Cambridge Sketches

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The question has often been raised by the older abolitionists, "Why did
not Sumner take an earlier interest in the anti-slavery struggle?" The
answer is twofold. That he did not join the Free-soilers in 1844 was most
probably owing to the influence of Judge Story, who had already marked
Sumner out for the Supreme Bench, and wished him to concentrate his
energies in that direction. His friends, too, at this time--Hillard,
Felton, Liebe, and even Longfellow--were either opposed to introducing
the slavery question into politics or practically indifferent to it.

On the other hand, Sumner never could agree with Garrison's position on
this question. He held the Constitution in too great respect to admit
that it was an agreement with death and a government with the devil. He
believed that the founders of the Constitution were opposed to slavery,
and that the expression, "persons held to labor," was good evidence of
this. One of his finest orations in the Senate was intended to prove this
point. Furthermore he perceived the futility of Garrison's idea--and this
was afterwards disproved by the war--that if it were not for the National
Government the slaves would rise in rebellion and so obtain their
freedom. He always asserted that slavery would be abolished under the
Constitution or not at all. Like Abraham Lincoln he waited for his time
to come.

Charles Sumner was the reply that Massachusetts made to the Fugitive
Slave Law, and a telling reply it was. Unlike his legal contemporaries he
recognized the law as a revolutionary act which, unless it was
successfully opposed, would strike a death-blow at American freedom. He
saw that it could only be met by counter-revolution, and he prepared his
mind for the consequences. It was only at such a time that so
uncompromising a statesman as Sumner could have entered into political
life; for the possibility of compromise had passed away with the
suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_, and Sumner's policy of
"no compromise" was the one which brought the slavery question to a
successful issue. For fifteen years in Congress he held to that policy as
faithfully as a planet to its course, and those who differed with him
were left in the rear.

Sumner's first difference was with his conservative friends, and
especially with his law-partner, George S. Hillard, a brilliant man in
his way, and for an introductory address without a rival in Boston.
Hillard was at heart as anti-slavery as Sumner, and his wife had even
assisted fugitive slaves, but he was swathed in the bands of fashionable
society, and he lacked the courage to break loose from them. He adhered
to the Whigs and was relegated to private life. They parted without
acrimony, and Sumner never failed to do his former friend a service when
he found an opportunity.

His difference with Felton was of a more serious kind. Emerson, perhaps,
judged Felton too severely,--a man of ardent temperament who was always
in danger of saying more than he intended.

Sumner's election to the Senate was a chance in ten thousand. It is well
known that at first he declined to be a candidate. He did not think he
was fitted for the position, and when Caleb Gushing urged him to court
the favor of fortune he said: "I will not leave my chair to become United
States Senator." Whatever vanity there might be in the man, he was
entirely free from the ambition for power and place.

There were several prominent public men at the time who would have given
all they owned for the position, but they were set aside for the man who
did not want it,--the bold jurist who dared to set himself against the
veteran statesmen of his country. It reads like a Bible-tale, or the
story of Cincinnatus taken from his plow to become dictator.

The gates of his _alma mater_ were now closed to Sumner, not only
during his life but even long after that. Such is the fate of
revolutionary characters, that they tear asunder old and familiar bonds
in order to contract new ties. In Washington he found a broader and more
vigorous life, if less cultivated, and the Free-soil leaders with whom he
now came in contact in his own State were much more akin to his own
nature than Story, and Felton, and Hillard. Sumner was never popular in
Washington, as he had been among the English liberals and Cambridge men
of letters; but he was respected on all sides for his fearlessness, his
ability, and the veracity of his statements. His previous life now proved
a great advantage to him in most respects, but he had become accustomed
to dealing and conversing with a certain class of men, and this made it
difficult for him to assimilate himself to a wholly different class.
Sumner's ardent temperament required constant self-control in this new
and trying position; and a man who continually reflects beforehand on his
own actions acquires an appearance of greater reserve than a person of
really cold nature.

