected by the outrage, and at a million fire- sides prayers were offered for the recovery of him who had suffered for a great cause. It may again be stated, what has been already noted in an earlier chapter, that no public man in the United States by his speeches and personality ever touched so much as Sumner the hearts of intelligent and Christian women. Letters of sympathy came at once to him, and con- tinued to come from every part of the free States, from cor- respondents, distinguished or known only to neighbors and
i June 13, 1856. Works, vol. iv. p. 344.
^Et. 44-15.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 501
townsmen, who represented all that was best in the American people. They came not only from those who had been in ac- cord with him before, but as well from others who confessed a change of heart as they meditated on the outrage in its personal and public aspects, — from obscure persons, whom he would never see, but who testified the inspiration they had drawn from his character and career ; from women who placed him in their affection and admiration by the side of husband or son ; from clergymen like Wayland, Storrs (father and son), Beecher, Huntington, Dexter, Farley, Clarke, Parker, Francis, Lowell, Kirk, and others less known to fame, but not less devoted min- isters at the altars of patriotism and religion.1
A few extracts must suffice to show the spirit of the mass of letters. Chase wrote, May 23 : " How I wish I could have been near when the dastardly ruffian struck you down. One arm at least would have been prompt in your succor and defence. . . . God bless you ! and God grant that Northern endurance may at length have an end ! " Thurlow Weed wrote, May 24, of the universal indignation awakened by the assassin-like assault, and expressed anxiety to hear of Sumner's escape from permanent injury, speaking of the speech as " a great and eloquent vindi- cation of our cause." R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote, May 27 : "I think of you every hour of every day ; you haunt me. Mrs. Dana cannot sleep because of you, and my children cry tears of anger and pity. Except for your physical suffering it is all right. It is one of the drops that make our cup run over. . . . You have both the wreath of civic victory and the crown of martyr- dom." Theodore Parker having written to Sumner, May 21 : " God bless you for the brave words you spoke the other day, and have always spoken!" wrote two days later to John P. Hale : " How much is the noble fellow wounded ? Give him my most sympathizing regards and love. I wish I could have taken the blows on my head."
Edward Everett assured him of his deep sympathies, with wishes for a speedy restoration, though careful to withhold an approval of his speech beyond a general concurrence in its ar- gument. The event drew from Prescott expressions of sympa- thy and affection, and awakened in him almost his first interest
1 Of the letters received between May 22 and June 30, not less than three hundred and fifty are preserved. It would be instructive to read in connection with these files the let- ters received by Douglas, Mason, Butler, and Brooks for the same period, and compare the sentiments expressed, as well as the character of the writers.
502 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
in the political movement against slavery. He wrote, June 14 : " You have escaped the crown of martyrdom by a narrow chance, and have got all the honors, which are almost as dangerous to one's head as a gutta-percha cane. There are few in old Massa- chusetts, I can assure you, who do not feel that every blow on your cranium was a blow on them." John Jay wrote, May 23 : " You have our deepest sympathy and love in the martyrdom you are suffering for truth and freedom." Charles Allen wrote, June 9 : " The scars which will remind men hereafter of (I trust) a glorious revolution will, more than laurel wreath, grace your stricken head." Dr. Wayland wrote, June 9 : " I will not say that I, but the whole nation, or the free portion of it, sympathize with you ; and what is far better, I believe them to be seriously moved. At least I have seen nothing like it before. With us the wave has reached an elevation which it never before touched ; " and he remarked how it carried along the most con- servative men, — those who were calm, considerate, and consti- tutional in their aims. Mrs. Seward, who was constant in her attentions until she left Washington, wrote, July 4, from Auburn, to dissuade him, for his own sake and for the sake of the great cause, from immediate public efforts, and said : " Dear Charles, your enemies have placed upon your brow a chaplet greener, brighter, and more unfading than any that could have been woven by the hands of dearest friends. You have served the cause of justice and humanity faithfully, fearlessly, and effectu- ally. Nothing you can say or do at present can strengthen your hold upon the affections of the North, of the enlightened, be- nevolent, the just everywhere, now and in coming time." Her letters were frequent, always affectionate and motherly. She wrote, August 12 : " Henry writes, ' We hear Sumner's name called in the Senate. I miss his loud and clear and emphatic and yet cheerful response.' "
Lydia Maria Child wrote, July 7 : —
" I have never been so overpowered by any public event. I was rendered physically ill by excess of painful excitement, which never before happened to my strong constitution. It seemed as if the necessity of remaining inactive at such an eventful crisis would kill me. My first impulse was to rush directly to Washington to ascertain whether I could not supply to you in some small degree the absence of a mother's or sister's care. Had I not been tied to the bedside of my aged father, I verily believe I should have done it ; for I thought I might trust to my venerable years to sanction the proceeding. Doubtless Mr. Douglas would have been shocked ; but you know it is difficult to avoid
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 503
shocking a person of such fastidious delicacy of sentiment as he manifests ! I am always eager to read your speeches, and you may judge whether under such circumstances I omitted a single line of your last and greatest speech. . . . The flowers [flower seeds] you sent me have all prospered. The sight of them has often hrought tears to my eyes of late. You are present to my mind every hour in the day, and all my thoughts of you are baptized with blessings. May God and good angels guard you, and restore your precious health ! "
Among the many who during the summer and autumn prof- fered Sumner hospitality to assist in his recovery were Francis P. Blair, Sr., from Silver Springs, Md., the brothers (W. H. and J. T.) Furness from Philadelphia, the Barclays from Balti- more, Mrs. Wadsworth from Geneseo, John Jay from Bedford, Mr. Fish from New York and Newport, John Bigelow from New York, Parke Godwin from Roslyn, Mr. Pell from the highlands of the Hudson, Mr. Adams from Quincy, Amos A. Lawrence from Brookline, F. W. Bird from Walpole, R. B. Forbes from Milton, Ellis Gray Loring from Beverly, John E. Lodge from Nahant, and Joseph Lyman from Jamaica Plain. Everywhere in the free States doors would have swung open to receive the honored guest. Yale College, in August, conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Dr. Woolsey, the president, in communicating the action of the corporation, took occasion to express his hearty concurrence in its action. He said : —
" I would have you believe, my dear sir, that this measure had my own hearty concurrence. I write also to say that it was not dictated by political feeling, nor simply by recent occurrences, which have called forth the sym- pathy of a large portion of the American people on your behalf. Such motives would not justify literary honors. Still less was this done in order to secure popular favor, which would be most unbecoming for persons discharging the du- ties of trustees of a literary society. But the motives which led to this honor were sincere respect for your literary, legal, and political attainments and cul- tivation, back of which no doubt lay in the minds of all an equally sincere respect for the principles of your political career. It is proper to add that no outside suggestion of any kind whatsoever led the corporation of Yale College to this vote, but that the thought of it originated entirely within the body."
A like honor came the same year from Amherst College ; but it did not come from his own Alma Mater (Harvard) till three years later.
In Europe, particularly in England, the assault was recognized as an event of grave import.1 George Cornewall Lewis called it
1 London Times, August 7; London News, September 1; Daily News, September 1; London Morning Star, June 24 (article written by Henry Richard) ; Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 326.
504 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
" the beginning of civil war." x Macaulay wrote to the Duchess of Argyll : " In any country but America, I should think civil war must be impending."2 Many letters of sympathy came to him from foreign friends. Macready wrote with affection, de- scribing the universal sympathy in his country, and the indig- nation which had been called forth by the outrage inflicted by " a cowardly and brutal ruffian." Cobden, testifying to the same opinions felt by all on that side of the Atlantic, expressed his dismay at the approval which "the dastardly and brutal attack" received from the Southern press, of which he said there was " nothing so bad in Austria or Italy." Henry Richard, while confessing similar emotions, saw in the sequel of the speech the most expressive tribute to " the power of high intellect conse- crated by Christian principle." The Earl of Carlisle addressed him from Dublin as " My dear hero, martyr friend," adding to the expression of his full and fervent sympathy as follows : —
" I think my predominant feeling is pride in you. Did I not always an- nounce that you were to be an historic man ? I really cannot tell you how strongly tempted I should have been, if it had not been for the circumstance of my being nailed to my vice-sceptre, to have hurried across that broad sea, in the hope of being allowed to join in waiting on you. Your bedside appears to me just now both the most interesting and the most important spot in the universe."
Dr. Palfrey wrote from London, June 11 : —
" I need not tell you that I have been greatly disturbed by the outrage, of which intelligence has just come to England. It strikes people here with amazement. . . . Lord Carlisle writes to me of his joy, after the first shock, ' to learn that no apprehension need be entertained for so useful and honored a life.' Mr. Ingham was with me yesterday, and wanted to be informed when Congress would adjourn, as he wanted to write to you, but not to trouble you while public concerns were in your hands. The tears stood in his eyes — and scarcely stood — while he spoke of your services and your perils."
R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote from London, July 25 : " The Duchess of Sutherland desired me to put into my note to you assurances of her warmest friendship, sympathy, and esteem ; and in these the Duchess of Argyll desired to join. Lord Wensleydale de- sired particular remembrances to you. Lord Cran worth, Ing- ham, Senior, Parkes, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Elgin, — all have spoken to me of you in a manner that would delight you, I
1 Henry Reeve also heard him say that it was "the first blow of a civil war."
2 The Duchess of Argyll to Sumner, Sept. 8, 1863.
^Et. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 505
know, and recall one of the brightest periods of your life. You may imagine how they all speak of your sickness and its cause." 1 Dr. Julius wrote from Hamburg that " not only himself, but his whole country, had been shocked by the assault."
There was a general desire to give Sumner a popular indorse- ment, and with that view it was proposed to have him nomi- nated as the Republican candidate for governor of Massachu- setts. His election was assured by a large majority ; and he might, after performing the duties from January to March, 1857, have accepted the new election as senator, which was to take place in January. Wilson cordially entered into this plan ; 2 but it found no favor with Sumner, who was always averse to any such irregular modes of obtaining popular approval.
The healing of the flesh wounds left Sumner a sufferer from pressure on the brain, with weakness in the spine, and great nervous sensibility. Dr. Wister thus described his condition when he arrived in Philadelphia, July 9 : —
" A condition of extreme nervous exhaustion, his circulation feeble, and in fact every vital power alarmingly sunken. At that time his steps were feeble and tottering, as in extreme old age ; he complained of constant pain in the back and lower extremities, — in the latter it was a tired and weary sensation, and he had a sense of constriction and pressure about the head. At that time his pulse was quick and small, appetite languid, and his sleep broken, dis- turbed, and unrefreshing. All the above conditions were heightened by exer- tion either mental or physical." 3
From Philadelphia he went shortly to Cape May for the pur- pose of trying sea air, and was received at the cottage of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Furness, new-made but most devoted friends. Here he passed the time on his bed, or sitting under an arbor on the beach. He was very feeble, quite prostrate for two days, and his hosts were alarmed.4
He wrote to Giddings, July 22 : —
" My earnest hope is to take my seat in the Senate this session, and I do not think I shall resign this hope until the session is closed ; but I am at times
1 The interest of Sumner's English friends in his recovery appears in Adams's "Biog- raphy" of Dana, vol. i. p. 358; vol. ii. pp. 9, 25, 45.
2 Outside of Massachusetts it found favor. Governor Chase by letter, August 22, advised Sumner to accept the nomination.
3 Works, vol. iv. p. 340.
4 He wrote hopefully, July 18, to Longfellow (Longfelllow's " Life," vol. iii. p. 47), but an ill turn came immediately after. E. L. Pierce sought him at Cape May, July 21-23, and found him in a state of extreme weakness, precluding physical and mental exertion. Boston " Advertiser," August 2.
506 MEMOIE OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
much discouraged. For a week I prospered here, but I have just had two wretched days, which have put me back about where I was when I came here. I would give much to be again in the Senate, with strength restored, that I might expose anew the crime."
To Phillips (addressing him " my dear Wendell "), July 24 : 2
" I long again for my place in the Senate, where I was struck down, to arraign anew the crime which I before arraigned, and to show, which I did not do before, its logical, harmonious, and entire dependence upon a slave- holding civilization. Of course, I can make no allusion to my assailant. His act belongs to the history of the country, where it will be judged without any word from me. I cannot close without letting you know how joyfully and tearfully I read your most beautiful spontaneous utterance at that first meet- ing in Boston. Few speeches equally felicitous have ever been made ; but beyond even its felicity I felt its warm, prompt pulsations, and the complete- ness of its defence against those cavillers who, true to the instincts of their petty souls, began at once to ransack my language to find in its alleged ex- travagance some apology for an act which was beyond all apology. When- ever in any speech or article I have noticed regrets for the language I deemed it my duty to use, I invariably discarded what followed as being the forced offering of the hour and not of the heart. Please let Mr. Garrison know that I was much touched by his resolution and speech."
Without any sensible improvement he left the seaside, Au- gust 3, for a change of air, and became the guest and patient of Dr. R. M. Jackson at Cresson, in the Allegheny Mountains.2 Wilson, after conferring with Seward and other Republican senators, advised him not to return to Washington during the session, which lasted till the middle of August.
At the mountains the former symptoms clung to him, — weak- ness generally, pallor of countenance, a tottering gait, wakeful nights, a sense of weight on the brain, and a dull throbbing pain in the head, indications of coming paralysis ; " the entire chain of symptoms soon pointing to the head and spine as the seat of a highly morbid condition." 3 Though quickly prostrated by attempts at walking, he was able to take daily rides on horse- back. Among friendly visitors to Cresson were Rev. Dr. Fur-
1 This letter was dictated.
2 New York Evening Post, August 4 and 16. Works, vol. iv. pp. 329, 338, 339, 340, where the reports of Drs. Wister and Jackson are found.
3 Dr. Jackson's letter to Wilson, Boston "Telegraph," Sept. 24, 1856, printed in Sum- ner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 340-342. Other accounts were given by Mrs. Swisshelm in the New York " Tribune," August 28, and by Rev. Dr. Furness, by letter of August 18, in the Boston "Transcript," August 20. Theodore Parker wrote George Sumner, August 12: "It seems to me his condition is very critical and perilous. I have never thought he would recover." Seward wrote, August 17: "Sumner is contending with death in the mountains of Pennsylvania." Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 287.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 507
ness, Anson Burlingame, Mr. Coffee, afterwards of the attorney- general's department at Washington, and Mrs. Swisshelm. Sumner wrote to Giddings, August 15 : —
"Your speech helped my convalescence. I read it with delight. At last, in this mountain air, I am tending to health. I have ridden on horseback three times ; hut it is still uncertain how long I shall be constrained to forego mental labor and the excitement of public speaking ; but I trust to do good service in the coming campaign. Most reluctantly have I renounced the opportunity of speaking from my seat, where I have longed to be heard, in exposure of the brutality of the slave oligarchy. For three weeks of this ses- sion I would have given three years of any future public life. I shall set my face homewards very soon."
To Dr. Howe, August 28 : —
"My strength is not re-established; but I ride on horseback, converse, read, write letters, and hope soon to be in working condition, though I fear that a perfect prudence would keep me from all public effort for some months to come. I feel as if composed of gristle instead of bone, and am very soon wearied by walking, which induces a pressure on the brain ; so also has any attempt with the mind. But I believe these things are passing away. I strive by alternations of rest and exercise to solidify my system. More than three months have thus been blotted from all public activity, at a moment when more than ever in my life I was able to wield influence and do good. This has been hard to bear. They write to me of a public reception on my return home. I am sorry ; I am against it. Gladly would I slip into Massachusetts, run about for a few days, and then, if able, commence our campaign,. The war of liberation is begun."
Early in September he left Cresson, and passing en route a day at Altoona with Mr. Enoch Lewis, he returned to Philadel- phia, where he became again the guest of James T. Furness and the patient of Dr. Wister.1 He was at this time improving phy- sically, and his capacity for exercise returning ; but there re- mained a pressure on the brain, with weakness in the spinal column. Any immoderate effort of mind or body, not felt in a condition of health, brought on abnormal consciousness in these parts, and also morbid wakefulness. The vision of health and vigor appeared from time to time only to recede. He was res- tive under his forced disability, longing to enter on the political campaign of 1856, one of the most exciting in all our history. Friends interposed with grave warnings to prevent premature activity which might prove fatal.2 He was obliged to content
1 He was at Washington for a day early in October, and met Chase there.
2 Letters from Wendell Phillips, Josiah Quincy, Colfax, and Seward.
508 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
himself with open letters, urging support of the Republican can- didates, which were read at public meetings or printed in the newspapers.1
To Dr. Howe he wrote, September 11 : —
"I left the mountains against the counsels of physicians, but because I wished to get nearer to my duties. On reaching here I have consulted my physician, Dr. Wister, who is much pleased with my condition. He says that I am better than he expected ; but he sets his face agaiust my thinking of anything except amusement till cold weather ; especially is he earnest that I should for some weeks keep away from Massachusetts and all chance of ex- citement. Sometimes I think him wrong in his advice, and at other times I fear that he is right. Last night I slept well, and this morning feel better every way than I have felt for three months. This is my best day. But yes- terday was a dishearteuiug day ; I seemed to be going back. Two nights of this week I have passed without closing my eyes for five minutes, — literally hearing the clock strike every hour till daylight, while my legs and arms seemed all jangled ; but otherwise I am now well. I have been much in the open air, and have a look of health. This exile from the field is hard. I long for the contest, and wish to do my part. Do not let them embarrass my posi- tion by the governorship. I am always willing to do and suffer for the cause ; but I believe that it is better for the cause that my name should not be com- plicated with the local questions and partisan feelings now linked with that post. I do not wish to be governor ; but I do long to do what I can for the freedom of my country. I am sorry to hear of your ill health, but hope you are now on your legs."
To Mrs. Child, September 19 : —
" I have latterly read again your most beautiful and generous letter which came to comfort me when I was very weak, more than balm or balsam. But I have not deserved the praise you give ; I know that I have not. To have it from you, one of my teachers, is a great reward.
"It is now nearly four months since I was disabled and shut out from all active exertion. It is still uncertain when this doom will close. At times I am happy in the thought that I am about to be restored to strength, and then some slight excess of exertion seems to undo everything. This is hard ; but it is harder still to be excluded from labor at a time when I am needed. I long to stand forward in the consciousness of renewed strength, and unroll the abominations of our tyranny. Surely I would do it at once if there were nothing before me worse than death ; but I do shrink from the possibility of life with shattered nerves, or perhaps with a brain that has lost its powers. Meanwhile the good omens multiply. Our cause is about to triumph ; I am sure of it. Then will all turn with gratitude to those who, like yourself, aided its birth, watched its cradle, protected its weakness, and sent it forth to con- quer. Believe me with much regard."
i Works, vol. iv. pp. 348-367.
.Et. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 509
To John Bigelow, October 9 : —
" Never did I expect this long divorce from my duties, which spins out its interminable thread. Constantly from week to week I have looked for resto- ration, and have made plans for speaking. But at last I must give them all up. I am still an invalid, with weeks, if not months, of seclusion still before me. All this has been made particularly apparent to me to-day by my physi- cian, while Dr. Howe of Boston, who has kindly visited me, has enforced this judgment by his authoritative opinion. My brain and whole nervous system are still jangled and subject to relapse. My only chance of cure is repose. And yet in many respects I am comfortable ; indeed, so well that I am un- happy not to be better. But however comfortable or well, I am still disabled. I long to do something. The wounded Philoctetes did not sigh for com- panionship with the Grecian chiefs against Troy more than I do for our pres- ent battle. I am grateful for your kind thought of me, and for your promised welcome under your roof. I do not expect to stop in New York, nor do I know when I can venture into Massachusetts. With kind regards to your confreres, oldest and youngest."
Sumner remained in Philadelphia until late in October.1 De- clining, under medical and friendly advice, participation in public meetings, he insisted on going to Boston to vote for Fremont for President, and for Burlingame, a candidate for re-election to Congress. As soon as his purpose was known, a committee of citizens waited on him, and urged his acceptance of a banquet. This invitation he declined, but he was unable to repress the popular sympathy which sought expression in a public reception. This became an imposing demonstration, unorganized, sponta- neous, and heartfelt. A committee, of whom Professor Hunting- ton of Harvard College, since Bishop of Central New York, took the lead, arranged that it should be " without military display, but civil, dignified, and elevated in character." 2 Sumner arrived from New York at Longfellow's, in Cambridge, Sunday morn- ing, November 2.3 On Monday he was driven to the house of Amos A. Lawrence in Brookline.4 Here he was met in the early afternoon by a number of prominent citizens, who had driven in eighteen carriages from the State House. The company, taking Sumner in an open barouche with Dr. Perry and Professor Hun-
1 After he left, Mrs. Furness wrote: "The little library was like an empty chapel, and the old friendly sofa had a monumental air."
- Professor Huntington's letter, October 10, to Sumner.
3 He arrived by the Fall River line at Harrison Square in Dorchester, and drove through Roxbury and Brookline to Cambridge.
4 The morning papers expressed the tenderness of public feeling towards him. Boston "Atlas," November 3.
510 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
tington, proceeded to Roxbury, and thence to the Boston line, where they were met by a cavalcade of citizens numbering seven hundred, and were awaited by a vast concourse of people. At Northampton Street, just north of the southern boundary of the city, Sumner's carriage was driven alongside of one containing A. H. Rice the mayor, and Josiah Quincy. Professor Huntington presented Sumner as one who had " come, a cheerful and victo- rious sufferer, out of the great conflicts of humanity with oppres- sion, of ideas with ignorance, of scholarship and refinement with barbarian vulgarity, of intellectual power with desperate and bru- tal violence, of conscience with selfish expediency, of right with wrong." 1 The aged Quincy, first citizen of the Commonwealth, then bade him welcome as the champion of freedom and the representative of Massachusetts in the Senate, — u unshaken, un- reduced, unterrified, . . . who had touched as with the spear of Ithuriel the evil spirit of our Union, . . . compelling it to unveil to the free States its malign design to make this land of the free a land of slaves." The old man, as he ended, thanked Heaven for prolonging his life to this day, that he might wit- ness the dawnings of liberty. While he was speaking, Sumner, who was standing, leaned slightly forward, inclining his head and showing much emotion.2 He replied from his carriage in a subdued voice, deeply affected by the scene. Only those near by could hear him, and the audience missed the full, powerful, and sonorous voice with which they were familiar. To them he appeared haggard and careworn, with languid eye and pale cheek, and his changed appearance brought tears to many eyes. One passage of his brief reply was as follows : —
"You have made allusion to the suffering which I have undergone. This is not small, but it has been incurred in the performance of duty ; and how- little is it, sir, compared with the suffering of fellow-citizens in Kansas ! How small is it compared with that tale of woe which is perpetually coming to us from the house of bondage ! With you I hail the omens of final tri- umph. I ask no prophet to confirm this assurance. The future is not less secure than the past."
Sumner and Professor Huntington then passed into the car- riage drawn by six gray horses in which were the mayor and
1 Professor Huntington first invited Mr. Everett to welcome Sumner; but while ex- pressing respect for Sumner, he declined the invitation, as he had before declined to speak at Faneuil Hall in condemnation of the assault.
2 Boston Traveller, November 4.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 511
Mr. Quincy, and the procession, mounted or in carriages, and half a mile nearly in length, moved north through the city, the multitude thronging the streets. All the way there were demon- strations of honor, cheers from the crowds on the pavements and sidewalks, waving of handkerchiefs from the windows, bou- quets thrown by men and women so as quite to fill the carriage,
thrown also by children, whose interest affected Sumner the
most ; along the route were displayed flags, festoons, and arches inscribed with " Welcome " and various tributes ; indeed, all was done that a grateful people could do to testify their devotion to an admired and beloved statesman who had suffered for a great cause.1 The area around the State House, the adjacent part of the Common and streets near by, — Beacon and Park, — and even the roofs of houses which could give a view, were packed with human beings, estimated at six or seven thou- sand, who greeted with long-continued cheering the senator as he came in sight. He was presented by Professor Hunting- ton to Governor Gardner as one whose "friends are wherever justice is revered," who "has a neighbor in every victim of wrong throughout the world," now returning to his State, " her faithful steward, her eloquent and fearless advocate, her hon- ored guest, her beloved son." The governor from the plat- form at the foot of the steps of the State House, surrounded by his Council and staff, welcomed in an address " the eloquent orator, the accomplished scholar, and the acknowledged states-
1 Wendell Phillips, in his sketch of Sumner for Johnson's Encyclopedia, says that absence of display and interest in the occasion was noticeable on Beacon Street, the seat of old Boston families. W. F. Channing, in a letter to E. L. Pierce, states the same fact, adding that Sumner at the time observed it. On the other hand, Professor Huntington, in a letter to E. L. Pierce, Feb. 20, 1890, states that there was no such contrast between Beacon and other streets on the route, making allowance for the habits, tastes, and social reserve of people living in that part of the town; and he is sure that as they drove, and during the evening at Sumner's house, where friends — E. P. Whipple and others — were present, and in Sumner's call on the professor at Cambridge, at all of which times the scenes of the day were talked over, no such difference between one part of the city and another was referred to or apparently observed by Sumner or any one present with him. Mr. Rice, the mayor, concurs in recollection with Professor Huntington.
It may be mentioned that Prescott and his family stood, as the procession passed, on the balcony of his house on Beacon Street, waving their handkerchiefs. The next day, calling on Sumner, he said that if he had known there were to have been decorations and inscriptions on houses he should have placed on his these words: —
Mat 22, 1856. "Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us."
In a few days Prescott sent Sumner some bottles of Burgundy and other choice products of ancient vintages. J. T. Fields's " Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches," pp. 85, 86.
512 MEMOIK OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
man, . . . the earnest friend of suffering humanity and of every good cause, . . . the successful defender of the honor and integ- rity of Massachusetts," and pledged the State to stand by him to-day, to-morrow, and forever. He bespoke for the already too wearied guest the privilege of undisturbed quiet in his own house, and freedom from exacting intrusions. "Sumner be- gan his reply with feeble voice, and spoke with difficulty. He had been speaking hardly more than a minute, during which he referred to his welcome and the familiar scenes about him, when, unable to proceed, he handed his manuscript to the reporter.1
In the undelivered remainder of his written reply he spoke of his five months of disability, with his hopes of health de- ferred ; of his sorrow in renouncing for a season all part in the pending contest for human rights in the Senate and be- fore the people ; his assurance that though still an invalid he should soon be permitted to resume with unimpaired vigor all the responsibilities of his position. He paid tributes to his colleague, Mr. Wilson, — to his readiness, courage, and power, and his extraordinary energies equal to the extraordinary occa- sion ; to Massachusetts, great in resources, great in children, approaching the pattern of a Christian commonwealth, stand- ing forth the faithful, unseduced supporter of human nature; and to Quincy, now at the age of Dandolo when he asserted in behalf of Venice the same supremacy of powers, putting himself at the head of the great battle for liberty. He closed thus : —
" May it please your Excellency, I forbear to proceed further. With thanks for this welcome, accept also my new vows of duty. In all simplicity let me say that I seek nothing hut the triumph of truth. To this I offer my best efforts, careless of office or honor. Show me that I am wrong, and I stop at once ; but in the complete conviction of right I shall persevere against all temptations, against all odds, against all perils, against all threats, knowing well that whatever may be my fate the right will surely prevail. Terrestrial place is determined by celestial observation. Only by watching the stars can the mariner safely pursue his course; and it is only by obeying those lofty principles which are above men and human passion that we can make our way safely through the duties of life. In such obedience I hope to live, while as a servant of Massachusetts I avoid no labor, shrink from no exposure, and complain of no hardship."
Nine hearty cheers were given as he closed. It was five in the afternoon when Sumner was escorted by the cavalcade to
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 377-385.
Mt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 513
the family house in Hancock Street, where his mother awaited him. A solid mass of people filled the street in front, and gave repeated cheers, in recognition of which, mother and son appeared at the window and bowed acknowledgments. With three parting cheers the ceremonies ended. During the day, neither in speech nor in banner was there a word of vengeance, no angry or intemperate expression against the slaveholding people, no mention even of the assassin. The language was de- corous, and the thought elevated and humane. All that was said or written was for liberty, patriotism, and Christian hero- ism. It was the unaffected homage of a humane and enlight- ened people to a faithful and fearless defender of human rights.1 Never was there a greater contrast than between the reception of Sumner in Massachusetts and that of Brooks in South Caro- lina, in the tokens of honor bestowed, and in the temper and spirit of the people. The two occasions typified two civiliza- tions, which confronted each other.2
Fremont was defeated in the national election, losing four free States, — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois ; but Massachusetts gave him nearly seventy thousand plurality, and nearly fifty thousand majority over the combined votes for Buchanan and Fillmore. Burlingame was re-elected by a very small majority over William Appleton, who was supported by the rump of the Whig party, which voted for Fillmore for President, and by others who for various reasons were unfriendly to Burlin- game. It was thought that the popular enthusiasm aroused by Sumner's reception turned the scale in his favor. He received a banquet, November 24, in Faneuil Hall, where a letter was read from Sumner. The Legislature was Republican with few exceptions, and Sumner's re-election was assured.
The vote for Fremont was a moral victory even in defeat. The consolidation of the free States, with four exceptions, fore- shadowed as certain at no distant time a united North. One who bore an active part in the conflict has written : " No Presi- dential contest had ever so touched the popular heart, or so lifted up and ennobled the people by the contagion of a great and pervading moral enthusiasm." 3 When Congress met, the
1 The materials for this sketch are found in the Boston journals of the day following. They are also in part found in Sumner's Works, vol. iv. pp. 368-385.
2 Von Hoist, vol. v. p. 331, has remarked that Brooks's act became "an historical event of eminent importance ... in denoting two radically different civilizations."
8 Julian's "Political Recollections," p. 152. vol. in. 33
514 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Republicans assumed a bolder front. They had carried the House, and were shortly to have twenty senators. The South was astounded at Fremont's enormous vote, and in Congress its representatives were less insolent and aggressive. The hope of making Kansas a slave State had gone, and gradually those who had sought the Territory for that purpose slunk away. At last there was a " North," and the end of Southern domination and Northern submission was not far off.
Sumner wrote to E. L. Pierce, November 15, from Longfellow's :
"I ain obliged by your kind sympathy. I am still an invalid, but during the last three or four days am conscious of improvement, so that I seem to be getting into a condition when I may do something, though I have a pain- ful sense of a want of that final strength essential to intellectual effort. My physician will not say when I shall be well. But for the coming session of Congress, I should go at once to Europe, and look at pictures, monuments, and the Alps, and thus pass unconsciously into health and ancient vigor. But I cannot renounce the idea of being in my seat, if not at the beginning, at least very soon. Our cause looks grandly ; the future, at least, is ours. Tell our friends to be of good cheer, and keep in line for action. Our front must not be broken. It is Bunker Hill that has been fought over again."
To William P. Fessenden, December 11 : —
" In my bed I have read your speech, and its many interjections and your felicitous responses, and have been happy that you are there, so ready and able. I wish that I were with you. You are the best debater on the floor of the Senate, and you must make them all confess it. We shall be proud of you."
To Whittier, December 20 : —
"Your letter charmed and soothed me. Every day I thought of it, and chided myself for letting it go unanswered. Then came your beautiful poem of Peace,1 depicting a true conquest, which made my pulse beat quick and my eyes moisten with tears. Truly do I thank you for that generous sym- pathy which you give to me and also to mankind. At last we may see the beginning of the end of our great struggle. The North seems to have as- sumed an attitude which it cannot abandon. Meanwhile our duty is clear, to scatter everywhere the seeds of truth. Never was the poet needed more than now ; and the orator, too, for the audiences are now larger and more attentive than ever. No opportunity should be lost for pressing upon the public mind the best and strongest statements of our cause, and the most earnest exhorta- tions to support it.
" My chief sorrow for seven months of seclusion has been that I have been shut out from the field of action. I am sad now that I am discouraged by my physician from making any present effort. I am permitted to take my
1 " The Conquest of Finland."
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 515
seat and be quiet. My purpose is to leave here for Washington very soon. What I shall do there must depend upon my health. I long to speak and liberate my soul. If I am able to speak as I desire, I think that I shall be shot. Very well, I am content. The cause will live. But I cannot bear the thought that I may survive with impaired powers, or with a perpetual disability." 1
To E. L. Pierce, Jan. 6, 1857 : —
" I am mending, but slowly, slowly. My general health is so far restored that a stranger would not know that I am still an invalid. The spinal cord continues morbidly sensitive, involving the whole back and shoulders, and finally the brain, from which it all proceeds. Nothing but time and repose will complete my restoration. I had hoped to be in my seat before now ; but physicians and friends conspire to hold me back. But just so soon as this session expires I leave for Europe."
Sumner's re-election was assured even without the event of May, 1856. The Know Nothing party was dissolving, and its voters in Massachusetts, among whom the antislavery sentiment had always predominated over the " American," were ranging themselves with the Republicans in the national election. The popular inspiration in favor of supporting the Republican lead- ers was universal. The slavery question and the contest in Kansas had become the vital issue in the public mind. The repeal of the Missouri prohibition had changed altogether the position of antislavery leaders like Hale, Chase, and Wilson ; and instead of being dismissed one after another from public life, they had been brought to the front. Sumner's course in the Senate since the struggle began on that repeal had made him the strongest public man in Massachusetts ; and the senti- ment of personal sympathy and devotion inspired by his suf- ferings, while doubtless increasing the enthusiasm in his favor, was now by no means essential to the continuity of his public career.
The Legislature of Massachusetts, meeting in January, 1857, and proceeding with more than usual despatch to the election,
* Whittier's "Last Walk in Autumn," printed at this time, paid a tribute to Sumner in these lines : —
" And he who to the lettered wealth Of ages adds the lore unpriced, The wisdom and the moral health, The ethics of the school of Christ ; The statesman to his holy trust, As the Athenian archon, just, Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone, — Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own ? "
516 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
hastened to express in authentic form the voice of the State in approval of its senator. The House, voting viva voce, gave Sum- ner three hundred and thirty-three votes to twelve for all others, of which three were for Winthrop, two for N. J. Lord, and seven for as many other persons. The Senate gave Sumner every vote. An election so unanimous, at a period of great political heat and controversy, is without parallel in the United States. The public journals of the country contrasted the incidents of Sumner's two elections, — the last one unanimous and prompt, the first after a long contest and a close final vote, when his chief support was a band of Free Soilers, and when he entered the Senate with only two to co-operate with him.1 He accepted the office in a letter, which was entered on the journal of the House.2
Many congratulations came to him on his re-election. Seward wrote, January 10 : " The telegraph announces your majestic success, and it makes us proud of Massachusetts and hope- ful for the cause. . . . Come here when your good physicians permit ; only rest at ease until they shall consent." 3 R. H. Dana, Jr., wrote, January 15 : " No one can say now that you have not a constituency behind you. Where is there a senator who holds by such a tenure ? The day has come we have all hoped and labored for, — the day of something like unanimity in New England." Wilson wrote, January 19 : " What a change here since you took your seat in 1851 ! And what a change in our State since 1851, when you were elected by one majority ! Your case is an illustration of the progress of our cause in the country. . . . How hopeful it is ! All we have to do now is to labor on in faith of ultimate success."
During the summer Sumner flattered himself at times that he was nearly restored, and so assured others ; but such hopes were soon darkened by relapses. As the autumn wore away without any certain progress, his most thoughtful friends, while clinging to hope, began to have serious apprehensions that his injury was permanent, or at the best they felt that a long
1 Works, vol. iv. pp. 392, 393; Chicago "Tribune," January 15 (leader written by E. L. Pierce). Longfellow wrote in his diary: "There is no mistaking the meaning of such a vote." The Boston "Daily Courier," then edited by George Lunt, was an ex- ception among Northern journals, making constant thrusts at Sumner.
" Works, vol. iv. pp. 394-397.
3 Sumner's reply is printed in Seward's " Life," vol. ii. p. 296, in which he said truly, " What has been done has been the utterance of the State, without a hint from me."
Mt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 517
struggle was before him. His sensitive, sympathetic tempera- ment was doubtless a part of his case, making recovery less steady and more difficult.
After his arrival in Boston he remained four months at home, with many visits to Longfellow at Cambridge, taking system- atic exercise and avoiding excitement.1 He was able to ride on horseback, but otherwise passed most of his time on his bed. He slept better, though still wakeful, and gained flesh, — the re- sult of his inactive life ; but there was still the pressure on the head after fatigue or unusual effort of mind. He was treated by Dr. Perry in consultation with Dr. James Jackson, both of whom insisted on his continued abstinence from public effort and the excitement of Washington.2 They advised a journey to Europe, hoping that change of scene and distance from the con- tests in which he was longing to participate would have a salu- tary effect. Late in the year he formed the purpose to pass the vacation of Congress in Europe. Finding himself unable to go to Washington at the beginning of December, he postponed taking his seat till January 1, and was at the later date still unable to go on.
