Henry Ward Beecher said of Charles Sumner: "He was raised up to do the work preceding and following the war. His eulogy will be, a lover of his country, an advocate of universal liberty, and the most eloquent and high-minded of all the statesmen of that period in which America made the transition from slavery to liberty."

"The most eloquent and high-minded." Great praise, but worthily bestowed!

Descended from an honorable English family who came to Massachusetts in 1637, settling in Dorchester, and the son of a well known lawyer, Charles Sumner came into the world January 6, 1811, with all the advantages of birth and social position. That he cared comparatively little for the family coat-of-arms of his ancestors is shown by his words in his address on "The True Grandeur of Nations." "Nothing is more shameful for a man than to found his title to esteem not on his own merits, but on the fame of his ancestors. The glory of the fathers is, doubtless, to their children, a most precious treasure; but to enjoy it without transmitting it to the next generation, and without adding to it yourselves,—this is the height of imbecility."

Sumner added to the "glory of the fathers," not by ease and self-indulgence, not by conforming to the opinions of the society about him, but by a life of labor, and heroic devotion to principle. He had such courage to do the right as is not common to mankind, and such persistency as teaches a lesson to the young men of America.

Charles was the oldest of nine children, the twin brother of Matilda, who grew to a beautiful womanhood, and died of consumption at twenty-one. The family home was at No. 20 Hancock Street, Boston, a four-story brick building.

Charles Pinckney Sumner, the father, a scholarly and well bred man of courtly manners, while he taught his children to love books, had the severity of nature which forbade a tender companionship between him and his oldest son. This was supplied, however, by the mother, a woman of unusual amiability and good-sense, who lived to be his consolation in the struggles of manhood, and to be proud and thankful when the whole land echoed his praises.

The boy was tall, slight, obedient, and devoted to books. He was especially fond of reading and repeating speeches. When sent to dancing-school he showed little enjoyment in it, preferring to go to the court-room with his father, to listen to the arguments of the lawyers. When he visited his mother's early home in Hanover, he had the extreme pleasure of reciting in the country woods the orations which he had read in the city.

In these early days he was an aspiring lad, with a manner which made his companions say he was "to the manor born." The father had decided to educate him in the English branches only, thus fitting him to earn his living earlier, as his income from the law, at this time, was not large. Charles, however, had purchased some Latin books with his pocket money, and surprised his father with the progress he had made by himself when ten years old. He was therefore, at this age, sent to the Boston Latin School. So skilful was he in the classics that at thirteen he received a prize for a translation from Sallust, and at fifteen a prize for English prose and another for a Latin poem. At the latter age he was ready to enter Harvard College. He had desired to go to West Point, but, fortunately, there was no opening. The country needed him for other work than war. To lead a whole nation by voice and pen up to heroic deeds is better than to lead an army.

All this time he read eagerly in his spare moments, especially in history, enjoying Gibbon's "Rome," and making full extracts from it in his notebooks. At fourteen he had written a compendium of English history, from CÆsar's conquest to 1801, which filled a manuscript book of eighty-six pages.

His first college room at Harvard was No. 17 Stoughton Hall. "When he entered," says one of his class-mates, "he was tall, thin, and somewhat awkward. He had but little inclination for engaging in sports or games, such as kicking foot-ball on the Delta, which the other students were in almost the daily habit of enjoying. He rarely went out to take a walk; and almost the only exercise in which he engaged was going on foot to Boston on Saturday afternoon, and then returning in the evening. He had a remarkable fondness for reading the dramas of Shakespeare, the works of Walter Scott, together with reviews and magazines of the higher class. He remembered what he read, and quoted passages afterwards with the greatest fluency.... In declamation he held rank among the best; but in mathematics there were several superior. He was always amiable and gentlemanly in deportment, and avoided saying anything to wound the feelings of his class-mates." One of the chief distinguishing marks of a well bred man is that he speaks ill of no one and harshly to no one.

In Sumner's freshman year his persistency showed itself, as in his childhood, when, in quarrelling with a companion over a stick, he held it till his bleeding hands frightened his antagonist, who ran away. By the laws of the college, students wore a uniform, consisting of an Oxford cap, coat, pantaloons, and vest of the color known as "Oxford mixed." In summer a white vest was allowed. Sumner, having a fancy for a buff vest, purchased one, wore it, and was summoned before the teachers for non-conformity to rules. He insisted, with much eloquence, that his vest was white. Twice he was admonished, and finally, as the easiest way to settle with the good-principled but persistent student, it was voted by the board, "that in future Sumner's vest be regarded as white!"

In scholarship in college he ranked among the first third. He gave much time to general reading, especially the old English authors, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Addison, Goldsmith. Hazlitt's "Select British Poets" and Harvey's "Shakespeare" he kept constantly on his table in later life, ready for use. The latter, which he always called The Book, was found open on the day of his death, with the words marked in Henry VI:—

"Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?"