Seward had thus far been the leader of the Free-soil and Republican
parties, not only before the country at large but in the Senate. It was
soon found, however, that Sumner was not only a more effective speaker,
but possessed greater resources for debate. Judge Story had noticed long
before that facts were so carefully and systematically arranged in
Sumner's mind that whatever spring was touched he could always respond to
the subject with a full and exact statement. He was like a librarian who
could lay his hand on the book he wanted without having to look for it in
the catalogue,--and this upon a scale which seems almost incredible.
Webster possessed the same faculty, but united it with a sense of
artistic beauty which Sumner could not equal.

Sumner, however, was the best orator in Congress at this time, as well as
the best legal authority. On all constitutional questions it was felt
that he had Judge Story's support behind him. His oration on "Freedom
National, Slavery Sectional," was a revelation, not only to the
opposition, but to his own party. From that time forth, he became the
spokesman of his party on all the more important questions.

It frequently happens that the essential character of a government
changes while its form remains the same. In 1801 France was nominally a
Republic, but its administration was Imperial. In 1853 the United States
ceased to be a democracy and became an oligarchy, governed by thirty
thousand slave-holders,--until the people reconquered their rights on the
field of battle. Accustomed to despotic power in their own States for
more than two generations, and justifying themselves always by divine
right, the slave-holders possessed all the self-confidence, pretension,
and arrogance of the old French nobility. They were a self-deluded class
of men, of all classes the most difficult to deal with, and Sumner was
the Mirabeau who faced them at Washington and who pricked the bubble of
their Olympian pretensions by a most pitiless exposure of their true
character.

Those men had come to believe that the ownership of slaves was equivalent
to a patent of nobility, and they were encouraged in this monarchical
illusion by the nobility of Europe. In Disraeli's "Lothair" an English
duke is made to say: "I consider an American with large estates in the
South a genuine aristocrat." The pretension was ridiculous, and the only
way to combat it was to make it appear so. Sumner characterized Butler,
of South Carolina, and Douglas, of Illinois, who was their northern man
of business, as the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of an antiquated cause.
The satire hit its mark only too exactly; and two days later Sumner was
assaulted for it in an assassin-like manner,--struck on the head from
behind while writing at his desk, and left senseless on the floor. Sumner
was considered too low in the social scale for the customary challenge to
a duel, and there was no court in Washington that would take cognizance
of the outrage.

The following day, when Wilson made the most eloquent speech of his life
in an indignant rebuke to Butler and Brooks, Butler started from his seat
to attack him, but was held back by his friends. They might as well have
allowed him to go, for Wilson was a man of enormous strength and could
easily have handled any Southerner upon the floor.

In "The Crime against Kansas" there are two or three sentences which
Sumner afterwards expunged, and this shows that he regretted having said
them; but it is the greatest of his orations, and Webster's reply to
Hayne is the only Congressional address with which it can be compared.
One is in fact the sequence of the other; Webster's is the flower, and
Sumner's the fruit; the former directed against the active principle of
sedition, and the latter against its consequences; and both were directed
against South Carolina, where the war originated. Sumner's speech has not
the finely sculptured character of Webster's, but its architectural
structure is grand and impressive. His Baconian division of the various
excuses that were made for the Kansas outrages into "the apology
_tyrannical_, the apology _imbecile_, the apology _absurd_, and the apology
_infamous_," was original and pertinent.

Preston S. Brooks only lived about six months after his assault on
Sumner, and some of the abolitionists thought he died of a guilty
conscience. Both in feature and expression he bore a decided likeness to
J. Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln. It might have proved
the death of Sumner, but for the devotion of his Boston physician, Dr.
Marshall S. Perry, who went to him without waiting to be telegraphed for.
It was also fortunate for him that his brother George, a very intelligent
man, happened to be in America instead of Europe, where he lived the
greater part of his life. The assault on Sumner strengthened the
Republican party, and secured his re-election to the Senate; but it
produced nervous irritation of the brain and spinal cord, a disorder
which can only be cured under favorable conditions, and even then is
likely to return if the patient is exposed to a severe mental strain.
Sumner's cure by Dr. Brown-Sequard was considered a remarkable one, and
has a place in the history of medicine. The effect of bromide and ergot
was then unknown, and the doctor made such good use of his cauterizing-
iron that on one occasion, at least, Sumner declared that he could not
endure it any longer. Neither could he tell positively whether it was
this treatment or the baths which he afterwards took at Aix-les-Bains
that finally cured him. His own calm temperament and firmness of mind may
have contributed to this as much as Dr. Brown-Sequard.

