MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.








A
MEMORIAL
OF
FROM1 THE
CITY OF BOSTON.
"Greater than the Divinity that doth hedge a King, is the Divinity that encompasses the
righteous man and the righteous people." — Sumner's Oration before the City authorities, July
4, 1846.
BOSTON:
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL.
M(DCCCLXXIV.




R OCK WELL  &  CHURCHILl,
PRINTERS TO THE CITY OF BOSTON.




CONTENTS.
ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.                                      7
MEETING IN rFANEUIL HALL.                                          29
THE FUNERAL...........   65
MEMORIAL SERVICES.71
EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.83








ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.








ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.
CHARLES SUMNER died suddenly at the National Capital on
Wednesday, the eleventh of March, 1874, at ten minutes before
three o'clock, P. M. The sad intelligence was immediately communicated to the Mayor of Boston, who ordered the flags on the public buildings to be displayed at half-mast, and called a special
meeting of the two branches of the City Council for the following
day at twelve o'clock, noon.
At the meeting of the Board of Aldermen a message from the
Mayor was read, as follows —
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, CITY HALL, 1
BOSTON, March 12, 1874.
To the Hfonorable the City Council d  -
GENTLEMEN, -  The mournful duty devolves upon me
of calling you together to receive the official announceInent of the death of Charles Sumner, who, during a
period of twenty-three years, has been the honored and
trusted representative of our people in the highest councils of the nation.
It is fitting that the city of Boston should do honor to
one of her citizens, who has always devoted his great
abilities to the advancement of fieedom and the establishment of just and equal laws.  Born in Boston in 1811, a
2                               9




10         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
graduate of the Latin School, and the recipient of a
Franklin Medal in 1826, he has ever retained his citizenship here, and has at all times responded, with noble
alacrity, to the demands which have been made upon him
in that capacity.
Although he held the position of a party leader in the
most eventful period of our country's history, no breath
of suspicion has ever tainted the purity of his motives;
and, had his life been spared but a short time longer, I
believe there would have been a universal recognition
among his own countrlymen, as there was among the most
intelligent in foreign countries, of his wise and far-seeing
statesmanship.
I trust you will take such action as will properly
express our sense of the great loss sustained by this city
in the death of its most eminent citizen.
SAMUEL C. COBB, Maffyor.
Alderman STEBBINS saidi -
MR. MAYOR: It is proper that the city which has the
honor to be the birthplace and home of Charles Sumner
should meet in its corporate capacity and officially express
the sorrow  which burdens all hearts in this hour of
national mourning, and pay homage to our illustrious
dead.
The feeling of sadness pervading our city is like that
of a personal bereavement, for which words fail to give
adequate expression.  The life we commemorate has been
a Golden Deed, and the best thought and culture of all
nations will pronounce eulogies in honor of our great




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENTo            11
citizen. The American people will guard his fame as
their highest example of purity and integrity in public
life. His errors will be written upon the sand, while his
virtues will be engraven upon enduring monuments. His
memory will be cherished for that love of country and
humanity which actuated his whole life; and the people
he labored so earnestly to ransom will teach their children's children to call him blessed forevermore.
Mr. Mayor, as an expression of the feeling of the
City Council, I desire to submit the following resolutions: -
-Resolved, That the City Council receives with profound
sorrow the intelligence of the death of Charles Sumner,
and deeply mourns the loss of the great Senator whose
illustrious career has reflected such honor and renown
upon the city of his birth and home.
R'esolved, That the public services rendered by Mr.
Sumnerl in the Senate of the United States thlronghout a
period of more than twenty-three years, and especially
his wise counsels upon international questions and his
untiring devotion to the rights of man, have laid a lasting
debt of gratitude upon the American people; and we now
gratefully recall the pride with which he ever regarded
his native city, and his constant fidelity to the important
and varied interests of Boston.
-Resolved, That the life of this great statesman affords
a striking example of the fearless and conscientious discharge of every public trust. In him we saw a man
whose constant incentive was a high sense of public duty;
whose heart ever beat in response to the claims of the
humble and oppressed; who was the firm friend of the




12        BMEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
soldiers of the republic, whose loyalty and devotion saved
the union of the States; who, though respectful to public
opinion, was still above it, and independent of it; who
never used his influence or his office to aggrandize himself, or to secure unworthy ends; and, above all, one upon
whose pure and spotless private character no breath of
suspicion ever rested.
Resolved, That His Honor the Mayor be requested to
call a meeting of the citizens in Faneuil Hall, at an early
day, to take such notice of this event as may be appropriate in view of the irreparable loss which the people of
Massachusetts, and particularly of Boston, have sustained.
Resolved, That a joint special committee of the City
Council be appointed, to act in co-operation with His
Honor the Mayor and the State and national authorities,
in making arrangements for the funeral ceremonies, and
for such other tokens of respect to the deceased, as are
due to the purity of his character, and the greatness of
his public services.
Alderman CUTTER said:
MR. MAYOR: Again has an impressive warning come
to teach us that in the midst of life we are in death. The
lessons of his providence, severe as they may be, often
become merciful dispensations, like that which is now
spreading sorrow through the land, and which is reminding us that we have higher duties to fulfil, and graver responsibilities to encounter, than those that meet us here.
Another great man has fallen in our land, ripe in years
and in honors, but never dearer to the American people




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.            13
than when called from the theatre of his services and renown to that final bar where the lofty and the lowly must
all meet at last.
It is almost a quarter of a century since he took his
seat in the Senate of our country. Since then he has belonged to his country, and has taken a part, and a prominent part, both in peace and war, in all the great questions affecting her interest and her honor; and though it
has been my fortune often to differ from him, yet I believe
he was as honest a man as ever participated in the councils
of a nation. During all the vicissitudes of a long and
eventful life he ever showed an anxiety to relieve the
afflicted and down-trodden.
Frank and fearless in the expression of his opinions and
in the performance of his duties, with rare powers of eloquence, which never failed to rivet the attention of his
auditory, and which always commanded admiration even
when they did not carry conviction; prompt in decision,
and firm in action; with a vigorous intellect trained in
the contests of a stirring life and strengthened by enlarged experience and observation, and great purity of
purpose, - these were the elements of his power and success, and we dwell upon them with mournful gratification
now that we shall soon follow him to the cold and silent
tomb where we shall leave him alone to the mercies of his
God and ours.
Alderman PRESCOTT said:
MR. MAYOR: I rise to sustain these resolutions; but I
never before felt so keenly how inadequate are words to




14         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
express the feelings which seem to pervade the whole
community.  Charles Sumner is dead.  Boston justly
claims him as her honored son. Born here sixty-three
years ago, when Boston was but a town, he fitted himself for
college at our Boston Latin School, received there a medal
inscribed as the gift of Benjamin Franklin, and finished
his collegiate education, in 1830, at our neighboring university.  The next twenty years of his life, till he entered
the United States Senate in 1851, were spent at home and
abroad, mainly in intellectual pursuits, which he loved so
well that when he entered the national service he was one
of the ripest scholars in the country.
Here his history becomes a part of the history of the
country. The biographer who at some future day may
write of the service of Mr. Sumner during the last quarter
century of his life, will write little else than the history of
his country during that time.
I need not recapitulate, Mr. Mayor, the services of Mr.
Sumner to his city, to his State, to his country, to the
cause of struggling  humanity throughout the world.
Though he belongs to us as a city, in a larger sense the
whole world will claim him. The absolute purity and integrity of his character are above all suspicion. He was independent even of his own party (which he loved so well)
and a man whose views were constantly in advance of the
times. Though strong in his support of the Government
in its struggle with rebellion, he was among the first to offer
the hand of firiendship when peace was declared. However men may differ in regard to the practicability of his
views, which caused his State to stain its records with an
implied censure of him, is there a man living who will




ACTION OF THE CITY  GOVERNMENT.               15
dare to say that Charles Sumner was not honest in those
sentiments?  Thank God, that before the silver cord was
loosed or the golden bowl was broken, he had the satisfaction of knowing that the old Commonwealth he had
served so faithfully sent to him, in the person of one of
the race he had done so much to elevate firom degradation
and slavery, a resolution blotting out the ungrateful words.
But, Mr/. Mayorl, this is not the place nor the occasion to
pronounce a eulogy upon Mr. Sumnelr. Soon his manly
form will be borne back to his native city, and all classes,
from  the highest to the lowest, will drop heartfelt tears
over his bier.
"Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him;
Not for him who, departing, leaves millions in tears;
Not for him who has died full of honor and years;
Not for him who ascended faime's ladder so high,
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky."
Aldermaln HAnRIS said:
MR. CHAIRMAN: I feel unwilling to stffer this occasion
to pass without briefly adding my tribute to the departed
statesman.  Identified with a party differing in politics
from  Mr. Sumner, I must in all frankness bear witness to
his honesty and incorruptibility. His life illustrates the
success of an earlnest and a laborious man.  His strong
physical powers and clear vision impelled him  onward
and upward; he could not remain contented to occupy
any uncertain position.  No timidity characterized his
actions; he followed to the end his convictions of what he
believed to be right.  He was like a standard bearer, ready




16         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
to lead, and his judgment and freedom of speech caused
him to be ever surrounded with friends. They shared in
his reputation and his honor. AWe lament his death, and
we would recognize in this dispensation our dependence
upon our Creator for all that we are permitted to receive
and enjoy.
Alderman PoWER said -
MR. CHAIRMAN: I feel it my duty to say a word on
this occasion. I heartily concur with all that has been
said or is to be said in eulogy of the great statesman now
deceased; and although belonging to the great party that
has in times past differed so widely with him on some of
the great questions of government, I feel that I but utter
the universal sentiment of that party when I say that he
always commanded their respect for his unflinching zeal
and undoubted honesty. And, as I said before, I heartily
conlcur in all that has been said and all that is proposed to
be done out of respect to the memory of the deceased.
Alderiman CLARK said: -
MR. CHAIRMAN; I rise merely to say that I heartily
concur in the sentiments of respect to the memory of the
deceased. It is not often that a city is called upon to
take action in regard to the death of a statesman so eminent for his services to his native city, to his State, and to
his country. The reputation of Mr. Sumner extends beyond the limits of our own country; he is almost as well
kliown in Europe as he is here; and the intelligence of




ACTION OFV THE CITY GOVERNMENT.          17
his death will be received with almost as much sorrow in
Europe as it is in the city of Boston.
There is no doubt that if there ever was a pure man in
political life, that man was Charles Sumner. During the
many years in which he was engaged in the public service
there never was any question of his earnestness of purpose
and his honesty of action. In him every one who has
ever felt the yoke of oppression has lost a friend.  It is
deeply to be regretted that he has been taken away in
the midst of his useful labors. But I trust, sir, that his
example will be felt by those who are now engaged in
administering the affairs of the country, and that it will
help to call out others who will work, as he worked, for
the best interests of the city, the State and the nation.
The question was then taken upon the adoption of the
resolutions, and they were unanimously agreed to, the
members rising in their places.
Alderman STEBBINS presented the following order,
which was unanimously passed:Ordered, That the joint special committee to be appointed unllder the resolutions in relation to the death of
Charles Sumner consist of the Chairman of this Board and
Aldermenl -, with such as the Common Council may
join, and that his Honor the Mayor be reqllested to act as
chairman of the committee; the expenses incurred by said
committee to be charged to the appropriation for incidentals.
The Mayor appointed Aidermen Stebbins, Cutter and




18          MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Prescott as members of the committee. The Board then
adjourned.
At the meeting of the Common Council, the message from the
Mayor was read by the President, EDWARD 0. SHEPARD, who then
addressed the members as follows -
GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  COMMON  COUNCILm:   By the
message of his Honor the Mayor, we are called together
as representatives of the chief city of the Commonwealth,
to provide such last tributes of honor and respect as are
due fromn this metropolis to the remains of Charles Sumpner. His public career as Senator from Massachusetts for
nearly a quarter of a century; his public acts in behalf of
freedom and the highest interests of his country; his sterling integrity and his matchless honor, are familiar to you
all. It is fitting that this city of his birth, thi s first city
of the State he has represented so many years, should
pay to his memory, now that he has gone from us, its highest tribute of honor and respect.
The resolutions adopted by the Board of Aldermen were then read,
and the question being upon the concurrence of the Council, Mr.
DEAN of Ward 12, said:Mr. PRESIDENT: Although within the short time which
has elapsed since the reception of the news of the sad
event which has called -us together it has been impossible
to make preparation for an adequate expression of the sentiment which involuntarily rises on this occasion, it does




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.           19
seemtl fitting and proper that an event of this great importance should not pass entirely unnoticed by those who
have differed from him in times which are passed. Charles
Sumner has been before the people of the United States
-and of the world in fact -for a generation. And we
cannot contemplate his death with without having our minds
revert back to the time when the contest in which he bore
so important a part, and which was of such national importance that all of the citizens of the United States were
called to express their interest on the one side or the other
of it, - I say we cannot help having our minds revert back
to the past, to the time when, in our boyhood, that contest
had its origin. I remember very well how, in the early
years of my life, I sympathized so sincerely with the cause
which he so ardently espoused. And even now I remember very well the peroration of an oration, - not delivered
by Mr. Sumner,   which was one of those pieces of oratory
which had an influence in inflaming the minds and drawing the attention of all to the great topic which was the
principal theme of his oratory. I remember that the olator to whom I allude, aftelr speaking of the wrongs of
Africa, conjured up the genius of Africa, and caused it to
address the genius of America; and, although it is so many
years since, the language is still vivid in my mind. He
described Africa as pointing her hand towards America,
and then slowly raising it towards heaven, and exclaiming: -
" I will meet thee there! I will meet thee there! Sot
at Philippi, in night and battle agony, but at the bar of
God, under the blaze of the judgment fires, just when the
highest hills of heaven are reddenling with the united blaze




20         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
of Africa and America. I will meet thee there, to ask for
my sons and my daughters, for my kings and my princes,
for my national renown and for my eternal salvation.'
Slowly, like one stiffening to death, the accusing spectre
has vanished. It is for us, my beloved countrymen, to lay
this terrible spectre forever, that it accuse us not in the
moment when the world's gray fathers and the latest born
shall be witnesses of the disgrace, and the hollowness of
our boast of fireedom  shall provoke the jeers of the
world."
I say, Mr. President, that in my school-boy days I sympathized heartily with the sentiment of those words, and
that sympathy is not abolished yet. It is true, that, subsequently, as I arrived at the years of manhood, I was compelled to assume another conviction of my duty, which is
best expressed in the opinion of the late Chief-Justice
Shaw, in a case that came before the Supreme Court for
decision: -
So long as the States remained sovereign they could
assert their rights in regard to fugitive slaves by war or
treaty, and, therefore, before renouncing and surrendering
such sovereignty, some substitute, in the nature of a treaty
or compact, must necessarily be devised and agreed to.
The clause of the Constitution seems to have been in character precisely such a treaty. It was a solemn compact,
entered into by the delegates of States then sovereign and
independent, and free to remain so, on great deliberation,
and on the highest considerations of justice and policy and
reciprocal benefit, and in order to secure the peace and
prosperity of all the States. It carries with it, therefore,
all the sanction whichcan belong to it, either as an inter



ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.            21
national or a social compact, made by parties invested
with full powers to deliberate and act; or as a fundamental
law, agreed on as a basis of a government, irrepealable, and
to be changed only by the power that made it, in the form
prescribed by it."
These two sentiments, if they may be described as such,
seem to have represented the feelings and convictions on
one side and the other; and these two sentiments were in
contest until finally the climax was reached. The war
came; it is ended; and peace again reigns. At first it was
like a cloud of the size of a man's hand. It spread itself
broadcast over the entire land. It burst, and war and devastation followed. Peace came at length; and, as we
looked around, we found the cause of the quartlel blotted
out forever. In that blotting out I rejoice; and I have no
doubt the entire country some day will, as indeed now
does the entire North, look with pride and satisfaction
upon this one great and happy result of an otherwise unprofitable, internecine war. No longer is such oratory as
I first alluded to needed. We are still a united people;
the cause of the division and contest is obliterated forever,
aind it only remains now for us to bring about that reign
of peace and concord which, at the last, was Charles Sumler's chief desire and work. He entered into it with such
zeal that it provoked even the condemnation of the Legislature of our own Commonwealth. Subsequent reflection
satisfied it that he was in the right, and it hastened, ere he
died, to carry to him the assurance that it was with him in
his mission of peace.  Let it be our great object now to
reap the full benefit of the past, and do whatever we can
for the purpose of so cementing peace and concord




22         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNERo
throughout the entire nation, that it will make us forever
remain united and indivisible. The event gives rise to
another reflections. However we may differ in opinion,
whichever side of any question we may take, —we shall do
our duty if we follow oulr sincere convictions. Although
I may differ in opinion from others, they have not the
right to go according to my judgment, any more than I
have to act according to theirs, if we each believe we are
right. On this deference to the opinion of the majority
rest the fundamental principles of American government.
I therefore, Mr. President, with great cheerfulness, favor
these resolutions, and9 in company with the most ardent
admirer, with the closest follower of Charles Sumner, I
shall taklie pride in dropping a tear upon his grave, and in
recording my vote to perpetuate a proper tribute to his
memory. I cannot, MrPresident, sit down without calling
attention to the recent visit of the committee of the City
Council on the post-offlec extension to Washington.
Among the most pleasant duties of that committee - for it
was a duty as well as a pleasure - was a call of the entire
delegation upon Senator Sunmner; and we cannot but
remember the great pleasure it seemed to give him to have
a delegation fiom the city of Boston - his native cityvisit him. And with what eagerness he proceeded to bring
forth his treasures; how he called our attention to the
Bible which John Bunyan had in prison; to Pope's Essay
on Maln, with the poet's corrections in his own handwriting; how he brought forth an album amicorum, containing  autographs of dtukes, princes, and many eminent
men; and how we neglected all others, to look upon the
writing and signature of John Milton; and how untirling




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.            23
he was in testifying his appreciation of the pleasure
derived firom our visit. I remember that, as I called attention to the copy of the reports that he presented, with his
own autograph, to Judge Story, in these words: "Hon.
Joseph Story, from his affectionate friend and grateful
pupil, Charles Sumner, March 30th, 1836," which is now on
my own table, his mind seemed to go back to the past
time, a look of sadness came over his face, and I could see
that he was buried in revery as he was contemplating his
past life, when he was enthusiastically engaged in the practice of his profession here, in -his native city. There is
another circumstance, Mr. President. When speaking of
the appropriation for the post-office, and of some one of
the congressional delegation fiom Massachusetts who, he
thought, was a little inclined to hesitate, he said, "I do
not; I am for Boston first, and for the appropriation bill
afterwards."  He was eminently a son of Boston, Mro
President; and as he went for Boston first, so we will go
for Charles Sumner now and last.
Mn. BOARDMAN, of Ward 14, said:'
MR. PRESIDENT: I can add but little  to what has
already been said by the member from Ward 12 in support of the resolutions which have been offered. I most
cheerfully corroborate his statement of the interview and
the genial entertainment that Charles Sumner gave us
when we were in Washington at the time to which he has
referred. In my own case —and I presiume in that of
otbherl  members of the  delegation - my preconceived




24         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
opinion of Mr. Sumner was somewhat modified. While
we all had admitted the remarkable attainments of Senator
Sumner, and his unswerving devotion to the freedom of
all classes, an idea has to a certain extent prevailed that
he was dictatorial in his manners; that, possibly, his disposition savored of arrogance. That was the feeling I
had in some degree. I had learned to admire him from
afar. But, certainly, no manner could have been more
cordial than he showed -- no greater warmth of welcome
could have been extended than that by him to us. He
seemed to take a personal interest in our visit there, and I
wish to add something to the allusion made by the gentleman from  Ward  12. When the question was asked
whether he could support the post-office appropriation
especially as his voice had been the first raised at the commencement of the session for retrenchment - he replied,
citing an Italian maxim, which you will pardon me for not
repeating, but which he kindly translated for us, to this
effect, that " a citizen is a Venetian before he is a Christian;" adding, " I am a Bostonian before I am a Senator;" creating the impression that we could rely entirely
upon him, first and always  And, during the banquet
given by Hon. Henry L. Pierce, he proposed to find out
how the delegation in Congress stood upon the question,
so anxious was he to see how the interests of Boston were
represented. I do not think it necessary to allude to
these incidents to convince us all of the fidelity of Charles
Sumner to his native city; but it is pleasant to be
reminded of them; to treasure them with memories of
him  hereafter. And I might also add that it was the
opinion of all of us who then saw him, that his strength was




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.            25
unabated, that we could hope to retain his valuable services in the same position in the country and State for
many years. I remember Mr. Somerby, who was there,
thought he had passed the critical period of his life, and
that we could assume that ten or fifteen years more of
active service would be given by him to his country. It
is not fitting now folr us to enter upon an analysis of the
character of the distinguished Senator, even if time permitted.  He blended in a rare degree an exhaustive
scholarship with profound integrity. It is true that in the
most intense partisan strife, whenever his course was such
as to provoke the warmest opposition from his opponents,
his character for spotless purity was never attacked. No
one could go to the Senate of the United States who was
acquainted with his history - and who is not?- and see
him there, constantly in his seat, constantly giving all his
attention, so far as possible, to the duties of his office,
without pronouncing him the " noblest Roman of them
all."  In combined scholarship and character he had no
equal nor second in that distinguished body. In my
opinion he was fortunate in his death. Rarely has it happened to any public man who has engaged, as he was engaged, in a great work for the elevation of mankind, to
enter into the fi'ruit of his labors as he did. It might fairly
be claimed that his life had been rounded when emancipation was secured for the slave. He not only lived to see
freedom  conferred upon the slave, but he lived long
enough to secure for them also full and equal recognition
in nearly every respect before the law; and, Mr. President, I think that in his death his influence will not be less
felt than if he had lived to carry out by his voice and pen
4




26         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
this same great work; that something of the asperity
which was nourished to a certain degree will be banished,
and that, though dead, he will yet speak in that important
work. As the great Roman orator, after he had defended
the republic against the machinations of Catiline, said that
he " had done enough to secure his own renown, but the
only question was whether he had done enough for the
republic," so has Charles Sumner done enough for his own
glory for all time to come. No man has ever lived in this
country who has so enshrined himself in the memories of
an entire race of men, who has made himself more memorable among the lovers ofthe human race. Never can the
immortal words of Pericles, in his eulogy over the graves
of Athenian soldiers, that " for illustrious men the whole
earth is a mausoleum,' be more fitly applied than to him.
For certainly his acts, his aspirations, his philanthropy
and his devotion to humanity are as comprehensive as the
whole world itself.
Mr. SnAw, of Ward 5, said:MR. PRESIDENT: It is a sad and mournful occasion, this,
that brings us together to-day. The nation mourns. Today humanity mourns the world over. The national emblem to-day floats upon the breezes of universal laimentation from  continent to  continent witlh extraordinary
significance. The electric wires are freighted with sorrow,
as they convey the sad intelligence of our great calamity
to the nations of the earth, and millions of people are
bowed down in grief. God, in his infinite wisdom, has
blottecl out the brightest star of the American firmament.




ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT.           27
In the fulness of manhood, after the accomplishment of
the noble purposes to which he has devoted a lifetime,
Charles Sumner has gone to his final reward. The rest
he so much coveted has been granted him. His wearied
body has returned to its mother earth —his soul to the
bosom of its Creator. 1?equiescat in pace! But he has
left behind him a noble heritage. His name and his fame
are the undying memorials which humanity will cherish,
through all generations to come, till time shall be no more.
Possessing the capacity to master, and mastering the great
questions of the day, - but above all and more than all,
possessing honesty of purpose and unquestioned spotless
integrity, persistent and unfaltering devotion to the great
principles of freedom and hulan rights which characterized and underlaid all his actions,-his name had become endeared to the hearts of the civilized world, and
mourning and sorrow at the sad event are not confined
to this continent alone. When stricken down and felled
to earth by the minions of slavery, uncomplainingly he bore
upon his person the effects of the brutal assault which
finally brought him to the grave; but within his soul faith
and hope, and confidence in the righteousness of the cause
whiche he had espoused sustained him through long years
of bodily suffering.
"His was the better fortitude of patience
And heroic martyrdom."
It was my fortune to know Mr. Sumner more intimately
than at any other time, during the earlier years of the
Rebellion, and, while holding official relations with the
Government, to have had much of his advice and counsel;




28          MEMORIAL OF CHARLIES SUMNER,
and I should be doing great injustice to my own sense of
duty did I not add a few words of gratitude to God that I
have enjoyed his confidence, and add something to the great
volume of well-merited praise which to-day is ascending
to heaven.  Mr. President, it is needless for me to say that
the resolutions meet in my bosom a hearty approval.
The question was then taken, and the Common Council concurred unanimously in the adoption of the resolutions, the members rising in their places.
The order appointing a committee to arrange for the funeral of
Charles Sumnner was read twice and passed by a unanimous vote.
The President appointed Messrs. Weston of Ward 1, Loring of
Ward 12, Cawley of Ward 2, Page of Ward 9, and Kent of Ward
21, the committee on the part of the Common Council.
On motion of Mr. Dean of Ward 12, the President of the Common Council was added to the committee.
On motion of Mr. Barnes of Ward 11, the Council then
acdjourned.




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.








MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.
In response to an invitation from His Honor the Mayor, a number of the leading citizens of Boston met in the Mayor's office on
Thursday, the twelfth of March, at half-past tell o'clock A. M.,
for the purpose of making arrangYements for a meeting of the
citizens in Faneuil Hall, "to afford all opportunity for a public
expression of the great loss sustained in the death of Charles
Sumnler."
The following committees were appointed:On organization:- Frederic WN. Lincoln, Charles G. Greene,
Charles Levi Woodbury, Ezra Farnsworth, Otis Norcross, William WT. Clapp, Francis Dane.
On resolutions — Richard H. Dana, Jr., Alexander H. Rice,
William Gaston, Richard Frothingham, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Joshua B. Smith, P. A. Collins.
In accordance with the request of the City Council and the
citizens, the Mayor called a meeting in Faneuil Hall on Saturday,
the fourteenth of March, at twelve o'clock, noon. Under the direction of the City Committee, the interior of the hall was appropriately decorated with the insignia of mourning.  As soon as the
doors were open, the building was filled with persons in every
condition of life, anxious to testify by their presence and their
voice to the sorrow which pervaded the community.
At the hour designated for the meeting, Hon. Frederic W. Lincoln came forward upon the platform, and stated that he was
31




32          MEMOR[AL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
authorized by the committee having charge of the organization,
to present the following list of officers: —
President,
SAMUEL C. COBB, Mayor.
Vice-Pr esidzlents,
Wendell Phillips,             Thomas Leavitt,
Charles Francis Adams,       Henry Lee,:Richard H. Dana, Jr.,        Edward Atkinson,
William Gray,                 Joseph W. Balch,
Benjamin R. Curtis,           S. N. Stockwell,
George Tyler Bigelow,        Oliver Ditson,
George S. Hillard,           YV. W. Greenough,
Win. Lloyd Garrison,          J. W. Candler,
Winm. Perkins,               Joseph F. Paul,
Francis NW. Bird,            D. N. Haskell,
Nathaniel Adams,              George Dennie,
Francis E. Parker,            George H. Monroe,
Edwin P. Whipple,             Lewis Rice,
Thomas Russell,               Charles R. Codmlllan,
Nathaniel Thayer,             F. WV. Palfrey,
Edward L. Pierce,             S. D. Crane,
Vnm. Claflinl,                Peter Harvey,
Thomas C. Amory,              George S. Hale,
Marshall P. Wilder,          H. P. Kidder,
Edward 0. Shepard,            Horatio Harris,
James L. Little,             Arthur W. Austin,
Moses Kimball,                Delano A. Goddard,
E. R. Mudge,                  Josiah Quincy,
George C. Richardson,        Alpheus Hardy,
Harvey Jewell,                Joseph M. Wightman,
Robert Morris,                Henry D. Hyde,




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.                 33
Henry D. Hyde,               Wmn. Amory,
A. D. Williams,              C. A. Richards,
Charles W. Slack,            Edwin M. Chamberlain,
Walbridge A. Field,          Thomas Gaffield,
George Lewis,                Avery Plumer,
William Parkman,             Edward S. Tobey,
J. I. Bowditch,              Albert Bowker,
Henry Smith,                 M. F. Dickinson, Jr.,
Dexter N. Richards,          Franklin Haven,
George B. Nichols,           Edward W. Kinsley,
Joseph W. Tucker,            John Cummings,
George L. Ruffin,            James M. Beebe,
L. Miles Standish,           Charles H. Allen,
Patrick Donahoe,             Amos A. Lawrence,
Charles Stanllwood,          Charles E. Pindell,
L. Foster Morse,             S. B. Schlesinger,
R. W. Hooper,                Otis Rich,
J. W. Bemis,                 Calvin Torrey,
John Pickering,              William Wells Brown,
Robert C. Winthrop,          M. P. Kennard,
Horace Gray,                 Reuben Crooke,
Edward Lawrence,             R. M. Pulsifer,
H. H. Coolidge,              James W. Bliss,
Sidney Bartlett,             Harvey D. Parker,
Samuel H. Walley,            Albert J. Wright,
John M. Forbes,              George William Bond,
John T. Clark,               James Guild,
N. J. Bradlee,               Moses H. Day,
Peleg W. Chandler,           H. G. Crowell,
J. Huntington Wolcott,       John E. Fitzgerald,
Martin Brimrner,             H. A. Whitney,
F. A. Osborn,                Curtis Guild,
James Lawrence,              Nathaniel Greene,
F. V. Balch,                 Weston Lewis,
5




34          MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
N. B. Shurtleff,             W. W. Warren,
A. W. Beard,                 Samuel M. Quincy,
H. A. Whitney,               Jonas Fitch,
Henry L. Hallett,            J. J. Smith,
Samuel Little,               George A. Simmons,
Uriel Crocker,               C. A. Phelps,
D. D. Kelley,                G. W. Wilder,
Sereno ID. Nickerson,        G. Washington Warren,
E. H. Clarke,                James Dana,
George B. Faunce,            H. Winthrop Sargent.
Samuel Atherton,.Secretaries.
Moorfield Story,             C. C. Smith,
Franklin W. Smith,           C. A. B. Shepard.
The list was adopted by the meeting; and the Mayor then
asked the Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop, D.D., to offer a prayer.
Dn. LOTHROP said:I have been requested by His Honor the Mayor, before
offering prayer, to read the following brief sentence from
the opening passage of Mr. Sumner's oration, or eulogy, on
Lincoln.  It is his own handwriting.  I read fromn his
original manuscript: -
" In the universe of God there are no accidents. From the fall
of a sparrow to the fall of an empire or the sweep of a planet, all is
according to Divine Providence, where laws are everlasting. It
was no accident which gave to his country the patriot we now
honor. It was no accident which snatched this patriot so suddenly
and so cruelly from his sublime duties. The Lord giveth, and the
Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord."




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             35
Almighty God, thou who livest and reignest King
of kings and Lord of lords; thou who livest while
mortals die, in devout submission and gratitude we humbly invoke thy blessing and the comforts of thy spirit as
we gather here this morning ill solemn recognition of that
inscrutable ordering of thy providence which knoweth no
accident, by which one of our most distinguished fellowcitizens and national Senators has been suddenly called
firom his high office, from the scene of his earthly fame
and glory and usefulness, to the higher scenes and grander
glories of the eternal world. We thank thee, 0 God, for
his life. We thank thee that thou didst raise him up,
endow him with large talents, enrich his mind with varied
learning, give him a commanding presence and eloquence,
and send him forth to be the champion of fieedom, to
proclaim  first that liberty was national and slavery
sectional in the republic; and then by energy and, perseverance, through toils, sacrifices, sufferings and perils,
to bear an important part in the high councils of the
nation, and in that conflict which ended in breaking the
fetters of the slave and proclaiming fireedom universal and
entire throughout the land. We thank thee that his life
was spared till his great work was done, and that the
closing days of that life were made sweet and pleasant
by the direct assurance firom the highest authorities of his
native State that he was still held in its perfect trust and
honor. And now, 0 God, that thou hast called the State
and the nation to mourning and sorrow by his death, we
pray that that death, as the life that preceded it, may be
sanctified to all. We pray, especially, that his example
may impress upon all rulers and people the inestimable




36         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
value of that energy in duty, that firm devotion to principle, that incorruptible integrity, purity and honor, both in
public station and in private life, that can alone preserve
the peace, the progress, the prosperity and the glory of
this great nation; and may all that is said and done here
this morning, and elsewhere, tend to quicken in our hearts
that faith and those principles that shall make us better
men, better citizens, and better Christians; and this we
ask to the glory of thy holy name, through Christ Jesus
our Lord. Amen.
The MAYOR then addressed the meeting as follows  -
FELLOW-CITIZENS:  The  lifeless  form  of Charles
Sumner is now on its way from the national capital to
Massachusetts, in the honorable and affectionate custody
of his peers in office.
Charles Sumner, the statesman and patriot, the scholar,
orator, philanthropist,- a great and good man, - is dead.
The whole civilized world takes note of the solemn event.
The whole country, in its great cities, its scattered villages, its roadside farmhouses, and its lowliest cabins,
pauses, reflects, and mourns. But Boston occupies the
place of chief mourner. His character and fame are the
property of the whole nation; but in his personal interests and. affections he was, and is, ours. His father was
an honored magistrate of Boston.
In these squares and alleys of ours, the boy, destined
to such eminence, pursued his childish games. He was
educated in our schools, and in the university on outr
borders. In his youth and early manhood, he sat at the




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             37
feet of our Quincy, and Story, and Shaw, and Adams, and
Webster, and Everett, and Channing. Here the fiture
Senator received the influences firom without, and kindled
the aspirations within, that in due time resulted in that
brilliant career, that noble and unspotted life, that unwearied, undivided and pre-eminent service for truth and
right, for fieedom and humanity.
Twenty-three years ago he went forth from among us
to take his part in the great arena of public life - in the
early prime of manhood, and without experience in affairs,
yet a stalwart man, and full of intellectual vigor and
generous enthusiasm. But yesterday he was a power in
the land, standing conspicuous among the foremost in
influence and in the public respect and confidence - one
to whose slightest word a nation listened with deference.
To-day his right arm has fallen, cold and motionless; his
tongue is stilled, his intelligence is quenched to our
mortal apprehension; his great soul gives no sign, and
his crumbling body is being borne back to us, to be laid
to its rest by our hands within the shadow of our city's
domes and towers, and of the home he loved so well. His
grave will be another added to our shrines of the illustrious dead, which we and our children and our children's
children, and citizens from western prairies and southern
savannas, and travellers from foreign lands, will visit
with reverend steps, to meditate on departed greatness
and worth.
We do well, fellow-citizens-we could not do less or
otherwise - to gather to-day in this our historic hall. We
come to mingle our sympathies and tears under the pressure of a great affliction. We come to renew our appre



38         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ciation of an illustrious character and life, and rekindle
our aspirations for the-best and loftiest things. We come
to give thanks to the Giver of all Good for this bright
and pure light permitted to shine upon us so long, and to
bow in submission to the decree that has now withdrawn
it. We come to pay our tribute - not the last tribute,
but the first- to the sacred memory of one of our best
and greatest men. The solemn grief of this hour for the
death of Charles Sumner reveals to us how much - how
much more even than we knew - we did in our hearts
honor and revere him while living.
Resolutions will now be presented for your acceptance,
which, I trust, will be found to embody, as far as mere
language can, the sentiments with which the sad occasion
has filled the minds of all of us, and of the multitudes
around whom these walls could not contain. I shall then
ask your silent and reverent attention to such remarlks as
may be offered by men, who, as the personal friends or the
life-long associates, or the intellectual peers, of the deceased, are qualified to speak of his character anid services,
and to impress upon us the lesson of the hour.
Hoin. RICHARD H. DANA, Jr., said: —
MR. MAYOR: On such a day as this, when this Cradle
of Liberty is draped as the chamber of death, in the presence of these tearful eyes and swelling hearts, my words
may well be few. Happy indeed would be the man who
could add anything to the expression of the scene. I am
aware, sir, that I owe the honor and privilege of my post
this morning to the fact that you and some others remem



MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             39
ber that I have been a friend of Mr. Sumner from my boyhood to the last. He was indeed a friend - I will not say
faithful and just, but partial and kind to me. And to-day
it is most fitting that I should restrict myself to a little
testimony of what I know and remember, which is not
known by the rising generation. I can bear witness that
in the university his life was intensely studious; that at
the age of twenty-three he had secured the reputation of
a scholar and a thinker, and the respect and fiiendship of
eminent men in jurisprudence and letters. When he went
to Europe, at the age of twenty-six, he bore credentials
from the first men of America to the first men of Europe,
for they knew that he would justify all that they could say
of him. And his great success in all parts of the Old
World was owing not merely to his genial social qualities,
his affectionate heart and his varied accomplishments, but
there are many who know that in London and Paris and
Vienna and Rome, his days and nights were as laborious
and studious as within the walls of Harvard University.
He commanded the respect and glad attention of the most
eminent men, holding the most responsible positions in
Europe. They foresaw in him  the great publicist and
statesman to which time developed him. I knew him in
various relations, social, professional and literary, but I
pass them all by for the consideration of the part he took
in organizing the great party of freedom  in 1848. He
had been indifferent to ordinary politics until the antislavery cause, passing out of the region of mere moral
effort, shaped itself into a movement of practical politics.
It was at his chambers in Court street that that small band
of men was in the habit of gathering preparatory to the




40         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Buffalo convention of 1548. And I would pause a moment, sir, to pay my tribute of respect, in which I know
that you, Mr. Vice-President of the United States, will
heartily join, to the disinterestedness, the courage, the
fidelity of the men who began that undertaking in those
dark days when it seemed all but hopeless, and promised
little else than labor and sacrifice. I recall the faces and
voices - some of them have passed away - of Mr. Adams,
Henry Wilson, Charles Allen of Worcester, Stephen C.
Phillips of Salem, Samuel Hoar of Concord, and his son,
Dr. Palfiey  of Cambridge, John A. Andrew, Iorace
Mann -but I will not try to complete the roll. Our
thoughts to-day are directed to one of its youngest, who
became the most eminent of all. He has the right to have
said of him what Burke said of Charles James Fox in
tribute to his efforts to protect the suffering East Indians
from the oppression of the East India Company:  "He
put to the hazard his ease, his interests, his fiiendship,
even his darling popularity, for the benefit of a race of men
he had never seen, and who could not even give him
thanks. He hurt those who were able to requite a benefit or punish an injury. He well knew the snares that
might be spread about his feet by political intrigue, personal animosity, and, possibly, by popular delusion. This
is the path that all heroes have trod before him. He was
traduced and maligned for his supposed motives.  He
well knew that as in the Roman triumphal processions, so
in public service, obloquy is an essential ingredient in the
composition of all true glory."  Social ostracism  had
fallen upon him, in a measure which this generation can
hardly credit. Although it wounded his sensibilities in




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.              41
many directions, it never affected his action. And I
know, as an intimnate friiend, that it did not affect his feelings towards individuals. He did not deal with men as
units, as the chemist deals with the ocean, by its drops.
He dealt with them by classes and races. He raised up
allies or opponents, friends or enemies, by masses, in obedience to those great laws of opinion and passion with
which he dealt.
Ml[r. Mayor, I testify to the manner in which he bore
himself during the most severe trial of self-respect and
dignity which I ever knew a man subjected to. I refer
to that period when his first election to the Senate was
pending before the Legislature.  He was tried by the advice of anxious and zealous friends, and by the hostility,
reproaches and sneers of the enemies of his cause. Everything seemed at stake upon that issue. He was urged to
see this man or that man, or allow such and such persons
to be brought to him. It was represented to him that if
he would meet more freely with those who had the decision in their power, and not hold himself aloof; if he would
say, by pen or tongue, this or that word, the result might
be secured. But we who stood about him know that he
was firm and immovable as that rock il the harbor of
Plymouth, surrounded by the dashings of a December sea.
Neither by what he did, or did not do, or say or did not
say, did he contribute anything to the result. " Let them
say, or think," said he, " that I am reserved, or haughty
or impracticable. I know it is self-respect. I know that
my usefulness in the post depends upon the manner in
which I attain it.'  And when, at length, the hour of triumph came, he did not allow himself to regard it as a
6




42         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
personal triumph over any individuals or small body of
men, whatever might have been his relations to them.
And I well remember -it is as fresh to me as if it were
yesterday - going into his chamber on the day after the
election, and noticing an expression of sadness on his
noble countenance. The newspapers of the day were
strewn upon the floor, and he said, with a sigh: "Ah,
when I see that cannon are firing and bells ringing in
New Ellngland, and on the Western Reserve of Ohio, I am
inexpressibly sad at the thought that I cannot, I know I
cannot, meet the public expectations in this cause."
But,' Mr. Mayor - 0 my friends before me! - could he
have foreseen then the scenes of the last days! - could he
have foreseen that, in three and twenty years, the news of
his death would have been met by the tears and sobs of
four millions of an enfranchised race; that his seat in the
Senate, from which he should once be driven by violence,
would be draped in mourning by the hands of his colleagues, and adorned with the freshest flowers of the
southern soil! -could he have known that the news of
this event was to be spread in a few hours through the
civilized world, and responded to by tributes of honor and
praise from more than one continent and from the isles of
the sea; that business and thought would be arrested
thoughout this republic, and held as by a spell, for days;
that flags would be worn at half-mast and bells tolled in
Charleston, South Carolina; that Independence Hall, in
Philadelphia, would respectfully solicit the honor of holding
for a few hours his remains on their funeral march; that
the great emporium of New York could not be satisfied
in the eagerness of its demand to do him honor; and that




MEETING- IN FANEUIL HALL.            43
here, in his own Commonwealth and city, the entire community  should  unite, past differences forgotten and
buried, in most tender tributes - ah, sir,- ah! my friends
-his friends! -if he could have foreseen this, or the one
hundredth part of this, he would not have feared that he
could not meet the public expectation!
I have desired, sir, to contribute my testimony to some
of these events now belonging to the past. It is not best
for me to attempt more. If I should ever think of analyzing his qualities and powers, it would not be here and now.
One of the resolutions says truly, that he was faithful to
the material interests and the welfare of the State and city.
This is true; but it is also true that he always made them
secondary, as they are, to the great moral questions on
which our national life depends. In the words of a poet,
never put in print, but which fell upon my ear in this hall,
a few weeks ago, whose presence we aclknowledge with
gratitude to-day, and whom the friends of Charles Sumner
now will, more than ever, love and revere [R. W. Emerson, who was on the platform]6Of what avail,
The plough and sail,
Or land or life,
If freedom fail!"
The contemplation of a great character is always elevating and ennobling. His moral and intellectual nature was
constructed upon a large scale; his mind belonged to the
comprehensive order; but it was that mysterious power of
will, that more subtle moral energy and human sympathy,
on whose seat in the human frame no physiologist has been




44        IMEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
able to put his finger, that insured to those powers their
highest and fullest action. But, Mr. Mayor, I must restrain
myself from attempting to enter upon that field. I cannot
take my seat, however, without thanking you for giving
me this opportunity to add a little testimony, to express a
few thoughts and feelings, not on his account but on my
own. And I will content myself with hoping that the resolutions, which I have the honor to present, will not fall
entirely short of expressing, in some measure, what this
assembly desires to place upon the record of this solemn
season.
MR. DANA theni read the following
RESOLUTIONS.
It having pleased the Almighty Maker of men and Allwise Disposer of events to bring to a close the life and
labors on earth of Charles Sumner, the citizens of his native town, assembled in this hall sacred to the memories
of great and good men, desiring to express our sorrow for
this bereavement, and our gratitude for his life and services, do unanimously agree upon these resolutions ~Resolved, The benefactions of his public service have
penetrated to the depths of our civilization, touched the
springs of our national life, and will be felt for generations
ill the renewed and purified organization of the republic.
Resolved, To this great result, affecting humanity itself
everywhere and in all ages, he contributed not only by
what he has said and done and suffered in the chamber of
the Senate, but by stirring and tireless appeals, for thirty




MEETING IN:FANEUIL HALL.              45
years, to the conscience and heart, the magnanimity and
sensibilities of the whole people of this land.
Resolved, We recall with special satisfaction his inexhaustible moral energy, his marvellous intellectual vigor,
his untiring industry, his varied attainments, the purity of
his private character, the loftiness of his public purposes,
the scholarly charm of his life and conversationl the dignity of his bearing, his indomitable resolution, a capacity
of enthusiasm  for right and indignation against wrong,
and a civil courage which neither feared nor courted the
hate or favor of men.
Resolved, While we unite with other citizens of our
Commonwealth and of the republic in expressions of
sorrow for such a loss, and satisfaction and pride in such
a life and service, we have a nearer claim and more special
interest as citizens of Boston, the place of his birth and
home, in whose institutions he was educated, and to whose
peculiar care his moltal remains are to be confided. We
acknowledge the interest he always took iln our institutions of education, charity, art, science, and letters, and the
aid he rendered to them by his pen and tongue, his counsels
and labors. We recognize that his name will add lustre
to our history. And we desire especially to record our
testimony to the fact that while his thoughts were directed,
and his powers devoted, to the enfianchisement of a race,
the reorganization of our national system, the adjustment
of our relations with'liberty and law, and to our intercourse with foreign powers, he never failed, as a public
agent, in the Senate, to give full attention and conscientious labor to the material interests of our city, and to
anything that concerned its dignity or welfare.




46         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Resolved, We heartily approve the action of the State
and the city in preparing for the remains of Charles Sumelr a public funeral, in which all our people may unite,
with the honors it has been the wont of our city and community to pay to its illustrious dead.
Resolved, There should be erected a permanent memorial of Charles Sumner, such as becomes a community not
unmindful of its duty to its great and good citizens, and
fitted to keep his character and services before the minds
of filture generations. We recommend that this memorial be one to which all, however poor, and of whatever
age, race or party, may nake contributions.
Resolved, To carry out the purpose of the preceding
resolve, the Mayor is requested to appoint a committee of
fifty citizens.
The Mayor then introduced MR. JOSHUA B. SMITH, who said:MR. MAYOR and GENTLEMEN: I would not appear here
before you to-day to say a word - for I do not feel able
to do it - but for one reason. I can only say Massachusetts has lost. a Senator, the United States has lost a
statesman, the world has lost a philanthropist, I have lost
a friend.
I shook Mr. Sumner's hand for the last time last Sunday evening, at half-past eight o'clock. He bade me say
to the people of Massachusetts, through their Legislature,
this: " I thank them  for remnoving that stain from me.
[Applause.]  I thank those that voted for me, and I tell
those that -voted against me that I forgive them all, for I
iknow, if they knew my heart, they would not have done it.




