As it became known that Mr. Sumner would return home to vote,
a Boston committee visited Philadelphia to urge his acceptance
of a banquet, with the understanding that he should simply show
himself there without speaking. Acting under medical advice, he
declined this invitation. The sympathy of the community found
vent in a public reception.
The reception of Senator Sumner, on his return to Boston, was
an imposing popular demonstration.[1] It was purely a peaceful
and spontaneous celebration. There was no organization of
enthusiasm; there were no military, no fire companies, no
associated bodies, to swell the ranks of the procession or
attract attention. Those of his fellow-citizens, simply, who
wished to testify respect and sympathy, went forth to meet
him; through the mouth of one, the most venerable and honored
of their number, they welcomed him on his entrance within the
limits of the city, and the chief executive magistrate of the
Commonwealth greeted him on his arrival beneath the shadow of
the State capitol. In both places, and also before Mr. Sumner’s
residence in Hancock Street, there were vast concourses of
citizens, assembled to do honor to their Senator.
The weather was favorable; the atmosphere was clear and warm
for the season; and although the appearance of the sky at times
boded rain, none fell until late in the evening, long after the
exercises of the day were concluded.
Mr. Sumner arrived in this vicinity on Sunday morning,
November 2d. On Monday he drove from Professor Longfellow’s,
in Cambridge, where he had been staying, to the house of Amos
A. Lawrence, Esq., at Longwood, in Brookline. Soon after one
o’clock, the invited guests, who had assembled at the State
House, proceeded in open carriages to Longwood, where they were
joined by Mr. Sumner, who passed along the line of carriages,
and was silently greeted by the gentlemen rising and removing
their hats. The carriages then proceeded across to Roxbury, and
thence along Washington Street to the Boston line, which was
reached at three o’clock. Here the cavalcade was assembled,
together with a vast concourse of citizens.
The chief marshal was General John S. Tyler, assisted by the
following gentlemen as aids: Major John C. Park, Colonel
R. I. Burbank, Major Moses G. Cobb, E. Webster Pike, Esq.,
Adjutant-General E. W. Stone, Colonel A. J. Wright, Colonel W.
W. Bullock, and Carlos Pierce, Esq.
The following were the assistant marshals: Captain I. F.
Shepard, Charles H. Hawes, W. E. Webster, F. L. Chapin, O.
H. Dutton, Major F. A. Heath, F. B. Fay, Julian O. Mason, A.
A. Dunnels, Stephen Rhoades, H. D. Child, Leister M. Clark,
Charles W. Pierce, R. F. Martin, Rufus Frost, F. A. Fuller,
J. W. Wolcott, William B. Spooner, Henry D. Williams, Colonel
Robert Cowdin, of Boston, and Eugene Batchelder, Charles D.
Hills, D. P. Ripley, of Cambridge.
As it went up Washington Street, the cavalcade numbered, by
actual count, about eight hundred horsemen; but its numbers
were subsequently increased by fresh arrivals, in couples and
in groups, to over a thousand.
On the head of the cavalcade reaching the borders of Roxbury,
it halted, and the whole was drawn up in a long line at the
upper side of Washington Street, facing the centre. For over
half an hour it waited for the cortege from Brookline which was
to escort Mr. Sumner, and when at last the latter appeared,
it was received with hearty cheers and music from the Brigade
Band. It consisted of some sixteen or eighteen barouches or
carriages, containing the Committee of Arrangements and other
gentlemen.
The barouche which contained Mr. Sumner was drawn by
magnificent horses. With Mr. Sumner was the Rev. Professor F.
D. Huntington, of Harvard University, and Dr. Perry, of this
city, Mr. Sumner’s physician. Among those in the succeeding
barouches were Messrs. Abbott and James Lawrence, George and
Isaac Livermore, Edwin P. Whipple, George R. Russell, Charles
G. Loring, J. Huntington Wolcott, Hon. E. C. Baker, President
of the Senate, Dr. Beck and Rev. Dr. Francis, of Cambridge,
Professor Lovering, and James Russell Lowell, the poet,--that
which followed Mr. Sumner’s barouche containing Professor
Longfellow, and George Sumner, the brother of the Senator.
As the carriage with Mr. Sumner touched the line between
Roxbury and Boston, there was a general cheer, which was
continued along far into the distance,--the Brigade Band
playing “Hail Columbia.” The first division of the cavalcade
wheeled to the left, and formed into an escort. The carriages
of Mr. Sumner and the Committee came next in succession, and
then the two remaining divisions fell into column.
A few rods north of the Roxbury line the cavalcade came to a
halt, when Mr. Sumner’s carriage was driven alongside of that
containing Hon. Josiah Quincy, and Hon. Alexander H. Rice,
mayor of Boston. After greetings between the parties, Professor
Huntington introduced Mr. Sumner to Mr. Quincy in the following
brief address.