When Sumner returned to Boston, early in 1860, all his friends went to
Dr. S. G. Howe to know if he was really cured, and Howe said: "He is a
well man, but he will never be able to make another two hours' speech."
Yet Sumner trained himself and tested his strength so carefully that in
the following spring he delivered his oration on the barbarism of
slavery, more than an hour in length, before the Senate; and in 1863 he
made a speech three hours in length, a herculean effort that has never
been equalled, except by Hamilton's address before the Constitutional
Convention of 1787.

I remember Sumner in the summer of 1860 walking under my father's grape
trellis, when the vines were in blossom, with his arms above his head,
and saying: "This is like the south of France." To think of Europe, its
art, history, and scenery, was his relaxation from the cares and
excitement of politics; but there were many who did not understand this,
and looked upon it as an affectation. Sumner in his least serious moments
was often self-conscious, but never affected. He talked of himself as an
innocent child talks. On all occasions he was thoroughly real and
sincere, and he would sometimes be as much abashed by a genuine
compliment as a maiden of seventeen.

At the same time Sumner was so great a man that it was simply impossible
to disguise it, and he made no attempt to do this. The principle that all
men are created equal did not apply in his case. To realize this it was
only necessary to see him and Senator Wilson together. Wilson was also a
man of exceptional ability, and yet a stranger, who did not know him by
sight, might have conversed with him on a railway train without
suspecting that he was a member of the United States Senate; but this
could not have happened in Sumner's case. Every one stared at him as he
walked the streets; and he could not help becoming conscious of this.
That there were moments when he seemed to reflect with satisfaction on
his past life his best friends could not deny; but the vanity that is
born of a frivolous spirit was not in him. He was more like a Homeric
hero than a Sir Philip Sidney, and considering the work he had to do it
was better on the whole that he should be so.

He carried the impracticable theory of social equality to an extent
beyond that of most Americans, and yet he was frequently complained of
for his reserve and aristocratic manners. The range of his acquaintance
was the widest of any man of his time. It extended from Lord Brougham to
J. B. Smith, the mulatto caterer of Boston, who, like many of his race,
was a person of gentlemanly deportment, and was always treated by Sumner
as a valued friend. As the champion of the colored race in the Senate
this was diplomatically necessary; but to the rank and file of his own
party he was less gracious. He had not grown up among them, but had
entered politics at the top, so that even their faces were unfamiliar to
him. The representatives of Massachusetts, who voted for him at the State
House, were sometimes chagrined at the coldness of his recognition,--a
coldness that did not arise from lack of sympathy, but from ignorance of
the individual. Before Sumner could treat a stranger in a friendly
manner, he wished to know what sort of a person he had to deal with.
There is a kind of insincerity in universal cordiality,--like that of the
candidate who is seeking to obtain votes.

A recent writer, who complains of Sumner's lack of graciousness, would do
well to ask his conscience what the reason for it was. If he will drop
the three last letters of his own name the solution will be apparent to
him.

The more Sumner became absorbed in public affairs the less he seemed to
be suited to general society,--or general society to him. He was always
ready to talk on those subjects that interested him, but in general
conversation, in the pleasant give-and-take of wit and anecdote, he did
not feel so much at home as he had in his Cambridge days. His thoughts
were too serious, and the tendency of his mind was argumentative.

Every man is to a certain extent the victim of his occupation; and the
formalities of the Senate were ever tightening their grasp on Sumner's
mode of life. One afternoon, as he was leaving Dr. Howe's garden at South
Boston, the doctor's youngest daughter ran out from the house, and called
to him, "Good-bye, Mr. Sumner." His back was already turned, but he faced
about like an officer on parade, and said with formal gravity: "Good
evening, child," so that Mrs. Howe could not avoid laughing at him. Yet
Sumner was fond of children in his youth. L. Maria Child heard of this
incident and made good use of it in one of her story-books.

The grand fact in Sumner's character, however, rests beyond dispute that
he never aspired to the Presidency. That lingering Washington malady
which victimized Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Seward, Chase, Sherman, and
Blaine, and made them appear almost like sinners in torment, never
attacked Sumner. He had accepted office as a patriotic duty, and, like
Washington, he was ready to resign it whenever his work would be done.