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             47
I knew Massachusetts was brave, and I wanted her to
show to the world that she was magnanimous too."  That
is my reason for speaking, and that alone. I have felt
that the greatest tribute I could pay to him for his kindness to me was simply to drop a tear to his memory;
but your honored Mayor was kind enough to bring me
forth to show my fiiends the fruits of his labors. I can
go back to the time when I sat under the eagle in this
hall, and when I saw some one stand on this platform;
and I did wish, when I heard certain expressions, that I
could sink. I can go back to my boyhood, when I have
seen other boys in their sports and plays, and I would
walk off in the woods and say, "0 God! why was I
born?'"
I can remember forty-five years ago, on a Christmas
day, passing through the orchard and seeing a silk-worm
hanging to the leaf of a tree. I took it home and hung it
in the room. I put it where it was warm, and it was
hatched out before the atmosphere was ready to receive
it. I lifted the window and it flew off, but had to return,
as it could not stand the atmosphere. And just so was I
hatched out by the eloquence of Charles Sumner, and.
turned loose in the atmosphere of public opinion, where I
had to suffer immensely. I could only feel at home and
feel well when I turned back into his presence, and his
arms were always open to receive me.  [Applause.]
And now, Mr. Mayor, our ship in which he has commanded is still adrift. We are standing out now in the
open sea, with a great storm, and in behalf of those five
millions of people of the United States, I beg of you to
give us a good man to take hold where he let go.  [lAp



48         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
plause.]  We are not educated up to that point. MWe
cannot speak for ourselves. We must depend upon
others. We stand to-day like so many little children,
when their parents have passed away. We can weep,
but we don't understand it; we can weep, but we must
beg of you to give us a man who will still lead us forward until we shall have accomplished all those designs
for which he offered his life.
Mr. Mayor, I thank you for this opportunity. I have
appeared in Faneuil Hall many times. If I was able - if
I had his tongue -if I could pay him for what he has done!
but I cannot; such as I have I give him. [Applause.]
Mr. Mayor, I second the resolutions.
HON. ALEXANDER H. RICE was then introduced, and spoke as
follows:FELLOW-CITIZENS: Amid the  associations of this
place and of this hour, surrounded by these mourning emblems and oppressed by this stupendous sorrow, my lips
seek no utterance and my heart clings to silence and contemplation. A great life has indeed closed. An illustrous career has ended. For a moment the voice of discord is hushed, and a stricken people bow before the
majesty of Heaven to take the measure of the nation's
loss, and to forecast the future with its hopes and fears, its
joys and sorrows. It is a time not alone for mourning, but
for courage and resolution also. Our streaming eyes follow anxiously the retreating forms of departed statesmen
-of Lincoln, of Andrew, of Sumner, and their illustrious
compeers in council and in war; and it behooves us to take




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             49
up manfully the duty which they have left us, mindful that
in the fierceness of battle, when the ranks are thinning,
victory often hangs upon the new-born valor of the remaining few. Charles Sumner has departed. It is too soon
for his eulogy; too soon for his history. Our minds are
full of his image; our hearts burn too hotly with the partial veneration and love. Memory throws back to us fascinating glimpses of his person and his character, and a
critical estimate of his worth is just now obscured by a
suffusion of tears. We see, as it were, his commanding
figure in our streets. We catch anew his genial smile of
recognition, and we hear the marvellous voice which now
thrilled the Senate with denunciation, argument or appeal,
and again fell in the accents of sweetness and pathos in the
circle of his companions and friends. In character he was
a moral hero. In learning and experience he was a model
statesman -the great senator. Always the friend of the
oppressed and the defenceless, the advocate of liberty for
his own sake, and the tireless champion of human rights
for all men, his forensic efforts had the boldness and fervency of Chatham combined with the classic purity and
elegance of Burke, whom in countenance he so strongly
resembled. Through a long career the advocate of an unpopular cause, at times the object of vituperation and even
of personal violence, no man ever assailed the sincerity of
his motives, the blamelessness of his life, or his stainless
fidelity. The taint of unfaithfulness never touched him.
Suspicion found no lodgment upon the guileless simplicity
of his deeds. He despised duplicity and revolted at everything that was dishonest. The good name of his native
State was as dear to him as his own reputation; and in the
7




50         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
discharge of his public trusts, his patriotism was the sure
guardian of the national renown.:No opportunity for
personal aggrandizement, no solicitation of private gain,
could swerve him from his sense of duty or from his
conviction of the requirements of the public welfare.
In the contemplation of such a character how  grand
is  justice, how  radiant  is truth, how  lovable is
fidelity, how  inestimable is personal honor! To these
there is no death. Mr. Sumner, to a remarkable degrec,
exhibited his life, as it were, in duplicate; for while engaged in the activities of his career he seemed an historic
personage. There was a breadth to his statesmanship
which transcended the measure of his generation, while
his learning supported it with examples from the past and
pointed out the way of safety in the future. Even his
conversation often bore the stately dignity of a message to
posterity. With comprehensive sagacity he discerned the
philosophy of government in passing events, and often anticipated his peers in seizing and acting upon results which
he considered would be ultimately certain, long before they
had transpired; and so outran his time, that when the
world overtook him we appeared to be living only what
had already been recorded. So exceptional was his greatness in this respect, that at times we saw in fancy his name
already upon the immortal scroll, and his stately effigy in
its appropriate niche in the temple of Fame. He passed
out of this world in the maturity of his manhood, in the
triumph of the cause which he had so ardently espoused,
blessed with the esteem and affection of his countrymen;
and his deeds and his example will live forever as potential
forces in the veneration and gratitude of posterity. Thus




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             51
in this world is his mortality swallowed up in life. His
spirit has gone to that higher congress above, where the
noblest and purest of earth sit together forevermore, in the
presence of that Divine Father and Guide, who is none
other than the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
O grave, thou canst receive of the departed statesman
only another clod of thy kindred dust; 0 death, thou art
robbed of thy shining victory, for again the holy declaration is fulfilled, and this mortal hath put on immortality!
HON. NATHANIEL P. BANKS was then introduced. He said: -
MR. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: The Senate of
the United States is a department in which is represented most carefully and exactly the dignity, capacity
and patriotism of the Government of the United States.
It was carefully organized by the great fiamers of the
Constitution and the founders of the Government to
stand between the extremes of democracy on the one
side and the aristocracy on the other. It is the tribunal
selected to pass judgment of the last resort upon the failing men in every department of the Government. It has
always discharged its duty faithfully and well, and, although sometimes liable to be a little on the one side or
the other of the principle of justice it was intended to
represent, it stands to us as the accepted representative of
the general strength and patriotic purpose of the nation
and the country. Every State has aimed to send to discharge the duty of representation in this august body, the
flower of its population and the ablest of its men. Massachusetts has been, among others, most happy in this re



52         MEMOi1IAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
spect. It numbers as the past Senators of the State in
this august tribunal, the best, the ablest, the purest of its
citizens. Strong, Sedgwick, Dexter, John Quincy Adams,
Otis, Webster, Everett, Choate, Winthrop, iRantoul, and
now Sumner, with manly others whose names will spontaneously spring to your lips, stand as the representatives
of this honored and patriotic State, in that great body. In
the choice of Mr. Sumner as the representative of this State,
many years agone, Massachusetts, as it appears now, did
a wise thing, and initiated a most important period of' her
history. And the distinguished Senator who received his
commission as the representative of this Commonwealth
in that body, looled back throughout the whole of his
career, as every one of his fiiends knowing will confess,
to the State of Massachusetts as the leader, the mistress
to whom he was to look for authority, and to whom he
could always appeal for support in the discharge of his
duties on that principle of fidelity to justice which was
the leading star of his life. He had carefully prepared
himself for this mission. It was the only public office he
ever held, with the single exception of a ministerial office
and a delegate to the Consltitutional Convention.  In the
varied acquirements that are necessary to the scholar, the
legist, the jurist, the orator, the debater, and even the
judge, no man ever stood higher or stronger. (Applause.)
He had marked for himself a course of conduct adapted
to this high magisterial office. He had in the filst instance determined, what I think no other Senator had determilled for himself, that under no circumstances and
upon lno call, except in connection with public affairs,
would he ever leave his seat in the Senate of the United




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.             53
States; and, beyond all other men, as the representative
of this State, he was faithful and true to that rule; and
that, although a little thing, is an important element in the
estimate of his character. He had fixed his mind upon
another important point; he did not look for rleputation,
transitory and momentary, by connecting his name with the
preparation of statutes, representing more or less the accidental spirit, or tone of opinion or morals; he had determined to look to ideas and principles, and the whole of
his public life was directed to the discharge of this higrh
duty.
He was the defender of principles and ideas; he was
the propagandist of great truths. And when, standing
alone, in the beginning, he had brought up, on the right
and on the left, the columns to sustain his ideas in measures which he had been prompt to represent, it was an
even chance if they did not find their leader away ahead
of the columns just brought up for his support. In this
way he had a never-ending and still enlarging and glorious
field of action; and at the very moment when his spirit
departed firom this world he had undoubtedly conceived
his future course of conduct with reference to this onward
progress, to which we may be strangers, and to which we
would probably, but sluggishly and slowly, come up to
support. In his preparation for duty he was more conscientious and laborious than any man I have known in
my time. As an illustration I can say fi'om, I think, personal knowledge, certainly firom  authentic information,
that when a delegate of the city of Boston, or one of the
towns of the Commonwealth, in a constitutional convention
of the State of Massachusetts, where the question of pop



54         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ular representation was to be considered and determined,
he carefully studied every page of the doings of the House
of Commons and the House of Lords, during the glreat
reform struggle, in order to possess himself of the philosophy as well as the practice and experience of the world
upon this great question. In every situation in which he
was placed, - when, as a member of the Senate, he was
excluded from all participation in the work of committees,
or when, after many years' service, he was unjustly and
unconstitutionally deposed from the Chairmanship of the
Committee on Foreign Relations,- he had but one idea, and
that was first for humanity, and then for his country.  [Applause.]  In these times of pretence and ostentatious
patriotism, Massachusetts, ay, Mr. Mayor, the  city of
Boston, can ill afford to lose such a man. There is no
example that leads us to duty, so bright, so constant, and
so undying as this; and there is no service that more
strongly claims firom us recognition and grateful confession of our obligations. I ought to have said in connection with the single idea to which I have adverted,
that in his advocacy of ideas and great truths and immortal principles, and his disregard of the mere phraseology
or of the framing, of measures in which those principles
were to be embalmed, he accorded to the spirit and the
practice of the Government and this country in its purest
and greatest days. Parliamentary philosophy, parliamentary law, and the spirit of constitutional legislation, preclude and deny to members of these great bodies that
are to participate in the duty of making laws, the right of
initiating and firaming folr themselves the particular ineasures, or the particular form of the measures, in which the




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.              55
principles adopted or agreed upon should be embraced or
represented; and it was for the purpose of representing
the great principles, and with a view to exclude all possibility of the defeat or of the success of measures, upon
mere personal considerations that this rule was laid
down.  We have unwisely, and to a very great degree, -I might say almost to a vicious and a criminal
degree,-departed firom this rule; and within my memory
it has come to be held that a man was not at liberty to oppose anything - any idea, principle or measure - to which
he had in some form  contributed. It is unhealthy and
unwise. It cannot but come to ill; and it is a practice
from which we should depart; but at this moment of sadness it is a relief and a joy, that throughout the career of
this illustrious Senator, scholar and legislator, he placed
no claim to respect or to honor upon the mere measures
that are placed upon the statute book.
It is as the advocate of immortal principles, of immortal
truths, part of which have been executed and part of
which are in the future to be fought for and vindicated,
that the triumph of his life and the honor of his name
nlust rest. The citizens of Boston have a right to participate in this honor, to assist in the commemoration of
these great triumphs, to drop a tear upon his bier when
it shall reach us, and to anticipate the sad moment by
assembling in this ancient hall, amid these emblems of
woe, to honor themselves, the metropolis of the Commonwealth, and the State, as well as its people, by the
discharge of this duty.  [Applause.]
The Mayor then introduced Hon. WILLIAMI GASTON.  I-Ie
said:




56         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
The great manll who, in the fuilness and completeness of
his fame, has just passed to his rest, had the accomplishments and graces of the statesman, of the orator and of
the scholar. These accomplishments attracted your admiration. But it is not merely to the statesman, the orator
and the scholar that you render your tribute to-day. You
recognize something in the person and in the life and
character of Charles Sumner which he had not acquired
in the halls of legislation, in the forum, or in the schools.
You recognize in him that integrity of purpose, that unhesitating devotion to duty, to justice and to truth which
generally lead through fierce opposition, but always
lead to triumph, and at length extort praises from unwilling
lips. [Applause.] You find in his character a placid and
determined courage, which feared neither minorities nor
majorities. His vision seemed to so reach into the future
as to give him the power of prophecy. He looked through
the clouds which surrounded, or appeared to surround him,
to the light which lay beyond them, and by that light he
saw the triumph of his principles and the vindication of
his fame. South Carolina assailed him with all the bitterness of hatred; but at the time of her defeat and his victory he failed not to be just to her; and if he lived to see
Massachusetts, his beloved Massachusetts, falter in her
devotion to him, we all reverently thank God that he lived
to see her true to him again.  [Applause.] To-day Massachusetts and South Carolina unite to do him  justice.
By purity in the public service, and by unselfish patriotism, he won the crown, and he wore that crown most
regally. A life of labor, of struggle, and of conflict has
ended in victory, in glory, and in peace.




MIEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.          57
1Rev. EDWARD EVERETT HALE said'How often he stood here and looked down upon a sea
of upturned faces when they were not unanimous, when
they did not agree with each other nor with him! And is
not that the thing to be remembered to-day, that he dared
to say the thing which was right, although he wounded his
nearest friends, his best friends, and the very people who
had loved him and honored him?  He was - more than
once - pierced to the very heart in his public life and in
his private relations; but still he did his duty and said his
word, and now we are so grateful that that word was
spoken and that that duty was done. That homage to the
right seems to have been what made the man and will
make his memory. He said, this very winter, to a young
man who repeated it to me, that when there was any new
subject of debate, when there was any new course to be
adopted, when there was any policy which seemed strange
or difficult, when there were any of those clouds of
which we have been speaking, when a new track was to
be found and was hard to find, he never took counsel with
men at last, but separated himself from men and went
alone and conferred with the highest authority, and when
he was assured by the highest authority, then he always
went forward and asked no question more. [Applause.]
Is not that the history of his life? I see young men
around me who think of him simply as an anti-slavery
leader; who have a feeling that the cause of anti-slavery
was the centre of his life. But he did not say so. He said
that in the early part of his life he looked upon war as the
great horror, and regarded this bringing of forces together,
8




58         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
of man against man, as the thing which must be avoided,
and to be put an end to, as the blackest stain on eivilization. It was because he hated war, it was because he
believed in  peace, that finding  organized  war in
this country, constant war between a little handful
of whites and a nation of blacks, finding that in the
way of permanent peace he committed himself to the great
anti-slavery enterprise. That statement seems to me to be
wholly illustrative of his life and method. Having got
hold of the principle, as General Banks has said, having
got hold of the idea, the central idea, this great idealist
of our time followed that idea wherever it might lead
him, and you know where it did lead him. It led him to
be the beloved leader of Massachusetts. It led him to
be the foremost man in the Senate of the United States.
It led him, as has been so gratefully and gracefully said by
one of the speakers, to be the first friend of the bondman,
the best beloved of those who have led a race of five
million of men out into freedom.  [Applause.]
And all the time how he did love Massachusetts! Massachusetts did not always show her love to him. Boston
sometimes was very cold to him. Yes, but he did love
Massachusetts. Just let me read to you a little note of his,
written in what seemed to be the darkest times, just before
they fired on Fort Sumter. A little note of his, - why, it
seems to enc as if the dead were speaking to us as I look
over it.
I had written to him to ask some question, - I know not
what, — some list of maps we wanted printed, perhaps.
This is his reply:



MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.                 69
WASHINGTON, 30 Dec.,'69.
MY DEAR HALE: I doubt whether anything can be done this
winter for ancient history. That of to-day will be too absorbing.
Meanwhile pray keep Massachusetts noble and true at the head
of the column, where in character and intelligence she belongs.
Nothing can be gained by subserviency or by acute argument to
find Human Freedom and its safeguards unconstitutional. Not in
vain have I studied my duty here; and I know that nothing is
more important than for our dear Commonwealth to stand as sshe is
- precisely; nor more nor less.
In the catastrophe which is imminent I wish her to hold faLst to
the old flag. Pray help her. But I count upon her governor.
God bless you!
Ever yours,            CHARLES SUMNEtR.' I count upon her governor," repeated Ir. Hale. [Applause and cries of "'Good."] Young men, remember that,
and remember who that governor was. In these days,
when we want to bring the republic back morally where
he left her, remember that that great man in the darkest
moment counted  upon her governor.  [~ Good" and
applause.]
There is a little story which I heard yesterday, and which
I cannot help repeating here, because I see so many boys,
so many young men, here who don't remember those days
of dark time. It was this:  That he singled out a young
man not long ago, as if he knew he was going to die, he
put his hand on his shouldler and said, "e It is on you, young
men, that we rely, and remember, young man, that character is everything."  And in this last month, when in the
midst of one of those petty personal intrigues at Washington, which will not, except by accident, go into history,




60         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
a Senator of the United States- I should think one of the
meaner sort, but I do not know'who - when such a Senator
said to him,'Mr. Sumner, how will this affect your
election?" he said, "  lWhat?   Affect what?' --    Affect
your election'? " —   What election do you speak of?"
-    Why, next year, in 1875, the period of your re-election
comes round."  He had not been thinking of that at all.
This was no play of his; there was nothing artificial in it;
he did not know what election was being spoken of; but
when he was reminded of it he said, i Oh, yes! so it will! -
my re-election would come round in 1875, but I may die
long before that, and as long as I live I can do my duty."
[Cries of "Good" and applause.]  Remember that, you
boys who have threescore of life before you yet; remember that so long as you live, though it be threescore years,
through all these years you can do your duty. [Applause.]
Will any man of us read such a sermon as that to-morrow?
[Applause.]
The resolutions were then unanimously adopted. The Mayor
gave notice that the hall would be open to the public during the
remainder of the day and on Sunday and Monday.
HIon. William Gray offered an additional resolution to the effect
that the merchants of Boston be requested to close their places of
business on Monday at twelve o'clock, the day of the funeral, and
that the flags on the shipping in the harbor be placed at half-mast.
The resolution was adopted, and the meeting then adjourned.
The following letters were received:NATICK, March 13, 1874.
HON. ALEXANDER H. RICE: -
MY DEAR SIR: Your note is received, conveying to
me the request of the committee, appointed to invite




MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.              61
speakers for the meeting in Faneuil Hall to-morrow.
While I hope to be present and listen to the voices of
others, I am compelled to be silent. But no poor words
of mine can deepen the affection, and increase the admiration for, or add to the fame of, the illustrious son of Massachusetts, whose sudden death the nation deplores. We
have been fiiends for thirty years, and it was my privilege
to aid in placing him in the Senate of the United States,
and to sit by his side there for more than eighteen eventful years. I have seen him in days of trial, disappointment, disaster; and in seasons, too, of successful triumphs,
and I have witnessed his faith, hope, resolution, courage,
and his tireless labors. In his death impartial liberty has
lost a devoted champion, the country a true patriot and
pure statesman, and republican institutions throughout the
world a sympathizing and undoubting fiiend. He had
lived to see the expiration of slavery and the triumph of'
the Union. But trials, and disappointments, and sickness
came to him, though none but intimate friends knew how
bravely he bore them. While, however, he greatly feared
he might become incapacitated for labor and further usefulness, he had no dread of death. Less than one year
ago, while sitting alone with him in his room, giving him
that advice — so easy to give, and so hard to take —to
cease from labor and take the much-needed rest, he said
to me with great earnestness: "If my works were completed and my civil-rights bill passed, no visitor could
enter that door that would be more welcome than death."
The failure to complete that allotted task was his regret
in his last moments, and the civil-rights bill he commended
to an honored colleague and fiiend. Loving hands will




62         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
complete that unfinished work, which the studenlt will read,
and the historian, who would trace the great events of the
last quarter of a century, will not fail carefully to study.
And, as we bear him to his burial, may we not hope that
his last injunction will be heeded, and that the provisions
of his civil-rights bill will be incorporated by the nation
into its legislation, and that " the equality before the law,"
which was so long the inspiration of his unflagging efforts,
may be assured to all, without distinction of race or color.
Very respectfully, yours,
HENRY WILSON.
57 MT. VERNON STREET, March 13, 1874.
RICHARD H. DANA, JR, J   ESQ.:MY DEAR MR. DANLA: I regret much that an engagement previously made, must prevent me firom joining yotu
in the proceedings in honor of our late fiiend, contemplated to-morrow in Faneuil HTall. It would have given
me a mournful satisfaction to contribute my mite to the
general testimony borne to his long and arduous labors ill
the country's service, and more particularly to that portion of them with which you and I were both most familiar. It is now nearly thirty years since we became associated in the prosecution of one great reform  in the
political institutions of this country.  It is more than
twenty years since Mr. Sumner attained a position that
enabled him the most fully to develop his great powers to
the attainment of that end. How much he exerted himself during the early days of severe trial, and how deeply
he suffered in his own person as a penalty for his cour



MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL.              63
ageous persistence in denouncing wrong, the public know
too well to need further illustration at this time. Like
most reformers, he possessed that species of ardor and
impetuosity which seem  almost indispensable to rouse
the sympathy and secure the co-operation of the great
and controlling masses of the people of a republic, in the
difficult work of changing settled convictions at the hazalrd of overturning cherished institutions. The trial was
a very costly one, we all admit; but when we look to see
how it has cleared us firom the most threatening evil that
weighed upon the minds of the early founders of the
republic, we cannot be too thankful to each and all of the
intrepid band who took the lead in the work of renovation, and persistently carried it on to the glorious end.
Among that number the name of Charles Sumner must
ever remain blazoned in the most conspicuous characters.
To the attainment of this great end two qualities were
indispensable - and both of these belonged to Mr. Sumner. One of them was firmness, which insured persistency over all obstacles. The second was personal integrity, unassailable by any form  of temptation, however
specious. After nearly a quarter of a century of trial,
there is not a trace left of the power of any temptation,
either in the form of pecuniary profit or the much more
dallgelous one of management for place. He was pure
throughout, and this was the clowning honor of his great
carleer.
I am very truly yours,
CHARLES FRANCIS ArDAMS.








THE FUNERAL.








