Cambridge Sketches

F >> Frank Preston Stearns >> Cambridge Sketches

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His acts of kindness were almost numberless. He assisted those whom
others would not assist; and if he suspected that a small office-holder
was being tyrannized over, he would take no rest until he had satisfied
himself of the truth of the case. In February, 1870, he learned that a
high official in the Boston Post-office, who was supported in his
position by the Governor of the State, was taking advantage of this to
levy a blackmail on his subordinates, compelling them to pay him a
commission in order to retain their places. Frank Bird was furious with
honest indignation. He said: "I will go to Washington and have that man
turned out if I have to see Grant himself for it"; and so he did.

One evening at Walpole a poor woman came to him in distress, because her
only son had been induced to enlist in the Navy, and was already on board
a man-of-war at the Boston Navy-yard. Mr. Bird knew the youth, and was
aware that he was very slightly feeble-minded. The vessel would sail in
three days, and there was no time to be lost. He telegraphed the facts as
briefly as possible to Senator Wilson, and in twenty-four hours received
an order to have the widow's son discharged. Then he would not trust the
order to the commandant, who might have delayed its execution, but sent
it to an agent of his own in the Navy-yard, who saw that the thing was
done.

Frank Bird's most distinguished achievement in politics was the
nomination of Andrew for Governor in 1860. Governor Banks was not
favorable to Andrew and his friends, and used what influence he possessed
for the benefit of Henry L. Dawes. An organization for the nomination of
Dawes had already been secretly formed before Frank Bird was acquainted
with Banks's retirement from the field. Bird and Henry L. Pierce were at
Plymouth when they first heard of it, about the middle of July, and they
immediately returned to Boston, started a bureau, opened a subscription-
list, and with the cooperation of the Bird Club carried the movement
through. It would have made a marked difference in public affairs during
the War for the Union if Dawes had been Governor instead of Andrew.
[Footnote: Dawes was an excellent man in his way, but during eighteen
years in the United States Senate he never made an important speech.]

Frank Bird had this peculiarity, that the more kindly he felt to those
who were unfortunate in life, the more antagonistic he seemed to those
who were exceptionally prosperous. He appeared to have a sort of spite
against handsome men and women, as if nature had been over-partial to
them in comparison with others. He was not a pedantic moralist, but at
the same time rather exacting in his requirements of others, as he was of
himself.

The Bird Club was evolved out of the conditions of its times, like a
natural growth. Its nucleus was formed in the campaign of 1848, when
Bird, Andrew, Henry L. Pierce, and William S. Robinson fell into the
habit of dining together and discussing public affairs every Saturday
afternoon. It was not long before they were joined by Elizur Wright and
Henry Wilson. Sumner came to dine with them, when he was not in
Washington, and Dr. S. G. Howe came with him. The Kansas excitement
brought in George L. Stearns and Frank B. Sanborn,--one the president and
the other the secretary of the Kansas Aid Society. In 1860 the club had
from thirty to forty members, and during the whole course of its
existence it had more than sixty members; but it never had any regular
organization. A member could bring a friend with him, and if the friend
was liked, Mr. Bird would invite him to come again. No vote ever appears
to have been taken. Mr. Bird sat at the head of the table, and if he was
late or absent his place would be supplied by George L. Stearns. At his
right hand sat Governor Andrew, and either Sumner or Stearns on his left.
Doctor Howe and Wilson sat next to them, and were balanced on the
opposite side by Sanborn, Governor Washburn, and two or three members of
Congress. However, there was no systematic arrangement of the guests at
this feast, although the more important members of the club naturally
clustered about Mr. Bird.

N. P. Banks never appeared there, either as Governor or General; and from
this it was argued that he was ambitious to become Senator; or it may
have been owing to his differences with Bird, while the latter was on the
Governor's Council. In this way the Bird Club became the test of a man's
political opinion, and prominent politicians who absented themselves from
it were looked upon with more or less distrust.

