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 \ OEATION 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE 
 
 THE LIFE AND SERVICES 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER, 
 
 PRONOUNCED BEFORE 
 
 THE SUMNER LITERARY DEBATING SOCIETY OF 
 STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, 
 
 EDWARD C. BILLINGS, 
 
 AT 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA., 
 
 June 12, A. D. 1874. 
 
 "Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, qtiidqnid roirati sumus, manet maiisurumqiie est iu 
 " auimis hominum, in seternitate teraporum, fama rerum," 
 
 S NEW ORLEANS : 
 
 JOHN W. MADDEN, PRINT, 73 CAMP STREET. 
 I874. 
 
 ; 
 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 
 
 Sumner Literary Debating Society, 
 
 of the Straight University : 
 
 History has been described by the most brilliant of 
 modern historians to be " philosophy teaching by ex- 
 ample." This is especially true of Biography. For 
 in the life of an individual there is an attractiveness 
 and a warmth which do not belong to events 
 scattered over Empires and running through eras. 
 It is part of God's economy that men truly great 
 should be sources of influence for all time, inspiring 
 in the minds of youth impulses for great exploits and 
 quickening manhood and even age with admiration 
 when emulation has ceased to be possible. He, who 
 studies the steps by which great power over self and 
 over others was attained learns quickest the secret of 
 attaining great power for himself. He, who turns his 
 attention to the career of those who have put into then- 
 lives least of self and much of philanthropy, will be 
 readily drawn into a life of self abnegation and resolute 
 bravery in adherence to the right. Thus examples of 
 goodness come to have not only the form and force of 
 precepts but they have the cadence and rythm and 
 harmony of poems. They proclaim virtue and illustrate 
 it possibility, its beauty and its sure and great reward. 
 
 Your wish, therefore, that the life and achievements 
 of Charles Sumner should be put before you was not 
 
only a most merited tribute to his memory, but was 
 most wise, since in your types and models and ideals of 
 manhood his overshadowing excellence should have 
 prominent place. 
 
 For who more than he sympathized with the aspira- 
 tions of youth, the kindly incentives of learning — above 
 all who sympathized more ardently than he with those 
 of you who are struggling with the peculiar embarass- 
 ments springing from the prejudices against race! Who 
 more loyal than he to all the rights of man, as man, 
 independent of all distinctions arising from the acci- 
 dents of birth ? Who more responsive than he to the 
 protests of all whose rights were denied or fettered? 
 There is, then, a peculiar fitness in our considering his 
 great qualities and noble deeds, here, in the midst of a 
 community, a large portion of which it was the labor 
 of his life to emancipate and disenthrall and, in an in- 
 stitution, where, in accordance with the sympathies of 
 his whole nature and the efforts of his whole soul, knowl- 
 edge is, at last, unveiled, to those from whom it had 
 been so long hidden, and, like God's sunlight and rain, 
 made open and accessible to all. 
 
 Charles Sumner was born in the year 1811. His 
 preparatory studies were pursued in the Boston Latin 
 School. He graduated at the Harvard University, in 
 the year 1830. He entered upon the study of the Law, 
 and at the age of 23, commenced its practice in his 
 native City of Boston. He was instinctively and under 
 all circumstances a scholar. Learning clung to him as 
 naturally as a garment. He was well grounded in the 
 Law, for his legal studies had been very broad and very 
 
deep. Clients and causes poured in upon him. Op- 
 portunities for a large and lucrative practice opened up 
 to him, for his reputation and promise had preceded and 
 heralded his entrance upon the profession. But he 
 seemed to share the opinion of Burke that "the law 
 sharpened but did not liberalize the mind," for he 
 voluntarily declined this proffered clientelage. There is 
 but one cause of public interest in the Courts with 
 which I have seen that he, as an advocate, was 
 connected, and that was a cause in which his love for 
 humanity enlisted him. He argued with great power 
 before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts against 
 the constitutionality of separate colored schools. 
 