On leaving college, Sumner's mind was not made up as to his future work. He was somewhat inclined to the law, but questioned his probable success in it. He spent a year at home in study, mastering mathematics, which he so disliked, and reading Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius, Hume, Hallam, and the like. In the winter he composed an essay on commerce, and received the prize offered by the "Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." Daniel Webster, the president of the society, gave the prize, Liebner's "EncyclopÆdia Americana," to Sumner, taking his hand and calling him his "young friend." He did not know that this youth would succeed him in the Senate, and thrill the nation by his eloquence, as Webster himself had done.

Sumner's class-mates were proud that he had gained this prize, and one wrote to another, "Our friend outstrips all imagination. He will leave us all behind him.... He has been working hard to lay a foundation for the future. I doubt whether one of his class-mates has filled up the time since commencement with more, and more thorough labor; and to keep him constant he has a pervading ambition,—not an intermittent, fitful gust of an affair, blowing a hurricane at one time, then subsiding to a calm, but a strong, steady breeze, which will bear him well on in the track of honor."

In the fall of 1831 Sumner had decided to study law, and began in earnest at the Harvard Law School. Early and late he was among his books, often until two in the morning. He soon knew the place of each volume in the law library, so that he could have found it in the dark. He read carefully in common law, French law, and international law; procured a common-place book, and wrote out tables of English kings and lord-chancellors, sketches of lawyers, and definitions and incidents from Blackstone. He made a catalogue of the law library, and wrote articles for legal magazines. He went little into society, because he preferred his books. Judge Story, a man twice his own age, became his most devoted friend, and to the end of his life Sumner loved him as a brother.

Chief Justice Story, whom Lord Brougham called the "greatest justice in the world," was a man of singularly sweet nature, appreciative of the beautiful and the pure, as well as a man of profound learning. The influence of such a lovable and strong nature over an ambitious youth, who can estimate?

The few friends Sumner made among women were, as a rule, older than himself, a thing not unusual with intellectual men. He chose those whose minds were much like his own, and who were appreciative, refining, and stimulating. Brain and heart seemed to be the only charms which possessed any fascination for him.

The eminent sculptor, W. W. Story of Rome, says, "Of all men I ever knew at his age, he was the least susceptible to the charms of women. Men he liked best, and with them he preferred to talk. It was in vain for the loveliest and liveliest girl to seek to absorb his attention. He would at once desert the most blooming beauty to talk to the plainest of men. This was a constant source of amusement to us, and we used to lay wagers with the pretty girls that with all their art they could not keep him at their side a quarter of an hour. Nor do I think we ever lost one of these bets. I remember particularly one dinner at my father's house, when it fell to his lot to take out a charming woman, so handsome and full of esprit that any one at the table might well have envied him his position. She had determined to hold him captive, and win her bet against us. But her efforts were all in vain. Unfortunately, on his other side was a dry old savant, packed with information; and within five minutes Sumner had completely turned his back on his fair companion and engaged in a discussion with the other, which lasted the whole dinner. We all laughed. She cast up her eyes deprecatingly, acknowledged herself vanquished, and paid her bet. Meantime, Sumner was wholly unconscious of the jest or of the laughter. He had what he wanted—sensible men's talk. He had mined the savant as he mined every one he met, in search of ore, and was thoroughly pleased with what he got."

In manner Sumner was natural and sincere, friendly to all, winning at the first moment by his radiant smile. A sunny face is a constant benediction. How it blesses and lifts burdens from aching hearts! Sumner had heart-aches like all the rest of mankind, but his face beamed with that open, kindly expression which is as sweet to hungering humanity as the sunshine after rain. And this "genial illuminating smile," says Mr. Story, "he never lost."

These days in the law school were happy days for the lover of learning. Forty years afterward, Mr. Sumner said, in an address to the colored law students of Howard University, Washington, "These exercises carry me back to early life.... I cannot think of those days without fondness. They were the happiest of my life.... There is happiness in the acquisition of knowledge, which surpasses all common joys. The student who feels that he is making daily progress, constantly learning something new,—who sees the shadows by which he was originally surrounded gradually exchanged for an atmosphere of light,—cannot fail to be happy. His toil becomes a delight, and all that he learns is a treasure,—with this difference from gold and silver, that it cannot be lost. It is a perpetual capital at compound interest."

While at the law school, Sumner wrote a friend, "A lawyer must know everything. He must know law, history, philosophy, human nature; and, if he covets the fame of an advocate, he must drink of all the springs of literature, giving ease and elegance to the mind, and illustration to whatever subject it touches. So experience declares, and reflection bears experience out.... The lower floor of Divinity Hall, where I reside, is occupied by law students. There are here Browne and Dana of our old class, with others that I know nothing of,—not even my neighbor, parted from me by a partition wall, have I seen yet, and I do not wish to see him. I wish no acquaintances, for they eat up time like locusts. The old class-mates are enough." To another he wrote, "Determine that you will master the whole compass of law; and do not shrink from the crabbed page of black-letter, the multitudinous volumes of reports, or even the gigantic abridgments. Keep the high standard in your mind's eye, and you will certainly reach some desirable point.... You cannot read history too much, particularly that of England and the United States. History is the record of human conduct and experience; and it is to this that jurisprudence is applied.... Above all love and honor your profession. You can make yourself love the law, proverbially dry as it is, or any other study. Here is an opportunity for the exercise of the will. Determine that you will love it, and devote yourself to it as to a bride."