The discussions at the club were frank, manly, and unreserved. Members
who talked from the point were likely to be corrected without ceremony,
and sometimes received pretty hard knocks. On one occasion General B. F.
Butler, who had come into the club soon after his celebrated contraband-
of-war order, was complaining that the New York Republicans had nominated
General Francis C. Barlow for Secretary of State, and that General Barlow
had not been long enough in the Republican party to deserve it, when
Robinson replied to him that Barlow had been a Republican longer than
some of those present, and Frank Bird remarked that he was as good a
Republican as any that were going. Butler looked as if he had swallowed a
pill.

William S. Robinson was at once the wit and scribe of the club, and the
only newswriter that was permitted to come to the table. He enjoyed the
advantage of confidential talk and authentic information, which no other
writer of that time possessed, and his letters to the Springfield
_Republican_, extending over a period of fifteen years, come next in
value to the authentic documents of that important period. They possessed
the rare merit of a keen impartiality, and though sometimes rather sharp,
were never far from the mark. He not only criticised Grant and the
political bosses of that time, but his personal friends, Sumner, Wilson,
and Frank Bird himself.

In 1872 Emerson said to a member of the club: "I do not like William
Robinson. His hand is against every man"; but it is doubtful if Robinson
ever published so hard a criticism of any person, and certainly none so
unjust. Emerson without being aware of it was strongly influenced by a
cabal for the overthrow of Robinson, in which General Butler took a
leading hand. Robinson was clerk of the State Senate, and could not
afford to lose his position; afterwards, when he did lose it, he fell
sick and died. He preferred truth-telling and poverty to a compromising
prosperity, and left no one to fill his place.

Frank B. Sanborn was for a time editor of the Boston _Commonwealth_,
and afterwards of the Springfield _Republican_; but he was better
known as the efficient Secretary of the Board of State Charities, a
position to which he was appointed by Governor Andrew, and from which he
was unjustly removed by Governor Ames, twenty years later. He was an
indefatigable worker, and during that time there was not an almshouse or
other institution, public or private, in the State for the benefit of the
unfortunate portion of mankind where he was not either feared or
respected--a man whose active principle was the conscientious performance
of duty. He was also noted for his fidelity to his friends. He cared for
the family of John Brown and watched over their interests as if they had
been his own family; he made a home for the poet Channing in his old age,
and was equally devoted to the Alcotts and others, who could not
altogether help themselves. He was himself a charitable institution.

Henry Wilson is also worth a passing notice, for the strange resemblance
of his life to President Lincoln's, if for no other reason. His name was
originally Colbath, and he was reputed to have been born under a barbery-
bush in one of the green lanes of New Hampshire. The name is an
exceptional one, and the family would seem to have been of the same
roving Bedouin-like sort as that of Lincoln's ancestors. He began life as
a shoemaker, was wholly self-educated, and changed his name to escape
from his early associations. He would seem to have absorbed all the
virtue in his family for several generations. No sooner had he entered
into politics than he was recognized to have a master hand. He rose
rapidly to the highest position in the gift of his State, and finally to
be Vice-President. If his health had not given way in 1873 he might even
have become President in the place of Hayes; for he was a person whom
every man felt that he could trust. His loyalty to Sumner bordered on
veneration, and was the finest trait in his character. There was no
pretense in Henry Wilson's patriotism; everyone felt that he would have
died for his country.

In 1870 General Butler disappeared from the club, to the great relief of
Sumner and his immediate friends. He had already shown the cloven foot by
attacking the financial credit of the government; and the question was,
what would he do next? He had found the club an obstacle to his further
advancement in politics, and when in the autumn campaign Wendell Phillips
made a series of attacks on the character of the club, and especially on
Bird himself, the hand of Butler was immediately recognized in it, and
his plans for the future were easily calculated. It is probable that
Phillips supposed he was doing the public a service in this, but the
methods he pursued were not much to his credit. Phillips learned that the
president of the Hartford and Erie Railroad had recently given Mr. Bird
an Alderney bull-calf, and as he could not find anything else against
Bird's character he made the most of this. He spoke of it as of the
nature of a legislative bribe, and in an oration delivered in the Boston
Music Hall he called it "a thousand dollars in blood."

"Who," he asked of his audience, "would think of exchanging a _bird_
for a bull!"