 It was in these days of his early manhood, that he 
 reported and published the Circuit Court decisions of 
 Justice Story. To this labor he was led somewhat by 
 his scholarly and legal tastes, but chiefly by the devoted 
 friendship which he entertained for Justice Story, 
 whose pupil, and, so to speak, younger brother, he had 
 been at the Dane Law School. This friendship, which 
 was germinated and nourished not alone from the affin- 
 ity between two scholars, but also from the mutual 
 appreciation existing between two gifted and pure men, 
 was imperishably embalmed in a most discriminating 
 and affectionate eulogy pronounced by the pupil upon 
 the teacher, as a jurist, after his death, in connection 
 with Pickering as a scholar, Allston as an artist, and 
 Channing as a philanthropist. In his friendship for 
 Story, as in all things else, was seen the love for the 
 worthy, which animated and guided all his preferences 
 
 Then came a residence of three years abroad, sedu- 
 
lously devoted to study in England and Europe, which 
 still more enriched an already rich scholarship and 
 deepened a love for humanity already absorbing. 
 
 Upon his return this man, who had developed into a 
 scholar, a statesman and a philanthropist, spoke, and 
 spoke with tremendous power, in a series of orations 
 delivered chiefly at the various seats of learning 
 throughout the country, the most marked of which 
 were, one on the " True Grandeur of Nations," which 
 advocated with all the force of argument, illustrated 
 from all the wealth of History, that the true aggran- 
 dizement of nations was to be found in the walks of 
 peace; one on "Fame and Glory," wherein was en- 
 forced the great truth that "no time and permanent 
 "fame can be founded except in labors which promote 
 "the happiness of mankind; one on the "Law of Hu- 
 man Progress," wherein was set forth in clearest light 
 the doctrine that human institutions gravitate towards 
 the right, and that the successive civilizations have ad- 
 vanced the ideas of men near and still nearer to an ac- 
 cord with that right; and one upon Granville Sharp, 
 wherein were swept together and presented by lips that 
 seemed to have been touched with a live coal from off 
 freedom's own alter, the heroic acts of an English mer- 
 chant, who, without any special fitness for such a mis- 
 sion, except a heart warmed with a generous and un- 
 conquerable love of freedom, by dint of individual will 
 and individual effort, and in spite of tremendous oppo- 
 sition continued through long years, succeeded in hav- 
 ing the principle established never to be shaken that 
 when a slave touched the soil of England he was from 
 
that moment forever free. It is in this oration, more 
 than in any other emanation, that the deep and thrilling 
 sympathy of Charles Sumner appears for the slave and 
 for one struggling for right against legalized wrong; 
 and as he follows Granville Sharp through his simple 
 but great life, from his position as an apprentice of a 
 linen draper, down to the time when, without having had 
 the patronage of the so-called great, but by virtue of the 
 good he had accomplished and the wrong he had de- 
 troyed, his remains were interred in Westminister Ab- 
 bey, that shrine of England's untitled nobility, he indi- 
 cates and foreshadows his own capability for a great 
 career, his own capability to tight giant wrong, without 
 any prospective reward save the approval of conscience, 
 with uncompromising hostility through long years till 
 at last victory for the right should come. 
 
 When his name had thus become familiar and en- 
 deared to all who loved high principles, there came a 
 troubling to the waters of politics in Massachusetts, 
 which gave the then small band of abolitionists their 
 first Senator from that State. On the 69th ballot Mr. 
 Sumner was elected for a period of six years from the 
 4th day of March, 1851. Following a precedent set 
 by John Quincy Adams, he addressed to the Legislature 
 a communication accepting the trust they had conferred, 
 and with characteristic boldness and zeal declaring- his 
 sympathy with the great movement to restrict slavery 
 within the narrowest constitutional limits, which was 
 then like a ground swell of the ocean commencing to set 
 in among the people of the land. In these words he 
 lays down the rule which as Senator he pledges himself 
 