THE FUNERAL.
Funeral services were held in the Senate Chamber at the National Capitol on Friday, the thirteenth of March, and at the
conclusion the presiding officer said:And now the Senate of the United States entrusts the
remains of Charles Sumner to its Sergeant-at-Arms and
the Committee appointed to convey them to their home,
there to commit them " earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust," in the soil of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  " Peace to his ashes!"
The body was then placed on bolrd a special train, which arrived in this city on Saturday evening. The Congressional Coinnlittee consisted of Messrs. Henry B. Anthony, of Rhode Island;
Carl Schurz, of Missouri; Aaron A. Sargent, of Californit; John
P. Stockton, of New Jersey; Richard J. Oglesby, of Illinois;
and Thomas C. McCreery, of Kentucky, on the part of the Sen
ate; and Stephen A. Hurlbut, of Illinois; Eugene Hale, of
Maine; Charles Foster, of Ohio; Joseph H. Rainey, of South
Carolinat; Charles Clayton, of California; Henry J. Scudder, of
New York; Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania; James B.
Beck, of Kentucky; and John Hancock, of Texas, on the part
of the House of Representatives.  The Massachusetts delegation
in Congress accompanied the Commlittee.
67




68         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
By invitation of the State authorities, who had charge of the
matter, the Mayor and the Committee of the City Council were
in attendance at the railway station on the arrival of the train, and
formed a part of the escort to the State House. His Excellency
the Governor, and the Executive Council, were in waiting in
Doric Hall; and, after the escort had entered, Senator Anthony,
Chairman of the Congressional Committee, said —
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR  EXCELLENCY: We are commanded by the Senate of the United States, to render
back to you your illustrious dead.  Nearly a quarter of a
century ago, you dedicated to the public service a man
who was even then greatly distinguished.  ite remained
in it, quickening its patriotism, informing its councils and
leading in its deliberations, until, having survived in continuous service all his original associates, he has closed
his earthly careelr. With reverent hands we bring to you
his mortal part, that it may be committed to the soil of
the Commonwealth, already renowned, that gave him
birth.  Take it; it is yours.  The part which we do not
return to you is not wholly yours to receive, nor altogether
ours to give. It belongs to the country, to mankind, to
freedom, to civilization, to humanity.  We come to you
with emblems of mourning which faintly typify the sorrow
that dwells in the breasts upon which they lie.  So much
is due to the infirmity of human nature.  But, in the view
of reason and philosophy, is it not rather a matter of
exultation, that a life so pure in its personal qualities, so
high in its public aims, so fortunate in the f'ruition of noble
effort, has closed safely before age had marred its intel



THE FUNERAL.                      69
lectual vigor, before time had dimmed the lustre of its
genlius?
Mcay it please your Excellency - our mission is completed.  We commit to you the body of Charles Sumner.
His undyincg fame the muse of history has already taken
ill her keeping.
The Governor thanked the Committee for the nanner in which
they had discharged the trust reposed in them, and stated that
the Committee of the Legislature appointed for the purpose
would take charge of the remains and arrange for their final disposition.
A guard of honor was then detailed from the Second Battalion
of Infantry, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, under the command of Major Lewis Gaul; and the body was laid in state in
Doric Hall, where it was visited, during the following clay, by a
vast number of people.
The State funeral took place on Monday, in King's Chapel, and
was attended by the City Government in a body. The bells of the
churches were tolled, and the flags on all the public buildings and
public grounds were displayed at half-mast. The services were
conducted by the Reverend Henry WV. Foote; and, at the conclusion, the remains were conveyed to Mount Auburn. The following gentlemen acted as pall-bearers: Henry W. Longfellow,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Francis Adanms, John G. Whittier, Robert C. Winthrop, John H. Clifford, Emory Washburn,
Nathaniel P. Banks, Alexander H. Bullock, William  Claflin,
George Tyler Bigelow.








MEMORIAL SERVICES.








MEMORIAL SERVICES.
The Committee of the City Council appointed under the resolutions in relation to the death of Charles Sumner, havinol de —
cided, on the 18th of March, to make arrangements for memorial
services in Music Hall, His Honor the Mayor was requested to
select a suitable person to deliver an address on the life and
character of the departed statesman. In compliance with that
request, an invitation was immediately sent to the Honorable
Carl Schurz, of the United States Senate, whose personal and
political relations with Mr. Sumner, during many years, gave him
peculiar qualifications for the task.
The invitation was accepted, and the twenty-ninth of April was
fixed as the time for holding the services. Among those officially
invited by the Committee in behalf of the City Council, were the
following: His Excellency the Governor, and the members of his
personal staff; the Executive Council; the Heads of State Departments; the members of the Senate and House of Representatives
of Massachusetts; United States Officers - civil and militarylocated in this city; the foreign Consuls; the Judges of the Supreme, Superior and Municipal Courts; the past Governors of the
Commonwealth; the past Mayors of the city; the Executive Committee of the Board of Trade; the Sumner Memorial Committee;
the President and Fellows of Harvard College; the Board of
Overseers of Harvard College; the classmates of Mr. Sumner;
the Officers of the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Trustees
of the Museum of Fine Arts, and personal friends.
10                          73




74            MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
The desire to gain admission to the services was so great that
it was found necessary, in order to exercise a proper control over
the proceedings, to admit only by tickets.  The hall was tastefully
decorated with flowers.  A fine portrait of Sumner, painted by
Dr. E. M. Parker, was hung in front of the organ.
At three o'clock the services were opened with a voluntary on
the organ by Mr. B. J. Lang.  The following invocation was
then sung by members of the Apollo Club.
Hear us, Almighty One!
Hear us, all Holy One!
Dark rolls the battle before us.
Father, all praise to Thee!
Father, all thanks to Thee!
That freedom's banner is o'er us.
Like a consuming brand,
Stretch forth Thy mighty hand,
Over oppression victorious.
Help us maintain the right!
Help us, 0 God of might!
Help us, Thy cause must be glorious.
Help us, though we may fall;
From out the grave we call,
Praise to Thy mercy forever.
All power and glory be
Thine through eternity.
Help us, Almighty One!
Amen. Amen.
The Mayor asked the attention of the assembly while prayer
was offered by the Reverend Phillips Brooks.
LET US PRAY: Almighty God, father of our souls and
master of all the destinies of men, open the gates of thy




MEMORIAL SERVICES.               75
presence, we beseech thee, to thy children, and let them
enter in to thee. We dare not speak of the great men
who are thy gifts, except in thy presence, filled with thy
love and enlightened by thy inspiration. Father, we thank
thee for the character of the great man whom we commemorate to-day. We thank thee for his truth and earnestness. When men trembled at duty, and were afraid
of it, he did it faithfully. When corruption hung like a
pestilence over our land, he stood up above it, brave and
pure. His heart was full of care for the humblest of the
race and the most oppressed. We thank thee, our Father,
for the truth and manliness that filled his life. We know
that the character of a good man is thy best gift to thy
children, and so we thank thee, first of all, and most of
all, that this thy servant was what he was. And we thank
thee, also, for the work which it was permitted him to do.
As we stand and look around and see the prosperity and
peace, the liberty and truth, and justice that so largely
pervade our land, we see in that the fruit of the seed
which he helped to plant; the issue of the struggle in
which he lived and suffered. We rejoice to-day for him,
0 Father, that thou didst give him so abundantly of that
which he loved the best, the privilege of serving his native
country. Wherever, 0 God, the work that Sumner tried
to do, still lingers incomplete, wherever any bond to the
world of sin still remains, wherever man still dares to forget righteousness, wherever any false standards still infest
the purlity of public life, and falsify and retard the work
in which thou didst so richly use this servant whom thou
hast taken to thyself-  give us great men. Give us
strong, good men, who shall thoroughly lknow thy will




76         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
and teach it to us all, and who, by the strength that thou
shalt give to them, shall lead thy people in thy way. We
beg thy blessing, O our Father, to rest upon our State
and upon our land.  Give wisdom  and strength to the
President of the United States, and to all others in authority.  Give, we implore thee, unto him who shall sit in the
chair which our great Senator has left empty, a heart and
mind as pure as his. Teach all our senators wisdom, and
be thyself the Governor of those whom thou hast set to
govern us. And now, what shall we ask, O Father, for
ourselves as we stand here desirous to commemorate the
great man whom thou hast taken to thyself, the good and
faithful servant whom thou hast called away'?  What can
we ask but that our own living shall be doubly consecrated to our duties?  In deeper purity, in more enduring
unselfishness, in broader wisdom, in a courage that nothing can frighten, and an integrity that nothing can seduce,
may we be wholly consecrated to duty, and may we lay
our humble lives, like strong, unnoticed stones in that
structure of righteousness and truth, and wisdom, which
thou art building in our land.  To some such self-consecration may we all be uplifted by the memorial service
of to-day.
The following hymn, which had been written for the occasion
by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmies, was then sung to a "Holland
National Air."
Once more, ye sacred towers,
Your solemn dirges sound;
Strew, loving hands, the April flowers,
Once more to deck his lound;




MEMORIAL SERVICES.                         77
A Nation mourns its dead,
Its sorrowing voices one,
As Israel's monarch bowed his head
And cried 1 "My son! My son! "
Why mourn for him? - For him
The welcome angel came
Ere yet his eye with age was dim,
Or bent his stately fraiame;
His weapon still was bright,
His shield was lifted high
To slay the wrong, to save the right,
What happier hour to die?
THou orderest all things well;
Thy servant's work was done;
He lived to hear Oppression's knell,
The shouts for freedom won.
I-ark! From the opening skies
The anthem's echoing swell,0' O mourning Land, lift up thine eyes!
God reigneth. All is well!"
Mr. Wendell Phillips then introduced the orator in the following words: -
MR. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: The Commonwealth has met with an irreparable loss -  a loss which it
tasks our language to describe. A consecrated life
bravely and solemnly ended! A great work left, in the
providence of God, unfinished -- the completion of which
not many of us, I fear, will now live to see. We meet to
pay another tribute of respect to the memory of the greatest man and the purest, that Massachusetts has lent to the
national councils during this generation or the last; the




78         MEMORIAL OiF CHARLES SUMNER.
one who has done the Nation more service and earned the
State more honor than any other. If we measure greatness by rare abilities, lofty purpose, grand achievement
and a spotless life, then neither in this generation nor in
the last has Massachusetts any political name worthy to
stand by the side of Charles Sumner, - the last martyr,
literally a martyr, -in the cause of free speech and personal liberty. We meet to contemplate his portrait drawn
by a master hand. No loving and partial friendship, begun
in boyhood, and grown closer year by year, will hold the
pencil. No State or City pride will unduly heighten the
colors. And this is well. For Sumner belonged, not to
Massachusetts alone, but to the Nation and the world.
From the lips of one born in a foreign land and dwelling
in afar-off State, - one who shared our great Senator's official labors, was his comrade in study and his near
friend, — from such a one we shall hear the verdict, - the
sober and dispassionate verdict which the world and posterity will render, - which history, proud of her trust, will
carry down to other generations. And as long as men
love justice and hate oppression, as long as they value the
devotion of great powers to the welfare of the race, as
long as they need to learn how the battle for liberty is to
be won when fought against almost hopeless odds, so long,
we may be sure, they will lovingly guard the record. As
such an historian, in this sad, proud hour of bereavement,
I have the honor to introduce the Hon. Mr. Schurz, of
Missouri.
Mr. Schurz, rising, shook hands with Mr. Phillips, and proceeded to deliver his address, which occupied two hours and twenty




MEMORIAL SERVICES.                     7 9)
minutes. It was listened to throughout with earnest attention,
and was frequently interrupted by hearty applause. At the conclusion a benediction was pronounced by Rev. Mr. Brooks, and
the assembly dispersed.








THE EULOGY, BY CARL SCHURZ.








EULOGY.
WHEN the news went forth, " Charles Sumner is dead,"
a tremor of strange emotion was felt all over the land. It
was as if a magnificent star, a star unlike all others, which
the living generation had been wont to behold fixed and
immovable above their heads, had all at once disappeared
from the sky, and the people stared into the great void
dlarkened by the sudden absence of the familiar light.
On the 16th of March a funeral procession passed
through the streets of Boston~ Uncounted thousands of
men, women and children had assembled to see it pass.
No uncommon pageant had attracted them; no military
parade with glittering uniforms and gay banners;  no
pompous array of dignitaries in official robes; nothing
but carriages and a hearse with a coffin, and in it the
corpse of Charles Sumner. But there they stood, —a
multitude immeasurable to the eye, rich and poor, white
and black, old and young, - in grave and mournful silence,
to bid a last sad farewell to him who was being borne to his
grave. And every breeze firom every point of the comupass came loaded with a sigh of sorrow. Indeed, there
was not a city or town in this great Republic which would
not have surrounded that funeral procession with the
same spectacle of a profound and universal sense of
great bereavement.




84         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Was it love; was it gratitude for the services rendered
to the people; was it the baffled expectation of greater
service still to come; was it admiration of his talents or
his virtues that inspired so general an emotion of sorrow'?
3[e had stood aloof from the multitude; the fiiendship
of his heart had been given to but few; to the many he
had appeared distant, self-satisfied and cold. His public
life had been full of bitter conflicts.  No man had aroused
against himself fiercer animosities.  Although warmly
recognized by many, the public services of no man had
been more acrimoniously questioned by opponents. No
statesman's motives, qualities of heart and mind, wisdom
and character, except his integrity, had been the subject
of more heated controversy; and yet, when sudden death
snatched him from us, firiend and foe bowed their heads
alike.
Every patriotic citizen felt poorer than the day before.
Every true American heart trembled with the apprehension that the Republic had lost something it could ill
spare.
Even firom far distant lands, across the ocean, voices
came, mingling their sympathetic grief with our own.
When you, Mr. Mayor, in the name of the City Government of Boston, invited me to interpret that which
millions think and feel, I thanked you for the proud
privilege you had conferred upon me, and the invitation
appealed so irresistibly to my firiendship for the man we
had lost, that I could not decline it.
And yet, the thought struck me that you might have
prepared a greater triumph to his memory, had you
summoned, not we, his friiend, but one of those who




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               85
had stood against him in the struggles of his life, to bear
testimony to Charles Sumner's virtues.
There are many among them to-day, to whose sense of
justice you might have safely confided the office, which
to me is a task of love.
Here I see his friends around me, the friends of his
youth, of his manhood, of his advancing age; among
them, men whose illustrious names are household words
as farl as the English tongue is spoken, and falr beyond.
I saw them  standing round his open grave, when it
received the flower-decked coffin, mute sadness heavily
clouding their brows.  I understood their grief, for
nobody could share it more than I.
In such a presence, the temptation is great to seek
that consolation for our loss which bereaved friendship
finds in the exaltation of its bereavement. But not to
you or me belonged this man while he lived; not to you
or me belongs his memory now that he is gone. His
deeds, his example, and his fame, he left as a legacy to
the American people and to mankind; and it is my office
to speak of this inheritance. I cannot speak of it without affection. I shall endeavor to do it with justice.
Among the public characters of America, Charles
Sumner stands peculiar and unique. His senatorial career
is a conspicuous part of our political history. But in order to appreciate the man in the career, we must look at
the story of his life.
The American people take pride in saying that almost
all their great historic characters were self-made men, who,
without the advantages of wealth and early opportunities,
won their education, raised them-selves to usefulness and




86          MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
distinction, and achieved their greatness through a rugged
hand-to-hand struggle with adverse fortune. It is indeed
so. A log cabin; a ragged little boy walking barefooted
to a lowly country school-house, or sometimes no schoolhouse at all; —a lad, after a day's hard toil on the farm,
or in the workshop, poring greedily, sometimes stealthily,
over a volume of poetry, or history, or travels; —  a forlornlooking youth, with elbows out, applying at a lawyer's
office for an opportunity to study; - then the young man
a successful practitioner attracting the notice of his neighbors; - then a member of a State Legislature, a representative in Congress, a Senator, maybe a Cabinet Minister, or even President. Such are the pictures presented
by many a proud American biography.
And it is natural that the American people should be
proud of it, for such a biography condellses in the
compass of a single life the great story of the American
nation, as fiom  the feebleness and misery of early settlements in the bleak solitude it advanced to the subjugation of the hostile forces of nature; plunged into an arduous struggle with danlgers and difficulties only known
to itself, gathering strength fiom every conflict and experience firom every trial; with undaunted pluck widening the
range of its experiments and creative action, until at last
it stands there as one of the greatest powers of the earth.
The people are fond of seeing their image reflected in the
lives of their foremost representative men.
But not such a life was that of' Charles Sumner. IHe
was descended fiom  good old I(entish yeomanry stock,
men stalwart of frame, stout of heart, who used to stand
in the fi'ont of the fierce battles of Old England; and the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.                87
first of the name who came to America had certainly not
been exempt from the rough struggles of the early settlements. But already from the year 1723 a long line of
Sumlners appears on the records of Harvard College, and
it is evident that the love of study had long been hereditary in the family. Charles Pinckney Sumner, the Senator's father, was a graduate of Harvard, a lawyer by
profession, for fourteen years High Sheriff of Suffolk
county. His literary tastes and acquirements  and his
stately politeness are still remembered. HIe was altogether
a man of high respectability.
IHe was not rich, but ill good circumstances; and well
able to give his children the best opportunities to study,
without working for their daily bread.
Charles Sumner was born in Boston, on the 6th of January, 1811. At the age of ten he had received his rudimentary traiin-g; at fifteen, after having gone thrloough
the Boston Latin School, he entered Harvard College, and
plunged at once with fervor into the classics, polite literature and history.  Graduated in 1830, he entered the
Cambridge Law School. Now life began to open to him.
Judge Story, his most distinguished teacher, soon recognized in him a young man of unlcommon stamp; alld an
illtimate friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil,
which was severed oiily by death.
He began to distinguish himself, not only by the most
arduous industry and application, pushing his researches
far beyond the text-books, - indeed, text-books never satisfied him, -but by a striking eagerness and faculty to
master the origihnal prilciples of' the science, and to trace
them through its development.




88         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER
His productive labor began, and I find it stated that
already then, while he was yet a pupil, his essays, published
in the "American Jurist," were  always characterized by
breadth of view and accuracy of learning, and sometimes
by remarkably subtle and ingenious investigations."
Leaving the Law School, he entered the office of a
lawyer in Boston, to acquire a knowledge of practice,
never much to his taste. Then he visited Washington for
the first time, little dreaming what a theatre of action,
struggle, triumph and suffering the national city was to
become for him; for then he came only as a studious, deeply interested looker-on, who merely desired to form the
acquaintance of the justices and practising lawyers at the
bar of the Supreme Court. He was received with marked
kindness by Chief Justice Marshall, and in later years, he
loved to tell his fiiends how he had sat at the feet of that
great magistrate, and learned there what a judge should
be.
Having been admitted to the bar in Worcester in 1834,
when twenty-three years old, he opened an office in Bostoin, was soon appointed reporter of the United States
Circuit Court, published three volumes containing Judge
Story's decisions, known as " Sumner's Reports," took
Judge Story's place from time to time as lecturer in the
Harvard Law School; also Professor Greenleaf's, who
was absent, and edited during the years 1835 and 1836
Andrew Dunlap's Treatise on Admiralty Practice. Beyond this, his studies, arduous, incessant and thoroughl
ranged far and wide.
Truly a studious and laborious young man, who took




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              89
the business of life earnestly in hand, determined to know
something, and to be useful to his time and country.
But what he had learned and could learn at home did
not satisfy his craving. In 1837 he went to Europe,
armed with a letter from Judge Story's hand to the law
magnates of England, to whom his patron introduced him
as " a young lawyer, giving promise of the most eminent
distinction in his profession, with truly extraordinary
attainments, literary and judicial, and a gentleman of the
highest purity and propriety of character."
That was not a mere complimentary introduction; it
was the conscientious testimony of a great judge, who
well knew his responsibility, and who afterwards, when
his death approached, adding to that testimony, was frequently heard to say, "I shall die content, as far as my
professorship is concerned, if Charles Sumner is to succeed
mIe."
In England, young Sumner, only feeling himself standing on the threshold of life, was received like a man of
already achieved distinction. Every circle of a society,
ordinarily so exclusive, was open to him. Often, by invitation, he sat with the judges in Westminster Hall. Renowned statesmen introduced him  on the floor of the
Houses of Parliament. Eagerly he followed the debates,
and studied the principles and practice of parliamentary
law on its maternal soil, where from the first seed corn it
had grown up into a magnificent tree, in whose shadow
a great people can dwell in secure enjoyment of their
rights. Scientific associations received him as a welcome
guest, and the learned and great willingly opened to his




90         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
winning presence their stores of knowledge and statesmanship.
In France he listened to the eminent men of the Law
School in Paris, at the Sorbonne and the College de
France, and with many of the statesmen of that country
he maintained instructive intercourse. In Italy he gave
himself up to the charms of art, poetry, history, and classical literature. In Germany he enjoyed the conversation
of Hunmboldt, of Ranke the historian, of Ritter the geographer, and of the great jurists, Savigny, Thibaut, and
Mittermaier.
Two years after his return, the " London Quarterly Review " said of his visit to England, " He presents in his own
person a decisive proof that an American gentleman,
without official rank or wide-spread reputation, by mere
dint of courtesy, candor, an entire absence of pretension,
an appreciating spirit and a cultured  mind, may be
received on a perfect footing of equality in the best
circles, social, political and intellectual."
It must have been true, for it came from a quarter not
given to the habit of flattering Americans beyond their deserts. And Charles Sumner was not then the senator of
power and fame; he was only the young son of a late
sheriff of Suffolk County in Massachusetts, who had
neither riches nor station, but who possessed that most
winning charm  of youth,,-purity of soul, modesty of
conduct, culture of mind, an earnest thirst of knowledge,
and a brow bearing the stamp of noble manhood and the
promise of future achievements.
He returned to his native shores in 1840, himself like a




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               91
heavily freighted ship, bearing a rich cargo of treasures
collected in foreign lands.
He resumed the practice of law in Boston; but, as I
find it stated, Snot with remarkable success in a financial
point of view."  That I readily believe. The financial
point of view was never to him a fruitful source of inspiration. Again he devoted himself to the more congenial
task of teaching at the Cambridge Law School, and of
editing an Americaln edition of "Vesey's Reports," in
twenty volumes, with elaborate notes contributed  by
himself.
But now the time had come when a new field of action
was to open itself to him. On the 4th of July, 1845,
he delivered before the City Authorities of Boston,
an  address on " The True  Grandeur of Nations."
So far he had been only a student, -a deep and arduous
one, and a writer and a teacher, but nothing more. On
that day his public career commenced. And his first
public address disclosed at once the peculiar impulse and
inspirations of his heart, and the tendencies of his mind.
It was a plea for universal peace,- a poetic rhapsody on
the wrongs and horrors of war, and the beauties of concord; not, indeed, without solid argument, but that
argument clothed in all the gorgeousness of historical
illustration, classic imagery, and fervid effusion, rising
high above the level of existing conditions, and picturing
an ideal future, — the universal reign of justice and charity, - iot far off' to his own imagination, but far beyond
the conceptions of living society; but to that society he
addressed the urgent summons, to go forth at once in
pursuit of this ideal consummation;   to transform  all
2




