Mr. Hinds, while engaged in canvassing the State of Arkansas on
the Republican side, was assassinated. The Senators of Arkansas
requested Mr. Sumner to speak on the resolution announcing his
death.
MR. PRESIDENT,--It is with hesitation that I add a word on this
melancholy occasion, and I do it only in compliance with the suggestion
of others.
I did not know Mr. Hinds personally; but I have been interested in
his life, and touched by his tragical end. Born in New York, educated
in Ohio, a settler in Minnesota, and then a citizen of Arkansas, he
carried with him always the energies and principles ripened under our
Northern skies. He became a Representative in Congress, and, better
still, a vindicator of the Rights of Man. Unhappily, that barbarism
which we call Slavery is not yet dead, and it was his fate to fall
under its vindictive assault. Pleading for the Equal Rights of All, he
became a victim and martyr.
Thus suddenly arrested in life, his death is a special sorrow, not
only to family and friends, but to the country which he had begun to
serve so well. The void, when a young man dies, is measured less by
what he has done than by the promises of the future. Performance itself
is forgotten in the ample assurance afforded by character. Already
Mr. Hinds had given himself sincerely and bravely to the good cause.
By presence and speech he was urging those great principles of the
Declaration of Independence whose complete recognition will be the
cope-stone of our Republic, when he fell by the stealthy shot of an
assassin. It was in the midst of this work that he fell, and on this
account I am glad to offer my tribute to his memory.
As the life he led was not without honor, so his death is not without
consolation. It was the saying of Antiquity, that it is sweet to die
for country. Here was death not only for country, but for mankind. Nor
is it to be forgotten, that, dying in such a cause, his living voice is
echoed from the tomb. There is a testimony in death often greater than
in any life. The cause for which a man dies lives anew in his death.
“If the assassination could trammel up the consequence,” then might
the assassin find some other satisfaction than the gratification of
a barbarous nature. But this cannot be. His own soul is blasted; the
cause he sought to kill is elevated; and thus it is now. The assassin
is a fugitive in some unknown retreat; the cause is about to triumph.
Often it happens that death, which takes away life, confers what life
alone cannot give. It makes famous. History does not forget Lovejoy,
who for devotion to the cause of the slave was murdered by a fanatical
mob; and it has already enshrined Abraham Lincoln in holiest keeping.
Another is added to the roll,--less exalted than Lincoln, less early in
immolation than Lovejoy, but, like these two, to be remembered always
among those who passed out of life through the gate of sacrifice.
POWERS OF CONGRESS TO PROHIBIT INEQUALITY, CASTE, AND OLIGARCHY OF THE
SKIN.