Whittier wrote, Nov. 12, 1856 : —
" I would say a word to thee as an old friend. Do not leave home for Washington until thy health is more fully estahlished. Massachusetts, God bless her ! loves her son too well to require him to hazard his health by a premature resumption of his duties."
Fessenden wrote from the Senate, December 18 : —
" I miss you very much, my dear Sumner, and so do we all, looking for- ward impatiently to the time when we can again have the aid of your great powers. But let not your own impatient ardor disappoint us. Be sure that your physical vigor is well restored before plunging again into this whirlpool of abominations."
Governor Chase wrote from Columbus, December 13 : —
" I see it stated that you purpose going to Washington about the first of January. Let me beg you to risk nothing, but to lay aside every care except
1 Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 2: " Sumner arrived just as we were sit- ting down to breakfast; he looks well in the face, but is feeble, and walks with an uncer- tain step." November 14: "Sumner is getting on very well; he takes a pretty long trot on horseback every forenoon, and a walk in the afternoon, and sleeps well. Still, I fear he has a long and weary road before him." John Brown's call on the senator in February, 1857, is described by an eye-witness, James Freeman Clarke, in his " Memorial and Bio- graphical Sketches," pp. 101, 102. Sumner's call on Lydia Maria Child at this time is noted in her " Letters," p. 88.
2 Works, vol. iv. pp. 329, 342.
518 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
that of your own restoration. You will, of course, be re-elected. Why not let the present session go, and take a trip somewhere out of sight and as far as possible out of recollection of disturbing and exciting causes ? "
Mrs. Seward wrote from Washington, December 8 : —
" He [Mr. Seward] says I must tell you that, though he would be very glad to have you here, he thinks it better that you remain away until your physician thinks you may come safely ; that just at this time there is little to be done, and no circumstances would justify your endangering a permanent restoration." 2
Wilson wrote from the Senate, Jan. 6, 1857 : —
" I think our friends here feel that you ought not to return unless you are well ; that you had better take time and get well before you take your seat. Would it not be better to give up all idea of coming back at this session, so that it will be understood by all that you will not be here till December next?"
It was feared at the time that he might, from unwillingness to leave his seat vacant, resign it ; but many protests came against any such movement. John A. Andrew wrote, Decem- ber 18 : "I hope that nothing will induce you to resign the senatorship, even for a week. Sit in your seat if you can. If you can't, let it be vacant ; that is my idea about the case."
Sumner went to Washington very late in the session, which was to end March 4, 1857. He passed the night in Philadelphia with the family of Mr. Furness, and arrived in Washington Wednesday evening, February 25.2 He was the next day at two o'clock in the afternoon in his seat, which had been vacant since May 22. He was greeted warmly by the Republican sena- tors ; but the Democratic senators were observed to pass him without recognition. Finding himself too weak to remain in his seat, he returned shortly to his lodgings, leaving directions to be called for any vote on the tariff bill. He came again at nine in the evening, and remained at the Capitol till two in the morn- ing, voting several times on the bill, and saving it on two votes ; 3 but otherwise than on this bill he took no part in the proceedings.
Sumner's sole object in going to Washington at this time was
1 Seward wrote, December 10 : " Sumner has gone away for a month with a broken heart, because he cannot work. What a sad thing! How much fortitude he requires!" Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 330.
a New York Tribune, February 27, March 5.
3 One of Sumner's letters states that he saved it on three votes.
JEt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 519
to aid in securing a modification of the tariff of 1846 by re- ducing the rates of duty on raw materials, particularly on wool, which was strongly urged at the time by the manufacturers of New England, — a further purpose of the modification being to reduce the revenue of the government, then yielding a surplus above expenditures.1 He as well as his colleague voted against Collamer's amendment, which maintained a higher duty on wool, and both voted for the bill (Hunter's) on its passage. The House disagreeing, a bill of the same general character, with unimpor- tant modifications, was reported by a committee of conference.2 There was no contest on its adoption, there being only eight votes against it ; and Sumner's vote not being necessary, he was not present when the bill, known as the tariff of 1857, passed March 2.
Theodore Parker wrote, Feb. 27, 1857 : —
" God be thanked you are in your place once more! There has not been an antislavery speech made in the Congress, unless by Giddings, since you were carried out of it, — not one. Now that you bear yourself back again, I hope to hear a blast on that old war trumpet which shall make the North ring and the South tremble."
Sumner wrote to Parker, March 1 : —
" I have sat in my seat only on one day. After a short time the torment to my system became great, and a cloud began to gather over my brain. I tottered out and took to my bed. I long to speak, but I cannot. Sorrow- fully I resign myself to my condition. Before I left home Dr. Howe insisted that I must abandon all thought of speaking, under pain of paralysis, and Dr. Perry urged that I should in all probability have a congestion of the brain if I made the attempt. Had I an internal consciousness of strength, I might brave these professional menaces ; but my own daily experience, while satis- fying me of my improvement, shows the subtle and complete overthrow of my powers organically, from which I can hope to recover only most slowly. What I can say must stand adjourned to another day. Nobody can regret this so much as myself."
Sumner took his oath, March 4, 1857, as senator for his sec- ond term, but did not remain to attend the extra session then beginning, — called for the special purpose of acting on the nominations of President Buchanan, who then succeeded to the
1 Among merchants of Boston who by letters desired Sumner's presence in the Senate, so as to carry the bill, were John E. Lodge and W. B. Spooner.
2 The committee, equally divided between the parties and the sections, consisted on the part of the Senate of Hunter, Douglas, and Seward, and on the part of the House of Camp- bell of Ohio, Letcher of Virginia, and DeWitt of Massachusetts.
520 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
office. He was placed on the committee on territories, of which Douglas was chairman. Wilson named him for the committee on foreign affairs ; but Seward desired that place, and moved in the Senate the adoption of the list, which was carried against the opposition of all the Republican senators except himself.1
Two days later Sumner arrived in New York, where he was for the night the guest of John Jay, and where several friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Fremont, gathered in the evening to pay their respects to him. The next day, March 7, at noon, he sailed for France in the steamship " Fulton." As the vessel left the pier, a large body of personal and political friends cheered him, and the Young Men's Republican Club of the city fired in his honor a salute of thirty-one guns.2 His last words as he parted from the country concerned the cause which lay deeply on his heart, and were contained in two letters, — one to the governor of Vermont from Mr. Jay's house, and the other to a friend of Kansas from the steamer just before it parted from the pilot.3 That very morning (just seven years from Webster's speech) the newspapers announced the decision in the case of Dred Scott given by the Supreme Court of the United States the day before, — a decision which denied to the negro national citizenship, and to Congress its immemorial power to prohibit slavery in the national territory.
Twenty years before, Sumner sailed from New York on a sailing vessel on his first European journey, — then a youth of twenty -six, now a man of forty-six. Then he went to observe countries and institutions, and to see mankind ; now he was to make a weary search for health, constantly receding as he seemed about to grasp it. Behind him, however, was a faith- ful people, who, through years of waiting, never for a moment thought of placing another in his vacant seat. Yon Hoist has written : —
" Massachusetts, in which the spirit of '76 manifested itself more power- fully every day, was determined that the 22d of May should not be forgotten. It chose no new senator, but waited patiently, year after year, until the martyr of liberty and of fearless speech could again resume his seat." 4
1 In the debate, March 9, Hamlin expressed surprise that Seward should offer such a list; and Fessenden remarking upon the universal dissatisfaction of Republicans, well known to Seward, said that he was unwilling it should go to the country that the senator from New York represented him.
2 New York Tribune, March 9.
3 Works, vol. iv. pp. 398-401. * Vol. v. p. 333.
Mt. 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 521
Brooks, having affairs of honor on hand already mentioned, found it inconvenient to make a personal canvass for a re- election ; and indeed there was no need of one. He remained in Washington, except for a few days which he passed at White Sulphur Springs. He however issued an address to his constit- uents, marked by a looseness and wildness of expression which betokened an ill-stored and ill-regulated mind.1 He posed as the avenger of his State when a senator from Massachusetts " falsified her history and defamed her character," but said not a word about any offence to his "uncle," or "near kinsman," Mr. Butler. His constituents, with only six dissenting votes, re-elected him, and he was in his seat again Aug. 1, 1856, two weeks after his resignation.2 Keitt, who had been re-elected, took his oath a few days later.
Brooks's triumph was short-lived. He came to Washington at the opening of the next session, in December, but he was not there at its close. He made a speech early in the ses- sion, December 17, on the slavery question, which, though fully Southern in spirit, was not intemperate in language. The next month he took a severe cold, from which no fatal effects were at first apprehended ; but it turned into a violent croup, or acute inflammation of the throat, resulting in sudden stran- gulation, from which, struggling for breath, he died suddenly, Jan. 27, 1857, in intense pain, after having, as it is stated (no physician being at hand), clutched his throat as if to tear it open. His friend Dr. Boyle, who had dressed Sumner's wounds, was his attendant, but failed to arrive in time to help him. His illness had not been reported, and the country was startled by the intelligence of his death. Two days later he was the subject of eulogies in the House. His friends maintained a decorous silence as to the deed which will alone give him remembrance, except Savage of Tennessee, who, in extolling it, exalted him to an historic place by the side of
1 The Columbia (S. C.) " Banner," July 23, 1856, copied in Boston " Advertiser," July 28. These are specimens: " I resigned my seat, and kicking the black dust of a black Republi- can majority from my feet, I left the hall in indignation and disgust. . . . My appeal is to you. If I have represented you faithfully, then re-elect me with a unanimity which will thunder into the ears of fanaticism the terrors of the storm that is coming upon them."
2 His triumphant air as he took the oath was observed. New York "Evening Post," August 2. The New York " Times," Oct. 8, 1856, reported fully a banquet given to Brooks at "Ninety-six," with speeches from himself, Toombs, Butler, and Governor Adams. Brooks spoke of himself as in his deed "the type and representative of the entire South," but did not treat it as avenging Butler.
522 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
Brutus.1 A sense of indignation pervaded the Republican mem- bers ; many of them at once withdrew, — not remaining to attend the funeral which followed immediately in the hall of the House.2 His remains were temporarily placed in the Con- gressional cemetery, where a cenotaph still bears his name, and later were taken to South Carolina, where there was a public funeral, February 13, combining civic and military honors, at the village of Edgefield Court House, his birthplace. All that was possible was done in the way of display and eulogy to pay respect to his memory.
Brooks was buried in the cemetery adjoining the Baptist Church at Edgefield village. In the centre of the family lot, which contains the gravestones of his parents and other kindred, rises an obelisk, the most conspicuous monument in the ceme- tery, which gives on three sides the dates of his career, carved insignia of the Palmetto regiment to which he belonged, and the assurance that he would be " long remembered as one in whom all the virtues loved to dwell." On the fourth side is this tribute, of which the last sentence was from Keitt's eulogy in Congress : " Ever able, manly, just, and heroic, illustrating true patriotism by devotion to his country, the whole South unites with his bereaved family in deploring his untimely end. ' Earth has never pillowed upon her bosom a truer son, nor Heaven opened wide her gates to receive a manlier spirit.' " 3
1 This passage, at Butler's request, was suppressed or modified in the Congressional Globe. It was severely condemned by the Northern press. New York " Times," January 31; New York "Herald," January 31 and Februar3'2; New York "Tribune," January 30; New York "Evening Post," January 30, 31; New York "Independent," February 5. James Buchanan, President-elect, who had arrived in Washington, took pains of his own motion to attend the funeral, although his presence had not been arranged for in the official programme. (J. S. Pike in the New York "Tribune," February 2.) Brooks had been his partisan in the election of 1856, and Buchanan had been an apologist for the assault. (Wil- son's History, vol. ii. p. 490; Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 276.) Wilson was indignant that Savage's insult was not instantly repelled in the House ; and he intended to brand it as "cowardly" in the Senate if he could get an opportunity. The weakness of De Witt of Massachusetts, who accepted service on the committee of arrangements for the funeral ; of Campbell, in taking part in the eulogies, and referring to Brooks's regard for the honor of his State; and of Hale, in moving an adjournment of the Senate out of respect to Brooks's memory, — were all offensive to Wilson. Letter to Sumner, Jan. 29, 1857.
2 Boston Traveller, February 2.
3 This spot was visited March 26, 1890, by the writer, — perhaps the only, or at least the first, Northern man who has ever stood there. Francis W. Pickens, who was governor of South Carolina at the time of the assault on Fort Sumter, is buried in the same ceme- tery. A fuller account of the visit was printed in the New York " Christian Union," July 24, 1890. Keitt, Brooks's confederate and eulogist, lies buried in an unmarked grave at Old Tabernacle, near St. Matthews, Orangeburgh County, S. C. Edmundson is still living (1892) in Virginia.
JEit 44-45.] THE BROOKS ASSAULT. 523
There was talk current at the time of Brooks's death, which found its way to the newspapers, that as soon as the flush of excitement was over he felt oppressed by his situation.1 He did not enjoy his honors as the representative of bullies, and, accord- ing to a statement of his colleague Orr to Wilson, so confessed.2 Northern members of Congress and their wives, who had been in pleasant social relations with him, avoided him, and his fellow- ships were only with his own party and section. His black hair turned to gray,3 and observers noted in him " nervous, stealthy glances from side to side " as he walked.4 It is most likely that he felt the weight of the universal judgment of mankind, outside of the slaveholding States, which pronounced his deed " brutal, murderous, and cowardly."
Wilson wrote to Sumner, January 27 : —
"A few moments ago the city was startled by the announcement of the death of Brooks. It came upon us all unexpectedly, and it will startle the country. He has gone to his Maker to render an account for his deeds. His enemies cannot but feel sympathy for his fate. What a name to leave behind him ! The religious community will regard his sudden death as a visitation of Providence."
Again, January 29 : —
" My thoughts amid all the scenes of to-day (the day of Brooks's funeral) were of you and your condition, your long suffering, and of the scenes of last May. I could not but feel to-day that God had avenged the blows of May last; and I could not but feel that he will yet avenge the wrongs of the bondman and the insults we endure."
Butler did not long survive Brooks. At the close of the ses- sion, in March, 1857, he went home, but not to return. He died May 25. Keitt lived to die in battle in Virginia in June, 1864.
The pain and suffering which Sumner was called to endure did not, either at the time of the injury or during the whole period of his disability, produce in him any feeling of personal bitterness, either against the assailant or the Southern people.5 He attri-
1 New York Independent, Feb. 5, 1857; New York Herald, Jan. 31, 1857.
2 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 495.
3 President Felton, who at Washington in his connection with the Smithsonian Institu- tion, so wrote to Sumner, Nov. 8, 1860, and gave Memminger as authoritv.
4 New York Times, Dec. 18, 1856.
5 The absence of the spirit of personal revenge in Sumner was remarked by R. H. Dana, Jr., in his address in Faneuil Hall. March 14, 1874, and by G. F. Hoar in his eulogy in Congress April 27, 1874.
524 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1855-56.
buted the deed to the spirit of slavery, instead of laying the re- sponsibility on individuals. Four years later, when he entered again into the debate between the contending principles, he said at the outset : " I have no personal griefs to utter ; only a vulgar egotism could intrude such into this chamber. I have no per- sonal wrongs to avenge : only a brutish nature could attempt to wield that vengeance which belongs to the Lord. The years that have intervened and the tombs that have opened since I spoke have their voices too, which I cannot fail to hear." 1 He is not known to have recurred to the subject in private, except in two instances, when it was introduced by others under pecu- liar circumstances. In 1872, when supporting Greeley for Presi- dent, and making his protest against any revival of sectional animosity, his attention being called to a caricature of himself drawn by Nast for Harper's Weekly, which represented him at the grave of Brooks reading the inscription on the stone, he said : " What have I to do with him ? It was slavery, not he, that struck the blow." The same season he was walking in the Congressional cemetery, when George William Curtis, his com- panion, pointed out to him the cenotaph of Brooks, which he had not before observed. He stood silent before it for a few mo- ments, and then turning away, said, " Poor fellow, poor fellow ! " Curtis then asked him, " How did you feel about Brooks ? " His reply was, " Only as to a brick that should fall upon my head from a chimney. He was the unconscious agent of a malign power." 2
1 Speech, June 4, 1860, vol. v. p. 8. His only other public reference to Brooks is of a similar tone. Letter to Speaker Blaine, Aug. 5, 1872. Works, vol. xv. p. 197.
2 Mr. Curtis gave a part of the above in Harper's Monthly, June, 1874 ("Editor's Easy Chair "), and the remainder in conversation with the writer. See also his sketch of Sumner in Appleton's " Cyclopaedia of American Biography." Longfellow, at whose house Sumner was the day after Brooks's death, wrote in his journal: " Sumner came out. His assailant Brooks has died suddenly at Washington. I do not think Sumner had any personal feeling against him. He looked upon him as a mere tool of the slaveholders, or, at all events, of the South Carolinians. It was their way of answering arguments."
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 525
CHAPTER XLI.
SEARCH FOR HEALTH. — JOURNEY TO EUROPE. — CONTINUED DISA- BILITY. — 1857-1858.
SUMNER'S journey from New York to Paris was by the same route which he traversed by sailing vessel and stage-coach nineteen years before.1 Reaching Paris by way of Havre and Rouen, March 23, he found there American and English friends to welcome him, — among the former T. G. Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. George B. Emerson, and Madame Laugel ; and among the latter, Nassau W. Senior. His first friendly office was a search for Crawford the artist, then facing death ; and it was to be their last meeting. His time was well occupied in visiting points of interest, driving with friends, attending the opera, and in inter- views with distinguished Frenchmen. Michel Chevalier, whose acquaintance he made during his earlier visit, was assiduous in his attentions ; so also was Senior, who was in intimate associa- tion with the literary and public men of France, and took pleas- ure in bringing Sumner into relations with them. He enjoyed Tocqueville's conversations on European politics, and was greatly attracted by the liberal thought of Comte de Montalembert, both sympathetic with his own views on slavery. He had inter- esting interviews with Guizot, Lamartine, Drouyn de Lhuys, and the historian Mignet. He wrote from Paris to Dr. Howe, April 23 : —
"It is now a month since I wrote you from the British Channel. In this interval I have had many experiences, mostly pleasaut. My time is intensely occupied. Besides making acquaintances here, and seeing the world more than any other American at this time, I am visiting the museums and other objects of interest most systematically. But I am sometimes troubled to find how little I can hear now, compared with that insensibility to fatigue which I had once, even a year ago. My whole system is still morbidly sensitive, and after a walk which would have been pastime once, I drag my legs along with difficulty. Add to this a terrific cold, — they call it la grippe here, — which I have had for three weeks, and which has compelled me to keep the house
1 The condition of his health during the voyage is described in the New York " Tri- bune," April 11, 13.
526 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
several days, and you will see some of my drawbacks. Paris is very gay and beautiful, and abounding in interesting people. Of tbose I have seen, Tocque- ville and Guizot have impressed me most. They are very superior men ; I am disposed to believe them the first men in France. . . . The intelligence and education constituting the brains of France are all against the emperor, who has the ateliers and his own immediate adherents. All admit that this baby, who was born with such parade, and who is now escorted by cavalry when he takes an airing, can never succeed to power; but I have not yet seen a human being who undertakes to say what will take place in the event of the death of the emperor. My own impression is that the emperor's supe- riority is found in his fixed will. His purpose is clear, and he is almost the only man in this condition. ... I tremble for Kansas, which seems to me a doomed Territory. How disgusting seems the couduct of those miserable men who thus trifle with the welfare of this region ! My blood boils at this outrage, and I long to denounce it again from my place."
To C. F. Adams, June 2, from Paris : —
" I have often thought of what the good Dr. Bigelow said when he post- poned my complete recovery till next December; and I have had gloomy hours thinking that perhaps it would not come then. But my feelings lat- terly, and particularly for the last few days, give me hope."
After a busy month in Paris he made a tour of three weeks in the provinces, which included Tours and the old chateaux of the Touraine ; Mettray, where he saw again Demetz, the founder of the penitentiary colony ; Angers, Nantes, Bordeaux, and the Pyrenees. His sojourn in Paris after his return was very brief, and he was in London June 16. He was recruited by his jour- ney to the west and south of France ; and while daily reminded of his disability by the sensitiveness in his spine, his inability to walk far, and weariness after exertion, he wrote, July 3, that he felt better than at any time since he was disabled.
Some of his English friends had died, — among them Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu, John Kenyon, the first and second Lord Wharncliffe, and Sir Charles Vaughan ; and Earl Fitzwilliam was on his death bed. But the greater number still survived.1 Thev remembered him well as he came in his vouth, and had followed his career. When they knew him first he was a youth of promise, — intelligent, aspiring, attractive in every way, but without any prestige of name or deeds ; he came now with a fame equal to that of any whom he met, and with a record of devotion and suffering. Time had wrought changes also with
1 Of the English friends whom Sumner made in 1838-1840, only Henry Reeve survives at this time (1892).
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 527
them as with him. He wrote to Longfellow, June 26 : " The lapse of nineteen years is very plain in the shrunk forms and feeble steps of some whom I had left round and erect. Some seem changed in mood and character, — particularly Milnes." He was welcomed by the Parkeses, Grotes, Seniors, and by Milnes, Reeve, Milman, and Whewell, of all of whom he had seen much during his first visit. He was warmly received by Lansdowne, Brougham, Cran worth (now lord chancellor), Wensleydale (Baron Parke), and Lushington, — all friends of his youth. The Earl of Carlisle promptly welcomed him to the vice-regal lodge at Dublin. The Duke and Duchess of Suth- erland pressed him to become their guest at Stafford House ; but he preferred the freedom of hired lodgings. During his sojourn in England the duchess and her daughter, the Duchess of Argyll, were most sympathetic ; and the latter was from this time until his death his correspondent, showing a constant in- terest in his personal as well as his public life.1 Lord and Lady Hatherton took an affectionate interest in his health and all that concerned him , and they became his faithful friends. Lords Granville, Aberdeen, and Clarendon were very cordial ; the Eomillys and Buxtons were most friendly. He was the guest of the Benchers at the Inner Temple, where he met again Sam- uel Warren, who many years later recalled him as " an affable and courteous guest." He made from London brief visits to the Sutherlands at Cliveden, to Dr. Lushington at Ockham Park, to T. Baring at Norman Court, to the Earl of Stanhope at Chevening, to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Addington, and to the Laboucheres at Stoke Park. He met Macaulay sev- eral times, as at Lord Belper's, the Duke of Argyll's, Lord Lans- downe's, and Earl Stanhope's. He was invited by Thackeray to dine, and by Charles Kingsley to visit Eversley ; but these invi- tations he was obliged to decline. At Cliveden he met Glad- stone, apparently for the first time. He had one or two long interviews with Palmerston, and lunched with Lord John Rus- sell at Richmond. Among his new acquaintances was Wilber- force, Bishop of Oxford. He met the French princes at Henry Reeve's, and also at Twickenham, where the Due d'Aumale
1 The Duchess of Argyll wrote to Sumner, Jan. 26, 1861, a reminiscence of the visit: " I remember your loyal look of horror when, sitting in the garden at Argyll Lodge, I said, ' It [the United States] must split; the North cannot be tied forever to such a part- nership of ruffianism and villany.' "
528 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
was living. One afternoon he joined in a fete champetre at Holland House. After seven weeks in London, passed in a round of social engagements, — which were enjoyable, though overtaxing his strength, — he left the metropolis, going first to Midhurst, where he was two nights with Mr. Cobden, who urged a week's visit, and then by way of Weymouth and Jer- sey to Normandy, where he had engaged to visit Tocqueville at his chateau. Returning to Paris, he next made an excursion to Switzerland, the Italian lakes, Holland, and Belgium. He wrote to C. F. Adams, September 1-1, from the Hague : —
"I know nothing of politics at home; hut I have implicit faith in the future. I know we shall succeed. Your sons may expect to take part in the triumph, even if we have passed away. Courage! Be of good cheer; the cause cannot fail ! I have heen impressed by the general prosperity of the countries I have visited ; they seem to smile with fertility and the fruits of industry. But amidst all the tokens of prosperity, there seems to be no home for the laborers. I wonder they do not all desert, and come to us."
Sumner was in England again September 19. He remained less than a week in London, visiting for a night Mr. Russell Sturgis at Walton, and Lord Cranworth at Holwood. He dined twice with Mr. Parkes at the Reform Club, but his friends were mostly absent from London. He then went north to attend the exhibition at Manchester, and to fulfil engagements for visits at Mr. Ash worth's at Bolton, Miss Martineau's at Ambleside, and Mr. Ingham's at South Shields. From Edinburgh he penetrated into the highlands of Scotland as far as Fort Augustus, in order to visit an old acquaintance, Edward Ellice, Sr., at Glenquoich. From this northern point he wrote to E. L. Pierce : —
" I am here farther north than Iona and Staffa, beyond Morven, and near the Isle of Skye, where Flora Macdonald sheltered Charles Edward. There is no family living within forty or fifty miles of the friend whose guest I now am, and whose estate stretches for miles and miles. In front of the window at which I write are the hills of the immense possessions of Lochiel. I am away from American papers, and without letters. By chance some days ago I had a newspaper which contained Wilson's speech at Worcester, — his best effort. Indeed, I always think his last is his best. Never have I known any person whose improvement was so palpable. I long to see our noble State a unit at the head of our great battle for civilization. This note, beginning in a glen, I finish at an inn in Elgin, October 15."
Afterwards he visited the Duke of Sutherland at Dunrobin Castle, Lord Aberdeen at Haddo House, Sir William Stirling at Keir, the Argylls at Inverary, and James Stirling near Dum-
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 529
barton. On his return from Scotland he visited Lord Brougham at his seat near Penrith, William E. Forster at Burley, Wharf e- dale, the Earl of Carlisle at Castle Howard (whom he met for the first time after an interval of fifteen years), and Lord Hath- erton at Teddesley Park in Staffordshire. He passed a day at Llandudno in Wales as the guest of John Bright, — the first meeting of two kindred spirits. His last visits were to Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, and to the Marquis of Westminster at Eaton Hall ; and his last night was at Liverpool with Mr. Rich- ard Rathbone, with whom he had a common sentiment on ques- tions of peace, prison discipline, and slavery. He wrote to Mr. Cobden, November 7 : —
"To-day I sail, against the advice of physicians and friends, who insist upon a longer 'fallow' for my brain. But I cannot be contented to stay. Our American political duties are most exacting. Since I parted from you at Chichester I have seen the Channel Isles, Normandy, Paris, Baden-Baden, Switzerland, the Alps at St. Gothard and St. Bernard, and Chamouni, the Rhine, Holland, then the Manchester Exhibition, the highlands of Scotland, a little of England, including Gladstone and John Bright. The latter I never saw before. I was glad to find him with so many signs of health, though from my own case I can feel how important repose must be to him for some time longer. I leave England profoundly impressed by its civilization, and at the same time painfully regretting three things, — primogeniture, the flunkey- ism of servants, and the tolls, — all three showing themselves everywhere."
To Macready : —
" I am unhappy that I have not seen you ; and not until the last few days did I renounce the idea of reaching Sherborne. But I have not been able to go in that direction. I have sympathized in your sorrows, which I know must be grievous, requiring all of your fortitude and Christian hope, with the solace of remaining children to be borne. Good-by. God bless you ! "
During his absence Sumner kept a journal, the only time he ever kept one, except during a part of his former journey to Europe. It was very brief, — made up of mere jottings of each day's experiences ; and the larger part of it is here given :
" March 21. A most interesting day. The steamer entered the dock [at Havre] between six and seven o'clock in the morning, and we landed about eight o'clock. Walked about and enjoyed the foreign aspect ; went through the farce of custom-house and of passports, and started at eleven o'clock on the railroad for Rouen. The carriages and the whole management of the road were in contrast with ours, and the country through which we passed was charming. Reached Rouen at two o'clock ; stopped at Hotel d'Angle- terre, and at once sallied forth alone to visit the sights, which kept me on Vol. hi. 34
I *l,
530 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
my legs till five o'clock. Diued at table d'hote, and afterwards heard part of ' La Dame Blanche.' Weary enough now, and astonished that I am able to endure the fatigue. The sea air, or sea sickness, or absolute separation from politics at home, or all combined, have given me much of my old strength.
" March 22, Sunday. Stayed in Rouen another day, partly for rest, and partly to enjoy still more the old town ; heard mass and vespers in the ven- erable cathedral; for several hours drove in an open carriage in the envi- rons, and passed a couple of hours at the opera in the evening.
" March 23. Left Rouen this morniug at half-past nine o'clock. The day was fine for March. Much struck by the whole management of the railroad, particularly when the train stopped for refreshments. Civilization seemed to abound. On arriving at Paris, . . . drove to the Hotel Westminster ; then sal- lied forth, and was astonished at the magnificence which 1 saw, beyond all my expectations. First of all, tried to find my old French teacher, M. Debidas,1 52 Rue St. Dominique. On applying there, the concierge, who had been there twelve years, told me that he had never heard of him ; he is perhaps dead. Next called at two different hotels to inquire for Crawford, but could hear nothing of Mm. Enjoyed part of the Rivoli, the Palais Royal, and the Boule- vards, and then two hours at the French opera, — ' William Tell;' home, weary, very weary.
" March 24. Called on T. Gr. Appleton, who took me to drive through the new Rivoli and the Boulevards. The improvements are prodigious. Dined with him at his rooms, and then went with him to the Opera Comique, where I enjoyed very much a new piece, — ' Psyche.'
u March 25. Moved to the Hotel de la Paix, at the corner of Rue de la Paix and the Boulevards, where I have a beautiful apartment from which I can see all the movement of Paris. At last found where Crawford lodged, but could not see him. His wife told me of his condition, which is sad. I went away sorrowful; walked in the garden of the Tuileries; dined at Trois Freres, Palais Royal, and then played the fl&neur, looking into shop windows as I walked along.
u March 26. Wrote letters home ; visited the Invalides, and saw the new tomb of Napoleon ; then visited Mr. William B. Greene and his most intel- ligent wife, living off beyond the Luxembourg ; saw something of that quar- ter; then dined with Elliot C. Cowdin, a merchant here, once connected with the Mercantile Library Association [of Boston], — the first time I have met company at dinner for ten months ; then to the Italian opera, where I heard the last part of ' II Barbiere di Siviglia.'
" March 27. Enjoyed a drive with Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Waterston, who took me to various places, among others Notre Dame and St. Etienne du Mont, and afterwards for hours in the Bois de Boulogne, which was new to me, and as beautiful as new. Dined with Appleton, and then with him and Miss Hensler2 (our Boston singer), to the Opera Lyrique, where I heard ' Oberon.'
u March 28. Plunged into the abyss of the Louvre galleries ; dined with Mr. Edward Brooks, and then tired myself at the Concert Musard.
1 Ante, vol. i. pp. 240, 241, 243.
2 Afterwards Countess of Edla, and wife of Ferdinand, titular king of Portugal.
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 531
" March 29. Beautiful day; called agaiu at Crawford's; his wife told me that he had expressed a desire to see me. The diseased eye was covered with a shade ; hut the other eye aud his face looked well. The fatal disease seems, however, daily to assert its power, and has already touched the brain. I held his hand, and expressed my fervent good wishes, and then after a few minutes left. I was told that it would not do to stay long. Before he came into the room, his faithful Italian servant, when I told him I was a friend of Craw- ford for eighteen years, fell on his knees before me, and poured out his affec- tion and his grief for his master. The whole visit moved me much. This beautiful genius seems to be drawing to its close.1 In the evening dined with Mr. Munroe, the banker;2 afterwards the Theatre Francais, to hear 'L'Aini a la Campagne,' a pleasant piece.
" March 30. Drove with Mr. and Mrs. George B. Emerson s to the museum of porcelain at Sevres, which was interesting. Dined with them, and then with Mr. Emerson went to the French opera, where ' La Favorita ' was played. Of course the show was fine ; but I have heard the chief parts sung with more effect in Boston by an Italian company.
" March 31. Rain and unpleasant weather. Dined with Mr. and Mrs. Greene at their lodgings, beyond the Luxembourg. Received to-day an in- teresting call from the Comte de Circourt.4
" April 1. Visited the Gobelins ; dined at the Cafe Anglais ; passed an hour at the reception of Mrs. F. Brooks in the evening ; afterwards went to the reception of the Comte de Colonna Walewski, Minister for Foreign Affairs. The hotel was splendid, and the company elegant. His resemblance to his father is marked,5 his manners cordial and distinguished. I made haste to speak of M. Boileau, the French secretary at Washington, and to commend him warmly. The minister coolly said that he had married a woman with- out fortune, and therefore could not await the slow course of his diplomatic career ; 6 he was to pass into the consular, and could not repass. This was because of his marriage !
" April 2. Some time this morning at the reception of the Comtesse de Circourt ; dined at Very's, Palais Royal ; afterwards, at the Vaudeville, heard a piece which has a great run, — the ' Faux Bons Hommes.' The acting was spirited and natural.
11 April 4. Still suffering from my cold, and stayed at home all day till evening. M. de Tocqueville called. His conversation was quite interesting. He did not disguise his opposition to the government. Alluding to Walewski, De Moray,7 and the emperor,8 he said that it was ' gouvernement de batards.'
1 He died October 10 of the same year.
2 Fellow-passenger in December, 1837. Ante, vol. i. p. 215.
3 Mr. Emerson (1797-1881) was the widely known educator, Ante, vol. ii. pp. 158-288 ; vol. iii. p. 2.
4 Adolphe de Circourt, who died in 1879, at the age of seventy-eight. Ante, voi. i. p. 235. Boston " Advertiser," Jan. 10, 1880, which contains Mr. Winthrop's tribute to the count.
5 1810-1868. Reputed son of Napoleon I., and minister of foreign affairs, 1855-1860.
6 He married a daughter of Thomas H. Benton, former senator from Missouri.
i (1811-1865.) Reputed son of Queen Hortense and Comte de Flahaut, and as such half-brother of the emperor.
8 An allusion to the relations between Queen Hortense and the Dutch admiral Verhuel.
532 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
There was no disposition, he said, to prevent the writing of hooks or even of reviews, because these could not reach the workshops ; but the daily press was under a close censorship. His own recent work was just passing to the third edition. He did not like Lamartine ; in his opinion he had done much harm by precipitating the republic, which was the cause of the exist- ing state of things. In his opinion Thiers is not a great writer; in style Louis Blanc is brilliant. He spoke most kindly and respectfully of George. In the evening, though still unwell, went to a dinner of the Societe d'Economie Politique.1 First called on Michel Chevalier, who was to take me, and whose appearance is not prepossessing to me. About thirty-five persons were at the table. I was placed at the right of the president. On the other side was a gentleman who mentioned at once that he was a friend of George, and before we parted gave me his card, — Comte de Kergorlay,2 a member of the legisla- tive body. After the dinner, which was very simple, the Society proceeded to consider several topics of political economy, and then, particularly at the sug- gestion of M. Passy, an old Minister of Finance, began to interrogate me. Professor Mohl3 of Germany, who has just produced a remarkable work on public law, was another guest. In the course of the dinner I was led to think, from something which fell from the president and his neighbor, a judge of the Court of Cassation, that they were not in favor of the existing state of things. I then made bold to inquire how many of the Society were on this side. To my astonishment, after carefully surveying the company, they replied that Michel Chevalier alone, and perhaps my next neighbor the Comte de Ker- gorlay, un petit pen, were for the existing state of things. This confirmed a remark which I have repeatedly heard, that the intelligence of the country is against the emperor.
" April 5. Stayed at home till evening, still troubled with my cold. Dined with Appleton pleasantly; then drove to Michel Chevalier, who re- ceived quite en grand seigneur. His principal room was hung with choice pictures bought from the pillage of the Tuileries in 1848. I liked him much better than at first, and his wife seemed quite pleasant. From there I went to the Waterstons, who had invited a few friends at their hotel, among whom was Madame Laugel 4 and her French husband. I have not seen her since she stood with her mother at the antislavery fairs in Boston.
" April 6. Michel Chevalier called to-day, and invited me to dine this evening. Dinner pleasant; nobody present but himself and wife, a prefect, and a judge. From there went to the Comtesse de Circourt's, where was a pleasant company.
1 At Kestaurant Donin, Palais Royal.
2 Count Florian Henri Kergorlay (1801-1873). His brother, Louis Gabriel Cesar (1804-1880), was the friend of Tocqueville.