92        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
swords into ploughshares, and all war-ships into peaceful
nerchantmen, without delay; believing that thus the
nation would rise to a greatness never known before,
which it could accomplish if it only willed it.
And this speech he delivered while the citizen soldiery
of Boston in festive ariray were standing before him, and
while the very air was stirred by the premonitory mutterings of an approaching war.
The whole man revealed himself in that utterance; a
soul full of the native instinct of justice; an overpowering
sense of right and wrong, which made him look at the
problems of human society from the lofty plane of an ideal
morality, which fixed for him, high beyond the existing
condition of things, the aims for which he must strive, and
inspired and fired his ardent nature for the struggle. His
education had singularly favored and developed that ideal
tendency. It was not that of the self-made man in the
common acceptation of the word. The distracting struggles for existence, the small, harassing cares of every-day
life had remained foreign to him. His education was that
of the favored few. He found all the avenues of knowledge wide open to him. All that his country could give
he had: the most renowned schools; the living instruction
of the most elevating personal associations. It was the
education of the typical young English gentleman. Like
the English gentleman, also, he tlravelled abroad to widen
his mental horizon. And again, all that foreign countries
could give he had: the instruction of great lawyers and
men of science, the teachings and example of statesmen,
the charming atmosphere of poetry and art which graces
and elevates the soul. He had also learned to work, to




EULOGY BY CARL SCHUlRZ.              93
work hard and with a purpose, and at thirty-four, when he
first appeared conspicuously before the people, he could
already point to many results of his labor.
But his principal work had been an eager accumulation of knowledge in his own mind, an accumulation most
extraordinary in its scope and variety. His natural inclination to search for fundamental principles and truths had
been favored by his opportunities, and all his industry in
collecting knowledge became subservient to the building
up of his ideals. Having not been tossed and jostled
through the school of want and adversity, he lacked, what
that school is best apt to develop,-keen, practical instincts, sharpened by early struggles, and that sober appreciation of the realities and possibilities of the times
which is forced upon men by a hard contact with the
world. He judged life fiom the stillness of the student's
closet and from  his intercourse with the refined and
elevated, and he acquired little of those experiences
which might have dampened his zeal in working for his
ideal aims, and staggered his faith in their realization.
His mind loved to move and operate in the realm of ideas,
not of things; in fact, it could scarcely have done otherwise. Thus nature and education made him an idealist,and, indeed, he stands as the most pronounced idealist
among the public men of America.
He was an ardent friend of liberty, not like one of those
who have themselves suffered oppression and felt the galling weight of chains; nor like those who in the common
walks of life have experienced the comfort of wide elbowroom and the quickening and encouraging influence of
free institutions for the practical work of society. But to




94         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
him  liberty was the ideal goddess clothed in sublime
attributes of surpassing beauty and beneficence, giving to
every human being his eternal rights, showering around
her the treasures of her blessings, and lifting up the lowly
to an ideal existence.
In the same ethereal light stood in his mind the republic, his country, the law, the future organization of the
great family of nations.
That idealism was sustained and quickened, not merely
by his vast learning and classical inspirations, but by- that
rare and exquisite purity of life, and high moral sellsitiveness, which he had preserve( inltact and fiesh through all
the temptations of his youth, and which remained intact
and fresh down to his last day.
Such was the llall, when, in the exuberant vigor of manhood, he entered public life. Until that time he had entertained no aspirations for a political career. When discussing with a friend of his youth - now a man of faire,
-what the future might have in store for them, he said:
" You may be a Senator of the United States some day;
but nothing would make me happier than to be President
of Harvard College."
And in later years he publicly declared: " With the ample opportunities of private life I was content. No tombstone for me could bear a fairer inscription than this:' Here lies one who, without the honors or emoluments of
public station, did something for his fellow-men.'"  It
was the scholar who spoke, and no doubt he spoke sincerely. But he found the slavery question in his path; or,
Irather, the slavery question seized upon him. The advocate of universal peace, of the eternal reign of justice and




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.                95
charity, could not fail to see in slavery the embodiment of
universal war of man against man, of absolute injustice
and oppression.  Little knowing where the first word
would carry him, he soon found himself in the midst of the
struggle.
The idealist found a living question to deal with, which,
like a flash of lightning9 struck into the very depth of his
soul, and set it on fire. The whole ardor of his nature
broke out in the enthusiasm of the anti-slavery man. In
a series of glowing addresses and letters he attacked the
great wrong. Hei  protested against the Mexican war; he
assailed with powerful strokes the fugitive slave law; he
attempted to draw the Whig party into a decided antislavery policy; and when that failed, he broke through his
party affiliations, and joined the small band of Free Soilers..He was an abolitionist by nature, but not one of
those who rejected the Constitution as a covenant with
slavery. His legal mind found in the Constitution no express recognition of slavery, and he consistently construed
it as a warrant of fieedom. This placed him in the ranks
of those who were called " political abolitionists."
He did not think of the sacrifices which this obedience
to his moral impulses might cost him. For, at that time,
abolitionism was by no- means a fashionable thing. An
anti-slavery man was then, even in Boston, positively the
horror of a large portion of polite society. To make antislavery speeches was looked upon, not only as an incendiary,
but a vulgar occupation. And that the highly refined
Sumner, who was so learned and able, who had seen the
world and mixed with the highest social circles in Europe;
who knew the classics by heart, and could deliver judg



96         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ment on a picture or a statue like a veteran connoisseur;
who was a favorite with the wealthy and powerfial, and
could in his aspirations for an easy and fitting position in
life count upon their whole influence, if he only would not
do anything foolish, -that such a man should go among
the abolitionists, and not only sympathize with them, but
work with them, and expose himself to the chance of being
dragged through the streets by vulgar hands with a rope
round his neck, like William Lloyd Garrison,- that was
a thing at which the polite society of that day would revolt, and which no man could undertake without danger
of being severely dropped. But that was the thing which
the refined Sumner actually did, probably without giving
a moment's thought to the possible consequences.
He went even so far as openly to defy that dictatorship
which Daniel Webster had for so many years been exercising over the political mind of Massachusetts, and which
then was about to exert its power in favor of a compromise with slavery.
But times were changing, and only six years after the
delivery of his first popular address he was elected to the
Senate of the United States by a combination of Democrats and ~Free-Soilers.
Charles Sumner entered the Senate on the 1st day of
December, 1851. He entered as the successor of Daniel
Webster,who had been appointed Secretary of State. On
that same 1st of December Henry Clay spoke his last
word in the Senate, and then left the chamber, never to
return.
A striking and most significant coincidence: Henry Clay
disappeared fiom  public life; Daniel Webster left the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              97
Senate, drawing near his end; Charles Sumner stepped
upon the scene. The close of one and the setting in
of another epoch in the history of the American Republic were portrayed in the exit and entry of these men.
Clay and Webster had appeared in the councils of the
nation in the early part of this century. The Republic was
then still in its childhood, in almost every respect still an
untested cxperiment, an unsolved problem. Slowly and
painfully had it struggled through the first conflicts of
constitutional theories, and acquired only an uncertain
degree of national consistency. There were the somewhat unruly democracies of the States, with their firesh
revolutionary reminiscences, their instincts of entirely
independent sovereignty, and their now and then seemingly divergent interests; and the task of binding them
firmly together in the bonds of common aspirations, of
national spirit and the authority of national law, had,
indeed, fairly progressed, but was far from being entirely
accomplished. The United States, not yet compacted by
the means of rapid locomotion which to-day make every
inhabitant of the land a neighbor of the national capital,
were then still a straggling confederacy; and the members of that confederacy had, since the triumphant issue
of the Revolution, more common memories of severe trials,
sufferings, embarrassments, dangers and anxieties togethel',
than of cheering successes and of assured prosperity and
well-being.
The great powers of the Old World, fiercely contending
among themselves for the mastery, tralmpled, without
remorse, upon the neutral rights of the young and feeble
Republic. A war was impending with one of them, bring



98         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ing on disastrous reverses and spreading alarm and discontent over the land. A dark cloud of financial difficulty hung over the nation. And the danger firom abroad
and embarrassments at home were heightened by a restless party spirit, which former disagreements had left
behind them, and which every newly-arising question
seemed to embitter. The outlook was dark and uncertain.
It was under such circumstances that Henry Clay first,
and Daniel Webster shortly after him, stepped upon the
scene, and at once took their station in the foremost rank
of public men.
The problems to be solved by the statesmen of that
period were of an eminently practical nature.  They had
to establish the position of the young Republic among the
powers of the earth; to make her rights as a neutral
respected; to secure the safety of her maritime interests.
They had to provide for national defence. They had to
set the interior household of the Republic in working
order.
They had to find remedies for a burdensome public debt
and a disordered currency. They had to invent and olriginate policies, to bring to light the resources of the land,
sleeping unknown in the virgin soil; to open and make
accessible to the husbandman the wild acres yet untouched; to protect the frontier settler against the inroads
of the savage; to call into full activity the agricultural,
commercial and industrial energies of the people; to develop and extend the prosperity of the nation so as to
make even the discontented cease to doubt that the national union was, and should be maintailled as, a blessing
to all.




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              99
Thus we find the statesmanship of those times busily
occupied with practical detail of foreign policy, national
defence, financial policy, tariffs, banks, organization of
governmental departments, land policy, Indian policy, intelrnal improvements, settlements of disputes and difficulties
among the States, contrivances of expediency of all sorts,
to put the Government firmly upon its feet, and to set and
keep in orderly motion the working of the political machinery, to build up and strengthen and secure the fiamework in which the mighty developments of the future
were to take place.
Such a task, sometimes small in its details, but difficult and grand in its comprehensiveness, required that
creative, organizing, building kind of statesmanship,
which to large and enlightened views of the aims and
ends of political organization and of the wants of society
must add a practical knowledge of details, a skilful handling of existing material, a just understanding of causes
and effects, the ability to compose distracting conflicts and
to bring the social forces into fruitful co-operation.
Onil this field of action Clay and Webster stood in the
front rank of an illustrious array of contemporaries: Clay,
the originator of measures and policies, with his inventive
and organizing mind, not rich in profound ideas or in
knowledge gathered by book study, but learning as he
went; quick in the perception of existing wants and difficulties and of the means within reach to satisfy the one
and overcome the other; and a born captain also, —a commander of men, who appeared as if riding through the
struggles of those days mounted on a splendidly caparisoned charger, sword in hand, and with waving helmet and
3




100       MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
plumc, leading the front; — a fiery and truly magnetic soul,
overawing with his frown, enchanting with his smile, floulrishing the weapon of eloquence like a -wizard's wand,
overwhelming opposition and kindling and fanillg the
flame of enthusiasm; - a marshaller of parties, whose very
presence and voice like a signal blast created and wielded
organization.
And by his side Daniel Webster, with that awful vastness of brain, a tremendous storehouse of thought and
knowledge, which gave forth its treasures with ponderous
majesty of utterance; he not an originator of measures
and policies, but a mighty advocate, the greatest advocate
this country ever knew, - a king, in the realm of intellect,
and the solemn embodiment of authority, - a huge Atlas,
who carried the constitution on his shoulders. He could
have carried there the whole moral grandeur of the
lation, had he never compromised his own.
Such men filled the stage during that period of construction and conservative national organization, devoting
the best efforts of their statesmanship, the statesmanship
of the political mind, to the purpose of raising their country to greatness in wealth and power, of making the
people proud of their'common nationality, and of imbedding the Union in the contentment of prosperity, in
enlightened patriotism, national law, and constitutional
principle.
And when they drew near their end, they could boast
of many a grand achievement, not indeed exclusively their
own, for other powerful minds had their share in the
work. The United States stood there among the great
powers of the earth, strong and respected. The Republic




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             101
had no foreign foe to fear; its growth in population and
wealth, in popular intelligence and progressive civilization, the wonder of the world. There was no visible
limit to its development; there seemed to be no danger to
its integrity.
But among the problems which the statesmen of that
period had grappled with, there was one which had eluded
their grasp. Many a conflict of opinion and interest they
had succeeded in settling, either by positive decision, or
by judicious composition. But one conflict had stubbornly
baffled the statesmanship of expedients, for it was more
than a mere conflict of opinion and interest. It was a
conflict grounded deep in the moral nature of men - the
slavery question.
Many a time had it appeared on the surface during the
period I have described, threatening to overthrow all that
had been ingeniously built up, and to break asunder all
that had been laboriously cemented together. In their
anxiety to avert every danger threatening the Union,
they attempted to repress the slavery question by compromise, and, apparently, with success, at least for a
while. 
But however firmly those compromises seemed to stand,
there was a force of nature at workl which, like a restless
flood, silently but unceasingly and irresistibly washed their
foundation away, until at last the towering structure toppled down.
The anti-slavery movement is now one of the great
chapters of our past history. The passions of the struggle having been buried in thousands of graves, and the
victory of Universal Freedom standing as firm and un



102        MEMORIAL OF CHAEILES SUMNER.
questionable as the eternal hills, we may now look back
upon that history with an impartial eye. It may be hoped
that even the people of the South, if they do not yet
appreciate the spirit which created and guided the antislavery movement, will not much longer misunderstand it.
Indeed, they grievously misunderstood it at the time.
They looked upon it as the offspring of a wanton desire to
meddle with other people's affairs, or as the product of
hypocritical selfishness assuming the mask and cant of
philanthropy, merely to rob the South and to enrich New
England; or as an insidious contrivance of criminally
reckless political ambition, striving to grasp and monopolize power at the risk of destroying a part of the country
or even the whole.
It was, perhaps, not unnatural that those interested in
slavery should have thought so; but from this great error
arose their fatal miscalculation as to the peculiar strength
of the anti-slavery cause.
No idea ever agitated the popular mind to whose origin
calculating selfishness was more foreign. Even the great
uprising which brought about the War of Independence
was less free from  selfish motives, for it sprang fiom
resistance to a tyrannical abuse of the taxing power. Then
the people rose against that oppression which touched
their property; the anti-slavery movement originated in
an impulse purely moral.
It was the irresistible breaking out of a trouble of conscience,- a trouble of conscience which had already disturbed the men who made the American Republic. It
founJ a voice in their anxious admonitions, their gloomy
prophecies, their scrupulous care to exclude fiom the Con



EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.                103
stitution all forms of expression which might have appearecd to scanction the idea of property in man.
It found a voice in the fierce struggles which resulted
in the Missouri compromise.  It was repressed for a time
by material interest, by the greed of gain, when the peculiar product of slave labor became one of the principal
staples of the country and a mine of wealth. But the
trouble of conscience raised its voice again, shrill and defiant as when your own John Quincy Adams stood in the
halls of Concgress, and when devoted advocates of the
~rights of man began and carried on, in the face of ridicule
and brutal persecution, an agitation seemingly hopeless.
It cried out again and a gain, until at last its tones and
echoes grew  louder than all the noises that were to
drown it.
The anti-slavery movement found arrayed against itself
all the influences, all the agencies, all the arguments which
ordinarily control the actions of men.
Commerce said, —Do not disturb slavery, foir its products fill our ships and are one of the principal means of
our exchanges.  Industry said, -Do not disturb slavery,
for it feeds our machinery and gives us markets.  The
greed of wealth said, - Do not disturb slavery, for it is
an inexhaustible fountain of richeso  Political ambition
said, -Do not disturb slavery, for it furnishes us combinations and compromises to keep parties alive and to make
power the price of shrewd management.  An anxious
statesmanship said, - Do not disturb slavery, for you
might break to pieces the union of these States.
There never was a more formidable combination of interests and influences than that which confronted the anti



104        MEMOIIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
slavery movement in its earlier stages. And what was its
answer? "Whether all you say be true or false, it matters
not, but slavery is wvrollg."
Slavery is wrong!  That one word was enough. It
stood there like a huge rock in the sea, shivering to spray
the waves dashing uponl it. Interest, greed, argument,
vituperation, calumny, ridicule, persecution, patriotic appeal,- it was all in vain. Amidst all the storm and assault
that one word stood there unmoved, intact and impregnable: Slavery is wrong.
Such was the vital spirit of the anti-slavery movement
in its early development. Such a spirit alone could inspire that religious devotion which gave to the believer all
the stubborn energy of fanaticism; it alone could kindle
that deep enthusiasm which made men willilng to risk and
sacrifice everything for a great causec; it alone could keep
alive that unconquerable faith in the certainty of ultimate
success which boldly attempted to oveircome seeming
impossibilities.
It was indeed a great spirit, as, against difficulties which
threw pusillanimity into despair, it painfully struggled into
light, often baffled and as often pressing forward with
devotion always fiesh; nourished by nothing but a profound
sense of right; encouraged by nothing but the cheering
sympathy of liberty-lovincg mankind the world ovelr and
by the hope that some day the conscience of the American
people would be quickened by a fiull understanding of the
dangers which the existence of the great wrong would
bring upon the Republic. No scramble for the spoils of
office then, no expectation of a speedy conquest of power,
n-lothing but that conviction, that enthusiasm, that faith




EULOGY BY CARL SCHTURZ.              105
in the breasts of a small band of men, and the prospect of
new uncertain struggles and trials.
At the time when Mr. Sumner entered the Senate, the
hope of final victory appeared as distant as ever; but it
only appeared so. The statesmen of the past period had
just succeeded in building up that compromise which admitted California as a free State, and imposed upon the
IRepublic the fugitive slave law. That compromise, like
all its predecessors, was considered and called a final settlement. The two great political parties accepted it as
such. In whatever they might differ, as to this they
solemnly proclaimed their agreement. Fidelity to it was
looked upon as a test of true patriotism, and as a qualification necessary for the possession of political power.
Opposition to it was denounced as factious, unpatriotic,
revolutionary demagogism, little short of treason. An
overwhelming majority of the American people acquiesced
in it. Material interest looked upon it with satisfaction,
as a promise of repose; timid and sanguine patriots
greeted it as a new bond of uniolln; politicians hailed it as
an assurance that the fight for the public plunder might
be carried on without the disturbing intrusion of a moral
principle in politics. But, deep down, men's conscience
like a volcanic fire was restless, ready for a new outbreak
as soon as the thin crust of compromise should crack. And
just then the day was fast approaching when the moral
idea, which so far had only broken out sporadically, and
moved small numbers of men to open action, should receive
a reinforcement strong enough to transform a forlorn hope
into an army  of irresistible strength. One of those eternal
laws which govern the development of human affairs




106        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
asserted itself, — the law that a gret  wrong, which has been
maintained in defiance of the moral sense of mankind, must
finally, by the very means and measures necessary for its
sustenance, render itself so insupportable as to insure its
downfall and destruction.
So it was with slavery. I candidly acquit the American
slave-power of wilful and wanton aggression upon the
liberties and general interests of the American people.
If slavery was to be kept alive at all, its supporters could
not act otherwise than they did.
Slavery could not live and thrive in an atmosphere of
free inquiry and untrammelled discussion. Therefore free
inquiry and discussion touching slavery had to be suppressed.
Slavery could not be secure, if slaves, escaping merely
across a State line, thereby escaped the grasp of their
masters. Hence an effective fugitive slave law was imperatively demanded.
Slavery could not protect its interests in the Union
unless its power balanced that of the free States in the
national councils. Therefore by colonization or conquest
the number of slave States had to be augmented. Hence
the annexation of Texas, the Mexican war, and intrigues
for the acquisition of Cuba.
Slavery could not maintain the equilibrium of power, if
it permitted itself' to be excluded from the national Territories. Hence the breaking down of the Missouri Compromise and the usurpation in Kansas.
Thus slavery was pushed on and on by the inexorable
logic of its existence; the slave masters were only the
slaves of the necessities of slavery, and all their seeming




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             107
exactions and usurpations were merely a struggle for its
life.
Many of their demands had been satisfied, on the part
of the North, by submission or compromise. The Northern people, although with reluctant conscience, had acquiesced in the contrivances of politicians, for the sake
of peace. But when the slave-power went so far as to
demand for slavery the great domain of the nation which
had been held sacred to freedom forever, then the people
of the North suddenly understood that the necessities of
slavery demanded what they could not yield. Then the
conscience of the masses was relieved of the doubts and
fears which had held it so long in check; their moral iUnpulses were quickened by practical perceptions; the moral
idea became a practical force, and the final struggle began.
It was made inevitable by the necessities of slavery; it
was indeed an irrepressible conflict.
These things were impending when Henry Clay and
Daniel Webster, the architects of the last compromise,
left the Senate. Had they, with all their far-seeing
statesmanship, never understood this logic of things?
When they made their compromises, did they only desire
to postpone the final struggle, until they should be gone,
so that they might not witness the terrible concussion?
Or had their great and manifold achievements with the
statesmanship of organization and expediency so deluded
their minds, that they really hoped a compromise which
only ignored, but did not settle, the great moral question,
could furnish an enduring basis for future developments?
One thing they and their contemporaries had indeed
accomplished; under their care the Republic had grown
4




108       MEMORIAI, OF CHARLES SUMNER.
so great and strong, its vitality had become so tough,
that it could endure the final struggle without falling to
pieces under its shocks.
Whatever their errors, their delusions, and, perhaps,
their misgivings may have been, this they had accomplished; and then they left the last compromise tottering
behind them, and turned their faces to the wall and died.
And with them stepped into the background the statesmanship of organization, expedients and compromises;
and to the front came, ready for action, the moral idea
which was to fight out the great conflict, and to open a
new epoch of American history.
That was the historic significance of the remarkable
scene which showed us Henry Clay walking out of the
Senate Chamber never to return, when Charles Sumner
sat down there as the successor of Daniel Webster.
No man could, in his whole being, have more strikingly
portrayed that contrast. Wahen Charles Sumner had been
elected to the Senate, Theodore Parker said to him, in a
letter of congratulation, " 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."  That
hope was gratified. He always remained in morals while
in politics. He never was anything else but the senator
with a conscience. Charles Sumner entered the Senate
not as a mere advocate, but as the very embodiment of
thle moral idea. From this fountain flowed his highest
aspirations. There had been great anti-slavery men in
the Senate before him; they were there with him, men
like Seward and Chase. But they had been trained in a




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             109
different school. Their minds had ranged over other
political fields. They understood politics. He did not.
He knew but one political object, -to combat and overthrow the great wrong of slavery; to serve the ideal of
the liberty and equality of men; and to establish the
universal reign of " peace, justice and charity."  He
brought to the Senate a studious mind, vast learning,
great legal attainments, a powerful eloquence, a strong
and ardent nature; and all this he vowed to one service.
With all this he was not a mere expounder of a policy;
he was a worshipper, sincere and devout, at the shrine of
his ideal. In no public man had the moral idea of the
anti-slavery movement more overruling strength. He
made everything yield to it. He did not possess it; it
possessed him. That was the secret of his peculiar
power.
He introduced himself into the debates of the Senate,
the slavery question having been silenced forever, as politicians then thought, by several speeches on other subjects, - the reception of Kossuth, the Land Policy, Ocean
Postage; but they were not remarkable, and attracted but
little attention.
At last he availed himself of an appropriation bill to
attack the fugitive slave law, and at once a spirit broke
forth in that first word on the great question which
startled every listener.
Thus he opened the argument: -
"Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrong and
woe of slavery, —profoundly believing that according to
the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of
the fathers, it can find no place under our national gov



110        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNEIR
ernment,- I could not allow this session to reach its close
without making or seizing an opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty
of the late intolerant enactment for the recovery of fugitive
slaves."
Then this significant declaration:" Whatever I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause.
I have never been a politician. The slave of principles,
I call no party master.  By sentiment, education, and
conviction, a friend of Human Rights in their utmost
expansion, I have ever most sincerely embraced the Deemocratic idea -not, indeed, as represented or professed by
any party, but according to its real significance, as transfigured in the Declaration of Independence, and in the
injunctions of Christianity. In this idea I see no narrow
advantage merely for individuals or classes, but the sovereignty of the people, and the greatest happiness of all
secured by equal laws."
A vast array of historical research and of legal argument was then called up to prove the sectionalism of
slavery, the nationalism of freedom, and the unconstitutionality of the fugitive slave act, followed by this bold
declaration' " By the Supreme Law, which commands me
to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian Law of
Brotherhood, by the Constitution I have sworn to support,
I am bound to disobey this law."  And the speech closed
with this solemn quotation: "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 amendment to the appropriation bill moved by Mr.