This was unfortunate for the calf, which lost its life in consequence;
but it was not worth more than ten dollars, and the contrast between the
respective reputations of General Butler and Mr. Bird made Wendell
Phillips appear in rather a ridiculous light.

The following year, 1871, as the Bird Club expected, General Butler made
a strong fight for the gubernatorial nomination, and the club opposed him
in a solid body. Sanborn at this time was editing the Springfield
_Republican_, and he exposed Butler's past political course in an
unsparing manner. Butler made speeches in all the cities and larger towns
of the State, and when he came to Springfield he singled out Sanborn,
whom he recognized in the audience, for a direct personal attack. Sanborn
rose to reply to him, and the contrast between the two men was like that
between Lincoln and Douglas; Sanborn six feet four inches in height, and
Butler much shorter, but very thick-set. The altercation became a warm
one, and Butler must have been very angry, for he grew red in the face
and danced about the platform as if the boards were hot under his feet.
The audience greeted both speakers with applause and hisses.

It was a decided advantage for General Butler that there were three other
candidates in the field; but both Sumner and Wilson brought their
influence to bear against him, and this, with Sanborn's telling
editorials, would seem to have decided his defeat; for when the final
struggle came at the Worcester Convention the vote was a very close one
and a small matter might have changed it in his favor.

The difference between Sumner and the administration, in 1872, on the San
Domingo question accomplished what Phillips and Butler were unable to
effect. Frank Bird and Sumner's more independent friends left the club,
which was then dining at Young's Hotel, and seceded to the Parker House,
where Sumner joined them not long afterwards. Senator Wilson and the more
deep-rooted Republicans formed a new organization called the
Massachusetts Club, which still existed in the year 1900.

The great days of the Bird Club were over. With the death of Sumner, in
1874, its political importance came to an end, and although its members
continued to meet for five or six years longer, it ceased to attract
public attention.

At the age of eighty Frank W. Bird still directed the financial affairs
of his paper business, but he looked back on his life as a "wretched
failure." No matter how much he accomplished, it seemed to him as nothing
compared with what he had wished to do. Would there were more such
failures!

SUMNER.

Charles Pickney Sumner, the father of Charles Sumner, was a man of an
essentially veracious nature. He was high sheriff of Suffolk County,
Massachusetts, and when there was a criminal to be executed he always
performed the office himself. Once when some one inquired why he did not
delegate such a disagreeable task to one of his deputies, he is said to
have replied, "Simply because it is disagreeable." It was this elevated
sense of moral responsibility which formed the keynote of his son's
character.

Charles Sumner's mother was Miss Relief Jacobs, a name in which we
distinguish at once a mixture of the Hebrew and the Puritan. She belonged
in fact to a Christianized Jewish family, but how long since her
ancestors became Christianized remains in doubt. Yet it is easy to
recognize the Hebrew element in Sumner's nature; the inflexibility of
purpose, the absolute self-devotion, and even the prophetic forecast.
Sumner was an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an American statesman.
True to his mother's name, he was at once a Puritan and an Israelite in
whom there was no guile; for he was wholly exempt from covetousness and
other meaner qualities of the Hebrew nature. In such respects Jews and
Yankees are much alike. Either they are generous and high-minded, or they
are not.

Charles was rather a peculiar boy, as great men are apt to be in their
youth. He cared little for boyish games, and still less for the bright
eyes of the girls. He had remarkably long arms and legs, which were too
often in the way of his comrades, and from which he derived the nickname
at the Latin-School of "gawky Sumner"; and it may be well to notice here
that there is no better sign for future superiority than for a lad to be
ridiculed in this manner; while the wags who invent such _sobriquets_
usually come to no good end. [Footnote: More than one such has died the
death of an inebriate.] There is sufficient evidence, however, that
Sumner was well liked both at school and at college.

He had his revenge on declamation day, for whereas others stumbled
through their pieces, he seemed perfectly at home on the platform; his
awkwardness disappeared and his performance gave plain indications of the
future orator. Wendell Phillips was in the class after him, and they both
were excellent speakers.