3 Robert Mohl (1799-1875). Sumner wrote to Chevalier, in accepting an invitation to drive with him and Professor Mohl to the dinner : " I am not a stranger to the writings of Professor Mohl, who was once of Tubingen. His appreciation of the history and institu- tions of my country is marvellous, beginning with his labors twenty years ago, and show- ing itself in his late masterly work on public law, which I trust soon to see finished. The dinner to which you invite me has an additional attraction in his promised presence."
* Daughter of Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. (Ante, vol. ii. pp. 189, 195, 238, 260.) Her husband, Auguste Laugel (1830-), has been the secretary of the Due d'Aumale, and is distinguished as a writer on literature and politics.
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 533
11 April 7. Still suffering from my cold; kept in the house nearly all day. Dined at the Club Des Chemins de Fer, on invitation of Comte Treilhard ; x about eleven at table.
" April 8. Went to Poissy, about fifteen miles from Paris, to see the cattle show.2 I have seen larger in Kentucky. The ceremonies on the distribution of the prizes were interesting. Too tired for the theatre or society ; went to bed before ten o'clock.
"April 9. M. Vattemare3 called and took me with Mr. E. Brooks to the Palais de ITndustrie. Afterwards I went with him to the Museum of the French Colonies ; then to the Bibliotheque du Louvre, which is the private library of the sovereign. Among the specialties here is a unique collection on Petrarch, made by an Italian, Professor Masson, whose life and soul were ab- sorbed by this idea. Here also are the ornamented books which have belonged to the recent sovereigns. In the evening went to Mr. Brooks's, where I met M. and Madame Mohl,4 and also the professor.
"April 10. Called on M. Vattemare, who showed me his American col- lection. Took him to drive through the old quarter of Paris as far as the Barriere du Trone, and then paid a pilgrimage to the quiet tomb of Lafayette, in a little cemetery where there is no common dust ; all there were of the ancient nobility on earth. Went to St. Roch, also to the Madeleine. The theatres, which to-day are closed, give place to the church. Good Friday; in the evening called on Mr. and Mrs. Leroy of New York.
" April 11. Received a pleasant visit from Mr. Senior of England, who told me something of friends there ; in the evening dined with the Comte de Treilhard at the Ancien Cercle ; afterwards went to Madame Mohl's, where I had been invited to dine, to meet among others the great Italian actress, Madame Ristori ; 5 she was still there when I arrived. In her organization and magnetic force she reminded me of Fanny Kemble and Jenny Lind; I should place her in the same category of physical natures. Her manner was amiable and intelligent. In a short conversation which I had with her, she mentioned the voyage as an insurmountable objection to visiting America. She spoke warmly of ' Maria Stuardo ; ' and when I objected that it was a translation, and said that when I listened to Italian I wish to have one of the classics of the language, she differed entirely, and still contended for her favor- ite, even against Alfieri.
"April 12. Visited Mr. Senior and talked of English friends, and of our American affairs ; then to the Hotel de Clnny and Palais des Thermes, which I found very interesting. Such a storehouse of curiosities in America would be most attractive. Visited the Pantheon and other churches; revived my recollections of the Law School and the Sorbonne ; dined with Appleton ; after- wards for a little while to the Opera Comique, which I left before it was over to get home to bed.
i Adolphe Treilhard (1815-1880), a judge and councillor of state.
2 Kergorlay was to have been his companion, but was prevented by illness.
3 Alexander Vattemare (1796-1864), who made international exchanges of duplicate books and works of art his specialty.
4 Julius Mohl (1800-1876). Madame Mohl, nde Mary Clarke, was born in 1793, and died in 1882.
6 (1821-.) M. Villemain was another guest.
534 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
u April 13. Breakfasted by invitation with Mr. Senior. Among the guests were M. de Tocqueville and Lord Granville.1 The conversation was chiefly in French. A topic which interested ine was about public speakers. M. de Tocqueville said that Odilon Barrot was the only one he had known who absolutely spoke without preparation ; not even Berryer did this. No one attempted to improvise. Royer-Collard,2 whose name was great, always placed his written discourse on the tribune before him, being unwilling even to seem to do what he did not, for he carefully prepared what he said. Thiers sometimes improvised a speech of five minutes, but his effects were all studied ; so also with Guizot. Lamartine sometimes exercised the privilege of correct- ing the reports of his speeches, even so far as to introduce ' bravos ' and ' ap- plaudissements ' which did not take place. Lord Granville said that Lord Palmerston told him that Brougham was the best speaker he had heard in Parliament. I inquired of De Tocqueville about prison discipline. For some years he had left this subject, being entirely absorbed in other directions, and he thought the separate system had lost ground with the government. When arrested on the morning of the coup d'etat, he was sent to Vincennes in one of the voitures cellulaires which he had helped to introduce, and thus had a prac- tical opportunity of trying. He was profoundly convinced that the cellular system, even if abandoned for long terms, ought to be established for short terms, and in houses of detention. He spoke of George with warm interest as a personal friend. After breakfast drove to M. Vattemare, who accompanied me to the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, where he introduced me to M. Sibbermanu, who is much interested in the question of weights and measures for all the nations ; next to the Mint, which I did not see, but I had a long interview with its head; and next to the Institute, where the Academy of Sciences was then in session. I heard several papers read ; saw the ceremony of balloting for corresponding members ; saw many of the men of science, among them M. Dumas,3 and particularly M. Le Verrier,4 who had a fresh and young look ; dined with Appleton, and went with him to hear Ristori in ' Maria Stuardo. ' The Italian language was delicious to hear, much more than the French. It seemed to me that the beauty of her acting had not been exaggerated. When the play was over, I was inclined to think that I had never before seen so good an actor, with so much power and so little exaggeration.
11 April H. Was with Appleton for some time selecting a dessert service for the Longfellows ; then went to M. Vattemare, who took me to a creche, where the little children of laborers are kept during the day; then to the Corps Legislatif, which is the old Palais Bourbon, where I visited particularly the excellent library, and then the Chamber, and traversed the corridors of
1 Other guests were Jobez, Marcet, and BartMemy St. Hilaire. N. W. Senior gives an account of conversations at this and other dates where Sumner was present. " Cor- respondence and Conversation of A. de Tocqueville with N. W. Senior from 1834 to 1859," vol. ii. pp. 160-170; "Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot, etc," vol. ii. pp. 114-139.
2 Ante, vol. i. pp. 247, 248. The Marquis of Chambrun expressed to the writer the opinion that there were material points of resemblance between Sumner and Royer-Collard.
3 (1800-1884.) Ante, vol. i. p. 237.
4 Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, astronomer and senator. (1811-1877.)
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 535
the bureaus. Went to De Tocqueville's on invitation ; found him as usual ami- able and interesting, and full of feeling against slavery. He was unwilling that France should be judged by the writings of George Sand, whose morality he condemned. I met there a granddaughter of Lafayette, Mademoiselle de Corcelle,1 and her father, who was French Minister at Rome at the time of the difficulties.
"April 15. Breakfasted at eleven o'clock with Mr. Senior, where were M. Guizot, M. Remusat, M. de Tocqueville, De Corcelle, Lord Granville, De Circourt, etc. I had never met Guizot before. His appearance is prepos- sessing, and his conversation eloquent. The question was asked which of the foreign accents of persons speaking French was least agreeable to Frenchmen. Guizot said at once the German ; and the others joined in this, except Remusat, who said the Spanish. Guizot mentioned that Louis Philippe judged a man's ability by the languages he spoke ; that the king spoke all the different dialects of the Italian. He expressed to me very kindly his sympathy in my position and his opposition to slavery. I left this company early, in order to keep an appointment with the Comte de Montalembert,2 at his house in the Rue du Bac. He spoke English with perfect ease and very little accent. He deplored the present state of things in France, and was astonished that his country could humble herself so much. But he did not profess to read the future. He thought that Louis Napoleon would degrade royalty throughout Europe, and hasten its extinction. He was astonished at the extent to which he was favored by the English, even by the Liberals. Formerly, while Louis Na- poleon was a member of the Assembly, the Count had been on familiar terms with him, and had recognized the power of his position ; but he did not antici- pate that he would get so far. Then he constantly avowed faith in his star. The Count thought him a man of courage. Of course the Count was against slavery. In the evening dined with M. and Madame Laugel; Senior was there, and our talk was in English. Afterwards company came, among whom was M. Elie de Beaumont.3 He spoke of Dr. Charles T. Jackson4 of Boston as having made ' la belle decouverte de l'etherisation.' To this I said nothing.5 Dr. Evans was here, the Philadelphia dentist, who sees every- body. He speaks of the emperor in the warmest terms of admiration, and describes him as laborious and happy, — beginning the day with a cold bath, and meeting his wife with a kiss.
"April 16. This morning called on M. Guizot, who had previously, through M. Vattemare, expressed a desire to receive me. I found him in a small and simple room, of which the walls were covered with books, except where there were three portraits and one medallion. The latter was of Casimir Perier ; and one of the portraits was of Lord Aberdeen, both personal friends; the other two portraits were of Washington and Hamilton. He remarked that no people at its cradle had been surrounded by men of so high a character as those in our Revolution and at the formation of the Constitution. He
1 Afterwards the wife of the Marquis de Chambrun (1831-1891), who lived in Washing- ton for many years.
2 1810-1870.
3 1798-1874. * 1805-1880.
5 Sumner considered Dr. W. T. G. Morton to have a better title to the honor.
536 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
lamented the mediocrity which he found now in France. Among the very young there was talent ; but among those between twenty-five and forty there was an absolute want of all remarkable l!alent. This was the case, he under- stood, also at the bar. Alluding to the studies of Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Sparks in the department of foreigu affairs, he thought the latter had puise
the most.
Keturned the call of Sir Robert Dallas. Went to M. Vattemare, who accompanied me to the Imprimerie Imperiale, where we spent some time, and also to several other places in that region of Paris ; dined with Mr. Henry James,1 who is here with his family; then went to Lamartine, who was in bed with a severe rheumatism ; his English wife, tall and thin, but re- fined in person, came to receive me. She expressed much disappointment that her husband's book had not found subscribers in America. The committee organized to procure subscribers had not subscribed themselves.
" April 17. Visited the sculptures of the Louvre to-day, and enjoyed those of the Renaissance as historical, and two or three antiques as beautiful, particularly the Diana de la Biche, which has always seemed to me one of the most agreeable remains of ancient art, and also the Venus Victrix. From the Louvre drove to make visits. Dined with Appleton; went with him and Miss Hensler to the Varietes, where we enjoyed several small pieces which made us laugh.
" April 18. Visited the Archives Imperiales, and passed several hours. Here I gained a new idea not only of the system which is now applied to the preservation of archives in France, but also which must have superintended them for centuries. Here is a wonderful accumulation of authentic materials, beautifully preserved and arranged, illustrating the history of the country. From this visit, which I enjoyed very much, I rambled through the narrow old streets of Paris as long as my legs would bear me. Unhappily, I am still sensitive to fatigue. In the evening went first to Lady Elgin's ; she is aged, but still interesting. Next to the reception of Countess Circourt ; then to that of the Duchess de Rauzan,2 where I met M. Berryer,3 who did not hesitate to express the shame he felt in the existing state of things. He said that they were no longer free in France ; that his career was finished ; that press and Parliament were both gone. He looked like his pictures, with his black coat buttoned close across his breast almost up to his neck.
" April 19. Went to the reception of Michel Chevalier; from there with Mr. Senior to the reception of M. Drouyn de Lhuys,4 formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs. Among my morning visits was one to M. Guerolt,5 a Re- publican friend of George, who spoke freely about the state of things here. One thing is certain, — nobody believes in the present dynasty.
" April 20. Called on M. Drouyn de Lhuys; sat with him in his cabinet
i Of Boston (1811-1882.) American writer on social and philosophical subjects; father of the novelist.
2 This was an acquaintance made probably through the Circourts. The duchess gathered distinguished people in her salon. Sumner was there again at a reception in May, 1859.
3 The eminent advocate, 1790-1868.
4 1805-1881.
5 Adolph Guerolt, 1810-1872, a St. Simonist, journalist, and deputy.
^Et. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 537
nearly two hours. Conversation was in English, which he speaks quite well. He inquired of me particularly with regard to the feeling in the United States towards the emperor and the present state of things, and wished me to an- swer frankly, as if he were not a Frenchman. This I did at some length. He then gave me an account of his relations with the emperor , of the cir- cumstances under which he took office, and finally quitted it. He does not con- sider the emperor as remarkable in talents, but in will, and what the French call caract&re ; also in differing entirely from the French, —being calm and cool, while they are excitable and hot. He is not paresseux ; but he is not industrious, and allows his time to be occupied by small things, — as uniforms and plans of buildings and ceremonies. M. Drouyn de Lhuys kept aloof from the coup d'etat, with which he had no sympathy. He thought the American government would be wise not to involve itself in the complications growing out of the Chinese war, for that any advantages conquered by England and France would be for the general beuefit, and we should be able to profit by them. I found him most intelligent and amiable. He kindly expressed a desire that I should visit him in the country. In the evening dined with Comte de Circourt ; De Tocqueville was there. I handed in Madame de Cir- court, and on my right I found M. LePlay,1 a friend of George, who takes a great interest in the moral condition of his country, on which we talked much. After dinner was a reception.
" April 21. Kept in the house nearly all day on account of my troubles, particularly the cold, which has vexed me ever since my arrival. Received several calls ; in the evening Michel Chevalier took me to the reception of M. Magne,2 the Minister of Finance, and then to M. Fould,3 Minister of State. The rooms were fine ; the company official, but not numerous.
" April 22. Kept in the house again nearly all day. Having accepted the invitation of Comte de Kergorlay some days ago, went out to dinner reluc- tantly; met a large company, many of them in the present government. From the dinner got home as soon as I could, without going elsewhere.
" April 23. Again kept in the house until it was time to keep an engage- ment made a week ago to dine with Comte de Montalembert. I found his wife agreeable, a great admirer of the character of Washington, of whom she had a portrait in a bed-room at her country house ; also a great hater of slavery. She would rather dig with her fingers than live on money wrung from slaves. Montalembert again expressed his mortification that England, amidst all her professions of liberal principles, should lend herself to Louis Napoleon. After dinner several persons came in ; I stole away. Did not go to Jules Simon's,4 where I had been invited, but got home as soon as possible, and went to bed.
"April 24. Began the day by abandoning a breakfast at Mr. Senior's, where I was to meet Manin, the head of the late Venetian Republic, and Lord Ashburton.
" April 28. In the house all the time till to-day, when I wrapt up and went to the exhibition of Paul de la Roche's pictures, which pleased me.
1 1806-1882. Councillor of State, an engineer, author of scientific works, and senator. Other guests were Viel-Castel, and Merim£e.
2 Pierre Magne, 1806-1879.
3 Achille Fould, 1800-1867.
4 1814-.
538 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
"May 1. Sent letters to the [American] merchants, declining a public dinner.1
"May 2. At last got out to-day. During all this time I have read and seen company. I have hired a Frenchman who does not know English to come every forenoon to read and speak French with me. Went to the Insti- tute and heard the discourse of M. Mignet on Lakanal.2 It was a master- piece, hut had sallies against our country. On my return I addressed him a letter at some length, making a reclamation. In the evening went to the reception of Madame de Circourt.
" May 3. Appleton called and took me to the Bois de Boulogne; dined with him. Then to Lady Elgin's; then to Michel Chevalier's.
" May 4- This morning received a visit from M. Mignet,3 in which he expressed himself in the handsomest terms with regard to my letter. Visited with Vattemare the library of the Institute, then the Cour des Comptes, where M. Battie, the premier president, received me very kindly, and gave orders that I should see all the archives, which are kept in a separate build- ing, and also the rooms. The machinery of administration in France seems to be perfect. In the evening went to M. de Lamartine. He was in a small room, with some half-dozen ladies and as many gentlemen, and while I was there several came and went. He received me kindly, and afterwards com- plimented me on my French, which he said was better than that of any American he had seen for ten years. Surely, his experience had been pecul- iar. He says he can understand English when spoken slowly. He under- stands the English better than the Americans ; the latter speak vite, vite, si vite. Nobody, he said, could anticipate the future of France. With a people so changeable, nothing was certain but change. I observed that there were two or three beautiful dogs which he petted. He invited me to visit him in the country. Afterwards went to Madame de Circourt. Lamartine gave an interesting account of Soule 4 at a dinner with Girardin, where were some eighteen persons, at which he undertook to vindicate slavery in a manner very ennuyeuse, while the company held down their heads.
" May 5. Breakfasted at Madame Mohl's. Among the guests were Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Senior. Went to the Corps Legislatif, where, through the kindness of Comte de Kergorlay, I was accommodated with a seat in one of the tribunes. A member who came to me remarked that ' nous n'avons pas d'orages.' Everything was very quiet. The debate was on a law regulat- ing courts-martial. Dined with Appleton ; in the evening heard Ristori in ' Camilla,' a piece of moderate merit, but very well acted. I did not like it so well as 'Maria Stuardo.'
i John Munroe, E. C. Cowdin, Thomas N. Dale, H. Woods, W. Endicott, Jr., etc. Sumner's letter will be found in his Works, vol. iv. pp. 402-405.
2 Joseph Lakanal, 1762-1845. a French writer and naturalist; a Republican and revo- lutionist, living in the United States 1815-1837; at one time President of the University of Louisiana. Incidentally the lecturer made some comments unfavorable to life in the United States, to which Sumner took exception as applying only to localities, and not just as a statement of general characteristics. Mignet's lecture may be found in "Memoires de l'Acad^mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l'Institut Imperiale de France," vol. ii. pp. 1-32.
3 1796-1884.
4 Pierre Soule" was in Europe 1853-1855, having been appointed Minister to Spain in 1853. While there he joined in the Ostend Manifesto.
^t. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 539
" May 6. Breakfasted with Mr. Senior; pleasant company again.1 Drove with Appleton to the review in the Champs de Mars, where were sixty thou- sand soldiers, — more than I have ever seen before, and more than I shall ever see again ; dined at a restaurant, and then went to Theatre Porte St. Martin to see the new play entitled ' Wilham Shakspeare ; ' but after two acts was so tired I was obliged to get home.
" May 7. Went to Musee d'Artillerie; made several calls. Passed my evening quietly; too tired for society or theatre.
u May 8. Went to Palais de Justice to hear M. Mairie, a member of the Provisional Government of the Republic ; but the case was postponed again on account of the death of his wife. Made calls ; drove with Appleton to the Bois. In the evening went to Madame Mohl's, where our Boston Miss Hensler sang, and I met a M. de Turgenev of Russia,2 who told me that serfdom would be abolished there within ten years ; that the emperor iusisted upon it ; that nobody vindicated it; that the only question was how to arrange the proprietary interests involved ; and that a commission is now occupied with the question. I told him that this was the greatest news I had heard since leaving home.3
"May 9. Visited the Imperial Library, confining myself to-day to the collection of engravings, manuscripts, and charts. Iu the latter department I was kindly received by M. Jobart, one of the old Egyptian expedition ; also saw a gentleman who claimed to have first invented the system of print- ing catalogues by stereotyped plates of individual titles, which Mr. Jewett 4 has put forth in America ; drove to the Bois to hear the music of the bands in the Pre Catalan. Dined with Appleton; in-the evening, Theatre Francais, where I enjoyed very much ' Fiammina.'
" May 10. Went to Versailles, merely to see the waters play, without entering the Museum. All the jets seemed feeble by the side of that on Boston Common. In the evening went to French opera, where was the ballet of the ' Corsaire,' given by order ; in the imperial box were the em- peror and empress, and their guest the Grand Duke Constantine.
" May 11. Made calls;5 dined with Appleton; weary; gave up society and theatre ; passed evening at home alone, reading French grammar.
u May 12. Went to St. Denis and saw the resting-place of the kings of France ; returned the call of Major Poussin ; went to the salon of Madame Meynier, who has just written an excellent article showing the inconsistency of slavery and Christianity. There I met M. Passy; also M. Coquerel,6 the eloquent preacher, and Mrs. Stowe.
1 Other guests were Tocqueville, Corcelle, Count Arrivabene, and Clives.
2 Ivan Sergiewitz Turgenev, 1818-1883; novelist, exiled from Russia, and living by turns in Germany and France, who in his writings gave vivid pictures of life in his native country.
3 The information proved to be true.
4 Charles C. Jewett (1816-1868), librarian of Brown University, of the Smithsonian Institution, and of the Boston Public Library.
5 Among them was one on Dowager Lady Elizabeth Bruce, mother of Sir Frederick Bruce.
6 1795-1868. He heard Coquerel preach at this time or in 1858-1859. He intro- duced, October, 1871, the younger Coquerel to an audience in Boston. Works, vol. xiv. pp. 311-312.
540 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
u May 13. Visited the Institution des Jeuues Aveugles. Went to St. Germain, the old retreat of the Stuarts, enjoyed the view from the terrace, and dined with Sir Charles Grey.1 At his table met Mrs. Bland, an agree- able lady, daughter of the late Mr. Wharton, of Philadelphia, married to an Englishman, and now residing here; reached home just before midnight.
' ' May 14- Passed some time at the Louvre ; visited the studio of Mr. Kellogg, an American artist ; admired very much a portrait on his easel ; also enjoyed a collection he has made, among which is a picture which seems to be a Raphael, and another a Leonardo da Vinci ; dined with the Laugels, where was De Tocqueville ; afterwards went to the reception of Jules Simon, where I met republicans, among whom were Camot 2 and Henri Martin 3 the historian. Their feeling against Louis Napoleon was bitter.
u May 15. Visited the Bibliotheque Imperiale, also the Hotel des Mon- naies, and the Institution des Sourds-Muets. At the latter I was much struck by the deaf and dumb, who had learned to articulate simply by watching the lips of a person who spoke; dined with Appleton, where I met Captain Lynch,4 who told me many pleasant things of Ferruk Khan, the Persian ambassador.
u May 16. Visited the Bibliotheque d' Arsenal, then the chateau at Vin- ceunes, then Pere la Chaise ; dined at the Cafe Anglais as the guest of a few Americans here.
" May 17. Through the kindness of Comte de Kergorlay, attended a con- cert of about twelve hundred voices of young musicians under the auspices of the city of Paris ; 5 dined with Michel Chevalier ; at dinner was a Rus- sian prince, also the famous Emile Pereire,6 the head of the Credit Mobilier ; afterwards went to Comte de Montalembert ; he was unwell, but I saw his wife and daughter.
" May 18. Visited the Observatory, but could not obtain admission; spent some time examining the collection of the Ecole des Mines ; next went to the region of medicine, examined the Musee Dupuytren and plunged into the dis- secting rooms, strong with the stench of human flesh ; in the evening was too tired for society or theatre ; took to my room and books.
uMay 19. Started early for Versailles, abandoning my morning exercise with my teacher; went through the Trianons, and then through the great museums ; returned to town at the beginning of the evening, too tired for anything but my room. I could hardly read my grammar.
"May W. Made calls; then went to Ville d'Avray, about nine miles from Paris, to find my old friend Tehihatcheff. He had gone to the steeple- chase, not far off ; I followed ; saw the running and leaping of horses, but not my friend ; went back to his house, where I saw his new wife ; 7 dined
i 1786-1865.
2 Lazare Hippolyte Camot (1801-1888), a St. Simonist, author, deputy, senator, son of the war minister who " organized victory," and father of the President of the French republic.
3 1810-1883.
4 William F. Lynch (1805-1865), explorer of the Dead Sea.
5 "Orphan sous la direction de M. Ch. Gounod." 6 1800-1875.
7 A Scotch lady. M. de Tehihatcheff died in Florence, Italy, Oct. 13, 1890, at the age of eighty-two. Ante, vol. i. p. 242. The writer in visits to that city in 1879, 1882, and 1889 enjoyed his conversation at his apartment in the Piazza di Zuavi.
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 541
with him ; got home at ten o'clock, too tired for society, and compelled to give up several opportunities.
u May 21. Drove with Appleton in Bois de Boulogne; caught in a terri- ble storm of rain ; went home, too much exhausted to go out.
" May 22. Visited the Horticultural Exhibition in the Palais de l'lndus- trie ; drove to Montmartre, saw the cemetery ; dined with Appleton, to meet Signor Eulfini,1 the Italian who has written so successfully in English; afterwards passed an hour or two at Lamartine's.
" May 23. Took my last French lesson to-day, previous to leaving Paris; drove with Appleton to St. Cloud, where we dined in the open air, while the band played near us; in the evening packed my trunk.
"May 24. Left Paris for a tour in the provinces, hoping that a change may improve my health, and wishing to see France elsewhere than at Paris ; arrived at Orleans by railroad about uoon ; day beautiful, country charming ; took a carriage and drove to the chateau at the source of the Loire, where Bolingbroke lived in his exile ; visited the old streets of Orleans, the Museum, and the Rue Pothier, where was the house in which this great jurist lived ; also saw his monument at the cathedral. At the end of the afternoon went on by rail to Blois, where in the evening I rambled about old streets as much as my strength would permit ; heard the close of a sermon in a well-packed church opposite the chateau, and also attended a concert.
" May 25. Early in the morning was waked by the light streaming into my window; as I dressed, looked out upon the Loire. At seven o'clock started in an open carriage to visit Chambord, about eleven miles distant, where after visiting the castle I breakfasted ; returned to Blois ; visited the interesting castle there, and other objects, and then took the railroad for Amboise, where I visited the castle ; then in an open carriage drove to Chenonceaux, perhaps the most beautiful castle of France ; returned to Amboise for dinner ; then by railroad to Tours. An interesting day.
u May 26. Rambled about Tours, visited its museum, its library, its cathe- dral, and its old streets ; also visited Mettray, the seat of the interesting colony of young culprits now under the direction of M. Demetz,2 formerly of the royal court of Paris. I was much touched by his saying that he had renounced his position, thinking that there was something more for him to do than to con- tinue rendering judgments of court, — ' faisant des arrets ; ' that he had the happiness to be a Christian, and that it was of much more importance to him what the good God should think of him than what men did. I was amused by the energy with which M. Demetz commended the sabots which his pupils wore. He said that in winter he wore them himself about the yard ; that they protected the feet better against moisture than any india-rubber.
"May 27. Left Tours by railroad early in the morning for Angers ; en- joyed the sight of valley and of castles. At Angers passed several hours ; visited its museum, its library, its remarkable chateau, and plunged into its narrow ancient streets ; in the afternoon went on to Nantes, where I arrived so weary that I soon went to bed. On the way my attention had been arrested by the ruins of the old castle of Gilles de Retz, the original Blue Beard, and
1 1807-1881; author of " Doctor Antonio."
2 An acquaintance of Sumner, made in 1838. Ante, vol. 1. p. 278.
542 ' MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
also by the heights of St. Florent, so memorable in the history of the Veu- dean war.
'* May 28. Rose early, and with a carriage visited the chief points of interest in Nantes ; took the express for Tours, then took a private carriage for Loches, a distance of thirty miles through a country beautifully cultivated. Here I am in a hotel, very ancient and primitive in all respects.
" May 29. This morning rose early to look about and eujoy this old pic- turesque place ; visited the chateau, and inspected the dungeons once occu- pied by prisoners of state ; saw the writing and marks of Ludovico Sforza made during his gloomy imprisonment ; was filled with detestation of the government that kept such cells ; as a ruin this chateau is one of the finest in Europe ; here also is the tomb of Agnes Sorel. My landlord here was a simple man, who had seen few strangers; he told me that there was not a single man cook in Loches with its five thousand inhabitants. Drove through a fertile country to La Haye, and visited the chamber in which Descartes was born. My visit here seemed to excite attention ; lost the train I had intended to take at Les Ormes ; waited there in a park till evening, when I went on to Poitiers.
" May 80. This is an old place. Early in the morning visited its cathe- dral, its ancient churches, and its library ; at eleven o'clock took the train for Bordeaux, passing Angouleme ; also Coutras, the scene of Henry IV.'s bat- tles, and St. Emilion. In the evening went for a little while to the mag- nificent theatre.
" May 31. Walked and drove, in order to see everything ; found, after two efforts, the tomb and effigies of Montaigne ; in the evening tired, tired, tired ; obliged to take to my bed.
" June 1. Left Bordeaux by rail for Bayonne. Dreary country, flat, with peasants on stilts. On reaching Bayonne, went out to Biarritz, the famous watering-place, where the emperor has built a chateau.
"June 2. Left Bayonne early by rail for Dax, where at breakfast met a Frenchman who insisted upon knowing my age and business ; he set me down at thirty-five, perhaps thirty-eight. The Eaux-Chaudes there are striking. Thence by diligence to Pau, where I arrived at evening ; the view here is far more beautiful than I had expected, — I think the most beautiful thing of the kind which I have seen in France.
" June 3. This whole day passed at Pau, where I saw the castle, and enjoyed the Pyrenees capped with snow.
"June 4. Started at eight o'clock in the morning on the outside of the diligence for Eaux -Bonnes in the Pyrenees ; as an accidental companion was a priest, with whom I talked a great deal, and who was very civil. The road was constantly ascending by the side of a beautiful little stream. Arrived before four o'clock ; tasted the waters, took a bath, and made a contract with a guide to conduct me to-morrow across the mountains to Cauterets.
"June 5. Mounted on horseback at six o'clock in the morning; guide also on horseback, and another horse with my trunk led by a person on foot ; traversed the mountain to Argeles, where I arrived about five o'clock ; on the top was snow. Gave up going to Cauterets, to rest at the pleasant inn of Argeles ; weary, very weary ; on the way passed shepherds on the mountain.
^Et. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 543
"June 6. Left Argeles (after a night sleepless from fatigue) in a private carriage for Bagneres de Bigorre ; then took another carriage for St. Gaudens, where I arrived about nine o'clock in the evening.
' ' June 7. In the diligence, hot and dusty, over the plains of Languedoc to Toulouse, which interested me much.
" June 8. Early in the morning took the train eastward ; passed the day at Carcassonne, in order to explore its well-preserved and venerable ruins, reviving the Middle Ages ; in the evening went on, passing ancient Narbonne and Beziers to Cette, where I arrived at midnight.
' ' June 9. Early again reached Moutpellier at seven o'clock ; rambled through its streets, visited its museum, and took the train for Lyons, pass- ing Nimes, Avignon, and many other interesting places, but felt obliged to hurry. I had already seen Nimes and Avignon.1
"June 10. Early this morning by train to Dijon, where I stopped to visit this old town, particularly to see its churches, and the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy ; in the evening went on to Fontainebleau ; was detained some hours on the road by an accident to the engine.
"June 11. Early this morning drove in the famous forest of Fontaine- bleau ; then went through the palace ; then to Paris, reaching my old quar- ters, Rue de la Paix, at five o'clock ; in the evening went to Ambigu Comique to see 'Le Naufrage de la Meduse.'
11 June 16. Left Paris in train for Boulogne ; while train stopped at Amiens for refreshments ran to see the famous cathedral ; crossing from Boulogne to Folkestone was quite sea-sick ; met aboard Miss Hosmer the sculptor, Gibson, Macdonald, and other artists from Rome ; reached London between nine and ten o'clock in the evening.
"June 17. Looked about for permanent lodgings; took rooms at No. 1 Regent Street [Maurigy's] ; saw my old friend J. Parkes, and dined with him in Saville Row.
" Jane 18. Left a few cards on old friends ; saw the queen in her carriage coming from the levee ; went to the opera, ' Don Giovanni ; ' afterwards to Monckton Milnes, who seemed much altered since I knew him.
" June 19. Down into the city ; dined at Dolby's ; in the evening went to Albert Smith's ' Mont Blanc'
"June 20. Passed some time with Lord Brougham, — very kind, but old; drove with the Mackintoshes in Hyde Park ; dined at Russell Sturgis's.
"June 21. Church in the Abbey; found myself seated at the foot of the tomb of Fowell Buxton ; diued with Mackintosh. Afterwards to Metropolitan Club, where I met Layard, Milnes, etc.
"June 22. Breakfast with Senior, where I met Lord Glenelg, Hatherton, Ebrington,2 also Milnes and M. de Lesseps and M. Merimee.3 Visited Sheep- shank's pictures; called on Lady Wharncliffe ; went to House of Commons, also Lords, where I spoke with many friends, old and new ; heard the Lord Chancellor, my old friend Lord Cranworth, open the subject of the consolida- tion of the statutes; dined with the Lord Chancellor, where was the grand- daughter of Lord Byron.
1 In 1839, when ere route for Italy. 2 1818-. The third Earl Fortescue.
3 Prosper Merimee (1803-1870), novelist and historian.
544 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
"June 23. Breakfast with Lord Ebrington; calls; Parliament; dinner with Mr. T. Baring.
" June 21*. Breakfast with Sir H. Holland; visit at Lansdowne House; visited the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford House ; declined her invitation to stay at Stafford House ; dinner at Lord Hatherton's, where I met old Lord Haddington.
" June 25. Duchess of Sutherland took me to the Crystal Palace, — a wonder. Before going, met at Stafford House Lord Shaftesbury ; dinner at Mr. Bates's, where were many distinguished people.1
" June 26. Visited the Athenaeum Club, where I have been made a pro tern, member; visited the House of Commons; breakfasted in the morning with the Duke of Argyll, where I met Lord Aberdeen ; dined with Lord Gran- ville, where I met Lord Clarendon and enjoyed him much, for he seemed a good man ; then to a great party at Lansdowne House.
" June 27. Weut down the Thames to the Tower; saw its curiosities; stopped at the Herald College and St. Paul's ; lunched at the Mitre in the seat of Dr. Johnson ; dined at Mr. Senior's, where were Lord and Lady Mon- teagle, Mr. and Mrs. Keeve, M. Merimee, M. de Lesseps.
u June 28. Went for morning service to the old Temple Church; called on Mr. Grote ; sat some time with Mr. Parkes ; dined at Sir Henry Holland's.
u June 29. Breakfast with Koebuck; Parliament, where in Commons I heard Disraeli, — in Lords, Ellenborough, Derby, etc., in brief speeches ; dined at the club, and went for a short time to see the scenic representation of ' Richard II.' at the Princess's theatre.
"June 30. Breakfast at Lansdowne House, where I sat next to Lord John Russell and conversed much with him. Monckton Milnes took me to the committees of the House of Commons, where I sat for some time ; visited Westminster Abbey again ; dined with Lord Hatherton, where were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Van de Weyer, Duke and Duchess of Argyll, etc.
"July 1. Breakfast at Lord Hatherton's, where were Tocqueville, Senior, Lord Aberdeen. Dinner this evening as the guest of the Benchers of the Inner Temple in their old hall, Mr. Roebuck, as treasurer, in the chair. My health was proposed, to which I replied.2 Afterwards went to Mr. Procter's (Barry Cornwall's) ; afterwards to Cosmopolitan Club, where I met Thackeray and others.
" July 2. Lunch at Argyll Lodge ; the Argylls took me to Professor Owen in Richmond Park; dinner with Mr. Ellice, where I met Mr. Dallas3 and family.
"July 3. Lunch at Stafford House, where was Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity ; visited House of Commons and House of Lords ; dined with Mr. Stirling,4 where were Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Ellice, Lady Molesworth, and
1 Among them were Lord Wensleydale, Henry Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton), and the Russian Minister.
2 At Lady Hatherton's request he wrote out his remarks concerning Lord Denman, and the manuscript was sent to Mrs. Edward Cropper, daughter of Lord Denman.
3 George M. Dallas, United States Minister.
4 Sir William Stirling Maxwell. 1818-1878. He married Mrs. Norton in 1877, and both died within a year after their marriage. Ante, vol. ii. p. 61.
Mi. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 545
Mrs. Norton, as beautiful as ever ; afterwards to a party at Lord Kinnaird's,1 where Mr. Webb 2 read.
" July 4. Gave up an engagement to dine with the Law Amendment Society at Greenwich, with Lord Brougham in the chair, that I might avoid public speaking ; went to Cliveden, the villa of the Duchess of Sutherland, to pass Sunday; there were the Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce), Gladstone, Labouchere3 and his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Charles Howard; pleasant talk.
" July 5. Sunday. Heard the bishop preach twice ; pleasant talk again, and most hospitable welcome.
u July 6. Lady Mary Labouchere took Gladstone and myself to her place,4 the famous Stoke, with the churchyard where Gray was buried, and part of the old manor-house where Sir Edward Coke died ; walked with Glad- stone two miles to the railroad ; enjoyed his conversation much; in the eve- ning dined with Lord Brougham, and met a most distinguished company, — the Lord Chancellor, Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas, Dr. Lushington, Lord Clanricarde, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Broughton, Lord Glenelg, Duke of Wellington, Bishop of Oxford, Sir John Stephen, Mr. Parkes, ete.