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               111
Sumner received only four votes of fifty-one. But every
hearer had been struck by the words spoken as something
differellt from the tone of other anti-slavery speeches delivered in those halls. Southern Senators, startled at the
peculiarity of the speech, called it, in reply, "-the most
extraordinary language they had ever listened to."  Mr.
Chase, supporting Sumner in debate, spoke of it, "as
marking  a new era in American history, when the antislavery idea ceased to stand on the defensive and was
boldly advancing to the attack."
Illdeed, it had that significance. Thele stood up in the
Senate a mall who was no politician; but who, on the
highest field of politics, with a concentrated intensity of
feeling and purpose never before witnessed there, gave
expression to a moral impulse, which, although sleeping
perhaps for a time, certainly existed in the popular conscience, and which, once become a political force, could
not fail to produce a great revolution.
Charles Sumner possessed all the instincts, the courage,
the firmness and the faith of the devotee of a great idea.
In the Senate he was a member of a feeble minority, so
feeble, indeed, as to be to the ruling power a mere subject
of derision; and for the first three years of his service
without organized popular support.  The slaveholders
had been accustomed to put the metal of their northern
opponents to a variety of tests. Many a hot anti-slavery
zeal had cooled under the social blandishments with which
the South knew so well how to impregllate the atmosphere
of the national capital, and many a high courage had given
way before the haughty assumption and fierce menace of
Southern men in Congress. Mr. Sumner had to pass that




112        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ordeal. He was at first petted and flattered by Southern
society, but, fond as he was of the charms of social intercourse, and accessible to demonstrative appreciation, no
blandishments could touch his convictions of duty.
And when the advocates of slavery turned upon him
with anger and menace, he hurled at them with prouder
defiance his answer, repeating itself in endless variations:
" You must yield, for you are wrong."
The slave power had so firequently succeeded in making
the North yield to its demands, even after the most formidable demonstrations of reluctance, that it had become
a serious question whether there existed any such thing as
Northern firmness. But it did exist, and in Charles Sum.ner it had developed its severest political type.  The
stronger the assault, the higher rose in him the power of
resistance. In him lived that spirit which not only would
not yield, but would turn upon the assailant. The Southern
force, which believed itself irresistible, found itself striking
against a body which was immovable. To think of yielding to any demand of slavery, of malking a compromise
with it, in however tempting a form, was, to his nature, an
absolute impossibility.
Mr. Sumner's courage was of a peculiar kind. He attaclked the slave power in the most unsparing  manner,
when its supporters were most violent in resenting opposition, and when that violence was always apt to proceed
from words to blows. One day, while Sumner was delivering one of his severest speeches, Stephen A. Douglass,
walking up and down behind the President's chair in the
old Senate-chamber, and listening to him, remarked to a
friend: " Do you hear that man?  He may be a fool, but I




EULOGY BY CARL SCIIURZ.             113
tell you that manll has pluck. I wonder whether he knows
himself what he is doing.  I am not sure whether I
should have the courage to say those things to the men
who are scowling around him."
Of all men in the Senate-chanber, Sumner was probably least aware that the thing he did required pluck. HIe
simply did what he felt it his duty to his cause to do. It
was to him a matter of course. IHe was like a soldier who,
when he has to march upon the enemy's batteries, does
not say to himself:'~ Now I am going to perform an act of
heroism," but who simply obeys an impulse of duty, and
marches forward without thinking of the bullets that fly
around his head. A thought of the boldness of what he
has done may then occur to him  afterwards, when he is
told of it. This was one of the striking peculiarities of
Mr. Sumner's character, as all those know who knew him
well.
Neither was he conscious of the stinging force of the
language he frequently employed. He simply uttered,
what he felt to be true, in lalunage fitting the strength of
his convictions. The indignation of his moral sense at
what he felt to be wrong was so deep and sincere that he
thought everybody must find the extreme severity of his
expressions as natural as they came to his own mind.
And he was not unfirequently surprised, greatly surprised,
when others found his language    offensive.
As he possessed the firmness and courage, so he possessed the faith of the devotee. From the beginning, and.
through all the vicissitudes of the anti-slavery movement,
his heart was profoundly assured that his generation
would see slavery entirely extinguished.




114        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
While travelling  in  France  to  restore his health,
after having been beaten dowli on the floor of the Senate,
he visited Alexis de Tocqueville, the celebrated author of'
"Democracy  in America."  Tocqueville expressed  his
anxiety about the issue of the anti-slavery movement,
which then had suffered defeatby the election of Buchainan.
"There can be no doubt about the result," said Sumner.
Slavery will soon succumb and disappearl."   Disappear!
in what way, and how  soon'?" asked Tocqueville. " In
whbat manner I cannot say," replied Sumner. " How soon I
cannot say. But it will be soon; I feel it; I know it. It
cannot be otherwise."  That was all the reason lhe gave.
" Mr. Sumner is a remarkable man," said de Tocqueville
afterwards to a friend of mine. " He says that slavery
will soon entirely disappear in the United States. I-Ie does
not know how, he does not know when, but he feels it, he
is perfectly sure of it. The man speaks lile a prophet."
And so it was.
What appeared a perplexing puzzle to otherl men's
minds was perfectly clear to him.  Ihis method of reasoning was simple; it was the reasoning of religious faith.
Slavery is wrong, - therefore it must and will perish; freedom is right,-therefore it must and will prevail. Aind by
no power of resistance, by no difficulty, by no disappointmcnt, by no defeat, could that faith be shaken. For his
cause, so great and just, he thought nothing impossible,
everything certain. Alnd he was unable to understand
how others could fail to share his faith.
In one sense he was no party leader. He possessed
none of the instinct or experience of the politician, nor
that sagacity of mind which appreciates and measures the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              115
importance of changing cilcumstances, or the possibilities
and opportunities of the day. He lacked, entirely, the
genius of organization.  tHe never understood, nor did he
value, the art of strengthening his following by timely
concession, or prudent reticence, or advantageous combination and alliance. He knew nothing of management
and party manceuvre.  Indeed, not unfrequently  he
alarmed many devoted friends of his cause by bold declarations, for which, they thought, the public mind was not
prepared, and by the unreserved avowal and straightforward advocacy of ultimate objects, which, they thought,
might safely be left to the natural development of' events.
He was not seldom accused of doing things calculated to
frighten the people and to disorganize the anti-slavery
forces.
Such was his unequivocal declaration in his first great
anti-slavery speech in the Senate, that he held himself
bound by every conviction of justice, right and duty, to
disobey the fugitive slave law, and his ringing answer to
the question put by Senator Butler of South Carolina,
whether, without the fugitive slave law, he would, under
the Constitution, consider it his duty to aid the surrender
of fugitive slaves, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should
do this thing?"
Such was his speech on the " Barbarism of Slavery,"
delivered on a bill to admit Klansas immediately under a
free State Constitution; a speech so unsparing and vehement in the denunciation of slavery in all its political,
moral and social aspects, and so direct in its prediction of
the complete annihilation of slavery, that it was said such
a speech would scarcely aid the admission of Kansas.
5




116        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Such was his unbending and open resistance to any
plan of compromise calculated to preserve slavery, whenr
upon Mr. Lincoln's election, the Rebellion first raised its
head, and a large number of Northern people, even antislavery men, frightened by the threatening prospect of
civil war, cast blindly about for a plan of adjustment,
while really no adjustment was possible.
Such was, early in the war, and during its most doubtful hours, his declaration, laid before the Senate in a series
of resolutions, that the States in rebellion had destroyed
themselves as such by the very act of rebellion; that
slavery, as a creation of State law, had perished with the
States, and that general emancipation  must immediately
follow, - thus putting the programme of emancipation
boldly in the foreground, at a time when many thought
that the cry of union alone, union with or without slavery,
could hold togethelr the Union forces.
Such was his declaration, demanding negro suffrage even
before the close of the war, while the public opinion at
the Norlth, whose aid the government needed, still recoiled
from such a measure.
Thus he was apt to go rough-shod over the considerations of management, deemed important by his co-workers.
I believe he never consulted with his friends around him,
before doing those things, and when they afterwards
remonstrated with him, lhe ingenuously asked: " Is it not
right and true, what I have said?  And if it is right and
true, must I not say it?"
And yet, although he had no organizing mind, and
despised management, he was a leader. He was a leader,
as the embodiment of the moral idea, with all its uncom



EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               117
promisilng filrlless, its unflagging faith, its daring devotion.  And in this sense lie could  be a leader only
because he was no politician.  He forced others to follow,
because he was himself impracticable.  Simply obeying
his moral impulse, he dared to say things which in the
highest legislative body of the Republic nobody else would
say; and he proved that they could be said, and yet the
world would move on. With his wealth of learning and
his legal ability, he furnished an arsenal of arguments,
convincing more timid souls that what he said could be
sustained in repeating. And presently the politicians felt
encouraged to follow in the direction where the idealist
had driven a stake ahead. Nay, he forced them to follow,
for they lknew that the idealist, whom  they could not
venture to disown, would not fall back at their bidding.
Such was his leadership in the struggle with slavery.
Nor was that leadership interrupted when, on the 22d
of May, 1856, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, maddened by an arraignment of his State and its Senator,
came upon Charles Sumner in the Senate, struck him
down with heavy blows and left him on the ground bleedinlg and insensible. For three years Sumner's voice was
not heard, but his blood marked the vatntage ground from
which his party could not recede; and his senatorial chair,
kept empty for him by the noble people of Massachusetts,
stood there in most eloquent silence, confirming, sealing,
inflaming all he had said with terrible illustration,- a guidepost to the onward march of fireedom.
When, in 1861, the Republican party had taken the reins
of government in hand, his peculiar leadership entered
uponl a new f.(eld of action. No sooner was the victory of the




118        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
anti-slavery cause in the election ascertained, than the Rebellion raised its head. South Carolina opened the secession movement. The portentous shadow of an approaching
civil war spread over the land.  A tremor fluttered through
the hearts even of strong men in the North,-a vague
fear such as is produced by the first rumbling of an earthquake. Could not a bloody conflict be averted?  A fresh
clamor for compromise arose. Even Republicans in Congress began to waver. The proposed compromise involved new and express constitutional recognitions of the
existence and rights of slavery, and guarantees against
interference with it by constitutional amendment or national law.  The pressure from the country, even firom
Massachusetts, in favor of the scheme, was extraordinary,
but a majority of the anti-slavery men in the Senate, in
their front Mr. Sumner, stood firm, feeling that a compromise, giving express constitutional sanction and an
indefinite lease of life to slavery, would be a surrender,
and knowing, also, that even by the offer of such a surrender, secession and civil war would still be insisted on
by the Southern leaders. The history of those days, as we
now know it, confirms the accuracy of that judgment.
The war was inevitable. Thus the anti-slavery cause
escaped a useless humiliation, and retained intact its moral
force for future action.
But now the time had come when the anti-slavery
movement, no longer a mere opposition to the demands of
the slave power, was to proceed to positive action. The
war had scarcely commenced in earnest, when Mr. Sumner urged general emancipation. Only the great ideal
object of the liberty of all men could give sanction to a




EULOGY BY CARL SCHUUZ.             119
war in the eyes of the devotee of universal peace. To
the end of stamping upon the war the character of a war
of emancipation all his energies were bent.  His unreserved and emphatic utterances alarmed the politicians.
Our armies suffered disaster upon disaster in the field.
The managing mind insisted that care must be taken, by
nourishing the popular enthusiasm for the integrity of the
Union, -the strictly national idea alonle,  to unite all
the social and political elements of the North for the
struggle; and that so bold a measure as immediate emancipation might reanimate old dissensions, and put hearty
co-operation in jeopardy.
But Mr. Sumner's convictions could not be repressed.
In a bold decree of universal liberty he saw only a
new  source of inspiration and strength. Nor was his
impulsive instinct unsupported by good reason. The
distraction produced in the North by an emancipation
measure could only be of short duration. The moral
spirit was certain, ultimately, to gain the upper hand.
But in another direction a bold and unequivocal antislavery policy could not fail to produce most salutary
effects. One of the dangers threatening us was foreign
interference. No European powers gave us their expressed
sympathy except Germany and Russia. The governing
classes of England, with conspicuous individual exceptions, always gratefully to be remembered, were ill-disposed towards the Union cause. The permanent disruption
of the Republic was loudly predicted, as if it were
desired, and intervention - an intervention which could
be only in favor of the South - was openly spoken of.
The Emperor of the French, who availed himself of our




120       MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
embarrassments to execute his ambitious designs in
Mexico, was animated by sentiments no less hostile. It
appeared as if only a plausible opportunity had been
wanting, to bring foreign intervention upon our heads.
A threatening spirit, disarmed only by timely prudence,
had manifested itself in the Trent case.  It seemed
doubtful whether the most skilful diplomacy, unaided
by a stronger force, would be able to avert the danger.
But the greatest strength of the anti-slavery cause had
always been in the conscience of mankind. There was
our natural ally. Tile cause of slavery as such could
have no open sympathy among the nations of Europe.
It stood condemned by the moral sentiment of the
civilized world. How colld any European government,
in the face of that universal sentiment, undertake openly
to interfere against a power waging war against slavery?
Surely, that could not be thought of.
But had the government of the United States distinctly
professed that it was waging war against slavery, and for
freedom? Had it not been officially declared that the
war for the Union would not alter the condition of a
single human being in America? Why then not arrest
the useless effusion of blood; why not, by intervention,
stop a destructive war, in which, confessedly, slavery and
freedom were not at stake? Such were the arguments of
our enemies in Europe; and they were not without color.
It was obvious that nothing but a measure impressing
beyond dispute upon our war a decided anti-slavery character, making it in profession what it was inevitably destined to be in fact, a war of emancipation,- could enlist
on ouni side the enlightened public opinion of the Old




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              121
World so strongly as to restrain the hostile spirit of
foreign governments. No European government could
well venture to interfere against those who had convinced
the world that they were fighting to give fireedom to the
slaves of North America.
Thus the moral instinct did not err. The emancipation
policy was not only the policy of principle, but also the
policy of safety. Mr. Sumner urged it with impetuous
and unlflagging zeal. In the Senate he found but little
encouragement. The resolutions he introduced in February, 1862, declaring State suicide as the consequence of
Rebellion, and the extinction of slavery in the insurrectionary States as the consequence of State suicide, were
looked upon as an ill-timed and hazardous demonstration,
disturbing all ideas of management.
To the President, then, he devoted his efforts. Nothing
could be more interesting, nay, touching, than the peculiar
relations that sprung up between Abraham Lincoln and
Charles Sumner. No two men could be more alike as to
their moral impulses and ultimate aims; no two men more
unlike in their methods of reasoning and their judgment
of means.
Abraham Lincoln was a true child of the people. There
was in his heart an inexhaustible fountain of tenderness,
and from it sprung that longing to be true, just and merciful to all, which made the people love him. In the deep,
large humanity of his soul had grown his moral and political principles, to which he clung with the fidelity of an
honest nature, and which he defended with the strength
of a vigorous mind.
But he had not grown great in any high school of




122        MEMORIAL OF CHARLE S SUMNER.
statesmanship. He had, friom the humblest beginnings,
slowly and laboriously worked himself up, or rather 1he
had gradually risen lip without being aware of it, and suddenly he found himself in the foremost rank of the distinguished men of the land.  In his youth and early manhoodl
he had achieved no striking successes that might have
imparted to him that overweening self-appreciation which
so friequently leads self-made men to overestimate their
faculties, and to ignore the limits of their strength.  He
was not a learned man, but he had learned and meditated
enough to feel how  nmuch there was still for him  to
lealrn. His marvellous success il his riper years left
intact the inborn modesty of his natureo  He was absolutely without pretension.  His simplicity, which by its
genuineness extorted respect and affection, was wonderfully  persuasive, and  sometimes deeply pathetic  and
strikingly brilliant.
His natural gifts were great; he possessed a clear and
penetrating mind, but in forming his opinions on subjects
of importance, he was so careful, conscientious and diffdent, that he would always hear and probe what opponents
had to say, before he became firmly satisfied of the justness of his own conclusions, - not as if he had been easily
controlled and led by other men, for he had a will of bis
own; -but his mental operations were slow and hesitating, and inapt to conceive quick resolutions.  He lacked
self-reliance.  Nobody felt more than he the awful weight
of his responsibilities. IHe was not one of those bold reformers who will defy the opposition of the world and undertake to impose their opinions and will upon a reluctant
(age.  With careful consideration of the possibilities of




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              123
the hourl he advanced slowly, but when he had so advanced, he planted his foot with firmness, and no powelr
was strong enough to force him to a backward step. And
every day of great responsibility enlarged the horizon of
his mind, and every day he grasped the helm of affairs
with a steadier halld.
It was to such a man that Sumner, during the most
doubtful days at the beginning of the war, addressed his
appeals for immediate emancipation, - appeals impetuous
and impatient as they could spring only from his ardent
and overruling convictions.
The President at first passively resisted the vehement
counsel of the Senator, but he bade the counsellor welcome. It was Mr. Lincoln's constant endeavor to sulround himself with the best and ablest men of the country.
Not only did the first names of the Republican party appear in his.cabinet, but every able man in Congress was
always invited as an adviser, whether his views agreed
with those of the President or not. But Mr. Sumner he
treated as a favorite counsellor, almost like a Minister of
State, outside of the cabinet.
There were statesmen around the President who were
also politicians, understanding the art of management.
Mr. Lincoln appreciated the value of their advice as to
what was prudent and practicable. But he knew also
how to discriminate. In Mr. Sumner he saw a counsellor
who was no politician, but who stood before him as the
true representative of the moral earnestness, of the
great inspirations of their common cause. From him he
heard what was right, and necessary, and inevitable. By
the former he was told what, in their opinion, could pru6




124       MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
clently and safely be done. Having heard them  both,
Abraham Lincoln counselled with himself, and formed his
resolution. Thus Mr. Lincoln, while scarcely ever fully
and speedily following Sumner's advice, never ceased to
ask for it, for he knew its significance. And Sumner,
while almost always dissatisfied with Lincoln's cautious
hesitation, never grew weary in giving his advice, for he
never distrusted Lincoln's fidelity. Always agreed as to
the ultimate end, they almost always differed as to times
and means; but, while differing, they firmly trusted, for
they understood one another.
And thus their mutual respect grew into an affectionate
friendship, which no clash of disagreeing opinions could
break. Sumner loved to tell his friends, after Lincoln's
death, - and I heard him relate it often, never without an
expression of tenderness,- how at one time those who
disliked and feared his intimacy with the President, and
desired to see it disrupted, thought it was irreparably
broken. It was at the close of Lincoln's first administration, in 1865, when the President had proposed certain
measures of reconstruction, touching the State of
Louisiana.
The end of the session of Congress was near at hand,
and the success of the bill depended on a vote of the
Senate before the hour of adjournment on the 4th of March.
Mr. Lincoln had the measure very much at heart. But;/umner opposed it, because it did not contain sufficient
guarantees for the rights of the colored people, and by a
parliamentary manceuvle, simply consuming time until the
adjoulnment came, he with two or three other Senators succeeded in defeating it. Lincoln was reported to be deeply




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             12o
chagrined at Sumner's action, and the newspapers already
announced that the breach between Lincoln and Sumner
was complete, and could not be healed.  But those who
said so did not know the men. On the night of the 6th
of March, two days after Lincoln's second inauguration, the customary inauguration ball was to take place.
Sumner did not think of attending  it. But towards
evening he received a card from the President, which
read thus: "Dear TM:r. Sumner, unless you send me
word to the contrary, I shall this evening call with my
carriage at your house, to take you with me to the
inauguration ball. Sincerely yours, ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
Mr. Sumner, deeply touched, at once made up his mind
to go to an inauguration ball for the first time. Soon the
carriage arrived, the President invited Sumner to take a
seat in it with him, and Sumner found there Mris. Lincoln
and Mr. Colfax, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Arrived at the ball-room, the President asked Mr.
Sumner to offer his arm to Mrs. Lincoln; and the astonished
spectators, who had been made to believe that the breach
between Lincoln and Sumner was irreparable, beheld the
PresidentSs wife on the arm of the Senator, and the Senator,
on that occasion of State, invited to take the seat of honor
by the President's side. kNot a word passed between them
about their disagreement.
The world became convinced that such a friendship
between such men could not be broken by a mere honest
difference of opinion. Abraham Lincoln, a man of sincere
and profound convictions himself, esteemed and honored
sincere and profound convictions in others. It was thus
that Abraham Lincoln composed his quarlels with his




126        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
friends, and at his bedside, when he died, there was no
mourner more deeply afflicted than Charles Sumner.
Let me return to the year 1862. Long, incessalt and
arduous was Sumner's labor for emancipation. At last the
great Proclamation, which sealed the fate of slavery,
came, and no man had done more to bring it forth than he.
Still, Charles Sumner thought his work far from accomplished. During the three years of war that followed, so
full! of vicissitudes, alarms and anxieties, he stood in the
Senate and in the President's closet as the ever-watchful
sentinel of freedom and equal rights. No occasion eluded
his grasp to push on the destruction of slavery, not only
by sweeping decrees, but in detail, by pursuing it, as with
a probiang-iron, into every nook and corner of its existence. It was his sleepless care that every blow struck at
the Rebellion should  surely and  heavily tell against
slavery, and that every drop of American blood that was
shed should surely be consecrated to human freedom. He
could not rest until assurance was made doubly sure, and
I doubt whether our legislative history shows an example
of equal watchfulness, fidelity and devotion to a great object.  Such was the character of Mr. Sumner's legislative
activity during the war.
As the Rebellion succumbed, new problems alrose.  To
set upon their feet again States disorganized by insurrection and civil war; to remodel a society which had been
lifted out of its ancient hinges by the sudden change of
its system  of labor; to protect the emancipated slaves
against the old pretension of absolute control on the part
of their former masters; to guard society against the
possible transgressions of a large multitude long held in




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               127
slavery and ignorance and now suddenly set free; so to
lodge political power in this inflammable state of things
as to prevent violent reactions and hostile collisions; to
lead social forces so discordant into orderly and fruitful
co-operation, and to infuse into communities, but recently
rent by the most violent passions, a new spirit of loyal
attachment to a common nationality,- this was certainly
one of the most perplexing tasks everl imposed upon the
statesmanship of any time and aly country.
But to Mr. Sumnelr's mind the problem of reconstruction
did not appear perplexinlg at all. Believing, as he always
did, that the Democratic idea, as he found it defined in the
Declaration of Independence, " Human rights in theirl utmost expansion," contained an ultimately certain solution
of all difficulties, lie saw the principal aim to be reached by
any reconstruction policy, in the investment of the emancipated slaves with all the iights and privileges of American citizenship.  The complexity of the problem, the
hazardous character of the experiment, never troubled him.
And as, early in the war, he had for himself laid down
the theory that, by the very act of rebellionl, the insurrectionary States had destroyed themselves as such, so he
algued now, with assured consistency, that those States
had relapsed into a territorial condition; that the national
government had to fill the void by creations of its own,
and that in doing so the establishment of universal suffrage  there was an  unavoidable necessity.  Thus he
marched forward to the realization of his ideal, on the
straightest line, and with the firmness of profound conviction.
In the discussions which followed, he had the adcvantag e