Sumner's speech on the barbarism of slavery, timed as it was to meet the
Baltimore convention, was evidently intended to drive a wedge into the
split between the Northern and Southern Democrats, but it also must have
encouraged the secession movement. Sumner, however, can hardly be blamed
for this, after the indignity he had suffered. That a high member of the
Government could have been assaulted with impunity in open day indicated
a condition of affairs in the United States not unlike that of France at
the time when Count Toliendal was judicially murdered by Louis XV.
Washington City was an oligarchical despotism.

A dark cloud hung over the Republic during the winter of 1860-'61. The
impending danger was that war would break out before Lincoln could be
inaugurated. Such secrecy was observed by the Republican leaders that
even Horace Greeley could not fathom their intentions. Late in December
John A. Andrew and George L. Stearns went to Washington to survey the
ground for themselves, and the latter wrote to William Robinson, "The
watchword is, _keep quiet_." He probably obtained this from Sumner,
and it gives the key to the whole situation.

It demolishes Von Hoist's finely-spun melodramatic theory in regard to
that period of our history, in which he finally compares the condition of
the United States to a drowning man who sees lurid flames before his
eyes. In the Republican and Union parties there were all shades of
compromise sentiment,--from those who were ready to sacrifice anything in
order to prevent secession, to Abraham Lincoln, who was only willing to
surrender the barren and unpopulated State of New Mexico to the
slaveholders. [Footnote: A not unreasonable proposition.] But Sumner,
Wade, Trumbull, Wilson, and King stood together like a rocky coast
against which the successive waves of compromise dashed without effect.
Von Hoist was notified of this fact years before the last volume of his
history was published, but he disregarded it evidently because it
interfered with his favorite theory.

The last of January, however, a report was circulated in Boston that
Sumner had joined the compromisers for the sake of consistency with the
peace principles which he had advocated in his Fourth of July oration.
Boston newspapers made the most of this, although it did not seem likely
to Sumner's friends, and George L. Stearns finally wrote to him for
permission to make a denial of it. Sumner first replied to him by
telegraph saying: "I am against sending commissioners to treat of
surrender by the North. Stand firm." Then he wrote him this memorable
letter.

WASHINGTON, 3d Feb., '61.

My Dear Sir:

There are but few who stand rooted, like the oak, against a storm. This
is the nature of man. Let us be patient.

My special trust is this: _No possible compromise or concession will be
of the least avail._ Events are hastening which will supersede all
such things. This will save us. But I like to see Mass. in this breaking
up of the Union ever true. God keep her from playing the part of Judas
or--of Peter! You may all bend or cry pardon--I will not. Here I am, and
I mean to stand firm to the last. God bless you!

Ever yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

The handwriting of this letter is magnificent. Sumner had a strongly
characteristic hand with something of artistic grace in it, too; but in
this instance his writing seems like the external expression of the mood
he was in when he wrote the letter.

The question may be asked, Why then did not Sumner rise in the Senate and
make one of his telling speeches against compromise during that long,
wearisome session? I think the answer will be found in the watchword:
"Keep quiet!" He perfectly understood the game that Seward was playing
and he was too wise to interfere with it. Seward was the cat and
compromise was the mouse. Whatever mistakes he may have afterwards made,
Seward at this time showed a master hand. He encouraged compromise, but
he must have been aware that the proposed constitutional amendment, which
would forever have prevented legislation against slavery, would not have
been confirmed by the Northern States. He could easily count the
legislatures that would reject it. It finally passed through Congress on
the last night of this session by a single vote, and was ratified by only
three States!

As soon as Lincoln was inaugurated there was no more talk of compromise,
and Seward was firmness itself. He declined to receive the disunion
commissioners; [Footnote: At the same time he coquetted with them
unofficially.] he compelled the Secretary of War to reinforce Fort
Pickens; he overhauled General Scott, who proved an impediment to
vigorous military operations. These facts tell their own tale.