to follow: "Since politics are simply morals applied 
 "to public affairs, I shall find constant assistance from 
 "those everlasting rules of right and wrong, which are 
 " a law alike to individuals and communities, nay, which 
 " constrain the omnipotent God himself in self-imposed 
 "bonds." And, with this grand text as his guide, he 
 entered upon his career as Senator — a career which was 
 destined to extend over almost a quarter of a century, 
 and to be connected with a struggle which, in results, 
 was to be the most important of our age, in which he 
 was to be a prominent actor and in some respects the 
 leading spirit. 
 
 Four years later in Faneuil Hall, he gave fuller utter- 
 ance to his political creed. Said he on that occasion: 
 "It was the sentiment of that great apostle of freedom, 
 Benjamin Franklin, uttered during the trials of the 
 Revolution, that ' where liberty is there is my country.' 
 In a similar strain I would say, where liberty is there 
 is my party. Such an organization is now happily 
 constituted here in Massachusetts and in all the free 
 States under the name of the Republican party. Fellow 
 citizens, we found now a new party ! Its corner stone 
 is freedom; its broad, all sustaining arches are truth, 
 justice and humanity. Like the ancient Roman Capitol, 
 at once a temple and a citadel, it shall be the fit shrine 
 for the genius of American institutions." A grand 
 prophecy, fearfully verified ! For though the Republic 
 was convulsed by the shock of hundreds of thousands 
 of opposing combatants, and our soil was drenched 
 from the Potomac to the Mississippi with fraternal 
 blood, while the nation's heart was each day wrung 
 
with fresh agony as her sons on each side by thou- 
 sands daily fell ! Nevertheless the irrepressible, adaptive 
 genius of constitutional liberty was able to preserve 
 and did preserve our free, representative government, 
 severed from the reproach and danger of slavery, 
 purified, transformed into the guardian of impartial 
 freedom — the "temple of free institutions" inviolate — 
 the " citadel" still further fortified. 
 
 When he entered the Senate in 1851, the slave in- 
 fluence was an autocracy. It was timidly obeyed in 
 the Executive Mansion, and was dominant in both 
 Houses of Congress, and with few exceptions, with the 
 public press of the country. It not only controlled the 
 National policy, but it was insolent in its apparently 
 confirmed power and was wrathful and resentful 
 towards opposition. It made up in haughty intolerance 
 for its conscious want of rightful strength. But with 
 the bravery of those who attack great numbers sustain- 
 ed only by a living sense of the justice of a cause, he 
 struck blow after blow against this entrenched evil. 
 He protrayed its horrors and its wrongs. He attacked 
 it through History, through political economy, through 
 ethics, and through the Holy Bible. Day after day, 
 month after month and year after year his Philippics 
 resounded through the Senate Chamber against this 
 ramified, thoroughly organized and well nigh nationali- 
 ized system, whose smile was courted as the passport to 
 political power, whose frown was dreaded as the pre- 
 cursor of a lasting banishment. Well nigh alone he 
 breasted the sentiment of the whole Senate and the 
 political aversion of those in power. How weary must 
 
8 
 
 lie sometimes have been, as the assertion of the great 
 doctrines of Human Liberty, and that too in a Republic, 
 fell upon the ears of an audience only to provoke oppo- 
 sition snd increase personal bitterness until it came 
 near to obloquy! Who that remembers the fierce oppo- 
 sition which he encountered when he sought to be 
 heard on his Bill " Repealing the Fugitive Slave Law," 
 can fail to remember the courage, the persistence, the 
 resources, which he exhibited in a contest which to the 
 vision of the multitude promised only defeat and disas- 
 ter. But never faltering, never disheartened he fought 
 on. 
 