" July 7. Breakfast at Henry Reeve's, where I met the Due de Nemours, Due d'Aumale, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Stanley, Lord Hather- ton, Lady Theresa Lewis, Tocqueville ; visited British Museum, and Mr. Owen; met the committee on the Ballot at their rooms in the city; heard Roebuck open his motion in the Commons for the abolition of the lord- lieutenancy of Ireland; dined with Mr. Parkes, where I met Mr. Sparks5 and Miss Cushman.6
'' July 8. Dinner at Earl Fortescue's, where was a large and distinguished company ; afterwards to the Russian Ambassador's, where I met Lord and Lady Palmerston and Lord Stanhope.
u July 9. House of Commons; dinner with Sir Edward Buxton.
" July 10. Breakfast at Lord Hatherton's; attended debate in the House of Lords on the Jews' bill; heard Lords Granville, Derby, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Dufferin, Argyll, the Bishops of London and Oxford, and the Archbishop of Canterbury; went late to a party at Stafford House.
u July 11. Invited by the Reform Club as honorary member; already in- vited also by Traveller's ; made calls ; dined at Lord Belper's, where I met for the first time Macaulay, so altered I did not know him.
" July 12. Sunday. Went to Dr. Lushington's, at Ockham Park in Sur- rey, the old seat of Lord Chancellor King ; among the guests there was Lady Trevelyan, a most agreeable sister of Macaulay.
" July 13. Left Ockham in the afternoon ; was driven by Charles Buxton to Esher, where I took the train for London ; attended debate in the Lords ; dined with Lord Wensleydale, where were the Lord Chancellor, Lord Lynd- hurst, the Argylls, etc. ; afterwards a reception there.
1 Ninth Baron. 1807-1878. 2 Of Philadelphia.
3 Afterwards Lord Taunton. He married the daughter of the sixth Earl of Carlisle.
4 The estate has been sold. 5 Jared Sparks. 6 Charlotte Cushman, the actress.
vol. in. 35
546 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
" July 14. House of Commons; dinner with Monckton Milnes, where I met Mr. Murray, the publisher; after dinner again to House of Commons, which was engaged in preventing a member from being heard.
"July 15. Breakfast at Duke of Argyll's, where were Macaulay, the Milmans, Senior, Reeve, Trench, Maurice, etc. ; made calls ; went to Gen- eral Fox's,1 at his beautiful villa, whose wife, Lady Mary, took me to Holland House, where there was a beautiful fete chamjoetre; dined at Lord Granville's.
u July 16. Visited the Turner Gallery ; also the National Gallery; went to the Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. Milman) ; House of Lords ; dined with Sir Roderick Murchison ; then to the House of Commons, where I heard Glad- stone, Palmerston, and Disraeli on the Persian War.
"July 17. In the forenoon went to the House of Lords, where there was a sitting on the Shrewsbury Peerage Case ; then to a dejeuner at Grosvenor House, where the company assembled in the magnificent gallery ; then to the House of Lords, where Brougham and Clarendon spoke on the slave trade; dined in the refectory of the House of Commons with Mr. Ingham ; then went to a reception at Lord Wensleydale's, and another at Mr. Senior's.
"July 18. Dinner at Mr. Labouchere's ; then reception at Lady Palmer- ston's.
"July 19. Went down to Mr. T. Baring's at Norman Court, near Salis- bury, where I met the Speaker. The pictures here are fine, and the company agreeable and our host most hospitable.
"July 20. Chatted for hours to-day with Lord Monteagle, one of the guests ; took a drive.
"July 21. Went over to Salisbury, where there is a great agricultural show ; saw the exhibition of implements ; visited the Cathedral and Chapter House, and then hurried back to London to be present at a debate in the House of Commons on Lord John Russell's Jews' bill ; heard Lord John and Gladstone.
"July 22. Breakfasted with Senior; rode home through the Park on one of Lord Hatherton's horses ; visited Mr. Ker at Lincoln's Inn ; drove to Camden Hill and lunched with the Duke and Duchess of Argyll; then drove with her and Lady Mary Labouchere to a dejeuner by the French prince, Due d'Aumale, at his house at Twickenham, where I saw most of the great people; then to dinner at the Lord Chancellor's, where I met Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Lovelace ; then to a reception at Lady Granville's.
"July 23. Dinner at the Earl Fortescue's, where were Lord John Rus- sell, Lord Wensleydale, and General Sir William F. Williams of Woolwich.
"July 24- Breakfast at Lord Hatherton's, where were Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Glenelg, Mr. Curzon, the author of the book on monasteries in the Le- vant, and Admiral Martin, the commander at the dockyard at Portsmouth. Went with Lord Hatherton to Richmond Hill to call on Lord John Russell at Pembroke Lodge. He was out. Also called on the Due d'Aumale at Twick- enham ; in the evening attended debate on the divorce bill in House of Com- mons ; heard Palmerston, but missed Gladstone.
1 Charles Richard Fox (1796-1873), eldest son, but not heir, of the third Lord Holland.
&t. 46-47. J JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 547
" July 25. Weut over the library of the British Museum with Mr. Jones, who is at the head of the department of printed books. The new reading- room is most beautiful. Early in the evening went to Argyll Lodge. Duke and Duchess took me with them to Lord Lansdowne's, at his villa at Rich- mond, where I was to dine. Before dinner walked in the grounds ; the com- pany were the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Lord and Lady John Russell, Lady Morley, Lord and Lady Hatherton, Sir Edmund and Lady Head, Senior, Macaulay, Panizzi; afterwards in town went to a reception at Lord Palmerston's.
"July 26. Sunday. Went out to Richmond to lunch with Lord John Russell, where in his pleasant grounds at Pembroke Lodge I met many dis- tinguished people. Afterwards dined with Mr. Edward Romilly, where was his brother, the Master of the Rolls.
" July 27. Left London on a visit to the Earl of Stanhope1 at Chevening ; at railway station found the Bishop of Oxford going to the same place, and joined him in taking a carriage for the nine miles ; arrived at dinner ; there was Mr. Macaulay also.
" July 28. Lord Lansdowne arrived at Chevening to-day ; also Lord and Lady Harry Vane. Lady Stanhope took us in her carriage (Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Macaulay, and myself) through the grounds of Lord Amherst, also of Lord Camden ; visited the church where are the tombs of the Stanhopes.
" July 29. Left Chevening this forenoon. Mr. Macaulay took me in his carriage fourteen miles as far as Bromley, where I took a dog-cart and drove to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Addington ; in the afternoon walked with the Archbishop in the Park.
"July 30. At noon returned to London. Sat for my photograph at re- quest of Mr. Richard of the Peace Society ; dined with him at Milton Club. Went at beginning of evening to Joseph Cooper's [at Tottenham], where were many friends of peace and antislavery, chiefly Quakers ; afterwards went to House of Commons.
"July 31. Made calls; at half-past one o'clock long interview with Lord Palmerston ; in the evening House of Commons, when I heard Mr. Gladstone in an elaborate speech against the divorce bill ; dined in the lobby of the House with Lord Ebrington.
"August 1. Went to Stoke Park to visit the Laboucheres. There were Mr. and Mrs. William Cooper and Lord and Lady Bagot.
" August 2. Sunday. Went to church in Gray's church ; wandered about his churchyard : visited the monument of Lord Coke ; in the afternoon drove to the chapel at Windsor, where was a choral service ; called on the dean, Dr. Wellesley, who took us into the private grounds of the castle ; drove by Eton back to Stoke, which we reached about eight o'clock.
"August 3. Returned to town ; by appointment visited Lambeth, where I was shown over the palace by Rev. Mr. Thomas, the son-in-law of the Arch- bishop ; attended House of Commons, where I heard Lord John Russell on the Jews again ; dined with Mr. Adolphus,2 and met there Mr. Macaulay, also
i 1802-1869.
2 Adolphus and Ellis, the reporters, were each old friends of Sumner. Ante, vol. i. p. 343; vol. ii. pp. 64, 65, 373.
548 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
Mr. Ellis ; after dinner also Mr. Paull,1 now member for St. Ives, who re- membered meeting me at Berlin.
" August 4- Lunched at Argyll Lodge; called on Lady Morgan;2 went to House of Commons ; dined at Senior's enfamille.
" August 5. Mr. Parkes breakfasted with me ; at ten o'clock left London ; took the train to Godalming, where I got upon the outside of the stage-coach for twenty-four miles on my way to Mr. Cobden's at Midhurst, passing the great estates of Petworth, now in the hands of Colonel Wyndham. Mr. Cobden was waiting for me at half-past six o'clock, and drove me to his pleasant home.
" August 6. Rode on horseback with Mr. Cobden to the Downs; several of the neighbor squires to dinner.
' ' August 7. Mr. Cobden drove me in an open wagon to Chichester (twelve miles), where I was to take the train for Weymouth ; visited the cathedral there, where are works of Flaxnian and the tomb of Chillingworth ; lunched at the house of a cousin of Mr. C.
" August 10. Left Jersey at half-past ten o'clock; arrived at Granville about two o'clock ; the tide did not allow us to enter the harbor, and we landed on the rocks, going ashore in a small boat ; the police came aboard, and with them the secretary of the mayor, who handed me a most hospitable letter from M. de Tocqueville. After an hour in the streets of Granville, a small sea-port and watering-place, took the diligence for Coutances (eighteen miles), where I did not arrive till dark.
u August 11. Rose before five o'clock to visit the noble cathedral here. At six o'clock was in a coupe for Valognes ; found in the coupe an intelligent and talkative priest ; breakfasted at Carentan, — poorly enough ! At Valognes hired a char-a-bancs, with one horse and a man, to drive me to Tocqueville, where I arrived about five o'clock; kiudly received; chateau three or four centuries old ; was warned particularly by M. de T. not to wear a white cravat at dinner, — that the habits of country life in France were less formal than in England. Nobody here but M. and Madame de T. and an elderly French lady.
" August 12. Dejeuner at half-past ten o'clock; then a walk with M. de Tocqueville in the grounds ; then conversation and reading at home ; after- wards a drive to the neighboring town of St. Pierre, and a call at the Chateau de St. Pierre, now belonging to M. Blangy, with its beautiful park, where the Abbe St. Pierre was born ; then home to dinner at seven o'clock ; in the eve- ning the ladies play at billiards.
"August 13. Another pleasant day. Mr. Hammond, the British consul at Cherbourg, came over with his two daughters to pass the day. M. de T. took us to visit Barfleur, and also the heights of Epernel, from which the whole country about could be seen ; view admirable ; caught in rain.
' ' August 14. At eight o'clock left the chateau with M. de T. in his carriage for Cherbourg ; went in one of the admiral's boats to visit the breakwater and the wonderful works for the dock ; dined with the British consul to meet com- pany; after dinner, parted from M. de T., who invited me most kindly to visit him again.3
1 Henry Paull.
2 Sumner made her acquaintance in 1838. Ante, vol. ii. pp. 21, 46.
3 Sumner described his visit to Tocqueville in a letter to Longfellow, Aug. 18, 1857. Longfellow's "Life," vol. iii. pp. 50, 51.
JEt. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 549
"August 15. At six o'clock this morning took the diligence for Caen (some eighty miles), passing through Bayeux; visited the old churches and streets of Caen.
"August 16. Took train for Paris, and arrived at my old lodgings at six o'clock ; in the evening saw my friends, Hamilton Fish and family, just arrived from New York.
"August 17. Visited M. Vattemare, also the Genevieve Lihrary, which is open to the public; dined with the Fishes at the table d'hote of Meurice's Hotel."
The summary of Sumner's diary for the month is as follows : Leaving Paris August 19, he stopped a few hours at Meaux, where he visited " the cathedral, the palace, and the garden of Bossuet ; " passed one night at Rheims, another at Strasburg, and a day at Baden-Baden, where Mr. C. A. Bristed of New York, then renting a villa near the town, drove him in the neighbor- hood, and up to the Alte Schloss. Next he went to Basle, Berne, Thun, Interlachen, the Lake of Brienz, the Brunig Pass, Alp- nach, and to Lucerne, where he met his old friend Theodore S. Fay, whom he had been disappointed in not finding at Berne, and the two recalled earlier days in long conversations. Then, " after a day of the grandest scenery " between Lucerne and Hospenthal, he crossed St. Gothard, took the steamer on Lake Maggiore, " passing the Isola Bella and Lesa, the home of Man- zoni," and went on by railway from Arona to Turin, then the capital of Piedmont, a city he had not before visited. Here he looked wistfully towards the south, but turning back, by mule or carriage, traversed the Val d'Aosta, and crossed the Great St. Bernard, passing a night at the Hospice, and then by way of Martigny, Tete Noire, and Chamouni, reached Geneva, Septem- ber 5. Here he was interested in the associations of Voltaire, Calvin, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and Byron. At Lausanne he sought the garden of the Hotel Gibbon, " to look upon the view that Gibbon looked upon ; " the cathedral, and also the library, where he traced out the manuscripts of La Harpe pre- pared for his pupil the Emperor Alexander. Then, by way of Lake Neuchatel, he went on to Basle and Heidelberg, where he called on his old friends Grosch and Mittermaier, from whom he received " a cordial, kind, and most friendly welcome." To the latter he wrote as he left the town a letter warm with affec- tionate remembrance, closing thus : " I can never think of you except with gratitude for your long life filled with laborious studies and inspired by the noblest sentiments." From May-
550 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
ence he descended the Rhine to Cologne, with Dr. C. E. Stowe and family as fellow-passengers. Then followed a brief excur- sion to Holland and Belgium, including glimpses of Amsterdam, the Hague, Delft (" two churches with the tombs of William of Orange, Grotius, and Van Tromp, also the house where William was killed"), Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent.
" September 19. Reached Loudon [from Ostend] about noon; in the eve- ning went to Mr. Russell Sturgis's at Walton.
'• September 20. Returned to London, and went to Lord Cranworth's in Kent ; his place is Holwood, once the residence of William Pitt ; walked in the grounds.
" September 21. Called on Mr. Hallam, who was with his son-in-law, Colonel Cator, in the neighborhood of Lord Cranworth's ; found him looking well in the face, but unable to use his legs ; sat with him half an hour ; 1 took the train for London ; dined at Reform Club with Mr. Parkes.
" September 22. Dined at Reform Club with Mr. Parkes, where I met Mr. Osborne, M. P., also Peter Cunningham and Charles Mackay.
"September 2£. Went to Dulwich Gallery, left cards; dined with Mr. Cooke, a partner of John Murray and old friend of the late James Brown [the publisher, of Boston].
" September 25. Left London in the train at 9.15 for Manchester; stopped at Palatine Hotel; went at once to the Exhibition.
" September 26. The whole day till night at the Exhibition; in the eve- ning heard Mr. Russell,2 of the London ' Times,' lecture at Free Trade Hall on the Crimea.
" September 27. Admitted to a private view of the Exhibition all day ; in the evening went with Mr. Henry Ashworth to his house at Bolton, where I dined and passed the night.
" September 28. Again in Manchester, and all day at the Exhibition. In the evening dined with Mr. Thomas Bazeley, President of Chamber of Com- merce, and passed the night at his house.
*' September 29. Again all day at the Exhibition. In the evening went to Ellenbeck, the seat of Mr. Cardwell, where I dined and passed the night.
"September 30. Stopped an hour at Preston; also an hour at Kendal; saw these towns ; went on to Ambleside to Miss Martiueau's, where I passed the night.
"October 1. Left Ambleside early; stopped at Brougham Hall for a couple of hours ; resisted pressing invitation to stay to dinner and all night ; went on to Carlisle.
" October 2. Drove out to Scaleby Hall (seven miles) to call on Long- fellow's correspondent, Miss Farrar ; she was gone ; her brothers received me kindly, took me to Scaleby Castle ; took the train in the afternoon for New- castle and South Shields, and reached the house of my old friend, Robert Ingham, M. P., in the evening.
1 It was his last meeting with Hallam, who died in the following January.
2 Dr. William H. Russell (1821-), correspondent of the London " Times " in the United States during the early part of the Civil War.
^Et. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 551
" October 3. Eainbled about, hoping to recognize old spots which I had known nineteen years ago ; company at dinner.
" October 4- Sunday. Visited the church at the neighboring village of Jarrow to see the chair in which the venerable Bede sat ; company at dinner.
" October 5. Left Westoe at eleven o'clock ; train to Newcastle; then by Berwick to Edinburgh, where I arrived before dark ; stopped at MacGregor's (Boyal Hotel) ; saw my friend from Boston, Prof. Henry D. Rogers.1
" October 6. Went to Jedburgh to visit Lord Campbell at his place, Hartrigge House; resisted all pressure to stay; walked in the grounds, and returned to Edinburgh at night.
" October 7. Fast day on account of India ; heard Rev. Dr. Hanna2 preach at Dr. Guthrie's church ; called on A. Russel,3 editor of ' Scotsman.' Dr. Brown drove me to see Lord Dunfermline, the old Speaker, now quite infirm, but taking a great interest in the slave question ; then called with Rogers on George Combe,4 also on Robert Chambers.5 Mr. Combe was anxious that I should not return to public duties until after longer rest.
" October 8. Visited Holyrood Palace ; in the afternoon started for Glas- gow, where I arrived at dark on my way to the western Highlands.
" October 9. At seven o'clock went on board the steamer ' Iona' down the Clyde, by Rothesay, through the Kyles of Bute to the Crinan Canal ; then by canal boat; then again by steamer in sight of Mull, Jura, stopping at Oban, to Fort William, where I arrived some time after dark; stopped at the Lochiel Arms at Banavie, opposite Fort William.
" October 10. At eight o'clock by steamer on my way to Mr. Ellice's6 at Glenquoich ; stopped near the mouth of Glengarry ; then by gig and dog-cart to this distant retreat in the midst of lakes and mountains; arrived before dark. Here were my host and his son, Lord Digby and family, and Lady Harriet Sinclair7 (a Die Vernon), daughter of the Earl of Rosslyn.
" October 12. Started early this morning in dog-cart; took the steamer near Fort Augustus, then to Inverness, where I arrived before dark ; took a walk in the streets ; called on Robert Carruthers, the editor, who was not at home ; dined ; then threw myself on my bed, and rested till half-past eleven o'clock, when I took the mail-coach for Dunrobin Castle ; travelled all night inside.
" October 13. Reached Golspie, a mile from Dunrobin,8 at eight o'clock in the morning, where I found a carriage from the castle. On arrival went to bed, and did not appear till lunch at two o'clock ; the duchess welcomed me most kindly; after lunch walked in the grounds; at her request planted a tree, a Mount Atlas cedar; dinner at eight o'clock; then games with the children, — the ' post,' a kind of blind man's buff. Here were Lord and Lady
1 (1808-1866.) Native of Philadelphia; geologist and naturalist.
2 1808-1882. s 1814-1876.
4 (1788-1858.) Phrenologist, who visited Boston in 1838.
5 (1802-1871.) Writer and publisher
6 Edward Ellice, Sr. (1781-1863), an old acquaintance of Sumner. Ante, vol. iL pp. 13, 62.
7 Married afterwards to the Comte de Munster of Hanover, and died in 1867.
8 Seat of the Duke of Sutherland.
552 MEMOIR OE, CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
Blatityre, Lord and Lady Grosvenor, Lord and Lady Bagot, Lord and Lady Stafford.
" October 14- Breakfast at ten o'clock; rambled in the grounds with the duchess ; went aboard the screw yacht to see the duke and some of the family off for Inverness ; then a drive and ramble to the glen ; lunch ; then drive up the mountain, — all with the duchess, four horses and outrider ; dinner at eight o'clock ; several new-comers, — among others, Mrs. Hay Mackenzie, the mother of Lady Stafford.
"October 15. Prayers in the morning by the duchess; breakfast; the duchess took me this morning four miles to the steamer ; took leave ; crossed over to Birkhead; then got a dog-cart to Elgin (nine miles), passing over the heath with Forres in sight, the scene of Macbeth and Banquo ; at Elgin saw the remains of the cathedral ; stopped at the inn .
" October 16. At eleven o'clock stage-coach to Keith; then railway to old Meldrum ; then posting to Haddo House, the seat of the Earl of Aberdeen. The queen had left the day before, and the family were alone. Dinner at eight o'clock.
" October 17. Walk in the grounds with Lord Aberdeen, Mrs. Farquar- son, and two daughters and son, of Invercauld ; next to Balmoral ; long con- versations with Lord Haddo and Mr. Arthur Gordon.
" October 18. Sunday. At twelve o'clock went to the kirk two miles, and heard a Presbyterian sermon and prayers; long walk and conversation with Lord Aberdeen in the grounds.
" October 19. Left Haddo House at half-past seven o'clock for Aberdeen; drove round this place ; then by train to William Stirling's at Keir, five miles from Stirling ; beautiful grounds, and house full of curiosities ; among the guests was Mrs. Norton.
" October 20. The forenoon spent in examining the curiosities collected in the house and library ; then drove with Mrs. Norton to the castle of Stirling ; dinner ; pleasant evening.
" October 21. Left Keir at eight o'clock with post horses for Callander; then for the Trossachs ; crossed Loch Katrine (twelve miles) in an open boat during two severe rain squalls ; then a drosky to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond ; then boat five miles to Tarbet ; then post horses through Glencroe to Inverary Castle, where I arrived after seven o'clock ; most kindly received by Duke and Duchess of Argyll; there were with them Lady Emma Campbell,1 Miss Campbell of Islay, and Dr. Cummings.2
" October 22. Two drives through the forest and plantations of Inverary with the duke and duchess ; dinner at eight o'clock.
" October 23. Planted two trees, — an oak and pine;3 after lunch crossed with family to the other side of the loch, where were the children of the duke and duchess.
1 The duke's sister.
2 Rev. John Cummings (1807-1881). Sumner wrote to Longfellow, October 22, of his visit to Scotland. LongfeIIow"s "Life," vol. Hi. pp. 51-53.
8 The duchess wrote, April 29, 1863: "I have been looking at your trees and thinking of our happy time in '57." She wrote again, July 23, 1863: "Your trees are flourishing, and bring back what seems yesterday, but is nearly six years ago."
^Et. 46-47.] JOURNEY TO EUROPE. 553
" October 24- Left Inverary Castle ; duke and duchess crossed the loch with me aud said 'good-by' most cordially aud kindly; took the stage-coach, and sat on the box by a most communicative coachman to the head of Loch Goil ; then by steamer into Loch Long ; then the Clyde to Dumbarton, where I stopped to visit James Stirling at Cordale House ; his carriage and servants were waiting for me ; he has just written a clever book entitled ' Letters from the Slave States.' Pleasant evening.
" October 25. Mr. Stirling lent me his carriage and horses to take me to Glasgow, sixteen miles ; on the way called and lunched at Erskiue House with Lord and Lady Blantyre ; met there Charles Howard. On reaching Glasgow drove to the Observatory to see Dr. Nichol ; x then back to the Queen's Hotel for the night.
" October 26. Took the early fast train at Glasgow, and reached Penrith at one o'clock, to visit Lord Brougham. His carriage was waiting for me at the station and took me to the Hall ; lunched ; walked in the grounds with him; then drove with Lady B. through Lowther Park; dinner; several guests; in the evening conversation; among the curiosities here was a cast from the face of Pitt after his death.2
" October 27. Left Brougham Hall at eight o'clock by train to visit W. E. Forster at Wharfeside, Buriey, near Leeds ; reached him in the afternoon. His wife is the eldest daughter of Dr. Arnold. In the evening at dinuer was Mr. Edward Baines3 of the Leeds ' Mercury.'
" October 28. At breakfast several guests. Left Wharfeside at eleven o'clock, accompanied by Mr. Forster, to Leeds, where Mr. Baines met me and showed me about the town ; then train to York, where I visited the Minster ; then train to Malton, whence by fly went seven miles to Castle Howard. My friend Lord Carlisle had gone to meet me in his carriage at another station. On his return we met for the first time after an interval of fifteen years. At dinner there were Lady Caroline Lascelles4 and her daughters, Miss Mary and Emma5 and Beatrice.6 After dinner saw Lady Carlisle, the mother of my friend, on a sofa in her room, where she is confined by a slight paralysis.7
1 '■' October 29. Prayers in the morning by Lord Carlisle; then a walk in the grounds; then breakfast; then the pictures in the castle ; writing letters; lunch; ramble with Lord C. in the grounds; tea at five o'clock: then dinner at seven o'clock; after dinner, in Lady Carlisle's rooms. To-day Lady Elizabeth Grey8 and her husband, Rev. Francis Grey, arrived.
u October 30. Prayers in morning by Lord Carlisle; breakfast; ramble with C. in the grounds; visit to the family mausoleum; met the hounds, who were crossing the grounds; lunch; drive with C. to visit a reformatory
1 John P. Nichol (1804-1859), professor of astronomy.
2 Brougham gave Sumner at this visit a colored print of Edmund Burke as a youth, — a copy of a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is now in the Art Museum of Boston.
3 1800-1890.
4 Eldest sister of the Earl of Carlisle. She died in 1881.
5 Married to Lord Edward Cavendish.
6 Married to Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter. * She died Aug. 8, 1858.
8 Sister of the Earl of Carlisle.
554 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
in the neighborhood; tea; dinner; in the evening in Lady Carlisle's room. Mr. Grey sang four songs of Longfellow, — 'Excelsior/ 'The Bridge,' 'The Kainy Day,' and ' The Arrow and the Song ; ' afterwards C. came to my room and we talked together.
" October 31. Left Castle Howard at eight o'clock in the morning; C. rose to see me off; Mr. Grey left en route with me as far as Manchester; in the train, not far from York, met Sir Roderick Murchison ; crossed the country by Crewe to Stafford, where I took a fly and drove six miles to Lord Hatherton's, Teddesley Park, near Penkridge, where I arrived just at dinner-time; in the house were several guests, — Lady Wharncliffe and Miss Wortley, Lord Wrottesley, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Reeve, Hon. Spencer Lyttleton, Mrs. Gas- kell and daughters. Lady Hatherton most charming and hospitable.1
" November 1. Sunday. This forenoon drove to the beautiful parish church of Penkridge, where in the chancel were beautiful monuments ; curious sermon ; after lunch went with Lord Hatherton to see his farm, which is in remarkable order ; saw his Hereford cattle, also his draining ; after dinner, at the close of the evening, the domestics (some twenty-five or thirty) and family assembled in the dining-room, where Lady H. read prayers and a short sermon.
11 November 2. Day misty and rainy ; forenoon in the house; after lunch went with Lady H. and a company of ladies to visit the jail at Stafford, which is in excellent condition, and under the direction of a governor who was for- merly a major in the army, and also had the English recommendation of old family; he evidently had a talent for the place. In Stafford visited the large parish church, also another church, now being restored ; saw Isaac Walton's house ; in the evening the governor of the jail came to dinner, also Captain Mackinnon, cousin of my old friend of the navy.
" November 3. Resisted all temptation to stay at Teddesley, and all fur- ther pressure to give up my idea of sailing at the end of the week for America. At noon left for the Stafford station on my way to John Bright at Llandudno, near Conway, in Wales, where I arrived in the rain just before dark. Stopped at hotel, where rooms were engaged for me by B. and as his guest ; long talks with him on health and politics till eleven o'clock.
" November 4. This forenoon with Bright, whom I have enjoyed much; left him at one o'clock for Hawarden Castle, the seat of Sir Stephen Glynne, brother-in-law of Mr. Gladstone, on a visit to Mr. G., whose home is at the castle ; arrived in the afternoon ; Gladstone took me in the thick mist round the grounds, particularly to the fine old ruin. At dinner were Sir Stephen Glynne, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, Lord Lyttleton, who has recently lost his wife, a sister of this family ; also Rev. Mr. Glynne, a brother, who has the valuable living in the neighborhood. Mr. Gladstone is much engaged in three volumes on Homer. I found in him the eloquent conversation which I have
admired.
"November 5. This morning, in the rain, drove through the park with Mr. Gladstone ; then at eleven o'clock left the castle ; at noon reached Ches- ter, where I drove about the town, visited the old cathedral, walked on the
l The Dowager Lady Hatherton, a faithful friend of Sumner, has lived in London since the death of her husband in 1863.
JEt. 46-47.] CONTINUED DISABILITY. 555
old town walls, and then drove to Eaton Hall, the magnificent seat of the Marquis of Westminster, in pursuance of a kind invitation which I had received from the Marchioness. Arrived there before lunch ; the Marchioness showed me through the house and took me to my room most hospitably ; notwithstanding rain, visited the gardens and stables ; at dinner were Sir Edward Cust, master of ceremonies at the palace, Mr. Antrobus of the Eng- lish legation at Washington in 1816-1819, Mr. Parker1 the archaeologist, and several others, besides the two daughters of my hosts, who seemed very sensi- ble and well educated.
"November 6. Lord Westminster read prayers in the chapel at a quarter before ten o'clock this morning ; breakfast at ten ; resisted all hospitable wel- come to stay. Lady W- kindly hoped that when I next came to England I should come direct to her house. At eleven o'clock left, seeing the famous horse Touchstone as I drove out of the park. At two o'clock reached the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, where Mr. Richard Rathbone2 had been waiting for me several hours ; looked about Liverpool, and then went with him to his house in the neighborhood, where was only his family ; after dinner we were joined by William H. Channing.3
"November 7. Saturday, my appointed day of sailing. Mr. R. at eleven o'clock drove me to the Adelphi Hotel ; at twelve o'clock to the pier, where I embarked on a small steamer with the passengers and their luggage for the steamer 'Niagara,' a Cunard packet bound for Boston; at about three o'clock all was ready, and the voyage commenced.
" November 17 . Tuesday. At midnight reached Halifax. The voyage has not been very rough ; the first days were even pleasant ; but I have suffered as ever from sea-sickness, and have not yet taken a single meal at the table. Much of my time has been passed in my state-room. . . . Went ashore at Halifax, and took a stroll through mud and darkness ; soon returned to the ship.
" November 18. At five o'clock this morning the steamer started for Boston.
" November 19. The day pleasant ; harbor of Boston beautiful ; about four o'clock steamer reached the wharf."
Sumner left England against the protests of his friends, who felt certain that he required a longer period of recuperation. George Combe submitted his case to Sir James Clark, the Queen's plrysician, and both advised against his immediate return to public duties; but he would not heed their counsels, anxious to be again at his post. He had taken such keen enjoyment in society and travel that at times he felt himself almost well again ; but he was often reminded, by excessive weariness and sensitiveness in the spine, that he was still an invalid. His absence for eight months from exciting scenes
i John H. Parker (1806-1884).
2 1788-1860. Ante, vol. ii. pp. 370, 378.
3 1810-1884 ; an American divine of the Unitarian faith, then in charge of a church in Liverpool ; nephew and biographer of William Ellery Channing.
556 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
had diverted his mind, and time was perhaps doing unobserved •its work of restoration ; but no substantial and certain gain was as yet apparent.
A number of friends met Sumner as he left the ship at East Boston, on the afternoon of November 19, — among them his colleague, Wilson, and Mr. Banks, who had just been chosen governor of Massachusetts. Driving with them to his mother's house in Hancock Street, he found a company of two or three hundred persons gathered in the street to give him welcome, to whom he said : " This welcome is entirely unexpected ; it takes me by surprise ; it fills me with gratitude. I am glad to be once more in my own country, on the firm earth and at home." Wilson also answered to the call of the people with congratulations on his colleague's return. Cheers came as Sum- ner entered his home ; and to those who followed him he said, " My health is nearer to what it should be than it has been for a long time." Amasa Walker, who was among those now wel- coming him, suggested that he should be left alone with his family, and all withdrew.
The next evening he attended in Tremont Temple a lecture by Mr. Banks before the Mechanic Apprentices' Association, where the audience greeted with continuous cheers his appear- ance on the platform,1 and insisted, in spite of his evident reluc- tance, upon his coming forward. He yielded to the call, and spoke for a moment, saying with reference to the membership of the Association that, "notwithstanding poverty, hardships, obstacles, and odds of all kinds, merit will always command success." Many lingered after the meeting was over, observing him intently and giving him congratulations. When he at- tended, a few weeks later, the inauguration of the governor in the State House, the sergeant-at-arms found it impossible to repress the applause which, in violation of the rules, greeted his entrance into the hall.
The Thirty-fifth Congress, meeting Dec. 7, 1857, was occu- pied with a debate on slavery in Kansas, from the beginning of the session to the end of the next April. The Adminis- tration still held the Senate, and had recovered the House. The pro-slavery party in the Territory had, by means of a legis- lature and constitutional convention originating in violence and fraud, caused the so-called Lecompton constitution to be sub-
i Longfellow's "Life," vol. ii. p. 310.
JEt. 46-47.] CONTINUED DISABILITY. 557
mitted to the people by a method which excluded any voting against it as a whole, and allowed only the alternative of voting "for the constitution with slavery" or "for the constitution without slavery." The instrument was so drawn as to imply a certain sanction of slavery in whichever way adopted, and the Free State men withheld their votes. It was therefore adopted " with slavery," and submitted to Congress by the President in a message, Feb. 2, 1858, in which he declared that by the decision of the Supreme Court " slavery exists in Kansas by vir- tue of the Constitution of the United States," and that " Kansas is therefore at this moment as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina." Douglas promptly, at the beginning of the session, took ground against the admission of Kansas under that constitution thus forced on the people, maintaining that according to " the principle of popular sovereignty " the inhabi- tants should have perfect liberty " to vote slavery up or down," and vaunting his indifference as to which they did. He said with emphasis, " Why force this constitution down the throats of the people of Kansas, in opposition to their wishes and our pledges ? " He drew to his side a number of Democratic sen- ators and representatives, mostly Western, nearly half of whom, however, proved untrustworthy in their votes on the English bill ; and his breach with the Administration had an important relation to the national election of 1860. He was thus brought for a time into accidental association with the Republicans, some of whom were disposed to put the best construction on his change of front,1 while others could not at once overcome a deep-seated distrust growing out of his twenty years subser- viency to the slave power, or the suspicion that his new atti- tude was due to the fact that his term as senator was near its end.2 His speeches in the celebrated debate with Mr. Lincoln, a few months later, justified this distrust and suspicion. Sum- ner wrote to E. L. Pierce from Washington, April 11, 1858:
" I know Douglas thoroughly ; and I think there cannot he too much cau- tion in trusting him. His whole conduct in the two great controversies which
1 Greeley, and also, it is stated, Seward, Wilson, and Cameron, were averse to Repub- lican opposition to his re-election ; but the Republicans of Illinois put Mr. Lincoln in nomi- nation, who opened his campaign June 16, 1858. Greeley and Wilson in their histories are not explicit as to their part in promoting Douglas's pretensions at this time. " The Amer- ican Conflict," vol. i. p. 301; "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. pp. 567, 568.
3 Chase wrote Sumner, Jan. 18, 1858, that Douglas was seeking a suspension of hostili- ties until his re-election became sure.
558 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
he conducted while I took part in dehate was essentially base. But men are improved by the cause they espouse ; and all attest the reserve, moderation, and propriety with which he has recently spoken. But why does he cease to be bully now ? Reasons for this may be given which are little creditable. Does he bully only when he knows his opponents do not use the pistol and knife ? He is essentially a partisan ; therefore in quitting Democracy he must ultimately come into our camp. But he must come there at least before he can rank with Republicans. He has not yet arrived."
It was a constant grief to Sumner that he could not take part in the debate in the Senate ; but his physicians forbade the strain and excitement. He was in his seat December 7, when he was welcomed by his Republican colleagues, while the Administration senators, with a few exceptions, kept aloof from him.1 As always, the diplomatic corps were very cordial, par- ticularly Lord Napier, notwithstanding his sympathies with the pro-slavery party.
Sumner found at once that he must remain a passive spec- tator for some time to come. He was relieved, at his own request, from service on committees. He attended the sessions during the morning hour, but otherwise kept away from the Senate, awaiting a notice of any important vote. His nervous system was so sensitive that he was disturbed by debates ; and he left his seat when they began, going out even on the third day when Douglas opened his controversy with the Administra- tion on the Lecompton question, a speech to which he desired much to listen.2 He abstained from general society, though occasionally dining with friends. While in Washington he passed his time mostly at his lodgings, quietly reading, or in the library of Congress, or in the Smithsonian Institution, — places where he looked over engravings and rare books ; and he tested his strength in walking. He chafed sorely under the limitations imposed by his disability. To Theodore Parker he wrote, December 19 : "I am unhappy ; and yesterday, after sit- ting in the Senate, I felt like a man of ninety. When will this end ? Otherwise I am very well." To Dr. Howe he wrote : "At times I feel almost well, and then after a little writing or a little sitting in the Senate I feel the weight spreading over my brain ; but at least for the present I shall do nothing. I make visits, inspect the improvements of the Capitol, read newspapers, and sit quietly in my room, often much alone ; but
i Boston Traveller, Feb. 25, 1858. 2 New York Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1857.