After Seward and Chase had left the Senate Sumner was _facile
princeps_. Trumbull was a vigorous orator and a rough-rider in debate,
but he did not possess the store of legal knowledge and the vast fund of
general information which Sumner could draw from. One has to read the
fourth volume of Pierce's biography to realize the dimensions of Sumner's
work during the period from 1861 to 1869. Military affairs he never
interfered with, but he was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs,
the most important in the Senate, and in the direction of home politics
he was second to none. No other voice was heard so often in the
legislative halls at Washington, and none heard with more respect. A list
of the bills that he introduced and carried through would fill a long
column.

The test of statesmanship is to change from the opposition to the
leadership in a Government,--from critical to constructive politics. Carl
Schurz was a fine orator and an effective speaker on the minority side,
but he commenced life as a revolutionist and always remained one. If he
had once attempted to introduce legislation, he would have shown his
weakness, exactly where Sumner proved his strength. Froude says that to
be great in politics "is to recognize a popular movement, and to have the
courage and address to lead it"; but three times Sumner planted his
standard away in advance of his party, and stood by it alone until his
followers came up to him.

He was always in advance of his party, but conspicuously so in regard to
the abolition of slavery, the exposure of Andrew Johnson's perfidy, and
the reconstruction of the rebellious States. We might add the annexation
of San Domingo as a fourth; for I believe there are few thinking persons
at present who do not feel grateful to him for having saved the country
from that uncomfortable acquisition.

The bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia was introduced by
Wilson. Sumner did not like to be always proposing anti-slavery measures
himself, and he wished Wilson to have the honor of it. Wilson would not,
of course, have introduced the measure without consulting his colleague.

Lincoln evidently desired to enjoy the sole honor of issuing the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, and he deserved to have it; but Sumner
thought it might safely have been done after the battles of Fort
Donaldson and Shiloh, and the victories of Foote and Farragut on the
Mississippi, six months before it was issued; and he urged to have it
done at that time. Whether his judgment was correct in this, it is
impossible to decide.

Early in July, 1862, he introduced a bill in the Senate for the
organization of the "contrabands" and other negroes into regiments,--a
policy suggested by Hamilton in 1780,--and no one can read President
Lincoln's Message to Congress in December, 1864, without recognizing that
it was only with the assistance of negro troops that the Union was
finally preserved.

In spite of the continued differences between Sumner and Seward on
American questions they worked together like one man in regard to foreign
politics. Sumner's experience in Europe and his knowledge of public men
there was much more extensive than Seward's, and in this line he was of
invaluable assistance to the Secretary of State.

Lowell could make a holiday of six years at the Court of St. James, but
during the war it was a serious matter to be Minister to England. In the
summer of 1863 affairs there had reached a climax. The _Alabama_ and
_Florida_ were scaring all American ships from the ocean, and five
ironclad rams, built for the confederate government, were nearly ready to
put to sea from English ports. If this should happen it seemed likely
that they would succeed in raising the blockade. As a final resort
Lincoln and Seward sent word to Adams to threaten the British Government
with war unless the rams were detained.

Meanwhile it was necessary to brace up the American people to meet the
possible emergency. On September 10 Sumner addressed an audience of three
thousand persons in Cooper Institute, New York, for three hours on the
foreign relations of the United States; and there were few who left the
hall before it was finished. He arraigned the British Government for its
inconsistency, its violation of international law, and its disregard of
the rights of navigators. It was not only a heroic effort, but a self-
sacrificing one; for Sumner knew that it would separate him forever from
the larger number of his English friends.

At the same time Minister Adams had an equally difficult task before him.
War with England seemed to be imminent. He held a long consultation with
Benjamin Moran, the Secretary of Legation, and they finally concluded to
see if an opinion could be obtained on the confederate rams from an
English legal authority. They went to Sir Robert Colyer, one of the lords
of the admiralty, and asked him if he was willing to give them an
opinion. He replied that he considered the law above politics, and that
he wished to do what was right. After investigating the subject Colyer
made a written statement to the effect that the United States was wholly
justified in demanding detention of the rams. Adams then placed this
opinion together with Lincoln's notification before the British Cabinet,
but the papers were returned to him with a refusal of compliance. "There
is nothing now," said Adams to Moran, "but for us to pack up and go
home"; but Moran replied, "Let us wait a little; while there is life
there is hope"; and the same evening Adams was notified that Her
Majesty's Government still had the subject under consideration. The rams
proved a dead loss.

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