 In the Senate never did he allow an opportunity to 
 pass to speak for the enslaved. And such words ! 
 They had the fervor and faith of the utterances of the 
 Hebrew prophets. They seemed to well up and over- 
 flow from a soul filled with a sense of the hideousness 
 of slavery, and with a longing to see all the slaves set 
 free and a determination to accomplish their freedom 
 by so accumulating the arguments that the moral sense 
 of the nation must rouse itself from its apathy and go 
 fearlessly with him. 
 
 The most memorable of his Senatorial efforts are 
 three: one of which he entitled "Liberty National, 
 Slavery Sectional," in which he strove to prove, and 
 did prove by the most exhaustive and rich collection of 
 authorities drawn from the fathers, and from the line of 
 argument drawn from the Constitution and the various 
 relative provisions, that the government was one upon 
 the principles and in the interests of freedom, and that 
 the dogma of the .supporters of slavery that where the 
 
9 
 
 Constitution went there it carried and protected slavery, 
 was an arrogant assumption. His intense sympathy 
 with the oppressed, and the retribution which he de- 
 voutly believed sooner or later attended oppression, he 
 breathed forth in the concluding sentence, borrowed 
 from an Oriental writer: "Beware," said he, "of the 
 "groans of wounded souls; oppress not to the utmost a 
 " single heart, for a solitary sigh has power to overset 
 " the whole world." 
 
 The second of his grand Congressional efforts he de- 
 nominated "The Crime Against Kansas." It was a pro- 
 test against the repeal of the Ordinance of Freedom 
 known as the Missouri ' ' Compromise." It was more than 
 an argument, though as such it was massive ; it was also 
 an impassioned note of warning, addressed to the 
 thoughtful throughout the country, to beware of the 
 aggressions of slavery, and it was a denunciation 
 against slavery big with the threat of its impending 
 overthrow, now that a face-to-face and life-and-death 
 struggle had been precipitated between it and freedom. 
 Listen to his entreaty, remonstrance and confident pre- 
 diction: " From the depths of my soul," said he, " as a 
 " loyal citizen and as a Senator, I plead, I remonstrate 
 " and protest against the passage of this bill. I strug- 
 " gle 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 assurances of that triumph by which 
 " Freedom will be restored to her immortal birthright 
 " in the Republic." 
 
 It was for this he received the violence, which, like 
 
10 
 
 that buffet to which more than mortal lips replied 
 " God shall smite thee, thou whited sepulchre," to his 
 other qualities added that last and most irresistible in a 
 great moral cause — that of great personal suffering en- 
 dured for that cause's sake. It was for this he received 
 the blow which, in the Senate Chamber — the theatre of his 
 prolonged struggles, and destined to be that of his great 
 victory — felled him to the floor. His cause, strong to 
 invincibility before, from that moment took on new 
 strength from the person of its advocate. Thenceforth 
 throughout the world, those who had sorrowed for the 
 slave, won to a Senator thus smitten, by a feeling in 
 which admiration and sympathy were blended, were 
 unconsciously drawn into a more fierce antagonism to- 
 wards a system which had been the real author of this 
 indignity and cruelty. Thereafter from his lips words 
 of protestation or incitement doubly inflamed, for they 
 of right kindled a zeal which has turned the tide in 
 many a moral conflict, in that they were spoken by one 
 upon whom had been set the seal of persecution, in de- 
 sign wrathful, but in effect a new and higher conse- 
 cration. 
 