When the study at the law school was over, Sumner returned to Boston, and entered the office of Benjamin Rand, Court Street, a man distinguished for learning rather than for oratory. The young lawyer succeeded fairly well, though he loved study better than general practice. Two years later he gave instruction at the law school when Judge Story was absent, and then reported his opinions in the Circuit Court, in three volumes. He assisted Professor Greenleaf in preparing "Reports of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of Maine," revised, with much labor, Dunlap's "Admiralty Practice," and edited "The American Jurist."

In the midst of this hard work he spent a brief vacation at Washington, writing to his father, "I shall probably hear Calhoun, and he will be the last man I shall ever hear speak in Washington. I probably shall never come here again. I have little or no desire ever to come again in any capacity. Nothing that I have seen of politics has made me look upon them with any feeling other than loathing. The more I see of them the more I love law, which, I feel, will give me an honorable livelihood."

When he visited Niagara, he wrote home, "I have sat for an hour contemplating this delightful object, with the cataract sounding like the voice of God in my ears. But there is something oppressive in hearing and contemplating these things. The mind travails with feelings akin to pain, in the endeavor to embrace them. I do not know that it is so with others; but I cannot disguise from myself the sense of weakness, inferiority, and incompetency which I feel."

When Sumner was twenty-six, he determined to carry out a life-long plan of visiting Europe, to study its writers, jurists, and social customs. He needed five thousand dollars for this purpose. He had earned two thousand, and, borrowing three from three friends, he started December 8, 1837. Emerson gave him a letter of introduction to Carlyle, Story to some leading lawyers, and Washington Allston to Wordsworth. Judge Story said in his letter, "Mr. Sumner is a practising lawyer at the Boston bar, of very high reputation for his years, and already giving the promise of the most eminent distinction in his profession; his literary and judicial attainments are truly extraordinary. He is one of the editors, indeed, the principal editor, of 'The American Jurist,' a quarterly journal of extensive circulation and celebrity among us, and without a rival in America. He is also the reporter of the court in which I preside, and has already published two volumes of reports. His private character, also, is of the best kind for purity and propriety."

His friend Dr. Lieber gave him some good suggestions about travelling. "Plan your journey. Spend money carefully. Keep steadily a journal. Never think that an impression is too vivid to be forgotten. Believe me, time is more powerful than senses or memory. Keep little books for addresses. Write down first impressions of men and countries."

Just before Sumner started from New York, he wrote to his little sister, Julia, then ten years old, "I am very glad, my dear, to remember your cheerful countenance.... Let it be said of you that you are always amiable.... Cultivate an affectionate disposition. If you find that you can do anything which will add to the pleasure of your parents, or anybody else, be sure to do it. Consider every opportunity of adding to the pleasure of others as of the highest importance, and do not be unwilling to sacrifice some enjoyment of your own, even some dear plaything, if by doing so you can promote the happiness of others. If you follow this advice, you will never be selfish or ungenerous, and everybody will love you."

To his brother George, six years younger than himself, he wrote, "Do not waste your time in driblets. Deem every moment precious,—far more so than the costliest stones.... Keep some good book constantly on hand to occupy every stray moment."

As soon as Sumner reached Paris he devoted himself to the study of the language, so as to be able to speak what he could write already. He attended lectures given by the professors of colleges, became acquainted with Victor Cousin, the noted writer on morals and metaphysics, and the friend of authors, lawyers, and journalists. He said, years later, in an eloquent tribute to Judge Story: "It has been my fortune to know the chief jurists of our time in the classical countries of jurisprudence,—France and Germany. I remember well the pointed and effective style of Dupin, in one of his masterly arguments before the highest court of France; I recall the pleasant converse of Pardessus, to whom commercial and maritime law is under a larger debt, perhaps, than to any other mind, while he descanted on his favorite theme; I wander in fancy to the gentle presence of him with flowing silver locks who was so dear to Germany, Thibaut, the expounder of Roman law, and the earnest and successful advocate of a just scheme for the reduction of the unwritten law to the certainty of a written text; from Heidelberg I pass to Berlin, where I listen to the grave lecture and mingle in the social circle of Savigny, so stately in person and peculiar in countenance, whom all the continent of Europe delights to honor; but my heart and my judgment, untravelled, fondly turn with new love and admiration to my Cambridge teacher and friend. Jurisprudence has many arrows in her quiver, but where is one to compare with that which is now spent in the earth?"

After some months in Paris, Sumner went to England, remaining ten months, and receiving attentions rarely if ever accorded to an American. He used some letters of introduction, but generally he was welcomed to the houses of lords and authors simply because the young man of learning was honored for his refinement and nobility of soul. He was admitted to the clubs, attended debates in Parliament, was present at the coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey, sat on the bench at Westminster Hall, dined often with Lord Brougham, Sir William Hamilton, Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review, Lord Morpeth the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Hallam, Carlyle, Lord Holland, Lord Houghton, Grote, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Landor, Leigh Hunt, and scores of others, the greatest in the kingdom. An English writer said: "He presents in his own person a decisive proof that an American gentleman, without official rank or widespread reputation, by mere dint of courtesy, candor, an entire absence of pretension, an appreciating spirit, and a cultivated mind, may be received on a perfect footing of equality in the best English circles, social, political, and intellectual."

