Clean, self-poised, great-hearted man, noble in person,
incorruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of
the oppressed.
Of course Congress must draw from every part of the country
swarms of individuals eager only for private interests, who
could not love his stern justice. But if they gave him no
high employment, he made low work high by the dignity of
honesty and truth. But men cannot long do without faculty and
perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of all
affairs intrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings
with which the spirit that makes the Universe rewards labor and
brave truth. He became learned, and adequate to the highest
questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old
errors, and of every noble reform. How nobly he bore himself
in disastrous times. Every reform he led or assisted. In the
shock of the war his patriotism never failed. A man of varied
learning and accomplishments.
He held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of his
mind, and Fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, but that
which follows him, not which he follows after.
Tragic character, like Algernon Sydney, man of conscience and
courage, but without humor. Fear did not exist for him. In
his mind the American idea is no crab, but a man incessantly
advancing, as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly body
that casts it. The American idea is emancipation, to abolish
kingcraft, feudalism, black-letter monopoly, it pulls down the
gallows, explodes priestcraft, opens the doors of the sea to
all emigrants, extemporizes government in new country.
Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the history
of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a
brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with social
culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent and able
workman, with rare ability, without genius, without humor, but
with persevering study, wide reading, excellent memory, high
stand of honor (and pure devotion to his country), disdaining
any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. His
singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman’s
conversation impress every one favorably. He has the foible of
most public men, the egotism which seems almost unavoidable
at Washington. I sat in his room once at Washington whilst he
wrote a weary procession of letters,—he writing without pause
as fast as if he were copying. He outshines all his mates in
historical conversation, and is so public in his regards that
he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is
no favorite with politicians. But wherever I have met with a
dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure
to be a supporter of Sumner.
It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner:
for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible
and a vice. Sumner’s moral instinct and character are so
exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for
honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every
good friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come
near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if
you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes,
easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify
them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his
virtue.
And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on Lafayette
we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by his own
character and fortunes to read that eulogy.
Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adversaries,
his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he had not
stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them truth
and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate
the instruction or not.
A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he needs
no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary genius, but
a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with the highest
sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving
his friend and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to
his purpose, shunning no labor that his aim required, and his
works justified him by their scope and thoroughness.
He had good masters, who quickly found that they had a good
scholar. He read law with Judge Story, who was at the head
of the Law School at Harvard University, and who speedily
discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to his
assistance in the Law School. He had a great talent for labor,
and spared no time and no research to make himself master of
his subject. His treatment of every question was faithful and
exhaustive, and marked always by the noble sentiment.
[149] _Page 252, note 1._ With this message of comfort to Sumner, struck
down for his defence of Liberty, may be contrasted what is said of
Webster when he abandoned her cause:—
“Those to whom his name was once dear and honored, as the manly statesman
to whom the choicest gifts of Nature had been accorded, disown him: ...
he who was their pride in the woods and mountains of New England is now
their mortification,—they have torn his picture from the wall, they have
thrust his speeches into the chimney,” etc.—“Address on the Fugitive
Slave Law,” at Concord, 1851.