JEt. 46-47.] CONTINUED DISABILITY. 559
this is my fate. Hard! very hard! I long to speak!" And again, March 17,1858 : "I would give one year of life for one week now in which to expose this enormous villany," — the Le- compton constitution. Leaving Washington December 20, 1857, he was absent the greater part of the time for five months, com- ing to the capital several times at the summons of his colleague to vote on questions concerning Kansas, and leaving as soon as a vote was reached. When absent from Washington he was in Philadelphia with Mr. Furness, at the Brevoort House in New York, at his home in Boston, or at Longfellow's in Cambridge.
At this time he "turned to engravings for employment and pastime."1 His interest in them hitherto had been general, but it now became almost a passion. He availed himself of such as were, accessible in Washington ; private collections in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Cambridge were opened to him ; he passed days in the Astor Library ; 2 but the rich- est treasures of the kind he found in the library of Harvard College, where under the guidance of Dr. Louis Thies he went through the remarkable Gray collection. He was so intense in this pursuit that he wearied out any one who joined him in it. Longfellow wrote in his diary, Jan. 21, 1858 : —
"We again passed the morning with the engravings, and again brought Sumner and Thies home to dinner, which they left midway to go back to the portfolios. Sumner is insatiable. He will be the death of Thies, who is ill. For my part, I cannot take in so much at once ; it fatigues my brain and body."
Again, January 26 : —
" Sumner comes to dinner. He was last night at our neighbor C.'s, look- ing over his engravings ; and this morning at Thies's house, engaged on his private collection. Verily, he goes thoroughly through the work."
Sumner began at this time to collect engravings for him- self, — those now preserved in the Boston Art Museum. To Dr. Howe he wrote, March 17 : "I wish you would be good enough to send to Louis Thies, of Cambridge, a check for one
i "The Best Portraits in Engraving." Works, vol. xiv. pp. 327, 328.
2 Sumner wrote to Longfellow, March 3 : " Each day I go to the Astor Library, which is as fascinating as Boccaccio's garden, and wandering in the beautiful, well-arranged alcoves, every book tells its tale, and every hour is more than a Decameron. It is a most charming retreat." He missed here an old friend of whom he wrote to Dr. Howe, March 4: " Poor Cogswell ! he has been obliged to leave for the present. The hand of death seems to be upon him. It is he who is really the fundator perficiens of this beautiful library." Dr. Cogswell, though resigning his place as superintendent of the Astor Library, lived till 1871. Ante, vol. ii. pp. 130, 131, 141, 143, 145, 147, 172, 185.
560 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
hundred dollars on my account. He is my most amiable and faithful teacher in engravings, who has undertaken to order from Europe a few choice old productions for me." He grati- fied this taste a few months later in Paris, both in looking over collections and also in purchases. He appreciated the general effect of an engraving, but he had not the eye of a connoisseur who can discover its place in the order of impressions. He had always, as a paper written by him later in life shows,1 a lively interest in the history of the art and in the biographies of eminent engravers.
Hitherto during the session Sumner was hoping that he was near the end of his disability, and at times assured inquirers that he was almost well ; but a difficulty in walking and in rising from his seat reminded him that he was still an in- valid. In April, while at Washington, he suffered a relapse. With no immediate cause that was apparent except a slight over-exertion, he was attacked with severe pains in the back and pressure on the brain, attended with lameness and ex- haustion. He could not rise from his chair or walk without pain ; and this condition lasted for a month. It was appa- rent that he must resign the hope of activity in the Senate for the present ; and he yielded to the advice of his physicians, Dr. Wister and Dr. Perry, reinforced by Mr. Seward and other senators who had observed his continued liability to prostra- tion, that he must abstain from the excitement of public life for a year to come. He was much in doubt where to go, what baths, if any, to take, and to what course of treatment to re- sort. In a letter to Longfellow, May 10, from Mr. Furness's, he stated his perplexity and his "most depressing sense of inva- lidism," and closed by saying, "Meanwhile time and oppor- tunity, irrevocable, pass on. I grow old, inactive, and the future is dreary." Regretfully he decided on another journey to Europe, having in mind a visit to Switzerland, Hungary, Russia, the Pyrenees, — some country not already familiar to him and remote from social attentions, but without any dis- tinct purpose of seeking medical treatment. His first thought of attempting on foot or horseback all the exercise he could possibly bear was found to be hazardous, and given up.2
i " The Best Portraits in Engraving," published in "The City," Jan. 1, 1872. Works, toI. xiv. pp. 327-354.
2 Works, vol. iv. p. 330.
^Et. 46-47.] CONTINUED DISABILITY. 561
As he sailed from New York for Havre, in the " Vanderbilt," May 22, just two years from the day when he was assaulted in the Senate, he addressed a letter to the people of Massachu- setts, explaining his absence from his post in search of health, and saying he should have resigned it if he had foreseen at the beginning the duration of his disability.1 The best wishes of his countrymen for his recovery went with him, and the public journals abounded in tender expressions of interest in him.2
Just before leaving home he wrote letters to Cobden and Tocqueville on European and American affairs. To the latter he wrote, May 7, from Washington : —
" I was happy, dear Monsieur de Tocqueville, to hear from you ; hut I should have heen happier still had you written me a few words about affairs in your own country. Everything there seems to portend great changes soon. The present unnatural system of compression cannot endure always.
"Our politics here continue convulsed hy the eternal slavery question; and this will not end until justice prevails. Mr. Buchanan has disappointed large numbers of his supporters by the extent to which he has gone in behalf of slavery. Many expected from him greater moderation ; for myself I am not disappointed. He is essentially a politician rather than a statesman, and is governed by vulgar ideas. All his sympathies are given to the most ultra school of pro-slavery. The usurpations and atrocities in order to plant sla- very in Kansas have all received his sanction. Indeed, I doubt if history can record any acts of meaner tyranny. He thinks that the Kansas question is now settled ; but it is only postponed. Meanwhile Mr. Mason 3 writes from Paris that the opposition to slavery from France and England is dying away. This is curious, while Russia is just beginning her great act of emancipation.' At present all our ministers in Europe are creatures of slavery, and think only how they can serve its purposes. Of course, they belong to an inferior class of public men.
" I am grateful that your interest in my country does not abate, and that you so often say a kind word for us. Be assured that many of those things by which we are degraded are caused by slavery, even in States where sla- very does not exist. This has demoralized our government, and introduced everywhere the vulgar principle of force, which, as you well know, underlies slavery. Let a party prevail founded on hostility to slavery, and although abuses and excesses may not all cease, yet I cannot doubt that the very prin- ciple on which it is founded will diffuse a new civilization over the whole country. And now, my dear friend, if you hear the American republic abused, pray charge its evil deeds to slavery, and say that there are good people here who are determined that this source of all our woes shall cease, — at all events, that it shall no longer give its tone to our government and to our national character.
i Works, vol. iv. pp. 408, 409.
2 New York Evening Post, May 22, 1858.
3 John Y. Mason, of Virginia, United States minister. vol. in. 36
562 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1857-58.
"Why will not Spain follow the example of other European powers, — and now of Russia, — and declare emancipation in her colonies ? This would do more to settle the slavery question than any blow ever before struck. It would at once take Cuba from the field of Mr. Buchanan's lawless desires, and destroy the aliment of filibusters ; besides it would be an act of noble justice, as well as of wise statesmanship.
" I notice the publication of M. Guizot's Memoirs, and look forward to their perusal with great interest. Remember me kindly to M. de Circourt and M. Ampere, and do not forget to commend me to Madame de Tocqueville."
To John Jay, June 1, from the " Vanderbilt," in the English Channel : —
" I have had less sea-sickness than on any previous voyage, — thanks in part to my experience, in part perhaps to the size and power of the steamer. Of my health in other respects I say nothing. I will not deceive myself or others, and yet it does seem to me as if I must in a few months longer exter- minate this deep-seated trouble. The table and other arrangements have a California character ; but I am glad that I came in this boat, for it takes me to my journey's end swiftly, and that state-room (with an upper berth knocked out) has proved airy, commodious, and free from motion. Five hun- dred souls have crossed with us, — a strange Babel of languages and people of all sorts. To-day we begin to know each other, and to-night we part. I wish I were at home. It is with real reluctance that I proceed on this pil- grimage, and nothing but the conviction that it is the surest way to regain my health would keep me in it. I long for work, and especially to make myself felt again in our cause. The ghost of two years already dead haunts me."
JEt. 47-48.] EUROPE AGAIN. 563
CHAPTER XLIL
EUROPE AGAIN. — HEROIC REMEDIES. — HEALTH RESTORED.
1858-1859.
SUMNER arrived at Havre June 1 ; and after a night at Rouen, an old city which always fascinated him, he went on to Paris. Two days after, an American merchant, Mr. Henry Woods of Boston, then engaged in business in that city, directed his attention to Dr. Brown-Sequard 2 as a person who, though not in the regular practice of medicine or surgery, had devoted himself to the study of nervous diseases, particularly as con- nected with the spine, and was well known for his experiments in physiology and his lectures before medical bodies. Sumner had had in mind a consultation with some eminent French phy- sician, like Louis, Trousseau, or Velpeau ; but now, with the sanction of Dr. George Hayward of Boston, then in Paris, he had recourse to Dr. Brown-Sequard, who concurred with Dr. Hayward in the opinion that the curative influences of time and change of scene were not sufficient to meet the case, but that it required " active treatment." Dr. Hayward expressed to Sumner full confidence that he would recover, thouo-h warn- ing him that much patience on his part and considerable time would be required.
Dr. Brown-Se'quard met Sumner first at the latter's lodgings, Hotel de la Paix, Rue de la Paix, on the 10th, having assured his patient in the note by which he made the appointment that there was not a human being, his own family included, whom he would so heartily rejoice to relieve from pain. After a diag- nosis lasting three hours, and accompanied with the application of ice and boiling water, he decided that the blows on the head had taken effect by contre-coup in the spine, producing distiu--
1 Charles Edward Brown-Sequard (1818-), born in Mauritius of mixed American and French parentage; educated in Mauritius and in Paris, his specialty being experimental physiology; restless by nature, and living at times in France, the United States, and Eng- land; a bold experimenter on animals and human beings; adventurous in practice as in theory; and attempting in late years to rejuvenate the human system.
564 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
bailee in the spinal cord.1 In his view the original injury had resulted in an effusion of liquid about the brain, and in a slight degree of congestion, — chiefly, if not wholly, confined to the membrane around the brain, but taking effect by counter-stroke in the spine. To Sumner's instant inquiry as to the remedy, the doctor replied " fire ; " and the patient asking for an imme- diate application, the moxa was applied that afternoon to the back of the neck and to the spine.2 Sumner was asked whether he would take chloroform or not, and he at once wished to know whether the remedy would be less effective with its use ; and being answered that it might be, he refused it, although in other like cases it was usually availed of to moderate pain. During the application, which lasted from five to ten minutes, Sumner held firmly the back of a chair, and griping it in his agony, broke the back. The fire was applied six times within two weeks, leaving wounds which, with the inflammation and suppuration, made motion difficult, and seriously interrupted sleep. Pains came in other parts of the body, as in the legs, — driven there, as it was thought, by the moxa. The doctor came daily to dress the wounds, and by the middle of August had made forty-five visits, passing nearly an hour with his patient at each visit. He gave a memorandum at the time : —
" I have applied six moxas to Senator Sumner's neck and back, and he has borne these exceedingly painful applications with the greatest courage and patience. A moxa is a burning of the skin with inflamed agaric (amadou), cotton wood, or some other very combustible substance. I have never seen a man bearing with such fortitude as Mr. Sumner has shown the extremely violent pain of this kind of burning." 3
1 Works, vol. iv. p. 330. Two letters from the correspondent of the New York "Tri- bune," the first dated June 23, and published July 9, and the second dated July 26, and published August 10, give an account of the treatment, after interviews with the doctor and his patient.
2 The moxa is a mode of cauterization known to the ancients, but in modern times is chiefly confined to Japan and China, where it is freely applied. It is now rejected as a remedy in civilized countries, and is barely mentioned in the medical literature of the present day, milder applications being found equally effective. Larousse's " Dictionnaire Universel," vol. xi.; Holmes and Hulkes's "System of Surgery," vol. i. p. 946; vol. iii. pp. 640-642. Dr. Hayward at the time recommended Vienna paste instead of the moxa. He had advised against consulting Velpeau, for the reason that he would apply a hot iron to the spine. Dr. Brown-Sequard has not treated the moxa at length in any publication; and after applying it to Sumner he discontinued its use, regarding the pain which he saw him suffer as too severe for the human system. This explanation of his disuse of the remedy he gave to the writer in Paris, who has endeavored to obtain from him a com- plete account of his treatment of Sumner's case; but though promised, it has never been given.
3 In a lecture in Boston, March 14, 1874, the doctor stated that he never saw a patient
^Et. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 565
In a note to Sumner, July 1, the doctor said : —
" I write a line to give you a kind of moral compensation to your excessive physical suffering. I am perfectly sure that the greater is the pain you have suffered, and the pain you have yet to suffer, the greater also is your chance of heing cured. Bear this idea in your mind, and the wakefulness of your nights will be less dreadful."
Sumner wrote to Longfellow, June 27 : —
" Little did I think when I last wrote you that fire would be my destiny. It has been applied six times to my neck and spine ; to-morrow again. The torment is great; and then the succession of Misters, inflammations, and smarts. ... I struggle for health, and do everything simply to that end. The doctor is clear that without this cruel treatment I should have been a permanent invalid, always subject to a sudden and serious relapse. Surely this life is held sometimes on hard conditions ! "
Dr. Hayward submitted the case in London to Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir James Clark, Sir Henry Holland, and the venerable Dr. Lawrence, whom he reported as approving, with some quali- fications, the treatment.
In the midst of this treatment, Sumner experienced, July 20, with some intimations a few days earlier, a severe pain and pres- sure in his chest, — the first attack of the angina pectoris, a malady which sixteen years later was to prove fatal to him. This new turn of the disease, which was singular and perplexing, was attributed to sympathy between the nerves in the region of the chest and those of the spine. Whether it was due to the treatment seems not to have been a subject of medical discus- sion. The attack came at night, while the wounds from the moxa were healing ; and the suffering was even greater than from the moxa. Sumner was obliged to leave his bed and sit in a chair during that night and the next day. These attacks con- tinued, occurring four times on some days, as on August 3, and were so severe as " to make the fire seem pleasant."
The correspondent of the New York u Tribune," who was in frequent communication with Dr. Brown-Sequard and Sumner, wrote, July 26 : —
u His physical sufferings have been constant, and rather increasing than diminishing, since I last wrote. The moxa has not been administered anew, but none of the wounds on the neck and back left by the six first burnings are
who submitted to such treatment in that way, and that Sumner's terrible suffering was the greatest he had ever inflicted on any being, — man or animal. New York "Tribune," March 18, 1874.
566 MEMOIR OF CHAKLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
yet healed. These render every change of posture difficult, slow walking very painful, and the constantly irritating motion of a carriage nearly intolerable. The bed gives only a cramped, labored repose ; for the nature and position of the fire wounds are such as to forbid the poor privilege of tossing about under penalty of fresh agony. This state of things has lasted now for nearly six weeks. Meanwhile, however, the burns are slowly closing over; and Dr. Brown- Sequard, who is in daily attendance, does not propose to apply the moxa again for the next two months.
"Some new features in the case have developed, causing the patient in- tense new pains. It is throwing but little light on them to say that they are neuralgic, constringing and oppressing the chest as with a torturing, deadly weight. They have been considerably reduced by the administration of hot baths and powerful internal remedies. If I rightly understand the physician and his patient, these new pains are to be regarded purely as an effect of sympathy between the nerves in the region of the chest and the great nervous central column, not as an extension to that region of the malady of the latter, nor as an independent local disease of those nerves."
In June and July Sumner passed the greater part of the time in his bed, unable even to take the air in a drive. He saw few persons, as it was difficult for him to move about ; and indeed he had little heart for society. Among his American callers were Mr. Woods, — always ready with kind offices for him, as for all fellow-countrymen, — William C. Bryant, Professor Felton, George Bemis, Thomas N. Dale, and Mrs. Ritchie of Boston ; and among English friends full of sympathy whom he met were Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Madame du Quaire, Madame Mohl, Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and Mrs. Jameson.1 In August he passed a day with the Grotes at St. Germain. Among French friends who came to him or communicated their interest were Auguste Car- lier,2 the Comte and Comtesse de Circourt, and Laboulaye. The last-named desired to know about Channing, — a topic always grateful to Sumner. Madame Mohl was his companion in a call at Rueil on M. and Madame Turgenev.3 He listened to a lec- ture on Schelling4 at the Institute, receiving a complimentary ticket from Mignet, the lecturer. Tender messages came across the channel from the Wharncliffes, Roebuck, Harriet Martineau,
1 He wrote to Longfellow, July 19 : "My chief solace latterly has been in seeing Mrs. Jameson, whose conversation is clear, instructive, and most friendly, and in the Brown- ings; all of these have been full of kindness for me, and I like them all very much."
2 He died in 1890, aged 87 ; author of "La Eepublique Amencaine. Etats Unis," and of different works on the United States, where he lived in the years 1855-1857.
3 Turgenev and his book, "La Russie et les Russes," are mentioned in Sumner's speech on " The Barbarism of Slavery," June 4, 1860; Works, vol. v. pp. 103, 104.
4 Printed in "Memoiresde l'Academiedes Sciences Morales et Politiques," vol. xi.p. 33.
^Et. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 567
Parkes, Senior, the Duchess of Argyll, and Ingham, — all sym- pathetic in his suffering, and urging visits as soon as his prog- ress to health admitted. He went some days to the galleries of the Louvre ; but his best resource during the few hours not passed on his bed was in visits to the National Library, where he turned over the engravings.1
Mrs. Grote wrote to Madame du Quaire in July, 1858 : —
" I was glad of an opportunity of informing myself respecting the sanitary condition and prospects of that illustrious martyr. The imposing dignity of his stature, his fine classic head, his resignation under agonizing experiments, and heroic acquiescence in his stricken destiny, form an ensemble which, if I were not now cured of making enthusiastic sacrifices to sentiment, would move me to put myself forward as ministering consolatrice to this most in- teresting of sufferers. The world is strewn with wrecks, else his case ought to attract active sympathy in all quarters. Passive sympathy he has, how- ever, in abundance, and perhaps it helps poor Sumner to carry his cross. What a fine study would he not he for a Juarez or a Murillo ! Heaven bless the skilful art of his physician, and restore this splendid human structure to vital completeness ! "
Sumner was greatly concerned at this time by an apparent disposition of the British government to relax its efforts for the suppression of the slave-trade, and wrote many letters to Eng- lish friends, — to Brougham, the Earl of Carlisle, the Duchess of Argyll, Cobden, Parkes, Senior, Reeve, and others, — urging a maintenance of the existing policy, and a fresh statement of the beneficial effects of emancipation in the West Indies.
He wrote to the Duchess of Sutherland, July 11 : —
"I cannot think of the sorrow of your family from recent bereavement without breaking silence to assure you of my true sympathy. I have grieved with you, whose sensitive nature is so easily touched, and I have thought much of the distressed parents, who, I trust, may be enabled to bear their great loss with resignation, and to find happiness in the future. I have not writ- ten to you earlier, for in the torment of my life I had not heart to write. My medical treatment has been severe. It has been by a system of counter- irritants, to expel the morbid condition which still lingers in my system, and which, according to my physician, can be reached only in this way. Of course, beyond the pain at the time, the fire has been followed by the natural conse- quences of burns, which have embittered my days and nights. But this crisis is now passing, and I begin to be comfortable. Whether any permanent good
1 Mr. Bemis, who met Sumner in Paris later in his sojourn, was astonished at his efforts in studying engravings, — helped, as he was, in and out of a cab, getting in and out almost on fours, and all the time struggling and hoping for health with heroic resolution. Sumner enjoyed very much at this time Fergusson's "History of Architecture," which he had bought just before sailing.
568 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
has been accomplished, I do not presume to know. But just so soon as my wounds heal enough for locomotion, I hope to leave Paris, and after wander- ing about France, to run through Switzerland and Germany. Pray, pardon these details about myself. I am tempted to them by the friendship which you have shown me, and which I feel so sincerely for you and your family.
" I notice that to-morrow the slave-trade will be discussed in Parliament. I tremble ; for I fear that the pro-slavery sentiment is to find some new ex- pression in England. The early battle must be fought anew ; and the slave- masters must be told that in England at least their plans will fiud neither sympathy nor tolerance.
"■ Everything tends to make the Cuban question the pivot of the anti- slavery cause. If Cuba falls into the hands of American slave-masters, the whole system of slavery will acquire a new lease of life and power. Their predominance in American politics will be fixed indefinitely, and I know not what they will next attempt. All this can be arrested at once, and the slave- trade also, if Spain can in any way be induced to follow British example and to decree emancipation in this island. That would be the greatest blow ever dealt at slavery. Indeed, that blow would be mortal. I do not think slavery could long survive in the United States. If it continued to exist, it would be in a feeble condition, without offensive force. I sometimes think that at this moment the neck of slavery is in Cuba, just ready to be severed. I know not to what extent England might influence Spain ; but if I were Prime Minister I would spare no pains to bring about this result, which would be the grand historic act of the age, — putting a final end to the slave-trade ; an end also to American filibusterism, leaving your cruisers at liberty, no longer vexed by questions of visit, and setting an example of emancipation which must be fol- lowed in the United States, while the slave-power there will lose all chance of aggrandizement and can only die.
"I suppose the Duchess of Argyll is still at Carlsbad. Remember me affectionately to all your family, who have been so kind to me."
To Longfellow, July 19 : —
" Just so soon as my wounds heal enough for locomotion, I hope to get away, perhaps to Aix en Savoie, and try the douche. The doctor does not wish to burn me for two months. Meanwhile the fire or my medicines (I cram daily with terebenthine pills) have driven my pain into one of my legs, which is at times sadly disabled. For this I am to have galvanism. You will see that I have powerful weapons against the enemy."
At the middle of August he tried his strength by an excur- sion to Brittany. On his return Dr. Brown-Sequard thought of applying fire again, but desisted, fearing that another appli- cation would interfere with the baths which were to follow. Shortly after, Sumner left Paris for Aix-les-Bains, taking on the way Orleans and Bourges with their cathedrals, and Gren- oble and the Grande Chartreuse. From Chambery he visited the house and burial-place of Madame de Warens, Rousseau's
JEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 569
friend.1 The mineral springs of Aix — aluminous and sul- phurous, and issuing from the earth with a temperature as high as one can bear — have been sought from the time of the Romans for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases. The establishment has been much changed since 1858, being en- larged after the cession of Savoy to France. The town is hemmed in by hills ; and within two miles is Lake Bourget, celebrated by Lamartine, on the shore of which, in the monas- tery of Haute Combe, are the tombs of the princes of the House of Savoy. In this retreat,2 then far more quiet than now, Sum- ner remained three weeks, taking baths, hot and cold, at 7 a.m., under the direction of Dr. Davat, the resident physician, and carried from and to his hotel, as is the custom, on a chair or divan, wrapped in a sheet. He rose late, taking breakfast at 11 a. m., and passing four or five hours of the day on his bed, and retired at eight. He walked and drove among the vine- yards and enjoyed the scenery. The guests were all stran- gers ; 3 but he found one of them, M. Mollier, a French lawyer, very agreeable, and they were correspondents for some years afterwards.
Sumner wrote to E. L. Pierce, September 11 : —
" The country about is most beautiful, and the people simple and kind. My life is devoted to my health. I wish that I could say that I am not still an invalid; but, except when attacked by the pains in my chest, I am now comfortable, and enjoy my baths, my walks, and the repose and incognito which I find here. I begin the day with douches, hot and cold, and when thoroughly exhausted am wrapped in sheet and blanket, and conveyed to my hotel and laid on my bed. After my walk I find myself obliged again to take to my bed for two hours before dinner. But this whole treatment is in pleasant contrast with the protracted sufferings from fire, which made my summer a torment ; and yet I fear that I must return again to that treatment. It is with a pang unspeakable that I find myself thus arrested in the labors of life and in the duties of my position. This is harder to bear than the fire. I do not hear of friends engaged in active service, like Trumbull in Illinois, without a feeling of envy."
From Aix he went with short pauses to Northern Italy by way of Geneva, Lausanne, Vevay, Soleure, Berne, Zurich, Schaff-
1 His search for them is related in his letter to Longfellow, September 15.
2 Sumner lodged at the Hotel Royal, now Hotel d'Aix, and had room 47. In May, 1879, the writer met at Aix M. Paul Guibert, son of the proprietor of the hotel when Sum- ner was there, and also met Dr. Davat.
3 Christopher Pearce Cranch, an American artist, came for a day to sketch while Sum- ner was there.
570 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
hausen, Constance, Rorschach, Ragatz, and the Splugen, — meet- ing his friend Fay at Berne, and visiting at Ragatz the tomb of Schelling, in whom he had taken a fresh interest from hearing Mignet's discourse at the Institute. His wanderings during Oc- tober cannot be traced in order ; but after Bellagio he visited Milan, Brescia, Vicenza, Verona, and Venice. From Italy he went to Vienna, Prague, and Dresden. At Berlin he had an interview with Alexander von Humboldt,1 whom he had met there nearly twenty years before. On the last day of the month he was in Nuremberg, whence he wrote, " Fire and water have not yet entirely cured me ; but I trust that their results will continue to develop in me. Every day I hope to turn the cor- ner." Thence he went to Munich and on to Worms, down the Rhine to Cologne, and after a night at St. Quentin was in Paris by the middle of November.
He wrote to E. L. Pierce from Worms, November 8 : —
" 'Though every tile on every roof were a devil, yet will I enter Worms.' These words of Luther, my dear Pierce, are not to be forgotten ; they have brought me a pilgrim here. I knew well the architectural importance of the venerable cathedral, and also the literary associations which cluster in this home of the Minnesingers and the old Nibehmgeulied ; but that lesson of fortitude has inspired my homage. In itself it is a perpetual fountain of encouragement. Wandering about these decayed streets, I have been re- minded of that remarkable letter of Cicero where he pictures the ruined cities which he passed on his way up the Mediterranean as so many corpses ; ' Cadavera ' was his word. But the cathedral is truly interesting. It be- longs to the Romanesque in architecture, and proclaims to the curious observer an antiquity beyond that of the pointed Gothic. Much as I have studied the cathedrals of Europe, I think that none has touched me more on artistic as well as historic grounds. Pardon these allusions, which surely are not unnatural in writing from this place.
" I trust you will not think me indifferent to your friendship because I have been so silent to you in my exile. While undergoing the torments of my summer I had no heart to write, and since I have become comfortable I have deferred writing that I might at last announce my perfect restoration. This seems to be a will-o'-the-wi6p, which I have chased through fire and water, over seas and mountains. I cannot say that I have yet grasped it. When I do, be sure that I shall hold it tight. But the last three or four weeks have shown a palpable improvement. My rambles of to-day in these streets only a short time ago would have excited the most menacing symptoms. I feel now certain of my ultimate restoration, but know not whether it will be in
1 Humboldt, in appointing the interview, bore tribute to Sumner's "noble sentiments." The baron was astonished when assured that Mr. Ticknor was not known in America as an "abolitionist."
JEr. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 571
a month or a year. The result is now fixed. There have been times when I have seen before me nothing but gloom ; I now see the light. In a few days I shall report myself to my physician in Paris, who will then review my case, and tell me if I have further sacrifices to make.
"All autumn elections are now over, and I trust the good cause has found fit representatives. Oh, it is a good cause ! Lookiug at it from this dis- tance, and at this place, I feel that it is worthy of the best energies of us all. No nobler cause has arisen in history. I long to be able again to serve it. Should we meet now, you would be astonished at my ignorance of Massa- chusetts affairs. For more than three months I have seen no Massachusetts newspaper except a solitary ' Liberator ' kindly sent to me from Paris. Per- haps this has been best for my health, and yet I have often wished to know what was going on in our well-beloved Commonwealth. Of the Worcester convention I have read no report. I suppose Charles F. Adams is now in his father's seat. This must tell for the cause everywhere, as his presence will tell for it incalculably on the floor of Congress. All alone I gave three cheers on the night of the election, and startled the streets of Munich. In this country there has been a constant snow-storm, which has outdone all that I have ever seen of snow at this season. At Munich there were six inches in the streets, —
'And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser rolling rapidly.'
" Excuse this scrawl, which I write in the public room of an humble inn while two Germans near me are discussing poetry and sipping coffee."
To Dr. Howe, from the steamer on the Rhine, November 10 :
"In my rapid rambles I have enjoyed much of nature and art. Switzer- land every moment, in every mountain, hill, lake, river, valley, and field, filled me with delight. The North of Italy left a painful impression, for everywhere were white-coated Austriaus. Germany more than satisfied me by its prevailing intelligence and civilization. I have made many little pil- grimages, — to Brescia, because there was the original of Thorwaldsen's ' Day and Night;' to Verona, because it sheltered Dante in his exile; to Vicenza, because it was the home of the architect Palladio ; and to Worms, because of Luther. These days have been sweet and happy. Everywhere I have taken to the pictures, and also to the engravings. The gallery at Dresden is most charming. No building or institution has impressed me so much as the em- peror's stalls at Vienna, with seven hundred horses stalled in a palace. I left with admiration of the palatial structure, vast in extent, and of the horses, which were most beautiful in every respect, but with a poignant conviction of the injustice on which it is founded. I saw how this was all for the luxury of one man, and in this seemed to be typified the Austrian empire. Surely it cannot last. At least it has my malediction. With the downfall of Napoleon it will crumble in pieces."
During his journey, particularly since leaving Aix, he had been sensible of constant improvement, with increasing strength
572 MEMOIK OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
and less susceptibility in the spine, though not free from some old symptoms. Again he felt that he was grasping health, — the long sought and much desired treasure, — but still uncer- tain in his hold upon it. Dr. Brown-Sequard, who saw him at once on his arrival in Paris, was altogether gratified with his progress, and assured him of ultimate recovery, but insisted at the same time that he must not yet return to the United States. A consultation of the doctor with Trousseau, the eminent French physician, and with Dr. Hayward, resulted in an approval of the previous treatment, as well as the decision of his physician that he should pass the winter in the south of France, and try dry cupping on the spine and certain drugs.1 Letters from friends showed their sustained sympathy. John Jay wrote, Oct. 18, 1858: —
"We have all thought of you, bearing so heroically your martyr pains; and even our youngest children never name you without emotion. My last letter from you was from Paris, giving so graphic an account of your treat- ment by fire and poison. ... I pray God, dear Sumner, for your speedy recovery ; but if that may not be, I will still thank him for what he has enabled you to accomplish in the past by your efforts and now by your sufferings."
C. F. Adams wrote, Aug. 1, 1858 : —
" The newspaper accounts of your condition I refused to believe until your answer to my wife's notes made them certain. Well, I thought the furnace you lived in was hot enough at Washington ; but to be roasted after this extra-fashion is awful. I shudder to think of it. I hope the relief they promise you will compensate for it ; but I have an instinctive aversion to medical butchery. You have paid a heavy instalment to the cause of lib- erty. I hope it has come to the last farthing through this fiery trial. And to be so far away from home, too, and from friends to cheer you and to sym- pathize ! It is grievous indeed ! "
Again, October 3 : —
" You still talk of repeating your fiery trial. Perhaps you are right. But I would not be the physician to assume the responsibility of advising it, — no, not for worlds."2
The Duchess of Argyll, whose letters were frequent while he was seeking health in Europe, wrote, September 4, from Inverary :
1 Letters of Dr. Brown-Sequard and Dr. Hayward, written November 19 and 20, are printed in the New York "Tribune," December 16, and Boston "Advertiser," Dec. 17, 1858.
2 He wrote again, November 21, in the same vein.
JEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 573
" I do wish to know exactly how you are ; so never think you can tell me too much about this. I do trust all that severe suffering is to end in restored health. How strange it must seem to you to he obliged to be quiet and inactive ! But how many who have fought God's battles here have been so taught to know where the strength is which is to win the fight 1 God bless you through it all, dear Mr. Sumner ! He knows how hard it is for you, — harder for your friends, perhaps, — that you should stand and wait, and suffer, alas I too."
The Earl of Carlisle wrote, Feb. 8, 1859 : —
"My dearest Friend, — I received with delight your kind words on their errand of friendship and sympathy. When I made the speech1 to which you refer you were certainly very prominently before my mind, and I think I must have had some unconscious instinct that you might see what I had said. I was very much pleased on the same occasion to make my first acquaintance with your friend Mr. Forster, for whose roof, I believe, you left mine, or vice versa, when you were last in England. I was much struck with his straightforward grasp of mind. I went to see Harriet Mar- tineau in the autumn, chiefly because you told me to do so. . . . In only one respect have I to find fault with your letter, and that must be very gravely, — you do not vouchsafe one syllable about the state of your own health, which is what above most things in the world I washed to be well informed about. Why did you not tell me ? Do you think I am wanting in interest, in ful- ness and tenderness of sympathy about you ? I know my own shortcomings as a correspondent ; but you must be aware how the love I have always felt for you since we met at the chief secretary's lodge in the Phoenix Park, at least a score of years ago, has not ceased to glow with its own warmth, though it may have been deepened into the soberer heat of reverence."
Sumner left Paris for Montpellier Nov. 25, 1858 ; 2 and while stopping for a day at Avignon 3 he was struck with a sharp pain in the left leg, which prostrated him. He attempted a walk ; and people in the streets stopped to look at the strange figure of one who seemed so old in gait and yet whose face was that of youth. This relapse was most discouraging, and he was almost in despair.
Montpellier, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants in 1859, lies on the Gulf of Lyons, within easy distance from Cette on the west, and Nimes and Aries to the east. It is aside from the tract of tourists, and is now less than formerly the resort of in- valids, who are repelled by its variable climate and its shadeless and dusty streets. It has a fine gallery, and is distinguished
1 Address before the Antislavery Society at Leeds.
2 He received from Mr. Fish and family an invitation to dine on Thanksgiving Day. 8 He had stopped at Macon to visit Lamartine's chateaux.
574 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
for an old university.1 The favorite resort of the people is the Promenade du Peyrou, an extensive terrace planted with lime- trees, distinguished by a triumphal arch, an equestrian statue of Louis XIV., and the Chateau d'Eau, and commanding a view of the Mediterranean and the Cevennes. The way from the modern quarter, where the hotels are situated, to the Prom- enade was in 1859, and even twenty years later, by the market through narrow and devious ways ; but a wide street with new buildings now connects the two points. Sumner took lodgings at the Hotel Nevet (named from its proprietor, who had once been a courier for English travellers). Here he remained more than three months, attending faithfully to the medical direc- tions, and passing eighteen hours a day on bed or lounge. He could not have been more secluded from old associations, for he saw no one whom he had ever seen before, except M. Cheva- lier, who happened to be in the city for a day, and Mrs. Kuhn (daughter of Charles Francis Adams) and her husband, tour- ists on their way through the south of France. With these two there was a full talk one evening, at his rooms, of Boston and old friends. But Sumner found much that was enjoyable in his seclusion, and made friendships which lasted for life. His physician, Dr. A. Crouzet, to whom he was commended by Dr. Brown-Sequard, conceived such an admiration for his patient that he refused compensation for his services, and twenty -five years after spoke with enthusiasm of him as " aussi admirable au physique qu' au morale." He was introduced also by letter to Charles Martins,2 a distinguished naturalist, then director of the Jardin des Plantes. There was then living at Mont- pellier Captain J. R. Gordon,3 a retired English soldier who had served under Wellington, and who had become intimate with French officers — Valliant, Cavaignac, and Lamoriciere — who were from time to time in garrison at Montpellier. With these two families, connected by the marriage of Gordon's son Richard to the daughter of Martins, Sumner was in daily asso-
1 The University of Montpellier celebrated, in May, 1890, the completion of its sixth century; and an account of the fetes is given by Dr. D. C. Gilman in the New York "Nation," June 19, 1890.