Sumner wrote back to his friends in America: "I have made myself master of English practice and English circuit life. I cannot sufficiently express my admiration of the heartiness and cordiality which pervade all the English bar. They are truly a band of brothers, and I have been received among them as one of them. I have visited many—perhaps I may say most—of the distinguished men of these glorious countries (England, Scotland, and Ireland), at their seats, and have seen English country life, which is the height of refined luxury, in some of its most splendid phases. For all the opportunities I have had I feel grateful."

Sumner found, what all travellers find, that cultivated, well bred people all speak a common language, that of universal courtesy and kindness. The English did not ask if he had wealth or distinguished parentage; it was enough that he was intelligent on all topics, considerate, gentle in manner, a gentleman in every possible situation.

Every letter home teemed with descriptions of visits to Wordsworth, then sixty-nine years of age; to Macaulay, whom Sydney Smith called "a tremendous machine for colloquial oppression;" to the beautiful Caroline Norton, the poet, "one of the brightest intellects I have ever met," with "the grace and ease of the woman, with a strength and skill of which any man might well be proud;" to Lord Brougham, with "a fulness of information and physical spirits, which make him more commanding than all."

Sumner spent three months in Rome, at first studying the language from six to twelve hours a day. He became the friend of the artist Thomas Crawford, then poor, but with high ambition. He wrote his praises home to his friends, induced them to buy one of his earliest works and exhibit it in Boston; cheered the half-despairing artist by assuring him that he would be "a great and successful sculptor, and be living in a palace," all of which came true. A noble nature, indeed, that could pause in its own aspiring work and lift another to fame and success!

Six months were spent in Germany by Sumner, where he studied language and law as earnestly as he had in France and Italy. The rich, full days of literary intercourse were coming to an end. He wrote to his intimate friend Longfellow: "I shall soon be with you; and I now begin to think of hard work, of long days filled with uninteresting toil and humble gains. I sometimes have a moment of misgiving, when I think of the certainties which I abandoned for travel, and of the uncertainties to which I return. But this is momentary; for I am thoroughly content with what I have done. If clients fail me; if the favorable opinion of those on whom professional reputation depends leaves me; if I find myself poor and solitary,—still I shall be rich in the recollection of what I have seen, and will make companions of the great minds of these countries I have visited."

In the spring of 1840 Sumner was home again, having been abroad for two and one-half years. The father and his sister Jane, a lovely girl of seventeen, had both died during his absence. He went at once to the Hancock Street home, and began his professional labors from nine till five or six in the afternoon. In the evening he read as formerly till midnight or later, going every Saturday evening to spend the night with Longfellow at Craigie House.

This affection for Longfellow never changed. When the poet went abroad in 1842, Sumner wrote him, "We are all sad at your going; but I am more sad than the rest, for I lose more than they do. I am desolate. It was to me a source of pleasure and strength untold to see you; and, when I did not see you, to feel that you were near, with your swift sympathy and kindly words. I must try to go alone,—hard necessity in this rude world of ours, for our souls always in this life need support and gentle beckonings, as the little child when first trying to move away from its mother's knee. God bless you, my dear friend, from my heart of hearts. My eyes overflow as I now trace these lines."

Sumner was full of incident and vivid description of his life abroad, and the most charming homes of Boston were open to him whenever he had the time to visit, which was seldom. The letters from Europe made the long days of law practice less monotonous. He wrote much on legal matters; and now, at thirty-three, undertook to edit the "Equity Reports" of Francis Vesey, Jr., numbering twenty volumes, for two thousand dollars. By the terms agreed upon, a volume was to be ready each fortnight. He worked night and day, took no recreation, and soon broke down in health; and his life was despaired of. He welcomed death, for he had before this time become somewhat despondent. Most of his friends were married, and some, like Prescott and Longfellow, had come to fame already. He felt that his life was not showing the results of which his youth gave promise.

Had he found at this time "the perfect woman" for whom he used to tell his friends he was seeking, and made her his wife, there would doubtless have come into his life satisfaction and rest. That he did not marry was the more strange since women admired him for the qualities which are especially attractive to the sex; a knightly sense of honor, fidelity in friendship, fearlessness, and affectionate confidence.

Sumner recovered his health, while his beloved sister Mary, at the age of twenty-two, faded from his sight by consumption. He wrote his brother George: "She herself wished to die; and I believe that we all became anxious at last that the angel should descend to bear her aloft. From the beautiful flower of her life the leaves had all gently fallen to the earth; and there remained but little for the hand of death to pluck. During the night preceding the morning on which she left us, she slept like a child; and within a short time of her death, when asked if she were in pain, she said, 'No; angels are taking care of me.'"

To Charles Sumner this death was an incomparable loss. She was especially beautiful and lovely, and the idol of his heart. Possibly it helped to make him ready for his great work.