Sumner's early life was not like that of Lincoln, neither was he obliged
to split rails for a living; but it was a life of good stoical training
nevertheless. Sheriff Sumner had eight children living at one time, and
with the natural desire to give them as good an education as his own, he
could not afford to spend much on external elegances. It was not until
Charles had become a distinguished lawyer that his mother dispensed with
the iron forks and spoons on her dinner table; and this gives a fair idea
of their domestic economy. We learn from Pierce's biography that his
college expenses did not exceed two hundred dollars a year; and this
included everything.

He entered at Harvard in the class of 1830; a year after Doctor Holmes
and a year before Wendell Phillips. Much more is known concerning his
college life than that of other distinguished men of that time, and it is
highly interesting to recognize the mature man foreshadowed in the youth
of eighteen. He was a good scholar in everything but mathematics; yet, at
the same time, he cared little for rank. He was an enthusiastic reader,
and sometimes neglected his studies for a book in which he was more
deeply interested. He also liked to converse about the books he read, and
in this way acquired a reputation for loquacity which never left him as
long as he lived. It was sometimes troublesome to his friends, but it was
of great advantage to him as a public speaker. He lived a quiet, sober,
industrious life in college, attracting comparatively little attention
from either his instructors or his fellow students. Yet, he showed the
independence of his character by attending a cattle-show at Brighton, a
proceeding for which he would have been suspended if it had been
discovered by the college faculty. There were many foolish, monkish
restrictions at Harvard in those days, and among them it was not
considered decorous for a student to wear a colored vest. He might wear a
white vest, but not a buff or a figured one. Sumner preferred a buff
vest, and insisted on wearing it. When he was reprimanded for doing so he
defended his course vigorously, and exposed the absurdity of the
regulation in such plain terms that the faculty concluded to let him
alone for the future. [Footnote: In 1860 he still continued to wear a buff
vest in summer weather.] He was exceedingly fond of the Greek and Latin
authors, and quoted from them in his letters at this time, as he did
afterwards in his speeches. His college course was not a brilliant one
like Everett's and Phillips's, but seems to have been based on a more
solid ground-work.

It was in the Law-School that Sumner first distinguished himself. Judge
Story, who had left the United States Supreme Bench to become a Harvard
professor, was the chief luminary of the school and the finest instructor
in law of his time. He soon discovered in Sumner a pupil after his own
heart, and in spite of the disparity of their ages they became intimate
friends. This is the more significant because Phillips was also in the
same class, and the more brilliant scholar of the two; but Judge Story
soon discovered that Phillips was studying as a means to an end, while
Sumner's interest in the law was like that of a great artist who works
from the pure love of his subject.

William W. Story, who was a boy at this time, records the fact that
Sumner was always pleasant and kind to children.

At the age of twenty-four Charles Sumner was himself appointed an
instructor at the Law-School; and during the two following years he
edited the reports of Judge Story's decisions in the United States
Circuit Courts.

It is evident from James Russell Lowell's "Fable for Critics" that the
personalities of his contemporaries troubled him: he could not see over
their heads. In 1837 Sumner went to Europe and we find from his letters
to Judge Story, George S. Hillard, and others, that he had already
obtained a vantage ground from which the civilized world lay before him,
as all New England does from the top of Mount Washington. He goes into a
French law court, and analyzes the procedure of French justice in a
letter which has the value of an historical document. He noticed that
Napoleon was still spoken of as _l'Empereur_, although there was a
king in France,--a fact pregnant with future consequences. He remained in
Paris until he was a complete master of the French language, and attended
one hundred and fifty lectures at the university and elsewhere. He
enjoyed the grand opera and the acting in French theatres; nor did he
neglect to study Italian art. He was making a whole man of himself; and
it seemed as if an unconscious instinct was guiding him to his destiny.

Fortunate was the old Sheriff to have such a son; but Charles Sumner was
also fortunate to have had a father who was willing to save and economize
for his benefit. Otherwise he might have been a sheriff himself.