2 1806-1889 ; succeeded in 1846 to the chair of botany in the faculty of Montpellier ; author of various papers and works on botany, natural history, and meteorology. His family was of German origin. In 1859 M. Martins and his son-in-law, Gordon, were in Switzerland with Theodore Parker when he was the guest of Desor, and both became admirers of Mr. Parker.
3 He died in 1863, at the age of seventy-four.
Mt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 575
ciation. With Captain Gordon he dined as often as twice a week ; l and they took walks together, conversing on English and continental affairs, in the Promenade du Peyrou and in the Place de la Canourgie, — the last named resort not then laid out with trees and flowers, as the visitor now finds it. Young Richard Gordon was often his companion. He was frequently at the house of Professor Martins in the Jardin des Plantes, dining with him from time to time, enjoying his daughter's playing on the piano, and listening to the band which played on Fri- day evenings in the Jardin. He was invited to the sessions of the Friday Club, Societe du Vendredi, and here met the liter- ary and scientific men of the city.'2 He was a guest at a ball given by the military and civil authorities, where he observed Dr. Favrat, a mulatto, whose father was a citizen of Montpellier and whose mother was a negress. Sumner said to Professor Martins at the time, that such a man if found in such an assem- bly in America " would be thrown out of the window ; " while, as the professor observed in recalling the incident, his presence at the ball, with his brown skin and crisp hair, excited no sur- prise. Other interesting acquaintances which Sumner made at Montpellier were Jules Renouvier,3 who had collected the best engravings and had a rare technical knowledge of the art, and Saint Rene Taillandier,4 then delivering at the university a course of lectures on French literature in the eighteenth century, includ- ing one or more on Beaumarchais, a course afterwards repeated at the Sorbonne. Sumner attended the lectures of Taillandier and other professors in the Salles des Lettres, occupying a privi-
1 Captain Gordon's home was Maison Chaix, 5 Rue St. Croix.
2 Sumner, writing to C. F. Adams, described the club as "founded as long ago as 1811, by the celebrated botanist De Candolle, which has among its members two or three pro- fessors, several retired men of letters, two or three judges of the Supreme Court, one banker, and several proprietaires. This description may remind you of the Friday Night Club of Boston. But the sumptuary law of the Montpellier club is strict. The entertain- ment is always confined to tea and four small plates of confectionery. I doubt if the expense any evening when I was present went beyond one or two francs ; and yet I assure you that I have listened there to conversation on art, architecture, science, history, politics, and lat- terly on the prospects of war, which would not have disgraced a Boston club of any name."
3 1804—1860 ; archaeologist, and author of various notes on the historical monuments of France and Italy, and of a book on the art of engraving in Italy, Germany, the Pays Bas, and France, published in 1853; born and always having his home in Montpellier; a republican during the reigns of Louis Philippe and Louis Napoleon. He made long calls on Sumner, during which they talked on French literature.
4 1817-1879; distinguished in literary and historical studies, one of his papers being entitled, "La Promenade du Peyrou et la Cathedrale de Montpellier;" member of the French Academy; professor at Montpellier, 1843-1863, and from 1863 at the Sorbonne. He served the government in the department of education from 1870 to 1872.
576 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
leged seat at the front.1 He was present also at the lectures of Maudot on Spanish literature, and of Germain on Roman history. He was an. habitual visitor at the Municipal Library, where almost daily he read for some hours French authors, being at this time specially interested in Rousseau. His curi- osity, always keen for books with a pedigree, was gratified in discovering here the entire library of Alfieri, which had found its way to Montpellier through Fabre, a French artist, a native and benefactor of the city, who had succeeded the Italian poet as the lover of the Countess of Albany. French was Sumner's language in this retreat, except in conversation with the elder Gordon.
Sumner made some excursions in the neighborhood, — one with the younger Gordon to Nimes, and another with Professor Martins to Aigues Mortes ; a walled city most interesting for its archaeology, in which his companion was an expert,2 — its fortifications constructed by Louis IX. and his son Philip the Bold, now removed from the sea, but six centuries ago the port from which St. Louis sailed on his first crusade. He was seized, as the professor recalled, with veritable enthusiasm, in the presence of such relics of mediaeval history, saying as he stood on the ramparts, " We have none of this in our country." His zeal in this exploration in company with his learned guide brought on exhaustion, which compelled quiet for some days ; and Dr. Brown-Sequard, on a report from Dr. Crouzet, enjoined greater caution for the future.
Another day was occupied with an excursion, in company with Professor Martins, to Calvisson, a small town ten miles south- west of Nimes, where they were received by M. Theodore Abau- zit, a Protestant pastor3 who was educating a number of girls
1 For descriptions of Sumner's life at Montpellier see his letters, Jan. 24 and 25, 1859, printed in Longfellow's "Life," vol. iii. pp. 55-59. M. Abauzit, who met Sumner at Mont- pellier, writes: "Mr. Sumner read all the memoirs and correspondence relating to the eighteenth century, particularly the letters of D'Alembert, Diderot, La Harpe, and Grimm. He exhausted, I believe, the public library of the town. He was also delighted with the ' Tableau de la Literature du XVIII. ieme Siecle du Villemain,' which I had recom- mended to him."
2 Professor Martins published in 1875 an account of "Aigues Mortes, son passe\ son present, son avenir."
3 His mother was English. He went with Sumner and Martins to Aigues Mortes. Sum- ner had a pleasant acquaintance at Montpellier with another Protestant pastor, M. Tellisier, of Bordeaux. In a letter to John Jay, March 4, 1859, he describes Abauzit as " a Protestant clergyman of a beautiful nature and remarkable accomplishments, living in the greatest retirement, with a flock of two thousand peasants, cultivating English and German letters, and speaking these two languages as well as French; of a family famous in the history
jEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 577
in his house. At his request Martins tested them in German, which he had known well from his youth, and Sumner in Eng- lish. With such examiners it was a rare day in the pastor's school. Sumner, selecting a volume of Brougham which he took from the library, read quite rapidly and without repetition a passage which his eye happened to fall upon, from a speech made May 15, 1823, in which slavery in Rome and in the West Indies was compared ; 2 and the pupils, to his surprise and the teacher's gratification, copied it perfectly. Sumner spoke briefly to the girls, telling them how they could become familiar with English, so as " to speak and live in it ; " and the pastor re- marked that " it would have been impossible to give this advice more gracefully, with more kindness or acceptable authority." Sumner's eye — or rather, as Abauzit says, " sa sagacite* et sa sympathie " — detected the peculiar interest of the pastor in one of the most intelligent and attractive of the girls, and men- tioned it on his return to Martins, who had not observed it. Teacher and pupil were quite unconscious of what was to come ; but Sumner's prediction that the interest would yet be mutual and end in a marriage proved true. Madame Abauzit followed the advice of that day, and came to write and speak English as easily as French. Her married life was not to be a long one, and she died in 1884.2
Sumner made a lasting impression on all whom he met at Montpellier. They were charmed alike with his scholarly en- thusiasm, the elevation of his sentiments, and his personal qualities. Renouvier, who as it proved had not long to live, sent him in the autumn a work of his own which had re-
of Protestantism, compelled to flee at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, finding then a refuge in Switzerland; one of his ancestors selected as an arbiter between Newton and Leibnitz, and honored by a most remarkable tribute from Rousseau in a note to the 'Nou- velle Heloise.' " M. Abauzit was a Wesleyan Methodist; and Sumner wrote to Mr. Jay, asking him to send to the pastor documents on the position of the denomination in the United States concerning the slavery question, to enable him to prepare an appeal to them from their brethren in France.
1 The two Frenchmen were surprised that Sumner had happened on the passage, and said, "There is a man consecrated to one leading idea."
2 Professor Martins gave the writer an account of the visit to Calvisson. M. Abauzit also wrote a full account for him, dated March 4, 1887, of what he calls "the most precious recollections" of Sumner's visit. Writing of an interview with him at Montpellier, the pastor says : " Mr. Sumner had me read the letter which he had just received from the poet Longfellow, telling him of the death of the historian Prescott, and saying, 'We shall never see that sunny face again ! ' He then talked a great deal of Theodore Parker, and said to me, 'He is our first man; but he is wanting in veneration.' He took pleasure in repeating what Tocqueville had said to him: 'Take care lest they take you for a French senator.' We were then under the empire."
vol. in. 37
578 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
ceived a prize from the Art Society of Brussels. Taillandier, leaving for Provence a few days before Sumner left for Italy, expressed in a note his great pleasure in their association and his earnest hope of renewing it. He kept his American friend fresh in recollection, and whenever he met the Gordons inquired for the latest news from him. Three years after Sumner left Montpellier, he said to Richard Gordon, " Je me rappelerai avec orgueil que j'ai eu l'honneur de compter parrni les auditeurs les plus assidus de mon cours l'illustre senateur des Btats Unis, M. Charles Sumner." The elder Gordon, with whom Sumner kept up a correspondence, mentioned, May 24, soon after they parted, how at every meeting his friends inquired earnestly for him, as " Renouvier, Taillandier, Bouchet (he of the horny hand, who tills his own soil), Masarin, and Carabine Mares, — from all of whom I am charged with kindest remembrances and com- pliments, which if given verbatim would swell this letter to a sheet of foolscap." And again, October 27 : " All your mes- sages and remembrances to your many friends here have been duly communicated to them ; and you may rest assured, should Montpellier ever again have the happiness of possessing you, that you will be hailed with a welcome which will prove to you that fickle though the French are said to be, yet when an impression is made by a master hand it remains indelible with them." Sumner was the correspondent of Captain Gordon while the latter lived. He was accustomed to send to Professor Martins the scientific publications of our government, — among them the reports of the explorations for the railroad to the Pacific. The latter wrote, in November, 1878, an account of Sumner's life in Montpellier, which closed thus : " I cannot help expressing my regret in not having been informed of the visit that Mr. Sumner made to Paris in 1872. I should certainly have gone to take him by the hand. I hope this letter may be sat- isfactory to you. It will prove to you at least that we have kept in remembrance the excellent and distinguished man who is the subject of your biography." But among Sumner's friends in Montpellier none felt his fascination more than young Rich- ard Gordon, whose Christian name he was accustomed to abbre- viate in a familiar way, — giving him as they parted at the station a small volume, Gourdon's " Grammaire Hdraldique," 1
1 Sumner was always interested in pedigrees as illustrating local or general history. He inquired of M. Martins as to those of families in the neighborhood; but they were of little account.
JEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 579
writing his name in it, and saying, " Dick, I want to give you something, but have only this book." Thus passed three months at Montpellier, which he left on the morning of March 6.1
Sumner kept up at Montpellier, under the immediate care of Dr. Crouzet, the treatment prescribed by Dr. Brown-S£quard, — " poisons for medicines " and cupping along the spine (ventouses seches), — painful, but, as he wrote, preferable to fire. The tran- quillity and separation from political excitement were salutary, and he really made progress ; but the end was still uncertain. Never were books more a refuge and a solace, — perfugium ac solatium; and they ministered to recovery.
He wrote to B. L. Pierce, March 4 : —
" During my winter solitude here, not a word from you. I hope, notwith- standing, that you have not ceased to think of me with your early kindness. My life here has been of the greatest tranquillity ; never did patient surrender himself more completely to the most assured means for the recovery of his health. I have spared nothing of effort, and have shrunk from no trial or pain. Some fifteen hours out of the daily twenty-four I have passed on my back, and have always begun the day with a treatment which was tolerable only as an exchange for fire. But I have found society and solace in books, which I have devoured with my ancient ardor.2 No prisoner in the Bastile ever read more. God be praised for this taste, or appetite, and for the return- ing strength which has enabled me to indulge it !
" Good friends I have found here, chiefly in the professors. The climate has been exquisite, — a perpetual spring. To-day I have been chatting with the professor of botany in the open air, and in the shade of his garden. Such things seem impossible in Boston, and yet Montpellier is on our line of lati- tude. I have also had pleasure in the lectures of the professors, — one of them an eminent writer in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' and speaking with exqui- site grace and beauty. I have seeu very little of American newspapers, and till this week not one from Boston. But the conduct of our government fills me with sorrow ; you cannot conceive the depths to which it degrades us, and
1 Twenty years later, March 30, 1879, the writer passed a day in Montpellier, lodging at Hotel Nevet, whose proprietor was still living. The elder Gordon had died; but his son Richard, now custodian of the Medical Library, was the writer's lively and agreeable companion. Professor Martins was still bright and amiable, fond of humor, enjoying good health, and active in duty. Dr. Crouzet, now advanced in years, was full of enthusiasm for his distinguished patient. The writer visited with Mr. Gordon all of Sumner's favorite haunts, —the Promenade, the Jardin, the home of the elder Gordon, the Municipal Library, and Taillandier's lecture-room. It was interesting to observe how, after a long interval, the interest of Sumner's friends in him was unabated. Again in March, 1887, the writer passed a few hours in Montpellier, seeing the hotel proprietor, now ninety in age, and re- newing agreeable intercourse with Richard Gordon. Dr. Crouzet was still living. Pro- fessor Martins had become an invalid, and was living in Paris, where he died two years later.
2 He wrote to George Sumner, February 15: "How often I think with gratitude of my love of books, which furnishes me in my retreat such hosts of truest friends."
*
580 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
the mill-stone which it hangs upon the liberties of Europe. I long to see the name of the republic a strength to the liberal cause instead of a weakness. Nobody now ventures to cite our example except to condemn us. It was not so once ; it will not he so when true ideas prevail at Washington."
To C. F. Adams, February 5 : —
" I am inclined to believe that had you been in my condition, after more than two years of ups and downs, — still a serious sufferer, unable to do what you had most at heart, and with chances most menacing, worse than death, — you would have intrusted yourself unreservedly to medical skill which had already inspired your confidence by a most careful and intelligent diagnosis.1 I will not now undertake to say that the painful treatment which I have endured was necessary, nor indeed that it has brought me to my present con- dition of convalescence and confident hope; but the careful examination at Paris made me precisely aware of my case in its details. With this knowl- edge I am able to tell to what extent I have succeeded in exterminating the remains of my original injuries. While I recognize still some symptoms mischievous in character, I feel a sense of health and a capacity for work to which I have been for a long time a stranger ; but I do not in the least inter- mit my treatment. I begin the day with my prescribed torments ; I feed on my poisons ; and while keeping in the open air for some time daily, I avoid all fatigue, and seek repose on my bed or sofa. I have determined that no care or effort on my part should be wanting to carry forward this cure. Of course, I am often pained by the thought of my public duties neglected ; and you can well imagine that were I in health some other place than Montpellier would attract me. But I have said too much of myself; and yet I must add one word more. The meeting of Congress this winter presented a question of painful embarrassment. There were several courses to take. To go home in the face of the positive counsel of eminent medical authorities, and with a consciousness that I was still an invalid, seemed rash, and hardly to be vindi- cated ; but to leave my seat vacant throughout a whole session seemed inex- cusable. It only remained that I should resign. Had I not felt that my case was exceptional, and not that of ordinary political life, of course I should have yielded to the inevitable necessity of this step. But I could not abandon a position dearer to me now than ever, because more than ever, with returning health, I can hope to serve our cause ; and because I have at heart to be heard again from the seat where my assassination was attempted. Pardon me also if I deceived myself by the belief that my resignation would have caused pain to many all over the country who are in earnest against slavery. But the present session of Congress will soon he over, and a legitimate vacation of months will then be before me, in the course of which I have every reason to expect to confirm and anneal my convalescence so as to be beyond relapse. How I do long for this hour !
" You know well the satisfaction I have had in your election. ' Returning justice lifts aloft her scales.' But I foresee responsibilities, not inviting, kin- dred to my own. Our friends must be taught to be in earnest, and to show
1 This was a reply to Mr. Adams's protest against another recourse to the heroic remedies. Ante, p. 572.
JEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 581
faith iu their cause ; they must be proud of it. Of course, such an austerity of principle will not make public life a path of roses. Among new accessions to our forces will be Mr. Eliot, and I think, also, Mr. Alley." *
Sumner retained always pleasant memories of Montpellier. He wrote, Nov. 7, 1859, from Althorp, Earl Spencer's seat, to the elder Gordon : —
" And now I look with increased longing and tenderness towards Mont- pellier. My residence there in such retirement, compared with my life else- where, seems like a fable or a dream. Most truly do I wish that I could repeat it. I need not say how much you contributed to make it agreeable. I often think of my quiet walks, my visits to the library, the lectm-es, friends, and then my weekly repast with you. I trust that my excellent doctor, who declined all fee, has a long list of patients who pay him well."
And again from Boston, Sept. 7, 1860 : —
" Be assured that your letter was most pleasant; for it gave me souvenirs of persons and places that will be ever dear to me. I often think of Mont- pellier, and never without blessing the day which turned my steps to that quiet place. So familiar is it to my mind that I can see clearly all its streets, buildings, and promenades, with the swans in the water. Would that I could enjoy a day there again with old friends, and another lecture of Taillandier ! Yesterday Agassiz dined with me ; we always talk of Martins. Pray tell him how grateful I am for his friendly thought of me."
The railway journey from Montpellier to Marseilles, broken by a day at Aries, greatly wearied him. Between Marseilles and Toulon he had while in the diligence another attack of the angina pectoris, — the first he had experienced for more than three months. It came so sharply that he was on the point of asking the driver to stop ; but he was shortly relieved, and went on. At Cannes he met Lord Brougham and Baron Bun- sen,2 — both anticipating his arrival with most cordial notes of invitation. He made pauses at Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, and Flor- ence,3 and reached Naples by steamer from Leghorn, April 9. He remained there ten days, visiting places of interest in com- pany with Mr. George Bemis, of Boston, whom he found unex- pectedly at the Hotel Victoria. They made visits to the museum and to several churches, — San Filippo Neri, Santa Chiara, and
i Thomas D. Eliot and John B Alley.
2 Bunsen made a long call on him, in which Sumner was struck by his "learning and humanity."
3 At Florence, where he remained ten days, he was entertained at the British Legation, and by M. Francois Sabatier-Unger at the Villa Concezione, to whom he had been com- mended by Mr. Gordon. Besides visits to the churches and galleries, he took much inter- est in Mr. Jarves's collection, which he hoped could be secured for Boston.
582 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
the Duomo ; 1 to the Royal Palace 2 and St. Elmo, ascending to the castle and descending by donkey ; took drives to the tomb of Virgil and the Grotta del Cane ; visited Herculaneum and Pompeii, dining at the Hotel Diomed, where Sumner ordered Falernian wine ; attempted the ascent of Vesuvius, but were stopped short of the Hermitage by a hard rain, Sumner going alone to Paestum. With all his weakness, his energy was too much for Bemis. The latter, whose journal and oral account are here followed, relates Sumner's pertinacity in seeing all that was possible in the way of art and history ; his indignation at the Royal Palace (Bomba was then king) that " all this should belong to one man, and be for the great only ; " his stopping a man with a drove of goats, and buying a mug of fresh milk, while the crowd collected from curiosity as he was drinking it ; his constant practice in speaking Italian, which he had not used for twenty years ; and withal, his good nature and gen-' erosity as a fellow-traveller.3 They went by rail to Capua, and thence by vettura to Rome, — taking the entire interior, as the coupe was already engaged, — being from Monday to Wednes- day on the way. Their first night was at Mola di Gaeta, where the landlord of the inn called Cicero's Villa offered them only a single room, but Sumner's peremptory " 0 due stanze o la strada " brought them the two ; and the second night was at Cisterna. From Albano they drove to the lakes Albano and Nemi, and by the middle of the afternoon they alighted in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, where Mrs. William W. Story awaited Sumner with a carriage, and claiming him as guest, drove him to her apartment in the Palazzo Barberini.
Mr. Bemis thus wrote in his journal of Sumner's conversation during their intercourse at this time : —
"What shall I say of the loug and intimate association that I had with Sumner during these ten days? Certainly that it abounded with instruc- tion and the highest interest for me. On our route to Rome in the vettura, I should think we talked together nearly three quarters of the time con- tinuously. We discussed literary subjects, — Hannibal's campaigns, Italian writers, Manzoni's ' Promessi Sposi ; ' French and Italian morals ; love, in- cluding some of Sumner's experiences; society, wherein S. told me a great deal of his English and foreign acquaintanceships ; law, including his relations
1 Here Sumner was struck with the elaborate oratory of a Dominican friar.
2 Here they met Mr. and Mrs. John Bigelow, of New York.
3 Sumner paid two thirds of the ten napoleons charged for the vettura to Rome, insist- ing on doing so.
JEt. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 583
with George T. Curtis, B. F. Hallett, Judge Fletcher, R. C. Winthrop, George S. Hillard, etc. ; persons, including Prescott, Bancroft, Lord Brougham, Bun- sen, Tocqueville, etc. I broached to him my criminal law theories, and he encouraged me to pursue them, suggesting the aid that I should find in Ben- tham. He also spoke of having read an Italian criminalist whose name was not familiar to me, but whom he praised with great warmth. He told me curi- ous chapters in Franklin's history ; ... in Lord Palmerston's, which he had heard from the Duchess of Sutherland ; and an account of Lord Palmerston's giving him the particulars of his Don Pacifico speech, which he (Lord P.) said was ' extemporaneous, and all came from here,' touching his forehead with his hand."
Sumner remained in Rome from April 20 to May 13, — his time laboriously occupied with its treasures of antiquity and art, renewing nis memories of his earlier visit, and cared for by his affectionate hosts. He witnessed the ceremonies of Easter ; lis- tened in St. Peter's to the Miserere from the Doria gallery ; was greatly interested in the bronze doors for our national Capitol, still in the studio of Rogers, to whom he suggested persons and events for commemoration ; talked earnestly with Story and with Hamilton Wild of statuary and paintings ; met other friends from Boston, — Edward N. Perkins, Turner Sargent, J. L. Motley, Miss Emma Weston, and Hawthorne, then writing his " Marble Faun ; " passed many hours in studios, — those of Story, Rogers, Overbeck, Cranch, Lehman, Hosmer, Ives, and Page ; made a melancholy visit to that of Crawford, which still held the artist's unfinished works ; gathered a stock of pho- tographs at Macpherson's ; visited with Bemis galleries and churches and studios. The latter wrote in his journal : " He talked with Page about art, and evidently made an impression ; he talked about the historical incidents of the Venus di Medici. I was wearied with the hard work which he put me to." Sum- ner was sad at leaving Rome, feeling that he should never be there again, and deeply regretting that he had left so much un- visited. He wrote to Longfellow, May 12, the day before leaving Rome : —
"1 have been in Naples, visited Paestum, which I had never seen before, and the ancient cities, and driven near the rolling, fiery lava. All this was most interesting ; but nothing touches me like Rome. Constantly I think of early days when I saw everything here with such fidelity, under the advantage of health which I do not now possess, and of boundless hope for the future which long ago closed on me. I am asked constantly what I find new in Rome. For this I have one answer. The photographs, which, as I drive through the streets or walk on the Piazza di Spagna, certainly arrest and
584 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
delight my eyes. Some of them are of consummate beauty. I have made a collection which I long to show you. Of course, in my wanderings I cannot forget the friends, one of whom is dead,1 who initiated me in Rome; and that happiest summer of my life is revived in all that I now see and do, with long- ings that I could have it all back, — but not, I think, on the condition that I should live the intervening years over again."
The day after leaving Rome, he wrote to Story from the steamer : —
"What I have left undone at Rome haunts me more than all that I en- joyed. I think perpetually of pictures and statues unseen ; but more than this, I am unhappy in opportunities I let slip. Why did I not press you to go with me to the Capitol and the Vatican ? Why did I not press Wild to a similar service in the picture galleries'? But I have stored away much; Rome now, as when I first saw it, touches me more than any other place. Then I have been so happy with you. Perhaps it will be long before we meet again; but I cannot forget those latter delicious days. God bless you ! and give my love to Emelyn and to Edith, and kisses to the boys."
To Dr. Howe, May 25 : —
"Crawford's studio interested me much; but I was strongly of opinion that it would be best to abandon all idea of continuing the doors. His sketches seemed to be in a very crude condition ; so that if the doors were finished according to them, I feared they would not come up to his great fame, or sustain the competition with the careful works of other artists ; and if the sketches were completed by another hand, then the work would in great measure cease to be Crawford's. His well-filled studio testified to his active, brilliant career. To me it was full of peculiar interest. It was just twenty years before that I had found him poor, struggling on three hundred dollars a year, but showing the genius that has since borne such fruit. Then it was I predicted that if I ever came again to Rome I should find him living in a palace, — in a palace, but not living, alas ! "
William W. Story writes of Sumner's visit to Rome at this
time : —
" After the terrible assault upon him in the Senate chamber, broken down in health and doubting whether he should ever be able to return to his duties in the Senate, he came to Rome, and was my guest during his whole visit. He was terribly shattered, — finding the greatest difficulty in ascending any stairs, forced constantly to stop and be assisted, and at times suffering sharp, almost intolerable, pain. But he still took interest in going over the old ground and renewing the old associations, and, despite his broken health, was still a stu- dent of everything that came in his way. All the long evenings he lay upou the sofa, and talked of men and things, — politics ; of France and Italy and Germany, and of their future ; of the old days ; of the persons he had met ; and had the liveliest interest in the prospects of Italy, and the deepest sym- pathy in her struggles for freedom. He spoke with no bitterness of his assail-
1 Crawford.
^Et. 47-48.] HEROIC REMEDIES. 585
ant Brooks, but rather with pity and sorrow, and seemed scarcely to hold him. personally responsible for his outrageous assault. He had not bated one jot of heart or hope for the great cause to which he had pledged his life, but ouly sorrowed over his own inability to be still in the van of the fight. ' I ought not to be here,' he used to say. ' I must get well ; I will get well ! My post is in the Senate, and there I long to be.' He described to us his terrible suf- ferings under the hot iron with which his spine was burned ; but said, ' I am willing to go through it again if I may go back to my duty and my work. It is terrible to be thus stricken down when there is so much to do.'
" Still, he took great interest in art, and visited, when he was well enough to do so, the galleries and churches, and the studios of the artists. He was specially interested in the doors which Mr. Rogers was then making for the Capitol at Washington, and repeatedly visited his studio and talked with him about them ; and he was also deeply interested that the sketches left by Craw- ford for the doors should be executed so as to uphold his fame. It was a great pleasure to me to be with him again in daily intercourse, and to feel that our old affection had suffered no diminution by time and separation ; but it was sad to see him so broken down in body. Still, he felt that his life had not been in vain ; and he looked forward to the future of our country with confidence, though he felt assured that it was only through some great cata- clysm— some terrible struggle to come —that slavery could be crushed and liberty secured. But no matter what comes, he said we must be free; no price is too great to pay for freedom."
Sumner went to Civita Vecchia, thence by steamer to Leg- horn and Genoa, and by railway to Turin, where he arrived on the 15th. The French army was in Italy, soon to meet the Austrians at Magenta. Indeed, a preliminary action took place at Montebello on the 20th, the day before Sumner crossed the frontier. With all his devotion to peace, he was an enthu- siast for the Italian cause, and was as much interested in the approaching conflict as if he had been bred a soldier. At Ales- sandria the station was sheltering from the rain several thou- sand soldiers, and " the train as it entered seemed to penetrate the living mass, and yet all was order and tranquillity." At Turin he had an interview with Cavour, then the first states- man of Europe ; and in that city he made the acquaintance, by Miss Weston's introduction, of two Italian ladies distinguished alike for intellectual gifts and patriotism, — Madame Arconati and Madame de Collegno,1 daughters of the Marchese Trotti
1 M. de Collegno was Piedmontese minister at Paris under Victor Emmanuel. His wife, surviving him a few years, died in 1868. W. S. Thayer, Consul General to Egypt, wrote from Alexandria, April 27, 1862, that the Marchesa Arconati, then in Egypt, desired him to "say many things to Mr. Sumner." Mr. Thajrer said of her: "Among women I have not seen her equal for the combination of masculine understanding and feminine sweet- ness of disposition." She was Margaret Fuller's, Madame Mohl's, and Nassau W. Senior's friend and correspondent. She died about 1872.
586 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
Bentivoglio, of an old Milanese family. With M. Alexander Trotti he visited the Superga, the burial-place of the kings of Piedmont. Here he took what Lord Aberdeen had told him was the best view of the Alps. He was struck with the tran- quillity of the city, and observed in the gallery, which he much enjoyed, artists copying the old masters as in time of peace. He wrote to Dr. Howe : —
" I am fresh from Turin, where I saw much that would interest you, — be- ginning with the Comte de Cavour, who is now acting such a transcendent part in the world's history. He received me in his bedroom. I found him calm and full of confidence in the future. He did not doubt that the Austrians would be driven out of Italy this summer ; and when I referred to the strength of that prodigious triangle Pes'chiera, Verona, and Mantua, he said that he thought all these fortifications could be taken. He hoped that Italy would take the place that belonged to her, and that when free she might once more pro- duce great men. I took the liberty of saying that his career showed that the mould was not lost or broken. By the way, they tell in society at Turin, and with great pride, that the Austrian general who was charged with the three days' ultimatum, when he called to take his conge of the Prime Minister at the end of the third day, said that his mission had at least one personal satis- faction,— that it gave him the honor of making the personal acquaintance of the first statesman of the age. I saw people in Turin of all shades of political opinion and social position. The Marchioness Arconati invited me to meet at her house persons who could tell me about affairs. I found the ladies, grandes dames all, engaged iu making lint for the hospitals, and most happy that the crisis long desired had at length come. They did not doubt the result. Vic- tory seemed to be already stooping to them ; and before them was the beautiful idea of Italy redeemed from the foreigner. It was hoped then to orgauize a kingdom of Alta Italia, with Piedmont, Lombardy, Venice, Parma, Modeua, and Florence, and a population of twelve millions, and a cluster of great cities such as no other country can show, — all vivified by the new influence. . . . Disliking the emperor as I do, I am yet disposed to believe that various circumstances, among which are early education, friendly sympathy for Italy, and a desire to do a generous deed that may make people remember with less bitterness the coup d'e'tat, — these and other things conspire for the moment to keep him faithful to the idea of Italian independence. But this is a great moment in history, — nothing like it since 1815."
To W. W. Story : —
" Let me say that a note which Cavour wrote me in French was written in the clear round hand of his country, — so different from the French, which is small and flowing, like their language. This national peculiarity of hand- writing is curious to observe, particularly in its relation to the language. He was calm as if he felt himself master of the situation, and asked me to observe the tranquillity of Turin, with not a soldier to be seen. . . . He asked me to observe that, though now invested with absolute power, their government
Mt. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTORED. 587
had put but one restriction on the press, — which was not to publish news about the war, except sanctioned by the regular bulletins."
Sumner bade farewell to Italy on the 21st, — unhappy, as he wrote to Dr. Howe, at the thought that he should not see the country again, a presentiment which proved true.1 He drove by way of Susa in an open carriage, hired only by himself, at the price of two hundred and twenty francs, across the mountains, meeting on the way the French troops marching to Italy. He wrote to Dr. Howe : —
" On the way, gleaming at each turn in the defiles of the Alps, I met the French forces — a squadron of the line, flying artillery, and the lancers — de- scending. Nothing could be more picturesque. Then would come a solitary soldier, foot-sore. When I encountered the lancers, — all beautifully mounted, each with a lance and pennon, the officers dressed as completely as on the streets of Paris, stretching farther than the eye could reach, — my postilion seemed confused as to the law of the road, and I hesitated which side to take. The officer cried out, ' au milieu, au milieu!' The postilion at once struck into the middle, while the lancers parted, and I drove between these two long lines. Of course I took off my hat as I passed the officers, and they all re- turned my recognition, — sometimes by taking off the hat, and sometimes by the military salute. The day was charming, and I seemed to be travelling in a picture."
Comparing his condition on his arrival at Paris witli what it was when he was under medical treatment in that city, he felt assured that he had made a certain advance in health since he entered it a year before. He wrote to Dr. Howe, May 25, the day after his arrival : —
" Now for the first time I have a clear and most appreciable measure of my improvement. I am in the same rooms where I suffered so much, and I daily descend stairs and walk pavements where at each step was a smart, an ache, or a strain. Now all is changed ; I walk naturally and unconsciously. I sit down in a chair without thinking how I am to get up ; and I get up without an effort or a pain. It is only when I walk a little fast that I am reminded of coming trouble on the chest, that the abnormal sensibility is not yet all gone. But this summer and autumn will do the business. Of course, I must make thorough work of my cure? and continue to stave off active labor that I may be in condition for my public duties in December. I shall not re- turn until I can announce myself as recovered, without being obliged to make any reserves."
He remained in Paris a month, meeting there Bemis, Motley, Bigelow, and Joseph Lyman, and seeing much of Theodore
1 His love for Italy appears in his letter to a public meeting in New York, Feb. 17, 1860. (Works, vol. iv. pp. 413-415.) His interest in Italian unity was often shown. Let- ters of Jan. 10 and Feb. 27, 1871 , Works, vol. xiv. pp. 139-141; Ibid., p. 167.
,"88 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
Parker,1 then an invalid, with whom he drove six hours the day after Parker's arrival. Bemis wrote in his journal an account of a conversation in Sumner's room, with Motley and Parker pres- ent, when Sumner spoke of John A. Andrew, hoping he would soon be governor of Massachusetts, and recalling Judge Pelcg Sprague's tribute to his ability as a lawyer. This was Sumner's last intercourse with Parker, whom he accompanied, June 24, to the railway station as the latter left Paris for Geneva.2 Sumner met again in Paris Montalembert, Villemain, the Mohls, the Circourts, and R. M. Milnes.3 At the Princess Belgiojoso's4 he met Mignet, Henri Martin, and Cousin, with whom he had had interviews in 1838, and conversed with them on literature and current events. He passed much time in the shops of the Rue Rivoli and the quais. He took great pleasure in an exhibi- tion of Ary SchefTer's pictures.
His physician directing a trial of sea-baths, he went to Dieppe, June 26 ; but dissatisfied with a place which lacked libraries or other interests, he remained only a day, and left for Lon- don. There he passed a busy month, filled with invitations to breakfasts and dinners from the Sutherlands, Lansdownes, Westminsters, Granvilles, Palmerstons, Argylls, Stanhopes, Cranworths, Wenslevdales, Kinnairds ; as also from Reeve, Senior, Macaulay,5 Sir Henry Holland, T. Baring, Buxton, Den- ison, and Mrs. Norton.6 He met again Brougham and Lynd- hurst. Lady Byron, an invalid, asked him to tea, referring to the pleasure which he and Lady Arabella King found in each other's society. He was present at a reception at Strawberry Hill. The Speaker gave him a seat for a month under the gal- lery of the House, which he frequently occupied. London soci- ety, agreeable as it was, was too much of a strain, and he left,
1 Mr. Parker spoke at the time most affectionately of Sumner, calling him "the great, dear, noble soul." Weiss's "Life of Parker/' vol. ii. p. 298; Frothingham's "Life of Parker," p. 515.
2 Parker's powers of endurance were at the time greater than Sumner's, and their friends who saw them then thought Parker more likely to be the survivor.
3 The Grotes had passed some time in the previous summer at St. Germain en Laye. Mrs. Grote, in a letter to Senior, described a "real jolly day," Aug. 3, 1858, in which she took Sumner and M. and Madame du Quaire to drive in the forest. They, as well as Mr. Grote, Henri Martin, and Circourt, dined together in the garden. Another drive followed, and Sumner returned to Paris at half-past ten in the evening.
4 1808-1871. Of a noble family of Milan; exiled by Austria for her liberal ideas; a traveller and author.
5 He found Macaulay, "as ever, exuberant and powerful."
6 He met Thackeray and Cruikshank at L. B. Mackinnon's.
Mr. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTORED. 589
July 23, for Bains Frascati near Havre. He wrote, August 8, to J. R. Gordon, of Montpellier : —
" I left Dieppe for London, where I enjoyed myself at breakfasts and din- ners, besides often attending Parliament. This was too much for a conva- lescent, and I came to this place, where I have been already a fortnight, and shall remain a month longer, happier in seclusion and sea-bathing than in the grande monde of Paris or London. Here I have access to the cercle and to the public library ; but I find no such friendly houses as yours and Martius's, and no such conversation as I enjoyed at Montpellier.
"At London I dined with Lord Cranworth ; Brougham and Clarendon were there. We spoke of old Mr. Dalton, who was described as in great force. I also dined with Sir Henry Holland, and sat by the side of his wife, who had not forgotten Montpellier. I was at Lansdowne House, Stafford House, Holland House, Grosvenor House, Cambridge House, Argyll Lodge, etc. ; and saw, perhaps, as much as could be seen in so short a time.