Into most lives, especially those designed for great deeds, there seem to come decisive moments when events open the door from the darkness of obscurity into the noonday glare of fame. Such a time came to Sumner in 1845. He was asked to deliver the usual Fourth of July address at Tremont Temple, Boston, as Charles Francis Adams, Horace Mann, and others had done in previous years. He chose for his subject "The True Grandeur of Nations," showing that the "true grandeur" is peace and not war. He dealt vigorously with the Mexican War, then impending, as a result of the annexation of Texas, with consequent enlargement of slave territory.

Sumner was now thirty-four, well developed physically, his face handsome and radiant as ever, with the smile of his boyhood, his voice clear and resonant, his mind full to overflowing. He spoke for two hours, without notes. He said: "The true greatness of a nation cannot be in triumphs of the intellect alone. Literature and art may widen the sphere of its influence; they may adorn it; but they are in their nature but accessories. The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened, and decorated by the intellect of man.... In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable. The true honor of a nation is to be found only in deeds of justice and beneficence, securing the happiness of its people,—all of which are inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Christian judgment, vain are its victories, infamous are its spoils. He is the true benefactor, and alone worthy of honor, who brings comfort where before was wretchedness; who dries the tear of sorrow; who pours oil into the wounds of the unfortunate; who feeds the hungry, and clothes the naked; who unlooses the fetter of the slave; who does justice; who enlightens the ignorant; who, by his virtuous genius in art, in literature, in science, enlivens and exalts the hours of life; who, by words or actions, inspires a love for God and for man. This is the Christian hero; this is the man of honor in a Christian land."

The believers in war felt somewhat hurt by Sumner's plainness of speech, but the city of Boston and the State of Massachusetts awoke to the knowledge of an eloquent man in their midst, who had doubtless a work before him. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote him: "How I did thank you for your noble and eloquent attack upon the absurd barbarism of war! It was worth living for to have done that, if you never do anything more. But the soul that could do that will do more."

Chancellor Kent wrote him, "I am very strongly in favor of the institution of a congress of nations or system of arbitration without going to war. Every effort ought to be made by treaty stipulation, remonstrance, and appeal to put a stop to the resort to brutal force to assert claims of right. The idea of war is horrible. I remember I was very much struck, even in my youth, by the observation (I think it was in Tom Paine's 'Crisis') that 'he who is the author of war lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.'"

Seven thousand copies of this oration were distributed by the Peace Societies of England, and it had a wide reading in our own country.

Sumner was now called upon to speak with Garrison, Phillips, and others, on the question of the annexation of Texas with her slave territory. He said, "God forbid that the votes and voices of the freemen of the North should help to bind anew the fetters of the slave! God forbid that the lash of the slave-dealer should be nerved by any sanction from New England! God forbid that the blood which spurts from the lacerated quivering flesh of the slave should soil the hem of the white garments of Massachusetts."

The educated Boston lawyer, the friend of hosts of authors and jurists on both sides of the ocean, the accomplished and aristocratic scholar, Sumner had placed himself among the despised Abolitionists! Many of his friends stood aghast, even refusing to recognize him on the street. This act required great moral heroism, but he was equal to the occasion. The door had opened to fame and immortality, even though they came to him through contumely and well-nigh martyrdom.

In 1846, Mr. Sumner spoke before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University: "We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient divinities of violence and wrong are retreating to their kindred darkness. The sun of our moral universe is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed by those images, Cancer, Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius, but beaming with the mild radiance of those heavenly signs, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Theodore Parker wrote to the orator, "You have planted a seed, 'out of which many and tall branches shall arise,' I hope. The people are always true to a good man who truly trusts them. You have had opportunity to see, hear, and feel the truth of that oftener than once. I think you will have enough more opportunities yet; men will look for deeds noble as the words a man speaks."

And Charles Sumner became as noble as the words he had spoken. It makes us stronger to commit ourselves before the world. We are compelled to live up to the standard of our speech, or be adjudged hypocrites.

Before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, Sumner read a brilliant paper on "White Slavery in the Barbary States," and gave an address before Amherst College on "Fame and Glory." He spoke earnestly in the Whig conventions, asking them to come out against slavery. He urged Daniel Webster, the Defender of the Constitution, to become the "Defender of Humanity," "by the side of which that earlier title shall fade into insignificance, as the Constitution, which is the work of mortal hands, dwindles by the side of man, who is created in the image of God." But the words of entreaty came too late; the Whig party did not dare take up the cause of human freedom.

In 1851, when Sumner was forty, the new era of his life came. The Free-Soil party, organized August 9, 1848, the successor of the "Liberty" party formed eight years earlier, wanted him as their leader. Would he separate from the Whigs? Yes, for he had said, "Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty to party. The first is a heavenly sentiment from God; the other is a device of this earth.... I wish it to be understood that I belong to the party of freedom,—to that party which plants itself on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.... It is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our opposition will fail. Fail, sir! No honest, earnest effort in a good cause ever fails. It may not be crowned with the applause of man; it may not seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end and aim of so much of life; but still it is not lost. It helps to strengthen the weak with new virtue, to arm the irresolute with proper energy, to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail when with their precious blood they sowed the seed of the Church?... Did the three hundred Spartans fail when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the sun? No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an example which is greater far than any victory. And this is the least we can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter."