Judge Story's letters of introduction opened the doors wide to him in
England. In the course of ten months he became acquainted with almost
every distinguished person in the United Kingdom. He never asked for
introductions, and he never presented himself without one. He was handed
from one mansion to another all the way from London to the Scotch
Highlands. Only twenty-seven years of age, he was treated on an equality
by men ten to fifteen years his senior; and he proved himself equal to
their expectations. No American except Lowell has ever made such a
favorable impression in England as Sumner; but this happened in Sumner's
youth, while Lowell in his earlier visits attracted little attention.

It is perfectly true that if he had been the son of an English sheriff
this would not have happened; but he encountered the same obstacles in
Boston society that he would have done under similar conditions in Great
Britain. The doors of Wentworth House and Strachan Park were open to him,
but those of Beacon Street were closed,--and perhaps it was better for
him on the whole that they were.

Sumner's letters from Europe are at least as interesting as those written
by any other American. Such breadth of vision is not often united with
clearness and accuracy of detail. All his letters ought to be published
in a volume by themselves. Sumner returned to America the following year
and settled himself quietly and soberly to his work as a lawyer. He was
not a success, however, as a practitioner in the courts, unless he could
plead before a bench of judges. In the Common Pleas an ordinary
pettifogger would often take a case away from him. He could not, if he
would, have practised those seductive arts by which Rufus Choate drew the
jury into his net, in spite of their deliberate intentions to the
contrary. Yet, Sumner's reputation steadily improved, so that when
Longfellow came to live in Cambridge he found Sumner delivering lectures
at the Harvard Law-School, where he might have remained the rest of his
life, if he had been satisfied with a merely routine employment, and the
fortunes of the republic had not decided differently.

The attraction between Sumner and Longfellow was immediate and permanent.
It was owing more perhaps to the essential purity of their natures, than
to mutual sympathy in regard to art and literature; although Longfellow
held Sumner's literary judgment in such respect that he rarely published
a new poem without first subjecting his work to Sumner's criticism.

Those who admired Sumner at this time, for his fine moral and
intellectual qualities, had no adequate conception of the far nobler
quality which lay concealed in the depths of his nature. Charles Sumner
was a hero,--one to whom life was nothing in comparison with his duty.

It was in the anti-Irish riot of June, 1837, that he first gave evidence
of this. Nothing was more hateful to him than race prejudice, and what
might be called international malignity, which he believed was the most
frequent cause of war.

As soon as Sumner was notified of the disturbance, he hastened to the
scene of action, seized on a prominent position, and attempted to address
the insurgents; but his pacific words only excited them to greater fury.
They charged on him and his little group of supporters, knocked him down
and trampled on him. Dr. S. G. Howe, who stood near by, a born fighter,
protected Sumner's prostrate body, and finally carried him to a place of
safety, although twice his own size. Sumner took his mishap very coolly,
and, as soon as he could talk freely, addressed his friends on the evils
resulting from race prejudice.

This incident may have led Sumner to the choice of a subject for his
Fourth of July oration in 1845. The title of this address was "The True
Grandeur of Nations," but its real object was one which Sumner always had
at heart, and never relinquished the hope of,--namely, the establishment
of an international tribunal, which should possess jurisdiction over the
differences and quarrels between nations, and so bring warfare forever to
an end. The plan is an impracticable one, because the decisions of a
court only have validity if it is able to enforce them, and how could the
decisions of an international tribunal have value in case the parties
concerned declined to accept them? It would only result in waging war in
order to prevent war. Yet, of all the Fourth of July orations that were
delivered in the nineteenth century, Sumner's and Webster's are the only
two that have survived; and the "True Grandeur of Nations" has recently
been published by the London Peace Society as an argument in favor of
their philanthropic movement.

Sumner was now in the prime of manhood, and a rarely handsome man. He had
an heroic figure, six feet two inches in height, and well proportioned in
all respects. His features, too large and heavy in his youth, had become
strong and regular, and although he had not acquired that leonine look of
reserved power with which he confronted the United States Senate, his
expression was frank and fearless. As L. Maria Child, who heard him
frequently, said, he seemed to be as much in his place on the platform as
a statue on its pedestal. His gestures had not the natural grace of
Phillips's or the more studied elegance of Everett, but he atoned for
these deficiencies by the manly earnestness of his delivery. He made
an impression on the highly cultivated men and women who composed his
audience which they always remembered.

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