" The distrust of Louis Napoleon is universal.1 The only person I heard speak well of him was Lady Shaftesbury. I met the Due d'Aumale twice, and found him as charming as ever. If the republic cannot prevail, let us have him. The Comte de Paris, whom I saw several times, but not to be- come acquainted with, did not impress me much ; he looked like an American youth. Had I not known who he was I should have selected him as from my own country.2 Lord Palmerston was as gay and jaunty as ever, Lord Clarendon as fascinating, Lord Brougham as fitful, Lord Lyndhurst as elo- quent and clever, Lord Lansdowne as kind, and Lord Cranworth as good. I saw much of Macaulay at breakfast and dinner, — at least half a dozen times, and twice in his own house. His conversation was as full and interesting as ever. Nothing seemed too great or too small for his memory. I think that I was more than ever struck by him. Bright I heard for the first time. I was asked if he was not like an American speaker ; I should be glad to claim him."
The consciousness of regained health continued, though with now and then a lurking sensibility ; and his letters assured his friends at home that he should return in the autumn " a work- ing man." He wrote to C. F. Adams, July 13 : —
" I am glad to assure you that I am to return a well man. Even at Rome I was obliged to seek repose during the day and to avoid all walking ; but I have got beyond this now. Imagine my happiness at being able again to move about without pain or any considerable fatigue. But there is still a some- thing lurking in the system which must be eradicated, and my physician pre- scribes a course of baths and medicines. For this purpose I went to Dieppe, but soon became dissatisfied. There was water enough, but no libraries or books, and I at once left for London. . . .
1 Rev. S. K. Lothrop, of Boston, was two days in Sumner's company at Havre, and records the latter's poor opinion of the emperor. " Reminiscences," p. 231.
2 He became well acquainted with the count when the latter was in the United States in 1861-1862, and from that time they were correspondents.
590 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
" At Paris I found Palfrey's book,1 which I read at once with great inter- est ; it is admirable in all respects. Dana's book 2 I hear of in the hands of his London friends. I found Lady Cranworth much pleased with it. Lord Stanhope finds his old friend W. Irving's ' Life of Washington ' very poor, — entirely unworthy of the subject and of the author. The ' Life of John Ad- ams ' he recognizes as a very different work, and of positive merit. I hear of Seward's visit, but have not yet seen him. Since I have been in London he has been in the Provinces, where he went partly to escape the 4th of July dinner. Is he to be our candidate ? "
To Theodore Parker, August 4 : —
"Meanwhile, what sudden changes in the attitude of European States! The peace of Villafranca is as treacherous and clever as its author, for I feel disposed at least to concede to him cleverness. But as time passes it prom- ises to be more and more advantageous to Italy. Several things seem ac- complished, — (1) Lombardy rescued from Austria ; (2) The duchies (Parma, Modena, and Tuscany) all taken from their old governments, and probably from the influence of Austria; (3) The idea of Italian unity and independence recognized by Europe ; (4) A movement in Italy which I think will ripen into events. Of course, this is not the programme with which the war was com- menced ; but it is something gained. Think of old Gino Capponi, blind, led to the urn, and voting for the emancipation of his country ! Well done, gallant veteran ! . . . I am glad that my brother George has found a tongue with which to speak offensive truth. The abuse he has received will do him good. How much remains to be done ! I do not agree with Seward, who says the cause is won ; if so, I should at once retire. Before me are fiercest battles, even at home in Boston ; the slave-driving sentiment is still uppermost there. I long for you there once more. A discourse from you on Mr. Choate would have been another great sermon to the nation, wherein they would have seen that brilliant and lovely qualities could not cover treason to humanity.3 Pray, get well. G-od bless you ! "
He remained at Bains Prascati six weeks, lodging at the hotel, where he took swimming baths daily, and had access to the public library and the Cercle du Commerce, which was well supplied with newspapers.4 He was in Paris for a day, August 14, to witness the emperor's triumphal entry into the city on
1 History of New England.
2 To Cuba and Back.
8 Rufus Choate was, after his death, the subject of a sermon by James Freeman Clarke and of an address by Wendell Phillips, in which those reformers took Sumner's and Par- ker's view of him.
4 Mr. A. N. Chrystie, an American merchant at Havre since 1849, and a fellow pas- senger with Sumner on the " Vanderbilt," saw him frequently while he was at Bains Frascati, finding him, as he said, very sociable, unlike other public men he had known. Sumner dined often with Mr. Chrystie, who observed, as Richard Gordon had observed at Montpellier, his habit of stopping in the street and putting his hand to his back, when quite unconscious that any one saw the movement.
^Et. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTORED. 591
his return from Italy. He was still gaining strength, and strength which he felt he could rely upon. He wrote, August 16, to his brother : " If anybody cares to know how I am doing, you can say better and better, and that I mean to return in the autumn a well man." From Havre, late in the month, he made an excursion through Normandy and Brittany, taking in Trou- ville, Caen, Bayeux, St. Lo, Coutances, Granville, Avranches, Pontorson, Mont St. Michel, St. Malo, Dinan, and Rennes, and other places on return, travelling partly by private carriage and partly by diligence. His companion as far as Rennes, whose ac- quaintance he had made at Bains Frascati, was an English youth, since well known as poet and novelist, Mr. Hamilton Aide. Mr. Aide wrote in his journal : —
" The longer I am with Charles Sumner the more I find to esteem and admire. ... His mode of speech is too deliberate, and in his desire to be com- plete in his analysis or description he is sometimes lengthy ; but what comes from him is always worth consideration, even when one feels most disposed to dissent from his views. . . . Nothing needs encouragement more than the habit of exercising the thews and sinews of the mind as we do, or should do, those of the body. Mr. Sumner has the best trained mind in this respect I remember to have met. There is no class of subjects, even to the most trifling, he is not ready to hear about, to discuss, and to extract from it what- soever it may have of value."
Mr. Aide' was quite amused by Sumner's naive manner of ap- pealing for frank opinions to interested parties, — as to the land- lady at Avranches for advice as to whether it was best to remain there or go on to Pontorson. It is not likely, however, that Sumner put much value on the answers, — it being his way of making talk with the people of the country. He wrote to John Bigelow, August 22, from Bains Frascati : —
" You are wise to make a hurried tour through Germany, and then return to France. In attempting to get both languages, you would lose both. See Germany physically, geographically, aesthetically as you can, and return to France, where you will keep among Frenchmen as much as possible. In travel you will do best alone, trusting to the society of the day and the op- portunities of making acquaintances, from whom you may get some idea of foreign life and thought. Of course, always have a book with you as a com- panion should other society fail. But keep alone, always excepting the com- panionship of a friend, whose society might compensate for the loss of all that chance can throw in your way."
Sumner returned to Paris, where he passed three weeks, mostly engaged in collecting bric-a-brac, but making one day
592 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
an excursion to Lagrange, the home of Lafayette,1 in company with a friend, probably Joseph Lyman. Here he was most graciously received by Madame de Lasteyrie. Just before leav- ing the city he wrote to Theodore Parker, then at Neuchatel :
"I had intended, dear Parker, to quit this world of Paris to-day; but the incidents of packing and purchases are against it. I go to-morrow, stopping at Amiens to enjoy its mighty cathedral, and then to London. For several days I have been torn and devoured by desires that have grown by what they fed on, — at shops on the quais, and collections of engravings. I have yielded, till I stand aghast at my extravagance ! I wish you were here to see some of my treasures. I have two or three manuscripts of exquisite beauty, with illuminations and miniatures, such as cannot be found in all Boston. I have Elzevirs and Aldiues, some in choicest old bindings, also incunabula ; and I have bronzes of several ancient works of art. With what pleasure I shall look at them all, and show them to my friends at home ! But I believe that my first delight is in my engravings. Pretty well, — all this indulgence for one who cannot call himself even 'petit rentier I But, thank God, I can pay my debts ! My only capital is health, which, though long in doubt, will be mine again. Lyman and I dine together almost daily, and make experi- ments on French wines. I have become so much of a Frenchman, or a Swiss, that I should like to see every day at my dinner-plate one of those black bottles, — contents ruby. One of my pleasantest excursions was to Lagrange. The day was charming, and we were received with exquisite grace.
"Did I tell you of a sight which I enjoyed at the exhibition (commence- ment) of the College of Havre ? On the stage sat the prefect and the mayor, the military commander of the place and the curate, with the dignitaries of Havre and the professors. Prizes were awarded ; and before the whole audi- ence, and standing on the platform, the successful boys were crowned with green leaves, — laureati. On the benches, mingled with the other collegians, were some twenty colored boys, — some mulattoes, and others black as Ham. To my delight, several of these, and among them one of the darkest hue, gained several prizes, and came forward to receive their books and to be crowned. Rounds of applause from the audience welcomed them as they made their way from their seats to the platform and back. This made me happier even than my engravings. In itself it was an exquisite engraving.
" Poor Italy ! I know not how its fate is to be spun. God give to it in- dependence ! My heart is there. I envy you much all the joys of Rome ; and yet, pardon me, I feel keenly the risks you run, — (1) a fitful climate, with imperfect provision against cold : but of this I have no winter experience per- sonally ; (2) the excitement of seeing and enjoying, which I fear will be in- consistent with that repose which is so necessary to an invalid. Think of these things.
" Mason will not be regretted at the Tuileries, so I learn, for his habits
i In his lecture on Lafayette, Nov. 30, 1860, he described this visit. (Works, vol. v. p. 375.) The writer made a -visit to Lagrange in 1882, when he found the chateau and grounds as Sumner described them, except that the ivy planted by Charles James Fox had been killed by the severe frost of the previous winter.
jEt. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTOKED. 593
were too disgusting. . . . How painful is much of the news from home ! Violence, vulgarity, degrading practices and sentiments, — these come on every wind. But surely there must be a change. I hear of Hillard here, but see him not. God bless you ! '•'
On his way from Paris, Sumner stopped at Amiens to see the cathedral ; and passing the night in Lille was in London Octo- ber 10, where he took lodgings again at Maurigy's, Regent Street. Society had left the metropolis, and during the rest of the month he passed his time at the British Museum, and in collecting old books and manuscripts ; making visits for the day or for a night to friends living in the country, within easy distance from the city ; and his last days in England were passed at seats in the North. He gave this summary in a letter from Liverpool, No- vember 5, to Mr. Gordon : —
" Perhaps it will interest you to know how I have passed my last days in England, — thanks to that generous hospitality of which I have enjoyed so much. Here it is : Seven days in London at the British Museum ; a day with the poet-laureate Tennyson at the Isle of Wight ; * two days with Lord Stanhope at Chevening Park, where I slept in the room which was occupied for three years by Lord Chatham ; one day at Argyll Lodge with the duke, where I met Gladstone ; one day with Dr. Lushington at Ockham Park in Surrey; one day with my countryman Motley, the historian of the Dutch commonwealth, at Walton-on-Thames ; one day with Lord Clarendon at the Grove ; one day with Lord Spencer 2 at Althorp ; one day with Lord Belper at Kingston Hall ; one day with Lord Hatherton at Teddesley Park ; 3 and here I am.4 . . . Mr. Gladstone was full of hope for Italy. Lord Clarendon was very pleasant and gay."
Shirley Brooks,5 sending him a souvenir, wrote, October 23 :
" Let it serve as a memorandum of a pleasant meeting, — to me an honor. I do not use the term of compliment. The mode in which I have spoken of you in various newspapers with which I am connected, at and after the time your name came prominently before English readers as that of the cham- pion of a noble cause, may witness for me. With hope that your European
1 The Duchess of Argyll wrote, July 23, 1863 : " Tennyson always remembers your visit with pleasure."
2 Born in 1835; twice lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Soon after returning home, Sumner sent Lord Spencer a quantity of blue-grass seed to be sown on his estate. From Althorp he visited Brington, the ancestral home of the Washingtons ; and a year later he received from the earl copies of the Washington memorial stones, and gave them to the Common- wealth of Massachusetts. They were placed in the State House. He gave a full account of the stones in a letter to Jared Sparks, Nov. 22, 1860. Works, vol. v. pp. 357-368.
3 Mr. Senior and his daughter (afterwards Mrs. Simpson) were fellow guests at King- ston Hall and Teddesley Park.
4 He was obliged to decline the invitation of Lord Wensleydale to visit him at Ampthill Park.
5 (1816-1874.) Connected with "Punch," as contributor or editor, from 1851 till his death.
Vol. in. 38
594 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
tour may produce a complete restoration to health, and that a long career of distinguished honor and success awaits you in your own country, believe me," etc.
Lady Hatherton, acknowledging, July 14, 1863, Sumner's let- ter of condolence on her husband's death, said : —
" He spoke of you often when tidings of your unhappy country filled him with grief, as he knew how you must be suffering in spirit. Your visits to Teddesley dwelt in his memory as a pleasant retrospect which he hoped might be renewed. This may not be, alas ! but whenever you do come to England, I trust to your remembering me for his sake, and trying to give me the pleas- ure of seeing you again."
During his two visits to Paris in 1859, and while in London, Sumner indulged his passion for rare books (rare as to binding or edition), old manuscripts, engravings bought with reference to the date of the impressions, and bronzes, — spending in this way at least two thousand dollars, and probably five hundred more. His engravings often cost him fifty dollars each. For one manuscript bought of Ledoyen in Paris he paid two hun- dred and seventy dollars. His bronzes were mostly from Bar- bedienne's. He could not bargain, and always paid the first and highest price. He bought at this time of Joseph Parkes the album kept at Geneva containing the autographs of Milton and Strafford, which he had seen on his visit of 1838-1840, and which he prized through life more than any of his possessions. For this he paid forty pounds.1 He made similar purchases by order after his return ; among them, copies of the " Young Au- gustus " and the " Psyche," executed by his friend Story.2 These purchases and the expenses of his illness absorbed all his in- come. He wrote, Jan. 25, 1859, to Howe, who had charge of his finances : "A few years ago I had a scheme of prudence and of economy which would have made me at this time master of ten thousand dollars. Important as this is to me at my time of life, I must renounce it for the sake of my health."
He sailed from Liverpool in the " Canada " November 5, and arrived in Boston on the morning of the 21st. Among the pas- sengers were Hillard, Sidney Howard Gay, and George Shea.
1 Ante, vol. ii. pp. 124, 131. Articles prepared by Sumner, and describing the album and the first edition of Thomson's "Seasons" which he had bought, may be found in the Boston "Transcript," Jan. 9 and 12, 1860.
2 His marbles became his sister Julia's; his bronzes were divided between Longfellow and Dr. Howe; his engravings are in the Art Museum of Boston; and his Jsooks, auto- graphs, and old manuscripts in the Library of Harvard College.
Mt. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTORED. 595
Many friends called at once at 20 Hancock Street to welcome him home. He was in time to attend on the same day the funeral of Dr. Marshal S. Perry, his physician in 1856. He de- clined a serenade which was proposed for the evening, and a public dinner also proposed for a later date. He was present a few days after his arrival at a lecture in the Parker Fraternity course given by Carl Schurz, who had just come into prominence as a public speaker in the Eastern States. His presence drew out long and hearty cheers ; and being persistently called for, he at length came forward, on the appeal of the chairman, and made a brief response, in which he paid a tribute to Mr. Schurz, and spoke of himself as, after a long struggle, at last a well man. The same evening. he attended in Cambridge a political reception at the house of J. M. S. Williams. He visited both branches of the Legislature, then holding an extra session for the revision of the statutes. Wherever he went he was cor- dially and tenderly taken by the hand. On his way to Wash- ington he was the guest of Mr. Fish in New York and of Mr. Furness in Philadelphia. His many friends in both cities, as well as those in Massachusetts, were gladdened to find him fully established in health, and ready with unimpaired physical and intellectual vigor to resume his career in the Senate, which had been interrupted for so long a period.
The people of Massachusetts were loyal to Sumner during his prolonged disability. His vote in the Senate was wanting not only on the trials of strength between slavery and freedom, but also on questions involving the interests of his State. With all this there was no murmuring, no call from any respectable quar- ter for his resignation. Here and there a politician might suggest a resignation as desirable ; but the feeling was almost universal among the Republicans, then in a very large majority, that the State was best served by his remaining senator so long as there was any reasonable prospect of his restoration, and any sugges- tion that he should give place to another was promptly rebuked by leading journals1 and public men. If Massachusetts was
1 Worcester "Spy," Dec. 29, 1858; Boston "Advertiser," Sept. 16 and 18, 1858; Boston "Atlas and Bee," Sept. 13, 1858; Springfield "Republican," Dec. 21, 1858; New York "Tribune," Jan. 24, 1857; June 11, 1858: J. G. Whittier in Boston "Advertiser," Sept. 18, 1858. An attempt of the Democratic journal, the Boston " Post," to torture the mean- ing of a resolution of the Republican convention so as to make it reflect upon his absence from his post, was met by replies in the "Atlas and Bee," Sept. 10 and 22, 1858; New York "Tribune," September 15 and October 2.
59G MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59
fortunate to have such a senator, he too was fortunate in the State which called him to the public service and kept him there. Various testimonies were given during his absence showing how he held the heart of the people, — among them a resolution of the Republican State convention in 1858, and the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred in 1859 by Harvard College, the announce- ment being received in the church where the exercises were held, " with loud and tremendous cheers."
Sumner had, indeed, recovered. Though his malady came again under great strain and increasing years, and finally proved fatal, he went through for eleven years an amount of work and responsibility which required confirmed health. Whether his recovery was due to time and change of scene, or to the heroic treatment to which he was subjected in Paris, cannot be known. His friends at home — C. F. Adams, F. W. Bird, the Sewards and Fishes, and, above all, Howe, who pro- tested most earnestly — were sceptical as to that treatment, and besought him to desist from submitting to it again. So also did English friends, as Roebuck and Parkes. That scepticism was shared by eminent physicians, so far as the application of fire was concerned. Even Dr. Hayward, who advised with some qualifications the treatment, afterwards questioned its efficacy.1 Dr. Brown-Sequard himself, so far as known, never resorted to it again. It is rejected generally by the medical profession, and is hardly resorted to this side of Japan. One lacking Sumner's good constitution and determined spirit could not have borne it. This, however, should be said, that Sumner to the last retained confidence in the physician who applied it.
George Sumner was, during the entire period of his brother's disability, always ready to be of service to him. He was at home with his mother in Boston, or engaged in lecturing in different parts of the country. During Charles's absence in Europe he wrote frequent letters, urging continued abstinence, until a cure was perfected, from public life and from thoughts concerning it, and constantly insisting upon more exercise in the open air and less addiction to books and engravings.
During his absence Sumner received letters from many friends at home, — Dr. Howe, Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Adams, S. P. Chase, Mr. and Mrs. Seward, John Jay, A. G. Browne, A. B. Johnson, and E. L. Pierce ; and there were occasional letters from many
1 He preferred at the time a milder remedy than fire.
Mr. 47-48.] HEALTH RESTORED. 597
others. Among deaths, while he was in Europe, of friends with whom he had been more or less intimate, were those of William Jay, Oct. 14, 1858 ; Prescott, Jan. 28, 1859 ; * Horace Mann, Aug. 2, 1859 ; 2 Dr. G. Bailey of the " National Era," June 5, 1859 ; 3 and Tocqueville, April 16, 1859. Theodore Par- ker died in Florence a few months later, May 10, 1860. Sumner wrote to Parker, Aug. 22, 1859 : —
" You will mourn Horace Maun. He has done much ; but I wish he had lived to enjoy the fruits of his noble toils. He never should have left Massa- chusetts. His last years would have been happier and more influential had he stayed at home. His portrait ought to be in every public school in the State, and his statue in the State House.4 The aesthetic development of the people in pictures and statues he never appreciated; but these ought to do him honor for the impulse he has given to that civilization in which they will be sure to thrive at last.
" I have a tender feeling for Choate.5 For years he was my neighbor in Court Street, and I never had from him anything but kindness. The last time I saw him was in Winter Street. He asked me what my physicians in Europe said of my case. I reported the opinion of Sir James Clark and George Combe. ' The voice of science itself,' said he ; l you will be mad not to follow it.' His best powers were given to his profession ; but I ask myself what single forensic effort he has left which will be remembered ? Not one ! Seward's defence of the negro Freeman is worth more for fame than the whole forensic life of Choate. I heard Gladstone say lately in London that it was the ' finest forensic effort in the English language.' "
Sumner wrote to Longfellow from Montpellier, March 4, 1859 : —
" Yes, it was your letter which first told me of Prescott's death. The next day I read it in the Paris papers. Taillandier announced it at the opening of his lecture. The current of grief and praise is everywhere unbroken. Per- haps no man, so much in people's mouths, was ever the subject of so little unkindness. How different his fate from that of others ! Something of that immunity which he enjoyed in life must be referred to his beautiful nature, in which enmity could not live. This death touches me much. You remem- ber that my relations with him had for years been of peculiar intimacy. Every return to Boston has always been consecrated by an evening with him. I am sad to think of my own personal loss. There is a charm taken from Boston."
1 His last letter from Sumner was written from Aix-les-Bains, Sept. 15, 1858.
2 Tributes to Mr. Mann mav be found in Sumner's Works, vol. iv. p. 424; vol. v. p. 288.
3 Sumner expected to meet Dr. Bailey in Paris, but he died at sea on his way to Europe.
4 A statue of Mann, to which Sumner contributed, was unveiled in front of the State House, July 4, 1865.
5 He died Julv 13, 1859.
598 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1858-59.
Five years after Prescott's death, when his biography was pub- lished, Sumner wrote thus from Washington to Mrs. Prescott :
" I have just read the biography of your husband, and I have mourned anew for myself the loss which was so infinite to you. The past has been revived, and I have lived over again nearly twenty years of life with happiest hours, closed, alas ! by death. I have felt keenly how much I was permitted to enjoy, and how much I have lost. Those evenings in the darkened back room in Bedford Street, with the kind, sparkling, intimate talk on books, his- tory, friends abroad and at home ; the pleasant suppers below, where were the venerable parents, so good and cordial ; then as I became absorbed in public affairs, the constant friendship which we maintained ; the welcome he always gave me on my return from Washington ; our free conversations on public affairs and public men ; and perhaps more than all things else his ten- der sympathy as he sat by my bedside, revealing how his heart was moved, only a short time before the summons came to himself, — all these I think of, and in selfish sorrow I grieve that he is gone. But I am filled with gratitude that I was permitted to enjoy for so long a time such true happiness.
" The earlier efforts of your husband, which are now so unreservedly com- municated to the world, were naturally less known to me, who came to his friendship only after his triumphs had begun. I have read them with intense interest and admiration ; the later I could chronicle from my own intercourse with him. I never return to Boston without feeling the vacancy from his ab- sence. Our good town is to me less affectionate and less interesting than it was. Time has softened your sorrow ; but I know that it can never silence all its pangs. And yet the thought of such a life, and of that completest and most unbroken association with it which you were permitted to enjoy, must have its satisfactions ; while there is before you the trust that this happiness will yet be renewed where there is neither disease nor death nor any failure of sight.
" I think often of you and of your kindness to me; and I hope that I do not now take too great a liberty in sending you from my busy chair this feeble expression of the sentiments with which I cherish the memory of your husbaud."
When Sumner arrived in Boston he was grieved not to find his friend Dr. Howe, who had gone to Canada to avoid being reached by any process of the United States. The doctor had been a friend of John Brown, and had taken an interest in some of his plans, though not implicated in his last enterprise at Har- per's Ferry. He had left home, partly under advice from Mont- gomery Blair, who thought it unsafe for him to remain where the process of the federal courts or of Congress could reach him. Sumner deplored his avoidance of process, and strongly advised him to return and openly await any summons.1
l Dr. Howe returned, and testified before the Senate Committee, Feb. 4, 1860.
JEt. 48-49.] RETURN TO THE SENATE. 599
CHAPTER XLIII.
RETURN TO THE SENATE. — "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." — POP- ULAR WELCOMES. —LINCOLN'S ELECTION. — 1859-1860.
SUMNER took his seat at the beginning of the session, Dec. 5, 1859 (the first session of the Thirty-sixth Congress), the Senate now occupying the new chamber in the extension of the Capitol, of which it had taken possession in the spring. Three years and a half had passed since he withdrew from active duty. During that period Buchanan had succeeded Pierce, — a change of administration, but not of policy ; the Supreme Court had proclaimed, in the Dred Scott case, the sanctity of slavery in the national territory, beyond the power of the inhabitants as well as of Congress to exclude and prohibit it; Kansas, after alternating seasons of disturbance and peace, had been finally rescued by her Free State settlers, who, predominating largely in numbers and waiving their plan of abstention, now held the legislature, thus acquiring the sanction of legitimacy ; the Le- compton constitution, when again submitted under the so-called " English bill," had been rejected by the people, notwithstanding the inducements offered in it for an accepting vote ; the Terri- tory was now waiting for admission as a free State under a constitution duly formed and approved by the people, still kept out by a pro-slavery majority in the Senate ; 1 Douglas had rent in twain the Democratic party by his stand for popular sov- ereignty in the session of 1857-1858, against the Lecompton constitution when it was submitted to Congress, — doing, from whatever motives, the one good service to his country which marks his public career, and paying the penalty in his removal from his place at the head of the committee on territories and his rejection by the pro-slavery party as a candidate for the Presidency ; Minnesota and Oregon had been added to the sisterhood of States, forever destroying the balance between freedom and slavery in the Senate ; the memorable debate in Illinois between Douglas and Lincoln had taken place, in
1 Admitted in January, 1861, on the withdrawal of senators from seceding States.
600 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
which, though the former prevailed by a meagre majority, the moral victory remained with his antagonist ; the people of the free States were advancing, though with unsteady steps, to a union against slavery, — the Democratic Administration losing the House of Representatives in the election of 1854, regaining it in that of 1856, and losing it again in that of 1858 ; Ameri- canism and other issues of temporary and local interest were dis- appearing, and the Republican party was uniting into one force the liberty-loving voters of the free States, with the probability of success in 1860 ; the pro-slavery party, with the co-operation of Buchanan and Douglas, had been conspiring to strengthen itself by the acquisition of Cuba ; the threats of disunion, once idle words, or words uttered in order to force into submission a timorous North, had come to express a definite and organ- ized purpose ; 1 and the pro-slavery agitators, having renounced hope of another slave State in the West and of dominion in the Union, were now busy with preparations for secession and armed revolt.2
Another and more eventful period was at hand. The new Capitol, with its ampler dome, and its extended wings covering the representatives of States and people, prefigured by no mean symbol the country which was to be renovated and glorified by the final conflict between freedom and slavery. The Senate had greatly changed since Sumner left it in 1856, mostly in the retirement of Northern members who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; but the change there did not ade- quately betoken the revolution in popular sentiment. He was now one of twenty-four Republicans, instead of one of three Free Soilers, as when he first entered the Senate. On the other side were thirty-seven Democrats and two Americans, with two vacancies in the representation of Democratic States. He was assigned to the committee on foreign relations, the place to which he naturally belonged from the first, with Seward as his only Republican associate ; the other members were Mason, Douglas, Slidell, Polk, and Crittenden, with only the last of whom had he any personal relations. He was welcomed by the Republican senators ; but there was no change for the
i Von Hoist, vol. vi. pp. 177-179, 193-197, 324, 328.
2 As to the military preparations at the South, see speeches of Miles in the House, Jan. 6, 1860; Van Wyck, March 7; and Mason in the Senate, March 1. Von Hoist, vol. vii. pp. 111-114, 366 note. Nicolay and Hay's " Life of Lincoln," vol. ii. pp. 300, 333.
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^Et. 48-49.] RETURN TO THE SENATE. 601
better on the part of the Democratic senators, Northern or Southern. Notwithstanding what he had passed through, they withheld all expression of sympathy or welcome. Seward, how- ever, who, absent in Europe when the session began, did not take his seat till after the holiday recess, had hardly a more friendly reception.1 The bitterness of the two sections had in- creased since Sumner's last participation in the business of the Senate. Their recognition of each other was no longer social, but only formal and official. The amenities of life were sus- pended ; and foreign ministers were obliged to invite their guests by sections.2 Sumner saw in this non-intercourse signs of the rupture which was to come within a twelvemonth. He wrote to David L. Child, Jan. 16, 1860 : —
"All things here show how politics and society are barbarized by slavery. There is now little intercourse between the two sides. So far as I am con- cerned, tant mieux. This is one of the signs that the bonds of union are weakening ; indeed, I should not be astonished if the Gulf States went off, a Gulf squadron, and hoisted the black flag."
Abstaining from general society, then much broken up by sectional heats, he dined often with the family of C. F. Adams, now serving his first session in Congress. He was frequently at the table of Lord Lyons,3 now British minister, with whom he remained in agreeable intercourse while the latter continued at Washington. He became intimate with Rodolph Schleiden,4 minister from the Hanseatic towns from 1853 to 1864, well versed in European affairs, and a shrewd observer of public men and passing events. The two bachelors dined together at least once a week, either at Schleiden's apartment or at a restaurant.5 Their topics were American and foreign politics, as well as lit- erature and art. Sumner always valued the observations of an impartial spectator of our affairs, and none more than those of
1 Seward was studiously avoided by the Democratic side, only two of them (Douglas and Pugh), and they anti-Lecompton, greeting him cordially. New York "Tribune," Jan. 10, 1860. New York "Evening Post," Jan. 12. Boston" Atlas and Bee," Jan. 13. Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 441.
2 Sumner wrote to Whittier, Jan. 27, 1860: "Society is dislocated; the diplomats can- not give a dinner without studying their lists as a protocol."
8 1817-1887. He was in Washington from 1858 to 1865.
4 Mr. Schleiden has for several years lived in Freiburg in Baden, where the writer had the pleasure of meeting him in 1889.
6 Among entertainments given by Mr. Schleiden was a dinner, two days before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, to the diplomatic corps, when Seward and Sumner had seats together at the table.
602 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
Mr. Schleiden, slight as was the sympathy of that minister with the antislavery movement.
Sumner contributed to the New York " Tribune " 1 at this time a paper introducing Macaulay's article, written when a youth, on slavery in the West Indies, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825, and had been overlooked or de- signedly omitted in the collected edition of his Essays. The paper contained a reference to his recent intercourse with the historian, who had died a few weeks before.2
For once Sumner came home for the Christmas and New Year holidays.3 On his return, while at Mr. Furness's in Phila- delphia, he called with Mr. Allibone on an old friend, Henry D. Gilpin, an invalid with but few days in store, cheering him with a report of the kind inquiries made concerning him by the Grotes and other English friends. He declined at the time two invitations in New York city, — one to address the New England Society, pressed by Mr. Evarts ; and the other to speak in the Academy of Music, given by Greeley, C. A. Dana, H. C. Bowen, and Oliver Johnson. Warned by physicians and friends to enter slowly into the excitement of debate,4 he took little part in the proceedings of the Senate for three months, although tempted by the ever-recurring discussions on slavery. The investigation by Mason's committee of John Brown's inva- sion of Virginia drew him into debate March 12, 1860, when
1 March 3, 1860. Works, vol. iv. pp. 417-423.
2 The Duke of Argyll, whose home at Kensington was very near Macaulay's, wrote Sumner an account of the historian's last days ; the duchess added a note, recalling how heartily he grasped Sumner's hand at their last meeting at Argyll Lodge. Motley wrote Sumner, Jan. 2, 1860: "Do you remember the breakfast at Holly Lodge? This was the last time we had any of us the pleasure of meeting Macaulay, I believe. I am sure it was the last time that I saw him, and I am not likely to forget it very soon. Do you remember how gay and amusing he was after breakfast, in his library, — repeating bal- lads from Mother Goose, and quoting stanzas from Dante's Inferno in the same breath, and fighting Monckton Milnes about German poetry ? Well, in that very room, and in the very arm-chair in which he then sat, he breathed his last, on Wednesday evening last, 28 December."
3 While at home he was presented by James Freeman Clarke, George W. Bond, and others with an interesting souvenir, — a dessert service of knives and forks once belonging to Lajos Batthyanyi, the Hungarian patriot.
4 Among bills and resolutions offered by him, not elsewhere noted, were these: for the substitution of simple declarations for custom-house oaths (Works, vol. iv. p. 441) ; for the promotion of the safety of passengers on steamers between New York and San Fran- cisco (Works, vol. iv. p. 455) ; for limiting the liability of shipowners ; for preventing violence and crime on board of the merchant marine; for abolishing the discrimination between citizens and foreigners in office-fees on the issue of patents; for preventing the abuse of seamen's protections ; for raising to a higher grade the mission to Sardinia, the last being reported by him from his committee.
JEt. 48-49.] RETURN TO THE SENATE. 603
he spoke against the commitment of Thaddeus Hyatt for con- tempt in refusing to answer certain questions put by the com- mittee,— contending that the Senate's jurisdiction in compelling witnesses to attend and testify was limited to certain well- defined cases, and did not extend to inquiries which were merely in aid of legislation.1 Later he commented on the action of the committee in its attempt to compel the attend- ance of Frank B. Sanborn as a witness.2 In his style of treat- ing the Hyatt and Sanborn cases he showed his readiness to meet old antagonists. Mason, with characteristic assumption, took exception to his language as unusual in circles in which he himself moved, but showed no disposition for any personal contest. The Virginia senator reported a resolution for return- ing to Sumner, who had presented them, certain petitions of free colored men, and the latter prepared notes of a speech on this proposed violation of the right of petition ; but the reso- lution did not come up for debate.3 Sumner paid a brief tri- bute to a deceased member of the House, John Schwarz, who had left the Democratic party on account of its course on the Lecompton question.4
The coming Presidential election now absorbed the public mind, and was the ever-recurring topic of debate in Congress. The Democratic national convention, meeting in Charleston, S. C, in April, adjourned, after a session marked by tumult and pas- sion, to meet at Baltimore in June, where it nominated Doug- las as President, after the withdrawal of Southern delegations, and of Northern delegates like B. F. Butler and Caleb dish- ing, both of Massachusetts, who were in sympathy with them.5 These seceders, who, disciples of Calhoun, did not think Doug- las Southern and pro-slavery enough in his position, put John C. Breckinridge (afterwards a general in the Confederate army) in nomination. In May, a remnant of conservative Whigs, known as the Constitutional Union party, nominated John Bell for
i March 12 and June 15, 1860. (Works, vol. iv. pp. 426-440.) The Republican sen- ators were divided as to the question of the Senate's jurisdiction. Generally those from New England agreed with Sumner, but Fessenden disagreed with them; Seward did not vote. Samuel E. Sewall and John A. Andrew were Hyatt's counsel. Andrew testified before the committee, and his manly bearing attracted public attention.
2 April 10, 13, and 16, 1860. Works, vol. iv. pp. 445-451.
3 Works, vol. v. pp. 176-187. His effort to obtain a reference of antislavery petitions failed April 18, 1860. Works, vol. iv. pp. 452-454.
4 Works, vol. v. pp. 188, 189.
6 In the Charleston convention Butler voted for Jefferson Davis for President, and was the Breckinridge candidate for governor of Massachusetts, in the autumn.
604 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
President and Edward Everett for Vice-President. The Repub- licans met at Chicago, May 16, and passing by Seward, the leading candidate, nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was sup- posed more likely than any one to command the support of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, — States which they failed to carry in 1856. Their declaration of principles challenged the heresies of their adversaries by proclaiming free- dom as ;' the normal condition " of all the Territories, by "deny- ing the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Ter- ritory of the United States," and by affirming, on Giddings's motion, the maintenance of the principles of the Declaration of Independence as " essential to the preservation of our Repub- lican institutions." Sumner maintained, as was his habit, re- serve as to the question of candidate, writing to, E. L. Pierce, April 20 : —
"I enjoyed your brother's speech and your article, — both excellent. I can trust you at Chicago, for I know that you are true and earnest. Should Seward be rejected there, I fear it will cause him a pang. Douglas will not be put up at Charleston. I long for Hunter. Then will the question be fairly in issue, — on one side slavery, just, divine, permanent; ou the other, unjust, barbarous, and to be abolished."
And again, May 4, he wrote to Mr. Pierce, who sought his advice as a delegate elected to the Republican convention from C. F. Adams's district, as follows : —
" The Democratic party is a wreck bumping on the rocks, and must go to pieces. This gives to us assurance of success. If any have inclined to a can- didate who did not completely represent our principles, he can find no excuse now.1 We can elect any man the convention at Chicago choose to nominate. You know that I always keep aloof from personal questions. I see no reason now to abandon my old rule. I have absolute faith in your devotion to the cause, and do not doubt your firmness. These may be needed. Could I talk with you I should review the field with some detail. I have had much pleas- ure in seeing Chase here. He has noble faculties nobly dedicated. God bless you ! "
In a letter to V. Fell, Bloomington, 111., he wrote, March 27 :
"Among Republicans I hope no man will be accepted who is not emphat- ically, heart and soul, life and conversation, a representative man. Such a man must have been an old and constant servant of the cause."