Millard Fillmore had signed the hated Fugitive Slave Bill, and Webster had made his disastrous speech of March 7, 1850, urging conformity to the demands of the bill. Sumner's hour had come. By a union of the Free-Soil and Democratic parties, he was elected to the Senate of the United States for six years, over the eloquent Robert C. Winthrop, the Whig candidate. The contest was bitter. Sumner would give no pledges, and said he would not walk across the room to secure the election. On Monday, December 1, 1851, he took his seat. Devotion to principle had gained him an exalted position.Months went by before he could possibly obtain a hearing on the slavery question, on which issue he had been elected. Finally, the long sought opportunity came by introducing an amendment that the Fugitive Slave Bill should be repealed. He spoke for four hours as only Charles Sumner could speak. Despised by the slave-holders, they listened to his burning words. In closing, he said: "Be admonished by those words of oriental piety,—'Beware of the groans of wounded souls. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart; for a solitary sigh has power to overset a whole world.'"

Mr. Polk of Tennessee said to him: "If you should make that speech in Tennessee, you would compel me to emancipate my niggers."

The vote on the repeal stood: Yeas, four; nays, forty-seven. Alas! how many years he wrought before the repeal came.

Sumner had been heard not merely by Congress; he had been heard by two continents. Henceforward, for twenty-three years, he was to be in Congress the great leader in the cause of human freedom.

In 1854 the advocates of slavery brought forward the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, by which a large territory, at the recommendation of Stephen A. Douglas, was to be left open for slavery or no slavery, as the dwellers therein should decide. On the night of the passage of this bill, Sumner made an eloquent protest. "Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, WORST and BEST at the same time.

"It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery.... It is the best, for it prepares the way for that 'All hail hereafter,' when slavery must disappear.... Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of freedom in Kansas and Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection by which freedom will be secured hereafter, not only in these Territories but everywhere under the national government. More clearly than ever before, I now see 'the beginning of the end' of slavery. Proudly I discern the flag of my country as it ripples in every breeze, at last become in reality, as in name, the flag of freedom,—undoubted, pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the best on which Congress ever acted?

"Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to enact. Joyfully I welcome all the promises of the future."

After the passage of the bill the excitement at the North was intense. Public meetings were held, denouncing the new scheme of the slave-power to acquire more territory. So bitter grew the feeling that Sumner was urged by his friends to leave Washington, lest harm come to him; but he walked the streets unarmed. "He was assailed," said the noble Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, "by the whole slave-power in the Senate, and, for a time, he was the constant theme of their vituperation. The maddened waves rolled and dashed against him for two or three days, until eventually he obtained the floor himself; then he arose and threw back the dashing surges with a power of inimitable eloquence utterly indescribable."

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill produced its legitimate result,—civil war in the Territory. Slave-holders rushed in from Missouri, bringing their slaves with them; free men came from the East to build homes, school-houses, and churches on these fertile lands. The struggles at the ballot-box over illegal elections were followed by struggles on the battle-field. At the village of Ossawatomie twenty-eight Free State men led by John Brown defeated on the open prairie fifty-six Slave State men. Houses were burned, and men murdered. Two State constitutions were adopted: one at Lecompton, representing the pro-slavery element; the other at Lawrence, representing the anti-slavery party. Finally, the President, in 1855, appointed a military governor to restore Kansas to order. But, while order might be restored there, the whole country seemed on the verge of civil war.

Meantime the Republican party had been formed in 1854, the outgrowth of the "Liberty" and "Free Soil" parties. A "Bill for the Admission of Kansas into the Union" having been presented, Sumner made his celebrated speech "The Crime against Kansas," on the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. He spoke eloquently and fearlessly, arousing more than ever the hot blood of the South. Two days later, as Mr. Sumner was sitting at his desk in the Senate chamber, his head bent forward in writing, the Senate having adjourned, Preston S. Brooks, a nephew of Mr. Butler, a senator of South Carolina, stood before him. "I have read your speech twice over, carefully," he said. "It is a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." Instantly he struck Mr. Sumner on the back of the head, with his hollow gutta-percha cane, making a long and fearful gash, repeating the blows in rapid succession. Sumner wrenched the desk from the floor, to which it was screwed, but, unable to defend himself, fell forward bleeding and insensible. He was carried by his friends to a sofa in the lobby, and during the night lay pale and bewildered, scarcely speaking to any one about him.

The indignation and horror of the North beggar description. That a man, in this age of free speech, should be publicly beaten, and that by a member of the House of Representatives, was, of course, a disgrace to the nation. Said Joseph Quincy: "Charles Sumner needs not our sympathy. If he dies his name will be immortal—his name will be enrolled with the names of Warren, Sidney, and Russell; if he lives he is destined to be the light of the nation." Wendell Phillips said: "The world will yet cover every one of those scars with laurels. He must not die! We need him yet, as the van-guard leader of the hosts of Liberty. Nay, he shall yet come forth from that sick-chamber, and every gallant heart in the commonwealth be ready to kiss his very footsteps."

