REMARKS INTENDED TO BE MADE IN THE SENATE, IN SECONDING A MOTION FOR
ADJOURNMENT ON THE OCCASION OF MR. GREELEY’S FUNERAL, DECEMBER 3, 1872.
The death of Mr. Greeley at the close of the canvass in which
nearly three millions of his fellow-citizens had given him their
suffrages for the Presidency, seemed, in the view of leading
Senators on both sides, to require from their body a respectful
recognition of the day appointed for his funeral; and it was
accordingly arranged that a motion for adjournment on this occasion
should be offered by Mr. Fenton, of New York, and seconded by
Mr. Sumner, with appropriate remarks by each. But a dominant
party-spirit, by recourse to parliamentary tactics, prevented
its introduction, and the day passed without notice. The remarks
designed by Mr. Sumner were as follows:--
MR. PRESIDENT,--I have been requested to second this motion. One word,
if you please. A funeral will take place to-morrow, on which the eyes
of the nation will rest, while innumerable hearts throb with grief, and
the people everywhere learn the instability of life and the commandment
of charity. It is proper, therefore, for the representatives of the
nation to suspend labor, that they too may be penetrated by the lesson
of the day. More for them than the illustrious dead is this needed. He
is gone beyond any earthly call; we remain. Duties are always for the
living; and now, standing at the open grave of HORACE GREELEY, we are
admonished to forget the strifes of party, and to remember only truth,
country, and mankind, to which his honest life was devoted. In other
days the horse and armor of the departed chieftain have been buried in
the grave where he reposed. So, too, may we bury the animosities, if
not the badges, of the past. Then, indeed, will there be victory for
the dead which all will share.