“MR. QUINCY,--The Committee of Arrangements for welcoming
the Hon. Charles Sumner to his home present him here to
you, Sir, a venerated representative of the city of his
birth. He comes back from his public post, where he has
bravely advocated the cause of all freemen, to enjoy a
freeman’s privilege and discharge a freeman’s duty. He
comes, a cheerful and victorious sufferer, out of great
conflicts of humanity with oppression, of ideas with
ignorance, of scholarship and refinement with barbarian
vulgarity, of intellectual power with desperate and brutal
violence, of conscience with selfish expediency, of right
with wrong. Boston does well in coming out to greet him.
For that ample and lofty manhood, trained under her
education and consolidated in her climate, has added new
dignity to her old renown. It has joined her name more
inseparably than ever with the aspirations of Christian
liberty, and the honors of disinterested patriotism,
throughout the earth, and through all time.”
MR. QUINCY then addressed Mr. Sumner as follows.
“MR. SUMNER,--It is with inexpressible pleasure that I
address you this day as the voice of the great multitude
of your fellow-citizens. In their name, and by their
authority, I welcome you to your home in Massachusetts,
expressing their honor and thanks for the power and
fidelity with which you have fulfilled your duties as
their representative in the Senate of the United States,
where, ‘unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,’ you kept your
love, your zeal, your loyalty to Liberty,--where neither
number nor example, threat nor sneer, ‘within you wrought
to swerve from truth, or change your constant mind.’
[_Applause._]
“You return to your country, Sir, after having given
glorious evidences of intellectual power, which touched,
as with the spear of Ithuriel, the evil spirit of our
Union, causing it at once to develop in full proportions
its gigantic deformity, compelling it to unveil to the Free
States its malign design to make this land of the free a
land of slaves. [_Voices, ‘Never! never!’_]
“You have suffered, and are still suffering, for your
intrepid faithfulness. But suffering in the cause of Truth
and Liberty is the heaven-laid path to win ‘the crown
which Virtue gives after this mortal change to her true
servants.’ [_Hearty cheers._]
“I rejoice that my life has been prolonged to this
day,--that I am permitted to behold the dawnings of
ancient Liberty through the broken openings of the clouds,
which for more than fifty years the spirit of Slavery has
extended over this Union. I thank Heaven that now, at
last, the Free States are beginning to awaken to a sense
of their dangers and their duties,--that, at length, they
begin to realize that the Slave States have overleaped
the bounds of the Constitution. The apathy of half a
century may delay for a time the triumphs of Freedom, but
come they will. Final success is certain. Never again
will the Free States in silence acquiesce in the farther
extension of slave domain. [_Loud applause, and cries of
‘Never! never!’_] Henceforth they will hear and attend to
the warning voice of Washington, solemnly uttered in his
Farewell Address,--‘SUBMIT NOT TO USURPATION,’--‘RESIST,
WITH CARE, THE SPIRIT OF INNOVATION UPON THE PRINCIPLES OF
THE CONSTITUTION.’ [_Cheers._]
“We welcome you, Sir, as the champion of Freedom [_loud
cheers_], and as one to whom the deliverance which we hope
may yet be destined for our country will be greatly due.”
MR. SUMNER, who had been standing in his carriage, uncovered,
then spoke, in a subdued voice, and evidently under the
influence of deep feeling, as follows.
MR. QUINCY,--A year has nearly run since I left Boston in the discharge
of public duties. During this period, amidst important events, I have
been able to do something which my fellow-citizens and neighbors,
speaking by your authoritative voice, are pleased to approve. I am
happy in this approbation. Especially am I happy that it is conveyed
by the eloquent words of one who from my childhood has been with me an
object of unaffected reverence, who was the municipal head of my native
city while I was a pupil at its public schools, and who was the head of
the University while I was a pupil in that ancient seat.
Boston, early in her history, set her face against Slavery. By a vote,
entered upon her Town Records, as long ago as 1701, she called upon her
Representatives “to put a period to negroes being slaves.” If I have
done anything to deserve the greeting you now lavish, it is because I
have striven to maintain those principles here declared, and to extend
them to other places,--stretching the venerable shelter of Faneuil Hall
even over distant Kansas. [_Loud applause._]
You have made allusion to the suffering which I have undergone. This
is not small. But it has been incurred in the performance of duty; and
how little is it, Sir, compared with the suffering of fellow-citizens
in Kansas! How small is it, compared with that tale of woe which is
perpetually coming to us from the house of bondage!
With you I hail the omens of final triumph. I ask no prophet to confirm
this assurance. The future is not less secure than the past.