Brooks was censured by the House of Representatives, resigned his seat, and died the following year. Sumner returned to Boston as soon as he was able. Houses were decorated for his coming, and banners flung to the breeze with the words, "Welcome, Freedom's Defender," "Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend her noble Sumner." The home on Hancock Street was surrounded by a dense crowd. He appeared at the window with his widowed mother, and bowed to their cheers. For several months he enjoyed the tender care of this mother, now almost alone. Her son Horace had been lost in the ship Elizabeth, July 16, 1850, when Margaret Fuller, her husband, and child were drowned. Albert, a sea-captain, had been lost with his wife and only daughter on their way to France. And now, perhaps, her distinguished son Charles was to give his life to help bring freedom to four millions in slavery.

In 1857 Sumner was almost unanimously reËlected to the Senate for six years, but Brooks had done his dreadful work too well. Broken in health, he sailed for Europe. Nearly twenty years before he had gone to meet the honored and famous, his future all unknown; now he went as the stricken leader of a great cause, one of the most able and eloquent men of the new world. Twenty years before he was restless and unhappy because he did not see his life-work before him; now he was happy in spite of physical agony, because he knew he was helping humanity.

After travelling in Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain, he returned and took his seat in Congress, but, finding his health still impaired, he sailed again to Europe. He regretted to leave the country, but was, as he says, "often assured and encouraged to feel that to every sincere lover of civilization my vacant chair was a perpetual speech." On this second visit he came under the treatment of Dr. Brown-SÉquard, who, when asked by Mr. Sumner what would cure him, replied, "Fire." At once the dreadful remedy was applied. The physician says, when he first met the senator, "He could not make use of his brain at all. He could not read a newspaper, could not write a letter. He was in a frightful state as regards the activity of the mind, as every effort there was most painful to him.... I told him the truth,—that there would be more effect, as I thought, if he did not take chloroform; and so I had to submit him to the martyrdom of the greatest suffering that can be inflicted on mortal man. I burned him with the first moxa. I had the hope that after the first application he would submit to the use of chloroform; but for five times after that he was burned in the same way, and refused to take chloroform. I have never seen a patient who submitted to such treatment in that way."

Sumner wrote home: "It is with a pang unspeakable that I find myself thus arrested in the labors of life and in the duties of my position. This is harder to bear than the fire."

Four years elapsed before he regained his health; indeed his death finally resulted from the attack of Brooks. No sooner had he returned to the Senate than he made another great speech against slavery. The country was agitated by the coming presidential election. John Brown had captured, with a force of twenty-two men, the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, with the fallacious hope of setting the slaves at liberty. He was of course overpowered, his sons killed at his side, as others of his sons had been on the Kansas battlefields, and he led out to execution, December 2, 1859, with a radiant face and an overflowing heart, because he knew that his death would arouse the nation to action.

Mr. Sumner spoke to an immense audience at Cooper Institute, urging the election of Abraham Lincoln. By this election, he said, "we shall save the Territories from the five-headed barbarism of slavery; we shall save the country and the age from that crying infamy, the slave-trade; we shall help save the Declaration of Independence, now dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth,—the equality of men.... A new order of things will begin; and our history will proceed on a grander scale, in harmony with those sublime principles in which it commenced. Let the knell sound!—

A "new order of things" was indeed begun. South Carolina very soon seceded from the Union, and other southern States followed her example. Sumner now spoke and wrote constantly. He urged Massachusetts to be "firm, FIRM, FIRM! against every word or step of concession.... More than the loss of forts, arsenals, or the national capital, I fear the loss of our principles."

In 1861, Mr. Sumner was made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. How different his position from that day, ten years before, when he stood almost alone in the Senate, a hated abolitionist!

When the war began, he saw with prophetic eye the necessity of emancipating the slaves. He urged it in his public speeches. When Lincoln hesitated and the country feared the result, he said to a vast assembly at Cooper Institute, "There has been the cry, 'On to Richmond!' and still another worse cry, 'On to England!' Better than either is the cry, 'On to freedom!'"

As the war went forward he was ever at his post, working for Henry Wilson's bill for the abolishing of slavery in the District of Columbia, for the recognition of the independence of Hayti and Liberia, for the final suppression of the coastwise trade in slaves, for the employment of colored troops in the army, and for a law that "no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color," on various specified lines of railroad. He spoke words of encouragement constantly to the North, "This is no time to stop. Forward! Forward! Thus do I, who formerly pleaded so often for peace, now sound to arms; but it is because, in this terrible moment, there is no other way to that sincere and solid peace without which there will be endless war.... Now, at last, by the death of slavery, will the republic begin to live; for what is life without liberty?

"Stretching from ocean to ocean, teeming with population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice happy in universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror, nothing too vast for its power, nothing too minute for its care."

He wrote for the magazines on the one great subject. He helped organize the Freedman's Bureau, which he called the "Bridge from Slavery to Freedom." He urged equal pay to colored soldiers. He was invaluable to President Lincoln. Though they did not always think alike, Lincoln said to Sumner, "There is no person with whom I have more advised throughout my administration than with yourself."

When Lincoln was assassinated, Sumner wept by his bedside. "The only time," said an intimate friend, "I ever saw him weep." When he delivered his eloquent eulogy on Lincoln in Boston, he said, "That speech, uttered on the field of Gettysburg, and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author, is a monumental act. In the modesty of his nature, he said, 'The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.'