 After a sojourn abroad under medical treatmemt for 
 several years, he was enabled to resume his seat in the 
 Senate. He renewed his unabated warfare in his grand- 
 est effort — one which tasked to the utmost, even his 
 moral heroism which he styled the " Barbarism of 
 Slavery." In this effort he assumed the offensive. He 
 attacked slavery from foundation to turret. He 
 arraigned it before the Bar of the Public Opinion of the 
 civilized world and charged it not only with being a 
 
11 
 
 system of unmitigated wrongs, but as blighting and 
 degrading the civilization which tolerated it. His other 
 animadversions had been bitter, this was gall; they 
 had been condemnatory, this was almost an anathema ; 
 they had been directed largely to considerations which 
 would restrict slavery and prevent its further expansion 
 in the new States and Territories, this one sought by a 
 thorough exposition of its vices, its violence and its 
 enormities — of its disastrous consequences to slaves, to 
 masters and to commonwealths, to overwhelm and up- 
 root it. There was and there could be no answer 
 either on the score of justice or of statesmanship to this 
 terrific assault. Its boldness was electric. Ringing 
 like a clarion through the land, it did much to multiply 
 and unite the opponents of slavery, and animate and 
 stimulate them to a wide-spread effort extending through 
 the free States which, made the party for freedom de- 
 termined, aggressive and triumphant. It was at this 
 point in his struggle when, either from the calm and 
 protracted reflections of a sick-chamber, or from an 
 observation of outward events, he became imbued with 
 a greatly augmented confidence in immediate success 
 and he not only continued to be a champion, but he 
 became a herald of victory. 
 
 Meanwhile his cause which he had presented solely 
 in its moral aspects, had, from reasons of expediency as 
 well as of justice, been adopted by a great political 
 national party. Many, who had not been attracted by 
 the inherent merit of principles when they had nothing 
 else to recommend them, at once espoused them, now 
 that they had become the tenets of a great and growing 
 
12 
 
 organization, marching on to victory at the polls. It is 
 thus that God in his Providence secures His results 
 among- men. He allies principles to human selfishness 
 and maintains and brings to triumph pure and unselfish 
 doctrines by bringing to their support the baser pas- 
 sions. What the principles of the early Abolitionists 
 lost by this alliance in disinterestedness, they gained in 
 coarser but effective force. The religious creed, or, per- 
 haps better, the humanitarian! principles of those who 
 supported Birney, thereby consciously finding political 
 ostracism, had become the platform upon which unnum- 
 bered candidates expected to be elected to honorable 
 and lucrative positions. And so the campaign of 1860 
 was made by the Republican party throughout the 
 North, by some who fought against slavery for rights 
 sake, by others from a sort of local patriotism, and by 
 others still for the loaves and fishes of office. Thus 
 constituted, it was successful. Surely such a party 
 needed some quickening, some transformation, some 
 baptism before it could be truly cmalified for any great 
 work for the nation or humanity. 
 
 This capacitating and ennobling force came, and 
 came unexpectedly, from a terrible civil war. For 
 slavery, unwisely for itself, had determined to risk all 
 upon the arbitrament of the sword. The opening of ac- 
 tual hostilities struck the Northern mind like a sudden 
 blow. It produced consternation. Then followed the 
 perception that the States divided would be States de- 
 generate, petty principalities, an easy prey to their own 
 jealousies or to foreign ambition. As the proportions 
 of the contest enlarged, came the stimulus which ever 
 
attends a gigantic undertaking. There was, too, the 
 absorbing interest which fathers, brothers and sons, fallen 
 or fighting in a cause, could alone create. Soon the en- 
 ormous expenditure made success a growing necessity. 
 All this gave to moral ideas a supremacy which ordi- 
 narily they do not possess in national affairs, and, 
 added to the influence of those who watched events 
 chiefly to see how the great interests of humanity 
 were advanced or retarded, opened up an opportunity 
 for the acquittance by the nation of what had been re- 
 ally the nation's sin. Thus, partly from selfish motives, 
 partly from much higher ones, was brought about the 
 abolition of slavery throughout the United States. In 
 this memorable contest, what part did Charles Sumner 
 take? When you contemplate his lifelong principles 
 you can tell in advance what measures he urged, and 
 with what spirit he urged them. 
 
