The Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill coming up as unfinished
business, Mr. Sumner moved to postpone indefinitely its
consideration, and after remarking on the Report of the Committee
on the Sale of Arms to French Agents, he said:--
MR. PRESIDENT,--I have no hesitation in declaring myself a member of
the Republican Party, and one of the straitest of the sect. I doubt
if any Senator can point to earlier or more constant service in its
behalf. I began at the beginning, and from that early day have never
failed to sustain its candidates and to advance its principles. For
these I have labored always by speech and vote, in the Senate and
elsewhere,--at first with few only, but at last, as success began to
dawn, then with multitudes flocking forward. In this cause I never
asked who were my associates or how many they would number. In the
consciousness of right I was willing to be alone. To such a party, with
which so much of my life is intertwined, I have no common attachment.
Not without regret can I see it suffer; not without a pang can I see
it changed from its original character, for such a change is death.
Therefore do I ask, with no common feeling, that the peril which
menaces it may pass away. I stood by its cradle; let me not follow its
hearse.