"He was mistaken. The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech. Ideas are more than battles."

And so the great slavery pioneer and the great emancipator will go down in history together. How the world worships heroic manhood! Those who, with sweet and unselfish natures, seek not their own happiness, but are ready to die if need be for the right and the truth!

Sumner aided in those three grand amendments to the Constitution, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.... All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.... The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

In June, 1866, Mr. Sumner came home to say good-bye to his dying mother. True to her noble womanhood, she urged that he should not be sent for, lest the country could not spare him from his work. Beautiful self-sacrifice of woman! Heaven can possess nothing more angelic. O mother, wife, and loved one, know thine unlimited powers, and hold them forever for the ennobling of men!

When Mrs. Sumner was buried, her son turned away sorrowfully, and exclaimed, "I have now no home." He had a house in Washington, where he had lived for many years, but it was only home to him where a sweet-faced and sweet-voiced woman loved him.

In 1869, Mr. Sumner made his remarkable speech on the "Alabama" claims, which for a time caused some bitter feeling in England. This vessel, built at Liverpool, and manned by a British crew, was sent out by the Confederate government, and destroyed sixty-six of our vessels, with a loss of ten million dollars. In 1864, she was overtaken in the harbor of Cherbourg, France, by Captain Winslow, commander of the steamer Kearsarge, and sunk, after an hour's desperate fighting. Her commander, Captain Raphael Semmes, was picked up by the English Deerhound, and taken to Southampton. In the summer of 1872, a board of arbitration met at Geneva, Switzerland, and awarded the United States over fifteen million dollars as damages, which Great Britain paid.

On May 12, 1870, Mr. Sumner introduced his supplementary Civil-Rights Bill, declaring that all persons, without regard to race or color, are entitled to equal privileges afforded by railroads, steamboats, hotels, places of amusement, institutions of learning, religion, and courts of law. His maxim was, "Equality of rights is the first of rights."

He supported Horace Greeley for President, thus separating himself from the Republican party, and carrying out his life-long opinion that principle is above party. After another visit to Europe, in 1872, when he was sixty-one years old, feeling that, the war being over and slavery abolished, the two portions of the country should forget all animosity and live together in harmony, he introduced a resolution in the Senate, "That the names of battles with fellow-citizens shall not be continued in the army register or placed on the regimental colors of the United States."

Massachusetts hastily passed a vote of censure upon her idolized statesman, which she was wise enough to rescind soon after. This latter action gave Mr. Sumner great comfort. He said, "The dear old commonwealth has spoken for me, and that is enough."

In his freestone house, full of pictures and books, overlooking Lafayette Square in Washington, on March 11, 1874, Charles Sumner lay dying. The day previous, in the Senate, he had complained to a friend of pain in the left side. On the morning of the eleventh he was cold and well nigh insensible. At ten o'clock he said to Judge Hoar, "Don't forget my Civil-Rights Bill." Later, he said, "My book! my book is not finished.... I am so tired! I am so tired!"

He had worked long and hard. He passed into the rest of the hereafter at three o'clock in the afternoon. Grand, heroic soul! whose life will be an inspiration for all coming time.

The body, enclosed in a massive casket, upon which rested a wreath of white azaleas and lilies, was borne to the Capitol, followed by a company of three hundred colored men and a long line of carriages. The most noticeable among the floral gifts, says Elias Nason, in his Life of Sumner, "was a broken column of violets and white azaleas, placed there by the hands of a colored girl. She had been rendered lame by being thrust from the cars of a railroad, whose charter Mr. Sumner, after hearing the girl's story, by a resolution, caused to be revoked." From there it was carried to the State House in Boston, and visited by at least fifty thousand people. In the midst of the beautiful floral decorations was a large heart of flowers, from the colored citizens of Boston, with the words, "Charles Sumner, you gave us your life; we give you our hearts."Through a dense crowd the coffin was borne to Mount Auburn cemetery, and placed in the open grave just as the sun was setting, Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, and other dear friends standing by. The grand old song of Luther was sung, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." Strange contrast! the quiet, unknown Harvard law student;—the great senator, doctor of laws, author, and orator. Sumner had his share of sorrow. He lived to see seven of his eight brothers and sisters taken away by death. He who had longed for domestic bliss did not find it. He married, when he was fifty-five, Mrs. Alice Mason Hooper, but the companionship did not prove congenial, and a divorce resulted, by mutual consent.

He forgot the heart-hunger of his early years in living for the slaves and the down-trodden, whether white or black. Through all his struggles he kept a sublime hope. He used to say, "All defeats in a good cause are but resting-places on the road to victory at last." He had defeats, as do all, but he won the victory.

Well says Hon. James G. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," "Mr. Sumner must ever be regarded as a scholar, an orator, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a statesman, whose splendid and unsullied fame will always form part of the true glory of the nation."

"He belongs to all of us, in the North and in the South," said Hon. Carl Schurz, in his eulogy delivered in Music Hall, Boston, "to the blacks he helped to make free, and to the whites he strove to make brothers again. On the grave of him whom so many thought to be their enemy, and found to be their friend, 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."