 A civil war is a terrible ordeal, not only for the State, 
 but for individuals. Not only is the destiny of the na- 
 tion made to hang upon the result of a battle or a cam- 
 paign, not only are the bands of civil society loosened, 
 and the ordinary restraints upon the citizens relaxed; but 
 the prominent personages in the Cabinet and in the field 
 have pressed upon them duties which test to the utmost 
 their intellectual and moral calibre, for they are com- 
 pelled to solve questions and settle upon movements and 
 lines of policy of momentous consequence to the com- 
 munity, with little opportunity for mature deliberation 
 and none for aid outside their own genius and spirit. 
 This was peculiarly true in our civil war on the part of 
 the North ; for there was demanded not only military 
 
14 
 
 skill of high order, not only administrative ability ca- 
 pable of providing- the means of vast and continued 
 military movements, but the spirit of the people had to 
 be kept up to the point which allowed of immense per- 
 sonal sacrifices for the common good, and also the ques- 
 tion of slavery had to be dealt with wisely and boldly. 
 Mr. Sumner developed no special ability in matters 
 purely military. He was excelled by many in matters 
 of administration. But as a man in whom the people 
 trusted for high and sustaining impulse, he Avas unsur- 
 passed. His zeal glowed and radiated, like the light, 
 throughout the whole North. The earnestness of his 
 convictions, then, above all other times, wrought con- 
 viction in others. His prophecies rekindled the hopes 
 of the desponding and imparted courage to those who 
 were ready to take counsel of their fears. His enthu- 
 siasm became intenser as the emergencies became more 
 alarming. Until by virtue of his never-flinching advo- 
 cacy of the right, in the midst of no matter what dan- 
 gers, he had accorded to him, both among the people 
 and in the nation's counsels, a prominence which mere 
 intellectual greatness could not have attained. From 
 the beginning to the end of the war he represented in 
 his words and acts a disinterestedness of motive and a 
 loftiness of devotion to country which aided much in 
 securing ultimate success. 
 
 On the subject of slavery he never wavered. He 
 was an early and incessant advocate of emancipation. 
 He pressed it as a measure of the clearest right and, 
 therefore, as in the highest and most enduring sense, 
 expedient. He also urged it as a means of national 
 
15 
 
 defense, founded upon reasons which evidenced its 
 practical wisdom when tested by the doctrine of imme- 
 diate material consequences. Many men contributed 
 to this measure, and the official responsibility of the 
 act of emancipation finally rested upon a president 
 whose austere simplicity and integrity of life, together 
 with his martyrdom, has given him an immediate and 
 high position in the world's estimation; but of all the 
 men who contributed to bring it about, no one brought 
 to bear an enthusiasm more truly sacred or a faith more 
 implicit or, a force which in the aggregate, was more 
 valuable when judged by the rare combination of high 
 qualities from which it was derived, or the effective- 
 ness with which it was exerted. When the storm 
 which darkened the nation's skv was thickest, his 
 sole fear was lest an opportunity for stupendous 
 good might be unimproved and pass never to return. 
 Thus the war with its terrors and horrors afforded an 
 opportunity for accomplishing for humanity that which 
 argument and eloquence and learning had only helped 
 to render possible. So when one sums up his labors 
 during the war, it should be said, that he stands forth 
 as, even now, a historic character remarkable for the 
 lofty tone which he imparted to discussion, and for 
 the elevated aim which he helped to give to measures 
 and as being one of the few who, with a union of States 
 assailed to the very verge of disruption, and, when it 
 was felt that a mistake would have been a calamity, 
 not alone to our government, but to free institutions 
 everywhere, never for one moment countenanced a 
 compromise of what he deemed right, who was sleep- 
 
16 
 
 less in his vigilance for the interests of humanity, and 
 as one who advocated and helped to carry through the 
 emancipation of slavery because it was justice to the 
 slave, and was right in the sight of God. He was great 
 in his prolonged advocacy of principles which at first 
 were treated as fanaticisms, but which were so strong 
 in their justice that they successfully defied and finally 
 overthrew the stoutest wrong. He was greater when 
 events had culminated so that a nation's deliverance 
 from overwhelming danger, was to be determined ac- 
 cording to the wisdom of the measures adopted, and 
 he, undismayed, still clung to the everlasting and un- 
 changing law of right. 
 