You are pleased to quote injunctions of Washington. If ever there was
occasion to bear these, not only in memory, but in heart, the time is
now, when Usurpation is the order of the day, and the Constitution
is set at defiance. Beyond these precepts is also his great example,
which, from first to last, teaches the constant lesson of fidelity, in
standing up for the liberties of our country, in undoubting faith that
the good cause cannot fail.
The rule of duty is the same for the lowly and the great; and, in the
communication which I addressed to the Legislature of Massachusetts,
accepting the trust which I now hold, I ventured to adopt the
determination of Washington, and to avow his confidence. In both I hope
to hold fast unto the end. [_Loud cheers._]
Mr. Sumner then passed from the carriage in which he had been
riding into that of Mr. Quincy and Mayor Rice. Professor
Huntington also took a seat in the same carriage, which was
drawn by six splendid gray horses. A body-guard of marshals
mounted, and of police, formed on each side of the barouche, in
order to keep the multitudes in the streets from pressing up to
shake hands with Mr. Sumner.
The cavalcade then proceeded onwards, amid repeated cheers of
the multitudes lining the streets on both sides. In accordance
with directions from his physician, Mr. Sumner acknowledged
these demonstrations only by a wave of the hand.
On reaching Newton Street, on Blackstone Square, a long line
of beautiful young ladies was ranged upon the pavement on the
south side, each holding a bouquet, to present to Senator
Sumner. Previously, however, a very interesting scene took
place. Mrs. C. W. Pierce, Mrs. G. L. Goodwin, Mrs. Henry Keyes,
and Miss Mary Pierce--each dressed in white, with wreaths on
their heads, and wearing elegant sashes--came forward, and
presented Mr. Sumner splendid bouquets, which action seemed
to give him much gratification. But the receipt of another
from the hands of a lovely child, carried up to the Senator in
the arms of a gentleman, and a similar act in Shawmut Avenue,
were peculiarly grateful to him. No previous or subsequent
circumstances during the day seemed to give Mr. Sumner such
true delight as these kindnesses. On proceeding forward, the
ladies showered their bouquets upon him from sidewalks and
windows along the street, until the carriage was pretty nigh
full. As the floral burden accumulated, he laughed the more
heartily, and spoke his gratitude to every one of the fair
donors his voice could reach. All along Newton Street, and the
west side of Blackstone Square, the procession was cheered
in the most enthusiastic manner. Ladies crowded almost every
window, and the scene was the most brilliant along the route.
As the procession reached the Boston Female Orphan Asylum on
Washington Street, the inmates of that institution were seen
ranged in front of the building, waving their handkerchiefs,
and displaying on a white banner a beautiful wreath of
evergreen intermingled with flowers, with the motto,--
“We weave a wreath for Charles Sumner.”
This was the only point on the route of the procession where
Mr. Sumner rose to his feet. Here the kindness of these
orphaned ones so touched his feelings, that he could not help
acknowledging it in this way.
Attached to several of the bouquets thrown to Mr. Sumner were
appropriate and expressive mottoes. The principal of them were
as follows.
“No bludgeon can dim the lustre of our champion of Freedom.”
“Massachusetts’s most honored son. If the ladies could
vote, he would be the next President.”
“A warm welcome from warm hearts to the noblest man America
has ever borne in her bosom! 78 Shawmut Avenue, Nov. 3,
1856.”
“Welcome home! The sons and daughters of Massachusetts
greet her noblest defender.”
“Infants welcome him whose name lives immortal in the
hearts of his countrymen.”
“Welcome, dear friend of justice!”
All along the line of procession, namely, down Washington
Street, Newton Street, Shawmut Avenue, Dover Street, Washington
Street, West Street, Tremont Street, Boylston Street, Charles
Street, and Beacon Street to the State House, the crowds which
greeted the honored Senator at every point were great.
At the corner of Washington and Newton Streets, over
Washington, there was a fine display of flags and streamers.
From the house of Mr. Nickerson, fronting on Franklin Square,
was a splendid triumphal arch, between two elm-trees, flags and
streamers surrounding the word--
“Welcome!”
Newton Street had a large number of flags, the union jack
displayed alternately with the national ensign on staffs
projecting from Franklin Square. The entire street was strewed
with evergreens. It was a beautiful display.
At the junction of Newton Street and Shawmut Avenue, the
houses of Benjamin Smith and Alfred A. Andrews were splendidly
decorated with festoons and flags. Between them, floating above
Newton Street, was the following:--
“Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend her
noble Sumner!”
The house of E. G. Dudley, at the corner of Shawmut Avenue
and Waltham Street, made a fine appearance. Besides flags and
festoons, was the following, wreathed in black:--
“May 22, 1856.”