Just before the convention met, Seward went home to Auburn, confident of his nomination and election. Sumner accompanied
1 Von Hoist, vol. vii. p. 170.
JEt. 48-49.] "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." 605
him as he left the Senate chamber,1 and wrote to him, after the result at Chicago, a letter of sympathy, to which Seward replied in language showing how deeply he felt his disappointment.2 To his own household he confessed " his deposition as a leader, in the hour of organization for decisive battle," to be a " humili- ation." 3 A few days after the convention he returned to Wash- ington.4 His loss of the nomination bore an important relation to his whole subsequent career, during which he was found al- most always, at critical moments, out of harmony with his party and with the antislavery cause, in the maintenance of which he had hitherto won his best fame.
Sumner appears to have had in mind, even before he became senator, a comprehensive treatment of American slavery, and a thorough exposition of its antagonism to Christianity and civili- zation, unembarrassed by the discussion of any pending measure. He was prompted to meet the general issue at this time by the bolder attitude of Southern members of Congress during the session, — like Hammond of South Carolina, Hunter and Mason of Virginia, Brown and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, — who had not hesitated to defend the institution as a normal condition of society, beneficial to both races, even ennobling to the white race, and the just basis of republican government; presenting an attitude altogether changed from that of Southern statesmen at the close of the last and during the first third of the present century, who confined themselves to apologies and regrets. Davis was then the Democratic leader of the Senate, and his resolu- tions, which he introduced February 2, affirming the sanctity of slave property in the territories, were passed May 24 and 25 by a vote of two to one ; his resolution approving the fugitive-slave acts, and denouncing the personal liberty laws of the States, being passed by a vote of thirty-six to six, — all having been previously approved by a caucus of the Democratic senators.5
1 Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 695.
2 C. F. Adams replied to the writer's request for his opinion as to the candidate, stating that he preferred another nomination than that of Seward, who was his first choice, if the latter was found after conference not likely to carry the doubtful Northern States. This letter should be compared with some passages of its author's eulogy on Seward at Albany in April, 1873. See Von Hoist, vol. vii. p. 163.
3 Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 454.
4 Just after the writer's return from Chicago, he dined at Adams's in company with Seward and Sumner, and at Seward's in company with Sumner. The dinner at Adams's is noted in Seward's "Life," vol. ii. p. 456.
5 Douglas was kept from the Senate by illness on the days of voting. His ally, Pugh, voted with the Democratic senators for all but the territorial resolution.
606 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
Douglas defended at length, May 15 and 16, against Davis, his " popular sovereignty " idea and his political position ; but in- tense as was the undercurrent of his personal feeling towards the Southern leaders who were wrecking his plans of ambition, his gentle and conciliatory manner towards them was in con- trast with his former treatment of antislavery senators like Chase and Sumner in the Kansas contest. The debate at this stage had in view the disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston on the issue of Douglas's candidacy.
Sumner thought the time had come to meet in the Senate these audacious assumptions once for all, and to treat with ab- solute plainness and directness of language the principle, motive, and character of slavery, and its baleful effects as seen in the practices of slaveholders and the habits of slave society, — each statement to be supported by facts, the whole to be an argument which would defy answer at the time, or in any future discussion in Congress or elsewhere.1 It was in his mind to show to the country and mankind that what the pro-slavery party vaunted as the finest product of civilization was none other than essential barbarism. No such speech had as yet been made by any states- man ; no one in Congress, not even Sumner himself, had hith- erto attempted more than to treat the institution as related to a pending measure, or incidentally to emphasize one or more of its features. An assault on American slavery all along the lines in the Senate, where it was most strongly intrenched, required courage and rare equipment at all points in moral and political philosophy, in history and law. Such a treatment of the sub- ject was, however, not at the time agreeable to Republican poli- ticians ; they feared, sincerely enough, that it would repel voters in doubtful States, who, though not yet antislavery by conviction, were, on the break-up of the Whig and American parties, in- clined to vote for Mr. Lincoln as the only way of defeating their old opponents, the Democrats. Others of conservative temper thought it would irritate Southern men without converting them, and perhaps drive them to unite their distracted voters or to resist the government in case of Republican success. Some who doubted the policy of the speech admitted Sumner's right to make it, in view of what he had suffered from the barbarism of
1 He had emphasized the importance of such a full development of the subject in Con- gress before he had any expectation of being a senator. Ante, p. 157 ; Dr. H. I. Bow- ditch's letter to Sumner, June 26, 1860.
JEt. 48-49.] "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." 607
slavery, — making a similar apology for a speech in the House by Owen Lovejoy, brother of the abolitionist killed at Alton.1 But Sumner had his own view of the historic conflict. To him it was " no holiday contest," but " a solemn battle between right and wrong, between good and evil," in which the deepest emo- tions of human nature were marshalled ; in which courage, per- tinacity, and devotion on the one side must be confronted by like courage, pertinacity, and devotion on the other. To him the transcendent issue was between slavery and freedom ; and whether settled in debate or civil war, it was not to be put aside by any considerations of fear or policy. Always, until the last slave became a freeman, he insisted that this issue should be supreme and constantly present in the public mind.
Sumner began to gather the materials for his speech soon after the holidays, and gave it the title of " The Barbarism of Slavery." " The House bill for the admission of Kansas, with a constitution prohibiting slavery, which had been framed by a territorial convention and ratified by the people, was pending in the Senate, where its defeat was assured by the determination of the Administration senators not to allow the increase of the Republican electoral vote which would result from its passage. The senators availed themselves of the debate on this bill to make political speeches which attracted attention only from the public interest in the speakers themselves. The day set apart for Sumner was Monday, June 4.3 He entered the chamber a few moments before the time assigned for the Kansas bill. He had with him his speech in print, thinking it best to rely on his notes and avoid the strain of trusting only to the memory. The audience in the galleries was not large, as the interest in the debate on slavery had been transferred from Congress to the country.4 The Vice-President, Breckinridge, during the morn-
1 John Bigelow of the "Evening Post,:' who was more in sympathy with Sumner's views than his associates Bryant and Godwin, wrote, June 27, that while appreciating "the doubt whether such a speech might not inflame the hostility of the enemies of free- dom more than the enthusiasm of its friends," he did not think a different treatment of the subject could reasonably be expected from its author.
2 Works, vol. v. pp. 1-174.
3 Green of Missouri, to whom the floor had been previously assigned, gracefully yielded it to him.
4 The account of the scene is compiled from letters to newspapers. Boston " Traveller," June 9, by E. L. Pierce; Boston "Journal," June 6, by B. P. Poore; Boston "Atlas and Bee," June 11, by James Parker; New York "Independent," June 14, by D. W. Bartlett; New York "Tribune," June 5; New York "Evening Post," June 5 and 7; Chautauqua (N. Y.) "Democrat," June 13; Iowa City "Republican," June 20. W. M. Dickson, of the Cincinnati bar, gave a vivid description of the scene, several years later, in a letter to the writer, and afterwards published it in the Cincinnati " Commercial," Nov. 28, 1877.
608 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
ing hour called Fitzpatrick of Alabama to the chair. Sumner, as soon as the Kansas bill was called up, took the floor and proceeded with his speech, reading from the printed slips with his usual fulness of voice, strong and resonant, but without any attempt at oratorical effect. His mind was not on senators and visitors present, but on the millions who were to be reached by the printed speech. At the beginning, in a passage listened to with impressive silence, he spoke of his long absence from the Senate in search of health, of his gratitude to the Supreme Being for his restoration, and of the tombs1 which had opened in the interval of four years since his last speech in the Senate on the same theme. He avowed his purpose to expose with all plainness the character of slavery, putting his argument not merely on the political grounds to which some had seen fit by express disclaimer to limit their contention, but as well on all others, — social, economical, and moral, — justifying himself in this respect by the habitual assumption of the defenders of sla- very, who now more than ever, even in the Senate, maintained its conformity with reason, religion, and patriotism. " There is," said he, " austere work to be done, and freedom cannot con- sent to fling away any of her weapons. . . . Idolatry has been exposed in the presence of idolaters, and hypocrisy chastised in the presence of Scribes and Pharisees."
He then proceeded with his argument, which in form was more like a tract than a forensic effort. He showed the bar- barism of slavery in five essential elements, — its conversion of a human being into a chattel or piece of property, to be the subject of ownership and alienation ; its abrogation of mar- riage, and of the parental relation ; its exclusion of slaves from knowledge, under severe and inhuman penalties; and, finally, its appropriation of their labor, — these all being, not abuses as often claimed, but elements of the system necessary for the one main purpose of compelling the labor of fellow-men without wages. He showed how the American system rejected the alle- viations of other systems of slavery. Then followed a review of the practical results of slavery, as shown in the tardy growth of the slave States, their inferiority in production, in education, in invention, in internal improvements, in institutions of learning and charity, in the manifold appliances of civilization, — all attested by figures. The character of slavery was exhibited in
i An allusion to the death of Brooks and Butler.
JEt. 48-49.] "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." 609
its effect on slave-masters, begetting violent passions, and ex- tinguishing the nobler and gentler instincts of humanity, par- ticularly in their quick resort to violence, both against slaves and the friends of slaves, — an effect of the institution which had been often noted by philosophic writers and confessed by slaveholders themselves. Further proof was given by the slave codes, which, whatever might be the eminence of individual vir- tue, were faithful witnesses of the average condition of society ; by advertisements for runaway slaves, suggestive of cruelty and lust, and admitted even into reputable journals ; by the three congenial agents of slavery, — " the slave-overseer, the slave- breeder, and the slave-hunter ; " the treatment of the friends of slaves, even when, like Samuel Hoar, they bore the com- mission of States ; the duels and street-fights common where slavery exists ; the frequent resort of slaveholding members of Congress to violence, — using pistols on the floor and chal- lenging to the duel, with their defence of such methods in cool harangues.
He treated the sophistries of the advocates of slavery, which had been reaffirmed during the session with greater audacity than ever before, that slaves were property which the masters had the right under the Constitution to carry to and hold in the Territories, with no power in Congress or the people thereof to interfere ; and that the slavery of the African race was justi- fied, as Jefferson Davis had maintained, by its inferiority and by the curse of Ham. Again, as in previous speeches, he held up the Constitution as pure from all recognition of property in man, and instinct with liberty, neither carrying slavery into the Territories of its own force, nor authorizing any power, national or local, to establish it in them. He rejected as unworthy of serious consideration " the popular sovereignty " dogma of Doug- las, that it was the right of the people of a Territory " to vote slavery up or to vote it down," — calling it " a delusive phrase," " a plausible nickname," " a device of politicians," and bidding him, as its boldest defender if not inventor, when encountering the ingratitude of those he had served, to
" remember Milo's end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend."
More than once on this occasion, as on others, Sumner recog- nized the distinction between the enormity of the system and
vol. in. 39
610 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
the character and responsibility of individual slaveholders ; but he did not emphasize it. In private life no one was more chari- table than he in judgments of persons ; and when slavery fell with the Civil War, no one desired more than he that the pas- sions of the conflict should cease altogether, — but he did not regard this as a fit time to weaken his argument by disclaimers and qualifications. In his " sacred animosity," — a phrase of his own, — he was justified by the example of prophets, Christian fathers, and'the reformers of the sixteenth century.1
There was now no disposition among the Southern men, at least among members of Congress, to resort again to violence ; but there appeared to be an understanding on the part of the Democratic senators to treat Sumner's speech with contempt or offensive indifference. Some kept away from their seats ; others rose to leave as he began ; coming in later, they talked audibly with one another, gathering in groups ; they were noisy in the space outside the desks, or in adjacent rooms, and indulged in derisive laughter. Once Sumner stopped, signifying that he was disturbed ; and Fitzpatrick, still in the chair, called for order, but in a tone and manner that showed his sympathy with the disorderly senators. This air of indifference was observed by some of the spectators to be unreal.2 The most offensive figure of all was Wigfall of Texas, ill-favored by nature and not im- proved by art, who kept walking about, and doing his best to dis- concert the speaker by looks and attitudes. Hunter, as usual, listened with respect, and maintained the decorum which be- comes a senator. Crittenden, who thought to avert the dread issue by compromise, sat in front of Sumner, with eyes steadily fixed on him, and anxious countenance, as if imploring him to desist, and not make a peaceful settlement between North and South impossible.3 The Republican senators, generally in their seats, listened with respect ; but excepting perhaps Pres-
1 Milton justified "a sanctified bitterness against the enemies of truth." Whittier wrote of the speech: "There is something really awful in its Rhadamanthine severity of justice; but it was needed." Felton, on the other hand, in a friendly letter to Sumner, took excep- tion to it as harsh and too sweeping in its treatment of slaveholding society.
2 In this description Mr. Dickson's account is followed ; but perhaps in some passages it may be colored too highly.
3 Of Southern members of the House who occupied vacant seats of senators were Curry of Alabama and Lamar of Mississippi, who were both thought by spectators to be enjoying "the classic and scholarly feast before them." Keitt, the accomplice of Brooks, sat awhile near Senator Hammond. Near Sumner sat Wilson (his colleague), Burlingame, and Lovejoy, and Senators Bingham and Preston King, —all ready to protect him. Sew- ard and C. F. Adams were present a part of the time.
JEt. 48-49.] "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." 611
ton King, all, or nearly all, would have preferred that the speech should not have been made at that time.1 Chestnut of iSouth Carolina followed Sumner with an outbreak of coarsenesss and brutality, which began with a sneer at his sufferings, and ended with a disclaimer of any intended violence to him, which would only make him still more an idol at the North.2 Sumner's only rejoinder was that he should print Chestnut's speech as another illustration of his argument. " I hope he will do it," said Ham- mond. Other senators were silent, and the Senate adjourned. The Kansas bill was laid aside the next day after brief speeches on the boundaries of the proposed State, and one by Wigfall on the general question, without reply or allusion to the speech of the day before. Sumner's was the last speech on American sla- very made in Congress.3 It was fitting that he should close the debate. *
During the speech, which lasted four hours, Sumner's voice lost nothing in power, and he was not conscious of weariness at the end. The Senate adjourning a few moments after he closed, he walked to his lodgings along Pennsylvania Avenue, a full mile, with friends, who insisted on accompanying him, — Wil- son and Burlingame walking, one on each side, and E. L. Pierce following a step behind.4 There was talk of violence in bar- rooms and similar resorts in Washington, but the only overt act was the intrusion of a Southern man four days after into Sumner's lodgings, who was offensive in speech and manner, and signified his purpose to come again. Sumner's friends, — among them Wilson, Burlingame, Sherman, and A. B. Johnson, — took precautions, though not at Sumner's instance, and even
1 Few of them followed a custom among senators to subscribe for copies of the speech to be franked to their constituents. Seward, without expressly objecting to the speech, called it "elaborate, unsparing, and denunciatory." (Seward's "Life," vol. n. p. 457.) His last adjective was misplaced.
2 Von Hoist (vol. vn. p. 203) says: "No sooner was the speech ended than Chestnut gave an astounding illustration of the demoniacal power of the barbarism just alluded to. His reply occupied scarcely two minutes ; but so enormous an amount of brutality and venomous vulgarity was condensed into the few sentences he uttered that the annals of Congress, rich as they are in such material, has nothing to match them."
3 Two or three speeches of the "campaign " style in the House, made within a week, do not seem to call for a qualification of this general statement. The character of slavery as an institution also came up incidentallv in debates concerning emancipation during the Civil War.
4 Wilson was armed, as the writer observed at his room in the morning, and probably Burlingame was armed. Francis P. Blair, Sr., invited Sumner to be his guest at Silver Springs, but Sumner declined, wishing to be near the Capitol. At a reception the same evening at Mr. Blair's the speech was the political topic of conversation.
612 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
against his protest.1 He notified Wilson of what had occurred, but he called upon no one to defend him, and took no part in the arrangements made by others for his protection. He par- ticularly chafed at the guarding of his apartment at night by friends who persisted in remaining in it. The time for violence in Congress, however, had passed. The advanced Southern men of the South Carolina type, who conceived and executed the pre- vious assault, were now busy with plots for secession and rebel- lion, and contemplated without passion a speech which, as they hoped, would help to make their cause the cause of all slave- holders whose system, habits, and methods it had assailed.
Sumner's speech drew public attention more than any made in Congress or elsewhere during the year. It was printed entire in the leading newspapers of the great cities East and West, and was issued in^several pamphlet editions, one of which had the sanction of the National Republican committee.2 Whether regarded as timely or not, it was accepted as an exhaustive exposition of American slavery altogether unmatched in our history.
The antislavery people, those who had been Abolitionists or Free Soilers, read the speech with profound satisfaction, wel- coming it as the most masterly and comprehensive statement of their cause ever made,3 and approving most of all its moral in- spiration and its arraignment of slavery on fundamental grounds of reason, humanity, and religion, which certain Republican lead- ers were taking pains to avoid ; and they counted on it as likely to be a potent force in securing the fruits of Republican success in the election. In hundreds of letters coming day after day from all parts of the free States, they expressed to the author their satisfaction that he was again in the Senate, with full vigor and unterrified spirit, where he had put the great cause in the foreground by a statement as timely as it was thorough ; and with tender devotion, even with religious pathos, they told of their confidence in his character, their interest in his career, their admiration of his courage, their gratitude to God for his
i Works, vol. v. pp. 127-129; Scribner's "Magazine," August, 1874, pp. 483-486; "Recollections of Charles Sumner," by A. B. Johnson; New York "Evening Post," June 11; New York "Herald," June 11; New York "Tribune," June 11. The "Tri- bune's" correspondent, June 5, thought that only prudence restrained the Southern party, as the speech was more severe than the one made in 1856.
2 Three years later an edition was issued with a dedication to young men, written by Sumner. Works, vol. vii. pp. 322-324.
3 New York Independent, June 14.
^Et. 48-49.] "THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY." 613
recovery from the assassin's blow. In no statesman's cor- respondence have there ever been such tributes from the heart.1
As in the Senate, so also among Republican politicians, there was anxiety as to the effect of the speech on voters who with- out antislavery convictions were likely to act with the Republi- cans in the election at hand. Some journals professed to fear that it would hinder the admission of Kansas as a free State,2 — an event altogether impossible with the Senate constituted as it then was. Others thought it better to limit the argument to an exposition of the constitutional heresies of the pro-slavery party.3 These Republican criticisms were, however, confined chiefly to the commercial centres of the Eastern States ; else- where the Republican journals justified the speech as required by the turn which the Southern leaders had given to the discussion.4
A reception awaited the speech in England similar to that which it had met here. The London " Times," already strongly pro-slavery, condemned it ; while antislavery journals, as the " Daily News," the " Morning Star," and the " Morning Adver- tiser," as fully approved.5 Punch gave it a hearty assent, and
1 As many as two hundred and fifty approving letters came to Sumner within a month, and were placed among his files, from some of which extracts are given in notes to the speech. (Works, vol. v. pp. 146-174.) Among the writers were S. P. Chase, J. R. Gid- dings, Carl Schurz, George W. Julian, John Jay, William Curtis Noyes, Hiram Barney, Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, Gernt Smith, Rev. George B. Cheever, Prof. Benjamin Silli- man, J. Miller McKim, Frederick Douglass, John G. Whittier, Josiah Quincy (the elder), Rev. R. S. Storrs (the elder), Rev. John Pierpont, Rev. Henry M. Dexter, Pruf. William S. Tyler, John A. Andrew, Francis W. Bird, Henry L. Pierce, Amasa Walker, Lydia Maria Child, Henry I. Bowditch, Neal Dow, and Chief-Justice John Appleton. The Legis- lature of Massachusetts, then in session, formally approved the speech in a resolution, in promoting the passage of which two members of the House — J. Q. A. Griffin and H. L. Pierce — took the lead.
2 New York "Times," June 6 ; New York " Tribune," June 5; New York "Evening Post," June 5. This last journal qualified its criticism two days after, and afterwards (May 1, 1862, and again April 8, 1865) thought Sumner justified by what had occurred during the Civil War. The New York "Tribune" printed the speech in its weekly issue, read chiefly in the country, but withheld it from the daily. The New York " Herald," June 5, 6, 7, 1860, made it conspicuous by sensational headings and comments, with the apparent purpose of inflaming the Southern mind and drawing away conservative people from the Republicans.
8 Boston Advertiser, June 6.
4 John Wentworth, of Chicago, treated it in his journal as "the embodiment of Republicanism."
5 The Duke and Duchess of Argyll approved it, the former "not thinking it a bit too strong." The duchess reported Tennyson as warmly approving it, and saying, " I thought the most eloquent thing in the speech was the unspoken thing, — the silence about his own story."
614 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
Miss Martineau in public letters expressed her cordial sympathy with its scope and spirit.1
As the agitation went on in the summer and autumn, — the profoundest and most universal in our history, — the people of the free States, it was found, were feeling and thinking as Sum- ner thought and felt ; and the discussion broadened beyond the precise point in issue, — the extension of slavery into the Terri- tories,— and embraced the character and history of slavery and the supremacy of the slave-power in the national government. It came to pass that Sumner's speech was read beyond that of any other statesman ; and the call for his voice in different States was most urgent, even from politicians skilled in feel- ing the public pulse and concerned chiefly for an immediate effect. It was seen that he had awakened the enthusiasm of the antislavery men by his effectual resistance to the tendency to lower the standard of principle for the sake of success, and by lifting the cause far above ordinary politics, where others had been too apt to place it.2 Shortly after the session closed he stood before an immense audience in the city of New York, where he was received and successively interrupted with bursts of applause accorded to no orator in the campaign except per- haps to Mr. Seward, during the latter's remarkable progress in the West. The Republican managers of the State, — Thurlow Weed, Simeon Draper, and D. C. Littlejohn, — the general com- mittee of the party as well as local committees, pleaded witli him to speak in its leading cities.3 Similar applications, pressed with great urgency, were made from Illinois by E. B. Wash- burne, N. B. Judd, I. N. Arnold, Herman Kreissman, and Owen Lovejoy; from Maine by Mr. Hamlin, the candidate for Vice- President, and Mr. Fessenden the senator ; and from Ohio by the State committee. His colleague, Wilson, who was omni- present in the campaign, and intensely alive to all its neces- sities, besought him to speak several times in the States of New Jersey and New York, as also in the two congressional districts of Boston, where the union of all the opponents of the Repub- licans had put in peril the election of two members of the
1 Miss Martineau's letters appeared in the New York "Antislavery Standard."
2 Works, vol. v. p. 173. Candidates for Congress in close districts sought his approval ; and he wrote some letters in their support, one being for James M. Ashley, who was run- ning in Ohio in the Toledo district.
3 He was assured by Mr. Littlejohn that his name would bring thirty thousand people to the mass meeting at Owego.
JEt. 48-49.] POPULAR WELCOMES. 615
House. The appeals from other States laid emphasis on the belief that no other speaker could arouse so well the antislavery men to put forth their utmost efforts.
After all, Sumner, as it proved, was wiser in his instincts than others in their political craft. No good cause ever suf- fers from courage in its defence. He who makes it grander in the eyes of men does more for it than the most dexterous management can accomplish. The gathering hosts of freemen craved inspiration, and they found it in Sumner's leadership. His prophet-like voice was needed to steady a movement which was in no small danger of shipwreck. Six months had hardly passed before certain Republican leaders became compromisers with slavery ; and it was not their steadfastness or wisdom, but the madness of the South, which saved the country from the calamity of an antislavery triumph being converted into a new surrender to the slave-power.
Immediately after his speech Sumner accepted the invitation of the Young Men's Republican Union of the city of New York, given some months before, to deliver an address at Cooper In- stitute. He had withheld an answer until he should have tested his strength in the Senate. He lingered after the close of the session (June 28) a few days at Washington, and on his way homeward delivered the address July 11, taking for his topic " The Origin, Necessity, and Permanence of the Repub- lican Party." 1 His last previous appearance before a popular audience was in 1855, when he spoke on a kindred topic, — . " The Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity of the Antislavery Enterprise." The address, opening with a contrast between John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams as historical repre- sentatives of opposite principles and policies, was in the line of his recent speech in the Senate, and reaffirmed the same positions in more popular form, with less amplification and citation of authorities and statistics. It was already in type before delivery, and so well fixed in his memory that he had no occasion to recur to the manuscript. There was a pro- digious desire to hear him. Since he had last spoken in the city, he had become associated with an extraordinary event in the history of American slavery ; and recent criticisms of his speech in the Senate had intensified the popular interest. Cooper Institute was crowded with all that was best in the life
1 Works, vol. v. pp. 191-229.
616 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
of New York,1 the stage being occupied by distinguished citizens, and ladies filling one section reserved for them. There was not a vacant place in the vast hall, — the scene presented being so different from ordinary political meetings in the city in the quality of the audience as to suggest to an eye-witness that it was more like a great concert or festival. The enthu- siasm as he came upon the platform was universal and intense, and so prolonged that the managers were obliged for some moments to delay the proceedings. It continued to the end, breaking out from time to time in loud applause followed by perfect silence. His voice, it was observed, was heard in the most distant part of the hall, showing the fulness of his re- newed strength. The accounts in unsympathetic as well as friendly journals united in describing a scene which has had few parallels in the history of the city.2
The Republican journals of the city which had taken ex- ception to the timeliness of Sumner's speech in the Senate refrained from any similar comments on his New York address (although the speech and the address were of like purport), and the notices in their columns contained only praise. The reception which the speech had met with from the people, and the extraordinary welcome accorded to its author at Cooper Institute, had cleared the vision of the critics. The address reached the American public through various channels, — a full report in the four morning journals of the city and in news- papers of other cities, a pamphlet edition of fifty thousand copies issued by the association at whose instance it was de- livered, and an edition of ten thousand copies issued by the Republican State committee of New York. Seward promptly wrote from Auburn : " Your speech in every part is noble and great. Even you never spoke so well." This and Sumner's later address at Worcester he called " masterpieces." 3
Sumner, as usual, was more sensitive than he need to have been to the criticisms of old friends like Greeley and Bryant, and to the want of response from others ; and in a letter to
1 Notwithstanding a fee charged for admission as a contribution to political expenses, three thousand persons were present.
2 New York Herald, July 12; New York Tribune, July 12 ; New York Evening Post, July 12; New York Times, July 12. Works, vol. v. pp. 191-193.
3 Descriptions of Sumner as an orator, stating his peculiarities, were given by Theodore Tilton in the New York "Independent," July 19, and by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in the New York" Tribune," November 16.
iET. 48-49.] POPULAR WELCOMES. 617
Gerrit Smith, June 11, he mentioned how much he missed Horace Mann, William Jay, and Theodore Parker, all recently deceased, of whose sympathy he was always assured. But the popular approval he received was all he could desire. He wrote, Sep- tember 2, to R. Schleiden : " Meanwhile the good cause ad- vances. Massachusetts stands better, fairer, and squarer than ever before."
Sumner was not altogether sure when the session began how much he could bear. He wrote to Whittier, Dec. 12, 1859 : —
" At last I am well again, with only the natural solicitude as to the effect of work, and the constant pressure of affairs on a system which is not yet hardened and annealed. My physician enjoins for the present caution and a gradual resumption of my old activities."
But his speech in the Senate in the June following, and his address at Cooper Institute the next month, gave assurance of established vitality and endurance. He wrote, August 6, 1860, to Dr. Brown-Sequard : —
" The speech in the Senate will he evidence to you of the completeness of my convalescence. Besides the delivery, which occupied between four and five hours, there was much labor of preparation. Ail this I went through without one touch of my old perverse complaints ; and then a short time after- wards I addressed three thousand people in New York for two hours without any sensation beyond that of simple fatigue. I think you will agree that the experiment has at last been most successfully made, and my cure completely established."
Sumner spoke at the Republican State convention in Worces- ter, August 29.1 It was his first appearance in such a body since he was present at the same place six years before, as well as his first opportunity to meet the people of the Commonwealth since his return to his duties. Hearty cheers greeted him as he entered Mechanics' Hall, and enthusiastic shouts, continuing for some minutes, hailed him as he took the platform. The chief feature of his address was a description of the different par- ties, and an exposure of the " popular sovereignty dodge " which Douglas had espoused, without however being loyal to it when pressed by his Southern allies. In this as in other speeches during the campaign he expressed cordial trust in Mr. Lincoln's character. He was happy to witness in the same convention the first nomination of John A. Andrew for governor, with whom
1 Works, vol. v. pp. 240-268.
618 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
he had been in confidential relations both as antislavery men and lawyers at No. 4 Court Street.
He addressed two mass meetings in the open air, — one, Sep- tember 18, at Myrick's station, in the southern part of the State, where he considered briefly the traditions of Massachusetts as devoted to education and freedom, closing with a warm tribute to Mr. Andrew ; 1 and another, October 11, at Framingham,2 where he treated the successive threats of disunion which had come from the slave States whenever their purposes were op- posed,— maintaining that the people should stand firmly by the cause of freedom against such menaces, whether uttered at the South or repeated at the North. In October, from their home, illuminated for the occasion, he witnessed, with his mother be- side him, a long procession of Republican " Wide- A wakes," 3 which, as it passed down Hancock Street, saluted them with repeated cheers. Later in the campaign he delivered in Fitch- burg, and repeated in Worcester, a speech on the " popular sov- ereignty " dogma, — a doctrine which admitted the right of the settlers of a territory to establish slavery in it, and showed how such a doctrine, if adopted early in our history, would have largely increased the number of slave States.4 Started by Cass and Douglas as a device for evading the issue in Congress be- tween freedom and slavery, it had been substantially adopted by Eli Thayer, the Republican member of Congress for the Wor- cester District, now seeking a re-election as an independent candidate against Mr. Bailey, who had been nominated by the Republicans. The contest promised to be a close one, and Sum- ner's speech was thought by those most intimately concerned to have insured Mr. Thayer's defeat. One journal in Boston printed an edition of twelve thousand copies for distribution in the district. Sumner received grateful notes from Mr. Bailey, and also from Mr. Dawes, who was to be his successor in the Senate. R. H. Dana, Jr., thought the speech " excellent, tem- perate in personam, and strong in rem" On the Saturday be- fore the election he spoke briefly at Salem for the re-election of John B. Alley to Congress;5 and on the evening before the election he took the chair at Faneuil Hall, where in a brief speech he recognized in a Republican victory a radical change
i Works, vol. v. pp. 273-287. 4 Works, vol. v. pp. 309-337.
2 Works, vol. v. pp. 293-308. 5 Atlas and Bee, November 6.
3 These companies are described in Works, vol. v. p. 344.
Mt. 48-49.] LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 619
in our history, making " not only a new President, but a new government," * and commended for support the two candidates for Congress from Boston, — Burlingame and Alexander H. Rice, the former of whom, however, failed of an election.2 On all these occasions he was received with every mark of popular affection and confidence.
Sumner's activity in the canvass of 1860 was confined to Massachusetts, and he withstood solicitations to speak else- where.3 His thoughts were fully before the public in his speech in the Senate and his address at Cooper Institute ; and, as already indicated, he had come to value far more the effect of an argument on the public mind as widely distributed in the public journals than as delivered from the platform before a limited number of people. He wrote to a friend in New York, just before delivering his address in that city, " My hope is through the press to speak to the whole country."
Lincoln received in Massachusetts one hundred and six thou- sand votes ; Douglas, thirty-four thousand ; Bell, twenty-two thousand ; and Breckinridge, six thousand. In the electoral colleges Lincoln received one hundred and eighty votes ; Breck- inridge, seventy-two ; Bell, thirty-nine ; and Douglas, twelve. The Unionists in the South were divided between Douglas and Bell. In the North the rump of the Whig party — those anti- pathetic to antislavery sentiments — supported Bell and Everett ; and their leaders in Massachusetts were chiefly the old oppo- nents of the Conscience Whigs, — Winthrop, Eliot, Stevenson, G. T. Curtis, Walley, and Hillard.4 The Whig conservatism of Boston had been broken up ; but a remnant of five thousand votes was given in the city for Bell and Everett, principally cast by voters having a mercantile interest or connection, while the masses gave nearly ten thousand votes for Lincoln, and divided five thousand between the two Democratic candi- dates, Douglas and Breckinridge.
1 Works, vol. v. pp. 338-347 ; Atlas and Bee, November 6.
2 Mr. Burlingame's defeat, which Sumner deeply regretted (Works, vol. v. pp. 348, 349), led to a new career, — his appointment by Mr. Lincoln as Minister to China, and his subsequent diplomatic service for the Chinese Empire, in which he died, Feb. 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg, at the age of forty-nine.
3 Letters declining to speak at meetings are found in Works, vol. v. pp. 190, 230, 231, 234, 269, 271.
4 Some of these leaders are described in the New York "Tribune/' September 17, and the Boston "Atlas and Bee," September 28. Felton, at this time President of Harvard College, and George Ticknor voted for Bell and Everett.
620 MEMOIR OF CHARLES SUMNER. [1859-60.
Sumner prepared in the autumn, as a lyceum lecture, a tri- bute to Lafayette, in which, with a view to arrest a tendency to compromise which he foresaw was at hand, he brought into prominence Lafayette's constant testimony against American slavery, and his fidelity to liberty from youth to age. It con- tains eloquent passages, and the whole is marked by a cadence and resonance of style, and a sympathy with noble lives, which recall his earlier commemoration of Channing and Story.1 It was delivered once before the election in Boston October 1, and after the election at Concord, where he was Emerson's guest, and also at Providence and Lowell ; and on each of these three occasions he was waited upon after his return from the hall by companies of " Wide-A wakes," to whom he replied with coun- sels for moderation in victory, and also for firm resistance to menaces of disunion.2
Leaving home for Washington November 27, Sumner stopped in New York to repeat his lecture at Cooper Institute, where, with Mr. Bryant in the chair, it was received with the same favor as his address in the summer at the same place.3 Near the end of December, during the recess of Congress, he repeated it in Philadelphia.4 It was his first public appearance in that city, and nothing could exceed his welcome as expressed in a packed house and most enthusiastic reception.
Among pleasant incidents of the summer and autumn were visits for the day to Mr. and Mrs. Adams at Quincy, and a visit to John M. Forbes at Naushon. Sumner took part in the fes- tivities in honor of the Prince of Wales, who was in Boston in October, being present at the collation at the State House, a musical jubilee at the Music Hall, and a reception at Harvard College, and also being selected by General Bruce as one of the party to accompany the prince to Portland on his day of sailing.5
i Works, vol. v. pp. 369-429. The lecture was printed at New York in pamphlet from a reporter's notes, without the author's revision. It was rewritten and repeated in 1870 at many places in the Western as well as Eastern States.
2 Works, vol. v. pp. 344-347, 350-356. The lecture was repeated the same autumn at other places, — as Foxborough and Woonsocket, R. I., and New Haven, Conn.
3 The passage which held up Lafayette as steadfast against compromise was greeted with nine cheers. Weed's "Life," vol. ii. p. 308.
4 After accepting the invitation, he refused to appear in consequence of a caution from the managers to avoid the slavery question "in the present excited state of the public mind;" but he reconsidered his refusal on the caution being withdrawn. (Works, vol. v. pp. 430-432.) A special police force was on hand to prevent disturbance.
5 Sumner contributed articles to the Boston "Transcript," October 15 and 16, on the Duke of Kent's visit to Boston in 1794, and on the Prince of Wales and his suite.
JEt. 48-49.] LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 621
He was pleased to find his brother George, now in full sympathy with his own views, at last taking part in public work, speaking for the first time in a political campaign. One day he sought Mount Auburn, lately unfamiliar to him, and wrote to William Story, August 10 : —
"Yesterday I was at Mount Auburn, especially to see the statues in the chapel. I had not been there for years. I was pleased with them all ; but yours [of Judge Story] seemed to me more beautiful than ever, both as por- trait and as art. I doubt if there be a finer statue in existence. The grounds about are well filled with marbles and stones, such as they are ; but the chief ornament was the trees and shrubbery, which were beautiful. By the side of your family were flowers showing constant care."
A note to Dr. Palfrey, October 14, relates to a book included in his diversions : —
" I have just read the most masterly, learned, profound, and multum in parvo survey of the reign of Charles II., by Buckle. I think it cannot fail to interest you. Here are Evelyn, Pepys, Macaulay, and one hundred others, all in their essence."
END OP VOL. III.
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