128        MEMORIAL O~F CHARLES SUMNER.
of a man who knows exactly what he wants, and who is
imperturbably, religiously convinced that he is right. But
his constitutional theory, as well as the measures he proposed, found little favor in Congress. The public mind
struggled long against the results he had pointed out as
inevitable.  The whole power of President Johnson's
administration was employed to lead the development of
things ill another direction. But through all the vacillations of public opinion, through all the perplexities in
which Congress entangled itself, the very necessity of
things seemed to press toward the ends which Sumner
and those who thought like him had advocated firom the
beginning.
At last, Mr. Sumner saw the fondest dreams of his life
soon realized. Slavery was forever blotted out in this Republic by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. By
the 14th the emancipated slaves were secured in their
rights of citizenship before the law, and the 15th guaranteed to them the right to vote.
It was, indecld, a most astonishing, a marvellous consuInmation. What ten years before not even the most sanguine
would have ventured to anticipate, what only the profound
faith of the devotee could believe possible, was done. And
no man had a better right than Charles Sumner to claim for
himself a pre-eminent share in that great consummation.
He had, indeed, not been the originator of most of the
practical measures of legislation by which such results
were reached. He had even combated some of them as
in conflict with his theories. He did not possess the peculiar ability of constructing policies in detail, of taking
account of existing circumstances and advantage of oppor



EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              129
tunities. But he had resolutely marched ahead of public
opinion in markingg the ends to be reached. Nobody had
done more to inspire and strengthen the moral spirit of
the anti-slavery cause. He stood foremost among the
propelling, driving forces which pushed on the great work
with undaunted courage, untiring effort, irresistible energy
and religious devotion. No man's singleness of purpose,
fidelity and faith surpassed his, and when by future generations the names are called which are inseparably united
with the deliverance of the American Republic from slavery, 11no name will be called before his own.
While the championship of human rights is his first
title to fame, I should be unjust to his merit, did I omit to
mention the services he rendered on another field of
action. When, in 1861, the secession of the Southern
States left the anti-slavery party in the majority in the
Senate of the United States, Charles Sumner was placed
as chairman at the head of the Committee on Foreign
Relations. It was a high distinction, and no selection
could have been more fortunate. Without belittling others,
it may be said that of the many able men then and since
in the Senate, MIr. Sumner was by far the fittest for that
responsible position. He had ever since his college days
made international law a special and favorite study, and
was perfectly familiar with its principles, the history of
its development, and its literature. Nothing of importance had ever been published on that subject in any
language that had escaped his attention. His knowledge
of history was uncommonly extensive and accurate; all
the leading international law cases, with their incidents
in detail, their theories and settlements, he had at his




130        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
fingers' ends; and to his last day he remained indefatigable in inquiry. Moreover, he had seen the world; he
had studied the institutions and policies of foreign countries, on their own soil, aided by his personal intercourse
with many of their leading statesmen, not a few of whom
remained in friendly correspondence with him ever since
their first acquaintance.
No public man had a higher appreciation of the position, dignity, and interests of his own country, and no one
was less liable than he to be carried away or driven to
hasty and ill-considered steps, by excited popular clamor.
I-e was ever strenuous in asserting our own rig'hts, while
his sense of justice did not permit him to be regardless of
the rights of other nations. His abhorrence of the barbarities of war, and his ardent love of peace, led him
earnestly to seek for every international difference  a
peaceable solution; and where no settlement could be
reached by the direct neg'otiations of diplomacy, the idea
of arbitration was always uppermost in his mind. He desired to raise the Republic to the high office of a missionary
of peace and civilization in the world. He was, therefore,
not only an uncommonly well-informed, enlilghtened and
experienced, but also an eminently conservative, cautious
and safe counsellor; and the few instances in which he
appeared more impulsive than prudent will, upon candid
investigation, not impugn this statement. I am far firom
claiming for him absolute correctness of -view, and infallibility of judgment in every ease; but taking his whole
career tog'ether, it may well be doubted, whether in the
whole history of the Republic, the Senate of the United
States ever possessed a chairman of the Commnittee on




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              131
Foreign Relations who united in himself, in such completeness, the qualifications necessary and desirable for
the important and delicate duties of that position. This
may sound like the extravagant praise of a personal
friend; but it is the sober opinion of men most competent
to judge, that it does not go beyond his merits.
Hiis qualities were soon put to the test. Early in the
war one of the gallant captains of our navy arrested the
British mail steamer Trent, running from one neutral port
to another, on the high seas, and took from her by force
Mason and Slidell, two emissaries of the Confederate Government, and their despatches. The people of' the North
loudly applauded the act. The Secretary of the Navy approved it. The House of Representatives commended it
in resolutions. Even in the Senate a majority seemed
inclined to stand by it. The British Government, in a
threatening tone, demanded the instant restitution of the
prisoners, and an apology. The people of the North responded with a shout of indignation at British insolence.
The excitement seemed irrepressible. Those in quest of
popularity saw  a chance to win it easily by bellicose
declamation.
But among those who felt the weight of responsibility
more moderate counsels prevailed.  The Government
wisely resolved to surrender the prisoners, and peace with
Great Blritain was preserved.
It was Mr. Stumner who threw himself into the breach
against the violent drift of public opinion. In a speech
in the Senate, no less remarkable for patriotic spirit than
legal learning and ingenious and irresistible argument, he
justified the surrender of the prisoners, not on the ground
7




132        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
that during our struggle with the Rebellion we wvere not
in a condition to go to war with Great Britain, but on the
higher ground that the surrender, demanded by Great
Britain in violation of her own traditional pretensions as
to the rights of belligerents, was in perfect accord with
American precedent, and the advanced principles of our
government concerning the rights of neutrals, and that
this very act, therefore, would for all time constitute an additional and most conspicuous precedent to aid ill the establishment of more humane rules for the protection of the
rights of neutrals and the mitigation of the injustice and
barbarity attending maritime war.
The success of this argument was complete. It turned
the tide of public opinion. It convinced the American
people that this was not an act of pusillanimity, but of
justice; not a humiliation of the Republic, but a noble
vindication of her time-honored principles, and a service
rendered to the cause of progress.
Other complications followed.  The interference of
European powers in Mexico came. Excited demands for
intervention on our part were made in the Senate, and Mr.
Sumner, trusting that the victory of the Union over the
Rebellion would bring on the deliverance of Mexico in its
train, with signal moderation and tact prevented the
agitation of so dangerous a policy. It is needless to
mention the many subsequent instances in which his
wisdom and skill rendered the Republic similar service.
Only one of his acts provoked comment in foreign
countries calculated to impair the high esteem in which
his name was universally held there. It was his speech
on the Alabama case, preceding the rejection by the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             133
Senate of the Clarendon-Johnson treaty.  He was
accused of having yielded to a vulgar impulse of demagogism in flattering and exciting, by unfair statements
and extravagant demands, the grudge the American
people might bear to England.  No accusation could
possibly be more unjust, and I know whereof I speak.
Mr. Sumner loved England -had loved her as long as he
lived - from a feeling of consanguinity, for the treasures
of literature she had given to the world, for the services
she had rendered to human freedom, for the blows she
had struck at slavery, for the sturdy work she had done
for the cause of progress and civilization, for the many
dear friends he had among her citizens. Such was his
impulse, and no man was more incapable of pandering to
a vulgar prejudice.
I will not deny that as to our differences with Great
Britain he was not entirely free from personal feeling.
That the England he loved so well - the England of
Clarkson and Wilberforce, of Cobden and Bright; the
England to whom he had looked as the champion of the
anti-slavery cause in the world - should make such hot
haste to recognize, nay, as he termed it, to set up, on the
seas, as a belligerent, that Rebellion, whose avowed object
it was to found an empire of slavery, and to aid that
Rebellion by every means short of open war against the
Union,- that was a shock to his feelings which he felt like
a betrayal of friendship. And yet while that feeling
appeared in the warmth of his language, it did not dictate
his policy. I will not discuss here the correctness of his
opinions as to what he styled the precipitate and unjustifiable recognition of Southern belligerency, or his theory




134        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNERo
of consequential damages. What he desired to accomplish was, not to extort from England a large sum of
money, but to put our grievance in the strongest light; to
convince England of the great wrong she had inflicted
upon us, and thus to prepare a composition, which,
consisting more in the settlement of great principles and
rules of international law to govern the future intercourse
of nations, than in the payment of large damages, woull
remove all questions of difference, and serve to restore
and confirm a friendship which ought never to have been
interrupted.
Whelln, finally, the Treaty of Washington was negotiated
by the Joint High Commission, Mr. Sumner, although
thinkiing that more might have been accomplished, did
not only not oppose that treaty, but actively aided ill
securing for it the consent of the Senate. Nothing would
have been more painful to him than a continuance of
aulfiriendly relations with Great Britain. Had there been
danger of war, no man's voice would have pleaded with
more fervor to avert such a calamity. He gave ample proof
that he did not desire any personal opinions to stand in
the way of a settlement, and if that settlement, which he
willingly supported, did not in every respect satisfy him,
it was because he desired to put the future relations of
the two countries upon a still safer and more enduring
basis.
lNo statesman ever took part in the direction of our
foreign affairs who so completely identified himself with
the most advanced, humane and progressive principles.
Ever jealous of the honor of his country, he soug(ht to
elevate that honor by a policy scrupulously just to the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.                135
strong, and generous to the weak. A profound lover of
peace, he faithfullly advocated arbitration as a substitute
for war. The barbarlities of war he constantly labored to
mitigate.  Inl the hottest days of our civil conflict he protested against the issue of letters of mnarque and reprisal;
lhe never lost aln opportunity to condemn privateerilg as
a barbarous practice, and he even went so far as to designate the system of prize-money as inconsistent with our
enlightened civilization.  In some respects, his principles
were in advance of our time; but surely the day will
come when this Republic, marching'in the front of progress, will adopt them  as her own, and remember their
champion with pride.
I now approach the last period of his life, which brought
to him new and bitter struggles.
The work of reconstruction completed, he felt that three
objects still demanded new efforts.  One wlas that the colored race should be protected  by national legislation
against degrading discrimination, in the enjoyment of facilities of education, travel and pleasure, such as stand
under the control of law; and this object he embodied in
his civil-righlts bill, of which he was the mover and especial
chiampion.  The second was, that generous reconciliation
should wipe out the lingering animosities of past conflicts
and reunite in new bonds of brotherhood all those who had
been divided. And the third was, that the government
should be restored to the purity and high tone of its earlier days, and that from its new birth the republic should
issue with a new lustre of moral greatness, to lead its children to a higher perfection of manhood, and to be a shillimyg example and beacon-light to all the nations of the earth.




136        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNEIl.
This accomplished, he often said to his friends he would
be conltent to lie down and die; but death overtook him
before he was thus content, and before death came he was
destined to taste more of the bitterness of life.
His civil-rights bill he pressed with unflagging perseverance, against an opposition which stood upon the ground
that the objects his measure contemplatcd, belonged, under
the Constitution, to the jurisdiction of the States; that the
colored people, armed with the ballot, possessed the necessary means to provide for their own security, and that the
progressive development of public sentiment would afford
to them greater protection than could be given by national
legislation of questionable constitutionality.
The pursuit of the other objects brought upon him experiences of a painful nature. I have to speak of his disagreement with the administration of President Grant and
with his party. Nothing could be farther from my desire
than to reopen, on a solenmn occasion like this, those bitter
conflicts which are still so fresh in OUI' minds, and to assail
any living man in the name of the dead. Were it my purpose to attack, I should do so in my own name and choose
the place where I can be answered, — not this. But I
have a duty to perform; it is to set forth in the light
of truth the motives of the dead before the living.  I
knew  Charles Sumner's motives well.  We stood together shoulder to shoulder in many a hard contest. We
were friends, and between us passed those confidences
which only intimate fiiendship knows. Therefore I can
truly say that I knew his motives well.
The civil war had greatly changed the country, and left
many problems behind it, requiiring again that building,




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               137
organizing, constructive kind of statesmanship which I
described as presiding over the Republic illn its earlier history. For a solution of many of those problems Mr.
Sumner's mind was little fitted, and he naturally turned to
those which appealed to his moral nature. No great civil
war has ever passed over any country, especially a republic, without producing wide-spread and dangerous demnoralization and corruption, not only in the government, but
among the people. In such times the sordid instincts of
human nature develop themselves to unusual recklessness
under the guise of patriotism. The ascendancy of no
political party in a republic has ever been long maintained
without tempting many of its members to avail themselves
for their selfish advantage of the opportunities of power
and party protection, and without attracting a horde of
camp followers, professing principle, but meaning spoil. It
has always been so, and the American Republic has not
escaped the experience.
Neither Mr. Sumner nor many others could in our circumstances close their eyes to this fact. He recognized
the danger early, and already, in 1864, he introduced in the
Senate a bill for the reform of the civil service, crude in
its detail, but embodying correct principles. Thus he may
be said to have been the earliest pioneer of the Civil Service Reform movement.
The evil grew under President Johnsolls administration, and ever since it has been cropping out, not only
drawn to light by the efforts of the opposition, but voluntarily and involuntarily, by members of the ruling party
itself. There were in it many men who confessed to themselves the urgent necessity of meeting the growing danger.




138         MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
Mr. Sumner could not be silent. He cherished in his
mind a high ideal of what this Republic and its govelinment should be: a government composed of the
best and wisest of the land; animated by none but the
highest and most patriotic aspirations; yielding to no selfish impulse; noble in its tone and character; setting its
face sternly against all wrong and injustice; presenting in
its whole being to the American people a shining example
of purity and lofty public spirit. Mr. Sumner was proud
of his country; there was no prouder American in the
land. He felt in himself the whole dignity of the Republic. And when he saw anything that lowered the dignity of the Republic and the character of its government,
he felt it as he would have felt a personal offence. He
criticised it, he denounced it, he remonstrated against it,
for he could not do otherwise. He did so, frequently and
without hesitation and reserve, when Mr. Lincoln was
President. He continued to do so ever since, the more
loudly, the more difficult it was to make himself heard. It
was his nature; he felt it to be his right as a citizen; he
esteemed it his duty as a Senator.
That, and no othei, was the motive which impelled him.
The rupture with the administration was brought on by
his opposition to the Santo Domingo Treaty. In the reasons upon which that opposition was based, I know that
personal feeling had no share. They were patriotic reasons, publicly and candidly expressed, and it seems they
were appreciated by a very large portion of the American
people. It has been said that he provoked the resentment
of the President by first promising to support that treaty
and then opposing it, thus rendering himself guilty of an




EULOGY BY CARL SCIURZ.             139
act of duplicity. He has publicly denied the justice of
the charge and stated the facts as they stood in his memory. I am willing to make the fullest allowance for the
possibility of a misapprehension of worlds. But I affirm,
also, that no living man who knew Mr. Sumner well, will
hesitate a moment to pronounce the charge of duplicity
as founded on the most radical of misapprehensions. An
act of duplicity on his part was simply a moral impossibility. It was absolutely foreign to his nature. Whatever
may have been the defects of his character, he never
knowingly deceived a human being. There was in him
not the faintest shadow  of dissimulation, disguise or
trickery. Not one of his words ever had the purpose of
a double meaning, not one of his acts a hidden aim. this
likes and dislikes, his approval and disapproval, as soon as
they were clear to his own consciousness, appeared before
the world in the open light of noonday. His fiankness
was so unbounded, his candor so entire, his ingenuousness
so childlike, that he lacked even the discretion of ordinary
prudence. He was almost incapable of moderating his
feielings, of toning down his meaning in the expression.
When he might have gained a point by indirection, he
would not have done so, because he could not. He was
one of those who, when they attack, attack always in
fi'olt and in broad daylight. The night surprise and the
flank march were absolutely foreign to his tactics, because
they were incompatible with his nature. I have known
many men in my life, but never one who was less capable
of a perfidious act or an artful profession.
Call him a vain, an impracticable, an imperious iman, if
you will, but American history does not mention the name




140        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
of one, of whomn with greater justice it call be said that he
was a true man.
The same candor and purity of motives which prompted
and characterized his opposition to the Santo Domlingo
scheme, prompted and characterized the attacks upon the
administration which followed. The charges he made,
and the arguments with which he supported them, I feel
not called upon to  enumerate.  Whether and how
far they  were correct or erroneous, just or unjust,
important or unimportant, the judgment of history will
determine. May that judgment be just and fair to us
all. But this I can affirm to-day, for I know it: Charles
Sumner never made a charge which he did not himself
firmly, religiously believe to be true. Neither did he condemn those he attacked for anything he did not firmly, religiously believe to be wrong. And while attacking those
in power for what he considered wrong, he was always
ready to support them in all he considered right. After
all he has said of the President, he would to-day, if he
lived, conscientiously, cordially, joyously aid in sustaining
the President's recent veto on an act of financial legislation which threatened to inflict a deep injury on the
character, as well as the true interests of the American
people.
But at the time of which I speak, all he said was so
deeply grounded in his feeling and conscience, that it was
for him difficult to understand how others could form different conclusions. When, shortly before the National
Republican Convention of 1872, he had delivered in the
Senate that fierce philippic for which he has been censured
so much, he turned to me with the question, whether I did




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             141
not think that the statements and arlguments he had
produced would certainly exercise a decisive influence
on the action of that convention. I replied that I thought
it would not.  He was greatly  astonished,-not as
if he indulged in the delusion that his personal word
would have such authoritative weight, but it seemed impossible to him that opinions which in him had risen to
the full strength of overruling conviction, that a feeling
of duty which in him had grown so solemn and irresistible as to inspire him to any risk and sacrifice, ever so
painful, should fall powerless at the feet of a party which
so long had followed inspirations kindred to his own.
Such was the ingenuousness of his nature; such his faith
in the rectitude of his own cause. The result of his effort
is a matter of history. After the Philadelphia convention,
and not until then, he resolved to oppose his party, and to
join a movement which was doomed to defeat. He obeyed
his sense of right and duty at a terrible sacrifice.
He had been one of the great chiefs of his party, by many
regarded as the greatest. He had stood in the Senate as
a mighty monument of the struggles and victories of the
anti-slavery cause. He had been a martyr of his earnestness. By all Republicans he had been looked tip to with
respect, by many with veneration. He had been the
idol of the people of his State. All this was suddenly
changed. Already, at the time of his opposition to the
Santo Domingo scheme, he had been deprived of his place
at the head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which he had held so long, and with so much honor
to the republic and to himself:  But few know how
sharp a pang it gave to his heart, this removal, which he




142        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
felt as the wanton degradation of a faithful servant who
was conscious of only doing his duty.
But, when he had pronounced against the candidates of
his party, worse experiences were for him in store. Journals
which for years had been full of his praise now assailed
him with remorseless ridicule and vituperation, questioning
even his past services and calling him a traitor. Men who
had been proud of his acquaintance turned away their heads
when they met him in the street. Former flatterers eagerly covered his name with slander. Many of those who
had been his associates in the struggle for fireedom sullenly
withdrew firom him their firiendship. Even some men of the
colored race, for whose elevation he had labored with a
-fidelity and devotion equalled by few and surpassed by
none, joined in the chorus of denunciation. Oh, how keenly
he felt it! And, as if the cruel malice of ingratitude and
the unsparing persecution of infuriated partisanship had
not been enough, another enemy came upon him, threatening his very life. It was a new attack of that disease
which, for many years, from time to time, had prostrated
him with the acutest suffering, and which shortly should
lay him low.  It admonished him that every word he
spoke might be his last.  He found himself forced to
leave the field of a contest in which not only his principles
of right, but even his good name, earned by so many
years of faithful effort, was at stake. He possessed no
longer the elastic spirit of youth, and the prospect of new
struggles had ceased to charm him. His hair had grown
gray with years, and he had reached that age when a
statesman begins to love the thought of reposing his head
upon the pillow of assured public esteem. Even the sweet




EULOGY BY CARL SCIHUZ.             143
comfort of that sanctuary was denied him, in which the
voice of wife and child would have said: Rest here, for
whatever the world may say, we know that you are good
and faithful and noble. Only the friends of his youth, who
knew him best, surrounded him with never-flagging confidence and love, and those of his companions-in-arms,
who knew him also, and who were true to him as they
were true to their common cause. Thus he stood in the
presidential campaign of 1872.
It is at such a moment of bitter ordeal that an honest
public man feels the impulse of retiring within himself;
to examine with scrupulous care the quality of his own
motives; anxiously to inquire whether he is really right
in his opinions and objects when so many old fiiends say
that he is wrong; and thenl, after such a review at the
hand of conscience and duty, to form anew his conclusions without bias, and to proclaim them  without fear.
This he did.
lHe had desired, and as he wrote, "he had confidently
hoped, on returning home fiom Washington, to meet his
fellow-citizens in Faneuil Hall, that venerable forum, and
to speak once more on great questions involving the welfare of the country, but recurring symptoms of a painful
character warned him  against such an attempt."  The
speech he had intended to pronounce, but could not, he
left in a written form for publication, and went to Europe,
seeking rest, uncertain whether he would ever return
alive. In it he reiterated all the reasons which had forced
him to oppose the administration and the candidates of
his party. They were unchanged. Then followed an
earnest and pathetic plea for universal peace and recon



144       MIEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ciliation. He showed how necessary the revival of fraternal feeling was, not only for the prosperity and physical
well-being, but for the moral elevation of the Amelrican
people and for the safety and greatness of the Republic.
He gave words to his profound sympathy with the Southern States illn their misfortunes. Indigunantly he declared,
that " second only to the wide-spread devastations of war
were the robberies to which those States had been subjected, under an administration calling itself Republican,
and with local governments deriving their animating
impulse firom the party in power; and that the people in
these communities would have been less than men, if,
sinking under the intolerable burden, they did not turn
for help to a new parity, promising honesty an(l reform."
He recalled the reiterated expression he had given to his
sentiments, ever since the breaking out of the war; and
closed the recital with these words:' Such is the simple
and harmonious record, showing how from the beginning I
was devoted to peace, how constantly I longed for reconciliation; how, with every measure of equal rights, this
longing found utterance; how it became an essential part
of my life; how I discarded all idea of vengeance and
punishment; how reconstruction was, to my mind, a transition period, and how earnestly I looked forward to the
day when, after the recognition of equal rights, the Republic should again be one in reality as in name. If there are
any who ever maintained a policy of hate, I never was so
minded; and now in protesting against any such policy, I
act only in obedience to the irresistible promptings of my
Soul."
And well might he speak thus. Let the people of the




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              145
South hear what I say. They were wont to see in him
only the implacable assailant of that peculiar institution,
which was so closely interwoven with all their traditions
and habits of life, that they regarded it as the very basis
of their social and moral existence, as the source of their
prosperity and greatness; the unsparing enemy of the Rebellion, whose success was to realize the fondest dreams of
their ambition; the never-resting advocate of the grant of
suffr age to the colored people, which they thought to be
designed for their own degradation. Thus they had persuaded themselves that Charles Sumner was to them a
relentless foe.
They did not know, as others knew, that he whom they
cursed as their persecutor had a heart beating warmly
and tenderly for all the human kind; that the efforts of
his life were unceasingly devoted to those whom he
thought most in need of aid; that in the slave he saw
only the human soul, with its eternal title to the same
right and dignity which he himself enjoyed; that he
assailed the slavemaster only as the oppressor who denied
that right; and that the former oppressor ceasing to be
such, and being oppressed himself, could surely count
upon the fulness of his active sympathy freely given in
the spirit of equal justice; that it was the religion of his
life to protect the weak and oppressed against the strong,
no matter who were the weak and oppressed, no matter who
were the strong. They knew not, that while fiercely
combating a wrong, there was not in his heart a spark of
hatred even for the wrong-doer who hated him. They
knew not how well he deserved the high hornage involuntarily paid to him by a cartoon during the late presiden