 His attitude prior to the war was stern opposition to 
 all compromises with slavery; during the war a heroic 
 devotion to Liberty and the Union, sustained by an un- 
 faltering trust in the triumph of both. Since the war 
 his efforts have been to secure by Constitution and 
 statute complete protection to the freedmen, to invest 
 them practically with all the rights which inhere in the 
 man and in the citizen, and to give guaranties for the 
 enjoyment of those rights. There are, however, two 
 measures which he has advocated which deserve special 
 mention. I refer to the "Civil Rights Bill" and the 
 "Resolution to erase from the National Battle Flags the 
 names of the inscribed battles in which the Union 
 armies had been victorious." 
 
 His Civil Rights Bill may be summed up in this: It 
 gives to all races and classes the full and equal enjoy- 
 ment of all the municipal public rights. It is a most 
 unjust criticism to characterize this bill as trenching upon 
 or meddling with social rights. For there is no social 
 
17 
 
 equality in a common right to ride in a public convey- 
 ance, or to stop at a public hotel, any more than there 
 is in the common right to breathe the vital air. It 
 leaves social intercourse to be regulated entirely by in- 
 dividual taste. There is not only humanity but im- 
 mense sagacity underlying this bill. The sooner Fed- 
 eral statutes unalterably fix these great common rights, 
 the denial of which is desired only by reason of preju- 
 dices bequeathed by slavery, and thereby secure the 
 harmless well-being, comfort and progress of the for- 
 merly proscribed and oppressed, the sooner will the en- 
 ergies of our community be devoted to the common pur- 
 pose of developing our material resources and attaining 
 the prosperity which, with harmonious and wisely di- 
 rected action on our part, is so clearly attainable. It 
 should, also, be borne in mind that, while these rights 
 should be firmly secured by the sanctions of Federal 
 law, it should be the object on the part of those in whose 
 behalf the law is enacted, by the acquirement of thor- 
 ough education, by industrious and economical habits, 
 by the attainment of distinction in the various voca- 
 tions and professions and personal standing and weight 
 in all the relations of life, and, above all, by the mani- 
 festation of a spirit of kindness towards all, to render 
 the law easy of enforcement and, at no distant day, un- 
 necessary. 
 
 His resolution to erase from our flags the names of 
 Union victories elicited much censure and provoked the 
 condemnation of the Legislature of his own State, 
 which, happily, was revoked on the last day of his at- 
 tendance in the Senate and three days before his death. 
 In this resolution, too, was not only the spirit of philan- 
 thropy, but also the sagacity of the statesman. The flag 
 
18 
 
 of a nation is the symbol of the nation's power and honor 
 and glory. It is a common emblem — in peace the pro- 
 tection, in war the inspiration — cf the whole country. 
 When, therefore, a great civil insurrection, in no matter 
 how indefensible a cause, lias been decisively put down 
 and an assured peace has been attained, I think the gov- 
 ernment would wisely remove from its common ensign 
 all memorials of victories of one section over another, 
 and, so far as possible, all traces of fraternal struggles. 
 While with a firm hand it should guard all from op- 
 pression and proscription, and should secure to all the 
 unrestricted opportunities for individual happiness and 
 progress, it should with equal consideration preserve all 
 from needless humiliation. The unsectional, unpartisan 
 character of Charles Sumner's purposes, his manly in- 
 dependence and his enlarged and comprehensive range 
 of view nowhere appear more conspicuously or more 
 commandingly than in this act, where in advance of, 
 and even against the public opinion of the country he 
 sprang forward to do this swift justice to those who had 
 for a lifetime been his bitterest opponents. It showed 
 the stretch of his vision and the height of his motives. 
 What a fitting attitude for the conclusion of his 
 beneficent life ! In one hand he holds a statute, which 
 removed from the former slave the last impediments in 
 the way of his equal access through all public means 
 to the public comforts and enjoyments, the public 
 ameliorations and advantages of life: in the other hand 
 he holds a resolution which sought to blot from the 
 national flag all reminders of triumph over those who 
 fought that slavery might be continued. These two 
 measures together would make the nation just, consid- 
 erate, wise and generous. If their spirit could be 
 
19 
 
 cordially adopted and acted upon, it would eradicate 
 all bitterness and would leave us, as a community, with 
 protection for all, with offense towards none, in our 
 feelings, as we are in our interests, indissolubly united. 
 
 The presence and touch of death came unexpectedly 
 to Mr. Sumner, as they come to all. There had been 
 unusual joy at the recission of the censure of Massachu- 
 setts ; unusual fatigue at extraordinary labors in the 
 Senate Chamber, when there was a calm arathermsr 
 of his garments about him, and midst a hush which 
 had fallen upon a whole people, he fell asleep and 
 henceforth lives with God, and in the minds of the o-ood 
 of this age and all future ages. 
 
 In dauntless opposition to wrong on broadest grounds 
 he is most resembled by Burke. In scholarship he 
 outranks the younger Adams and Everett, and in an 
 intimate knowledge of what might be termed the Lite- 
 rature of Philanthropy, all modern Statesmen. His 
 efforts in breadth of mere intellect were not equal to 
 those of Webster, and in logical subtlety fell short of 
 those of Calhoun; but they showed a commanding 
 intellect, to a distinguishing degree comprehensive and 
 logical. His statesmanship was of a high order when 
 judged with reference to its historic wisdom, its forecast 
 or its adaptation of means to ends, and is well nigh 
 solitary in its preeminence when viewed as illustra- 
 ting a broad, sleepless love of mankind, insisted on with 
 the valor of chivalry and the self-devotion of the 
 martyrs. 
 
 About the same time two men emerged into public 
 life, and each, after having been an actor in stirring- 
 events for about the period of twenty-five years, pre- 
 maturely worn out with his labors, found repose in 
 
20 
 
 death. The one became Emperor of France ; the other 
 was an American Senator. The aim of one was per- 
 sonal aggrandizement ; that of the other the advance- 
 ment of humanity. The great effort of the one was to 
 found an hereditary dynasty ; that of the other to free 
 the slave. The one after seeing his dynasty melt away 
 before the wrath of a people resuming sovereignty for 
 themselves, died in exile, crownless and cheerless ; the 
 other lived to see four millions of slaves set free and 
 enfranchised and descended to the grave cheered by 
 their gratitude, beloved by all his countrymen and 
 revered throughout the world. Chiselhurst will for- 
 ever suggest the frailty of princely ^erogatives and the 
 sadness and mockery of the splendor of titled power; 
 while from Mount Auburn will be suggested the im- 
 mortal vig-or and freshness of renown won in struo-o-les 
 for our fellow-men, and the grandeur and pathos which 
 can be crowded into the life of a Republican Citizen. 
 
 When that cortege witnessed by that hundred thous- 
 and sorrowing fellow-citizens accompanied his mortal 
 remains to his simple grave, they did but give expression 
 to the sense of personal bereavement which saddened 
 every heart in the nation, and did but anticipate and 
 attest the verdict of history. Great in his love of man, 
 great in his obedience to the right, he has entered upon 
 an immortality of fame. Like the labors of Howard, 
 and the songs of Burns, the utterances of Sumner will 
 kindle tender and grateful emotions in the hearts of 
 men so long as human hearts continue to beat. In al- 
 most his own language on an occasion of heartfelt 
 tribute, be it said : let the politician and time server 
 stand aside, a pure patriot, the friend of humanity, the 
 fearless vindicator of the Right has gone to his reward. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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