146        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
tial campaign, —a cartoon, designed to be malicious,
which represented Charles Sumner strewing flowers on
the grave of Preston Brooks. They foresaw not, that to
welcome them back to the full brotherhood of the American people, he would expose himself to a blow, wounding
him as cruelly as that which years ago levelled him to the
ground ill the Senate Chamber. And this new blow he
received for them. The people of the South ignored this
long. Now that he is gone, let them never forget it.
From Europe Mr. Sumner returned late in the fall of
1872, much strengthened, but far from being well. At
the opening of the session he reintroduced two measures
which, as he thought, should complete the record of his
political life. One was his civil-rights bill, which had
failed in the last Congress, and the other, a resolution
providing that the names of the battles won over fellowcitizens in the war of the Rebellion, should be removed
from the regimental colors of the army, and from the
army register. It was in substance only a repetition of a
resolution which he had introduced ten years before, in
1862, during the war, when the first names of victories
were put on American battle-flags. This resolution
called forth a new storm against him. It was denounced
as an insult to the heroic soldiers of the Union, and a
degradation of their victories and well-earned laurels. It
was condemned as an unpatriotic act.
Charles Sumner insult the soldiers who had spilled
their blood in a war for human rights! Charles Sumner
degrade victories and depreciate laurels won for the cause
of universal freedom!  How strange an imputation!
Let the dead man have a hearing. This was his thought:




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              147
No civilized nation, fiom the republics of antiquity down
to our days, ever thought it wise or patriotic to preserve in
conspicuous and durable form the mementos of victories
won over fellow-citizens in civil war. Why not? Because
every citizen should feel himself with all others as the child
of a common country, and not as a defeated foe. All civilized governments of our days have instinctively followed
the same dictate of wisdom and patriotism. The Irishman, when fighting for old England at Waterloo, was not
to behold on the red cross floating above him the name of
the Boyne. The Scotch Highlander, when standing in
the trenches of Sebastopol, was not by the colors of' his
regiment to be reminded of Culloden. No French soldier
at Austerlitz or Solferino had to read upon the tricolor
any reminiscence of the Vendde. No  Hungarian at
Sadowa was taunted by any Austrian banner with the surrender of Villagos. No German regiment, fi'om Saxony
or Hanover, charging under the iron hail of Gravelotte,
was made to remember by words written on a Prussian
standard that the black eagle had conquered them  at
lKoniggratz and Langensalza.  Should the son of South
Carolina, when at some future day defending the Republic
against some foreign foe, be reminded by an inscription
on the colors floating over him, that under this flag the
gun was fired that killed his father at Gettysburg?
Should this great and enlightened Republic, proud of
standing in the fiont of human progress, be less wise, less
large-hearted, than the ancients were two thousand years
ago, and the kingly governments of Europe are to-day?
Let the battle-flags of the brave volunteers, which they
brought home from the war with the glorious record of




148        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
their victories, be preserved intact as a proud ornament of
our State-Houses and armnolries. But let the colors of the
army, under which the sons of all the States are to nleet
and mingle in common patriotism, speak of nothing but
union, —not a union of conquerors and conquered, but a
union which is the mother of all, equally tender to all,
]knowing of nothing but equality, peace and love among
her children. Do you want conspicuous mementos of your
victories?  They are written upon the dusky brow of
every fireeman who was once a slave; they are written on
the gate-posts of a restored Union'; and the most glorious
of all will be written on the faces of a contented people,
reunited in common national pride.
Such were the sentiments which inspired that resolution.
Such were the sentiments which called forth a storm of
obloquy. Such were the sentiments for which the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a solemn resolution of
censure upon Charles Sumner, - Massachusetts, his own
Massachusetts, whom he loved so ardently with a filial
love, -of whom he was so proud, who had honored him
so much in days gone by, and whom he had so long and
so faithfully labored to serve and to honor! Oh, those
were evil days, that winter; days sad and dark, when he
sat there in his lonesome chamber, unable to leave it, the
world moving around him, and in it so much that was
hostile, - and he prostrated by the tormenting disease,
which had returned with fresh violence, - unable to defend himself, - and with this bitter arrow in his heart!
Why was not that resolution held up to scorn and vituperation as an insult to the brave, and an unpatriotic act -
why was he not attacked and condemned for it when he




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             149
first offered it, ten years before, and when he was in the
fullness of manhood and power'? If not then, why now?
Why now?  I shall never forget the melancholy hours I
sat with him, seeking to lift him up with cheering words,
and he, -his frame for hours racked with excruciating
pain, and then exhausted with suffering, - gloomily brooding over the thought that he might die so!
How thankful I am, how thankful every human soul in
Massachusetts, how thankful every American must be, that
he did not die then! —-nd, indeed, more than once, death
seemed to be knocking at his door. How thankful that he
was spared to see the day, when the people by striking  developments were convinced that those who had acted as he
did, had after all not been impelled by mere whims of
vanity, or reckless ambition, or sinister designs, but had
good and patriotic reasons for what they did; - when the
heart of Massachusetts came back to him full of the old
love and confidence, assuring him that he would again be
her chosen son for her representative seat in the House of
States; - when the lawgivers of the old Commonwealth,
obeying an irresistible impulse of justice, wiped away from
the records of the Legislature, and firom the fair name of
the State, that resolution of censure which had stung him
so deeply,-and when returning vigor lifted him up, and
a new sunburst of hope illumined his life! How thankful
we all are that he lived that one year longer!
And yet, have you thought of it, if he had died in those
dark days, when so many clouds hung over him, - would
not then the much vilified mall have been the same Charles
Sumner, whose death but one year later afflicted millions
of hearts with a pang of bereavement, whose praise is now




150        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
on every lip for the purity of his life, for his fidelity to
great principles, and for the loftiness of his patriotism?
Was he not a year ago the same, the same in purpose, lhe
same in principle, the same in character? What had he
done then that so many who praise him  to-day should
have then disowned him'? See what he had done. He
had simply been true to his convictions of duty. He
had approved and urged what he thought right, he had
attacked and opposed what he thought wrong. To his
convictions of duty he had sacrificed political associations
most deal to him, the security of his position of which he
was proud. For his convictions of duty he had stood up
lagainst those more powerful than he; he had exposed
himself to reproach, obloquy and persecution. Had he
not done so, he would not have been the man you praise
to-day; and yet for doing so he was cried down but yester(lday. He had lived up to the great word he spoke when
he entered the Senate: " The slave of principle, I call no
party lmaster."  That declaration was greeted with applause, alld when, true to his word, he refused to call a
party master, the act was covered with reproach.
The spirit impelling him to do so was the same conscience which urged him to break away from the powerful
party which controlled his State in the days of Daniel
Webster, and to join a feeble minority, which stood up
for freedom; to throw away the favor and defy the power
of the wealthy and refined, in order to plead the cause of
the down-trodden and degraded; to stand up against the
slave power in Congress with a courage never surpassed;
to attack the prejudice of birth and religion, and to plead
fearlessly for the rights of the foreign-born citizen at a




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              151
time when the know-nothing movement was controlling
his State and might have defeated his own re-election to
the Senate; to advocate emancipation when others trembled with fear; to march ahead of his followers, when they
were afraid to follow; to rise up alone for what he thought
right, when others would not rise with him. It was that
brave spirit which does everything, defies everything, risks
everything, sacrifices everything, comfort, society, party,
popular support, station of honor, prospects, for sense of
right and conviction of duty. That is it for which you
honored him long, for which you reproached him yesterday, and for which you honor him again to-day, and will
honor him forever.
Ah, what a lesson is this for the American people, -a
lesson learned so often, and, alas! forgotten almost as
often as it is learned!  Is it well to discourage, to proscribe in your public men that independent spirit which
will boldly assert a conscientious sense of duty, even
against the behests of power or party?  Is it well to teach
them that they must serve the command and interest of
party, even at the price of conscience, or they must be
crushed under its heel, whatever their past service, whatever their ability, whatever their character may be?  Is it
well to make them believe that he who dares to be himself must be hunted as a political outlaw, who will find
justice only when he is dead?  That would have been the
sad moral of his death, had Charles Sumner died a year
ago.
Let the American people never forget that it has always
been the independent spirit, the all-defying sense of duty
which brolke the way for every great progressive move



152        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
ment since mankind has a history; which gave the Americalln colonies their sovereignty and  made this great
Republic; which defied the power of slavery, and made
this a Republic of freemen; and which - who knows,may again be needed some day to defy the power of ignorance, to arrest the inroads of corruption, or to break the
subtle tyranny of organization in order to preserve this
as a Republic!  And therefore let no man understand me
as offering what I have said about Mr. Sumner's course,
during the last period of his life, as an apology for what
he did. HIe was right before his own conscience, and
needs no apology. Woe to the Republic when it looks in
vain for the men who seek the truth without prejudice
and speak the truth without fear, as they understand it,
no matter whether the world be willing to listen or not!
Alas for the generation that would put such men into
their graves with the poor boon of an apology for what
was in them noblest and best! Who will not agree that,
had power or partisan spirit, which persecuted him because
he followed higher aims than party interest, ever succeeded in subjugating and moulding him after its fashion,
against his conscience, against his conviction of duty,
against his sense of right, he would have sunk into his grave
a miserable ruin of his great self, wrecked in his moral nature, deserving only a tear of pity? For he was great and
useful only because he dared to be himself all the days
of his life; and for this you have, when he died, put the
laurel upon his brow!
From  the coffin which hides his body, Charles Sumner now rises up before our eyes an historic character.
Let us look at him  once more. His life lies before us




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.               153
like an open book which contains no double meanings, no
crooked passages, no mysteries, no concealments. It is
clear as crystal.
Even his warmest friend will not see in it the model of
perfect statesmanship; not that eagle glance which, from
a lofty eminence, at one sweep surveys the whole field on
which by labor, thought, strife, accommodation, impulse,
restraint, slow and rapid movement, the destinies of a nation are worked out, — and which, while surveying the
whole, yet observes and penetrates the fitness and working
of every detail of the great machinery;- not that ever
calm  and steady and self-controlling good sense, which
judges existing things just as they are, and existing forces
just as to what they can accomplish, and while instructing, conciliating, persuading and moulding those forces,
and guiding them on toward an ideal end, correctly estimates comparative good and comparative evil, and impels
or restrains as that estimate may command. That is the
true genius of statesmanship, fitting all times, all cilrcumLstances, and all great objects to be reached by political
action.
Mr. Sumner's natural abilities were not of the very first
order; but they were supplemented by acquired abilities of
most remarkable power. His mind was not apt to invent
and create by inspiration; it produced by study and work.
Neither had his mind superior constructive  capacity.
When he desired to originate a measure of legislation, he
scarcely ever elaborated its practical detail; he usually
threw his idea into the form  of a resolution, or a bill
giving in the main his purpose only, and then he advanced
to the discussion of the principles involved.  It was
20




154       MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
difficult for him to look at a qLestion or problem from
more than one point of view, and to comprehend its
different bearings, its complex relations with other questions or problems; and to that one point of view he was
apt to subject all other considerations. He not only
thought, but he did not hesitate to say that all construction
of the Constitution must be subservient to the supreme
duty of giving the amplest protection to the natural rights
of man by direct national legislation.  He was not
free from that dangerous tendency to forget the limits
which bound the legitimate range of legislative and
governmental action.  On  economical questions  his
views were enlightened and thoroughly consistent.
He had studied such subjects more than is commonly
supposed. It was one of his last regrets that his health
did not permit him to make a speech in favor of an early
resumption of specie payments. On matters of international law and foreign affairs he was the recognized
authority of the Senate.
But some of his very shortcomings served to increase
that peculiar power which he exerted in his time. His
public life was thrown into a period of a revolutionary
character, when one great end was the self-imposed subject of a universal struggle, a struggle which was not
made, not manufactured by the design of' men, but had
grown from the natural conflict of existing things, and
grew irresistibly on and on, until it enveloped all the
thought of the nation; and that one great end appealing
more than to the practical sense, to the moral impulses of
men, making of them the fighting force, There Mr.
Sumner found his place and there he grew great, for that




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.              155
moral impulse was stronger in him than in most of the
world around him; and it was in him not a merecrude,
untutored force of nature, but educated and elevated by
thought and study; and it found in his brain and heart all
armory of strong weapons given to but few: vast information, legal learning, industry, eloquence, undaunted
courage, an independent and iron will, profound convictions, unbounded devotion and sublime faith. It found
there also a keen and just instinct as to the objects which
must be reached and the forces which must be set in
motion and driven on to reach them. Thus keeping the
end steadily, obstinately, intensely in view, he marched
ahead of his followers, never disturbed by their anxieties
and fears, showing them that what was necessary was
possible, and forcing  them  to follow  him, —a great
moving power, such as the struggle required.
Nor can it be said that this impatient, irrepressible propulsion was against all prudence and sound judgment, for
it must not be forgotten, that, when Mr. Sumner stepped
into the front, the policy of compromise was exhausted;
the time of composition and expedient was past. Things
had gone so far, that the idea of reaching the end, which
ultimately must be reached, by mutual concession and a
gradual and peaceable process, was utterly hopeless. The
conflicting forces could not be reconciled; the final struggle was indeed irrepressible and inevitable, and all that
could then be done was to gather up all the existing forces
for one supreme effort, and to take care that the final struggle should bring forth the necessary results.
Thus the instinct and the obstinate, concentrated, irresistible moving power which Mr. Sumner possessed were




156        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
an essential part of the true statesmanship of the revolutionary period. Had he lived before or after this great
period, in quiet, ordinary times, he would perhaps never
have gone into public life, or never risen in it to conspicuous significance. But all he was by natule, by acquirement, by ability, by moral impulse, made him one of the
heroes of that great struggle against slavery, and in some
respects the first. And then when the victory was won,
the same moral nature, the same sense of justice, the same
enlightened mind, impelled him to plead the cause of peace,
reconciliation and brotherhood, through equal rights and
even justice, thus completing the fulness of his ideal. On
the pedestal of his time he stands one of the greatest of
Americans.
What a peculiar power of fascination there was in him
as a public man!  It acted much through his eloquence,
but not through his eloquence alone. His speech was not
a graceful flow of melodious periods, now drawing on the
listener with the persuasive tone of confidential conversation, then carrying him along with a more rapid rush of
thought and language, and at last lifting him up with the
peals of reason in passion. His arguments marched forth
at once in grave and stately array; his sentences like rows
of massive doric columns, unrelieved by pleasing variety,
severe and imposing. His orations, especially those pronounced in the Senate before the war, contain many
passages of grandest beauty. There was nothing kindly
persuasive in his utterance; his reasoning appeared in the
form of consecutive assertion, not seldom strictly logical
and irresistibly strong. His mighty appeals were always
addressed to the noblest instincts of human nature. His




EULOGY BY CARL SCIIURZ.             157
speech was never enlivened by anything like wit or
humor. They were foreign to his nature. He has never
been guilty of a flash of irony or sarcasm. His weapon
was not the foil, but the battle-axe.
He has often been accused of being uncharitable to
olpponents in debate, and of wounding their feelings with
uncalled for harshness of language. He was guilty of
that, but no man was less conscious of the stinging force
of his language than he. He was often sorry for the
effect his thrusts had produced, but being always so firmly
and 1honestly persuaded of the correctness of his own
opinions, that he could scarcely ever appreciate the position
of an opponent, he fell into the same fault again. Not
seldom  he appeared haughty  in his assumptions of
authority; but it was the imperiousness of profound conviction, which, while sometimes exasperating his hearers,
yet scarcely ever failed to exercise over them a certain
sway. His fancy was not fertile, his figures mostly labored
and stiff. In his later years his vast learning began to
become an encumbering burden to his eloquence. The
mass of quoted sayings and historical illustrations, not
seldom  accumulated beyond measure and grotesquely
grouped, sometimes threatened to suffocate the original
thought and to oppress the hearer.  But even  then
his words scarcelv ever failed  to chain the attention of the audience, and I have more than  once
seen the Senate attentively listening while he read
from  printed  slips the  most elaborate disquisition,
which, if attempted by any one of his colleagues,
would at once have emptied the floor and galleries. But
there were always moments recalling to our mind the




158        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNERG
days of his freshest vigor, when he stood in the midst of
the great struggle, lifting up the youth of the country
with heart-stirring appeals, and with the lion-like thunder
of his voice shaking the Senate chamber.
Still there was another source from which that fascination sprung. Behind all he said and did there stood a
grand manhood, which never failed to make itself felt.
What a figure he was, with his tall and stalwart frame,
his manly face, topped with his shaggy locks, his noble
bealring, the finest type of American Senatorship, the
tallest oak of the forest!  And how small they appeared
by his side, the common run of politicians, who spend their
days with the laying of pipe, and the setting up of pins,
and the pulling of wires; who barter an office to secure
this vote, and procure a contract to get that; who stand
always with their ears to the wind to hear how the
administration sneezes, and what their constituents whisper, in mortal trepidation lest they fail in being all things
to everybody! How he towered above them, he whose
aims were always the highest and noblest; whose very
presence made you forget the vulgarities of political
life; who dared to differ with any man ever so powerful,
any multitude ever so numerous; who regarded party
as nothing but a means for great ends, and for those
ends defied its power; to whom the arts of demagogism
were so contemptible, that he would rather have sunk
into obscurity and oblivion than descend to them; to
whom the dignity of his office was so sacred that he
would not even ask for it for fear of darkening its lustre!
Honor to the people of Massachusetts who, for twentythree years, kept in the Senate, and would have kept him




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZ.             159
there ever so long, had he lived, a man who never, even
to thein, conceded a single iota of his convictions in order
to remain there!  And what a life was his! A life so
wholly devoted to what was good and pure!  There he
stood in the midst of the grasping materialism of our
times, around him the eager chase for the almighty. dollar,
no thought of opportunity ever entering the smallest
corner of his mind, and disturbing his high endeavors;
with a virtue which the possession of power could not
even tempt, much less debauch; fiom whose presence the
very thought of corruption instinctively shrunk back; a
life so spotless, an integrity so intact, a character so
high, that the most daring eagerness of calumny, the
most wanton audacity of insinuation, standing on tiptoe,
could not touch the soles of his shoes!
They say that he indulged in overweening self-appreciation. Ay, he did have a magnificent pride, a lofty
self-esteem. Why should he not?  Let wretches despise
themselves, for they have good reason to do so; not he.
But in his self-esteem there was nothing small and mean;
no man lived to whose very nature envy and petty
jealousy were more foreign. Conscious of his own merit,
he never depreciated the merit of others; nay, he not only
recognized it, but he expressed that recognition with that
cordial spontaneity which can only flow from a sincere
and genelous heart. His pride of self was like his pride
of country. He was the proudest American; he was the
proudest New Englander; and yet he was the most cosmopolitan American I have ever seen. There was in him
not the faintest shadow of that narrow prejudice which
looks askance at what has grown in foreign lands. His




160        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
generous heart and his enlightened mind were too generous and too enlightened not to give the fullest measure of
appreciation to all that was good and worthy, from whatever quarter of the globe it came.
And now his home! There are those around me who
have breathed the air of his house in Washington, that
atmosphere of refinement, taste, scholarship, art, friendship,
and warm-hearted hospitality; who have seen those rooms
covered and filled with his pictures, his engravings, his
statues, his bronzes, his books and rare manuscripts -the
collections of a lifetime -the image of the richness of
his mind, the comfort and consolation of his solitude.
They have beheld his childlike smile of satisfaction when
he unlocked the most precious of his treasures and told
their stories.
They remember the conversations at his hospitable
board, genially inspired and directed by him, on art and
books and inventions and great times and great men,when suddenly sometimes, by accident, a new mine of curious knowledge disclosed itself in him, which his friends
had never known he possessed; or when a sunburst of the
affectionate gentleness of his soul warmed all hearts
around him. They remember his craving for friendship,
as it spoke through the far outstretched hand when you
arrived, and the glad exclamation: "I am so happy you
came," -and the beseeching, almost despondent tone
when you departed' "Do not leave me yet; do stay a
while longer, I want so much to speak with you! "-It
is all gone now. He could not stay himself, and he has
left his friends behind, feeling more deeply than ever that
no man could know him well but to love him.




EULOGY BY CARL SCHURZo                161:Now we have laid him into his grave, in the motherly soil
of Massachusett,  which was so dear to himn. He is at rest
nowv the stalwart, brave old champion, whose face and
bearing were so austere, and whose heart was so full of
tenderness; who began his career with a pathetic plea for
universal peace and charity, and whose whole life was
an arduous, incessant, never-resting struggle, which left
him  all covered with scars.  And we can (lo nothing
for him but commemorate his lofty ideals of Liberty, andcl
Equality, and Justice, and Reconciliation, and Purity,
and the earnestness and courage and touching fidelity
with which he fought for them; so genuille in his sincerity, so single-minded in his zeal, so heroic in his devotion!
Oh, that we could but for one short hour call him up
from his coffin, to let himn see with the same eyes which
saw so  much hostility, that those who stood against him
in the strugTgles of his life are his enemies no longer!
That we could show himn the fruit of the conflicts and sufferinags of his last three yeals, and that he had not struggled
and suffered in vain! We would bring before him, not only
those. who from offended partisan zeal assailed him, and
who now  with sorrowful hearts praise the purity of his
patriotism;  but we would bring to him  that man of
the South, a slaveholder and a leader of secession in
his time, the echo of whose words spoken in the name
of the South in the halls of the National Capitol we heard
but yesterday;   words of respect, of gratitude, of
tenderness. That man of the South should then  do
what he deplored not to have done while he lived, —
he should lay his hand upon the shoulders of the old friend




162        MEMORIAL OF CHARLES SUMNER.
of the human kind and say to him': h Is it you whom I
hated, and who, as I thought, hated me? I have learned
now the greatness and magnanimity of your soul, and
here I offer you my hand and heart."
Could he but see this with those eyes, so weary of contention and strife, how contentedly would he close them
again, having beheld the greatness of his victories!
People of Massachusetts! he was the son of your soil, in
which he now sleeps; but he is not all your own. He belongs
to all of us in the North and in the South,-to the blacks he
helped to make free, and to the whites he striove to make
brothers again. On the grave of him whom so many
thought to be their enemy, and found to be their fiiend,
let the hands be clasped which so bitterly warred against
each other.'Upon that grave let the youth of America
be taught, by the story of his life, that not only genius,
power and success, but more than these, patriotic devotion
and virtue, make the greatness of the citizen! If this lesson
be understood and followed, molre than Charles Sumner's
living word could have done for the glory of America will
then be done by the inspiration of his great example. And
it will truly be said, that although his body lies mouldering
in the earth, yet in the assured rights of all, in the brotherhood of a reunited people, and in a purified Republic, he
still lives and will live forever.