Born at Boston, Jan. 6, 1811: died at Washington, D. C., March 11, 1874. A noted American statesman. He was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard, graduating in 1830; studied law at Harvard; and was admitted to the bar in 1834. He travelled in Europe 1837–40; became noted as an advocate of anti-slavery ideas; took an active part in politics as a Whig, and from 1848 as a Free-soiler; was an unsuccessful Free-soil candidate for Congress in 1848; was elected United States senator from Massachusetts by Free-soil and Democratic votes 1851; became a leading opponent of slavery in Congress; was assaulted in the senate-chamber by Preston Brooks May 22, 1856; was reëlected senator as a Republican in 1857, 1863, and 1869; was absent from his seat 1856–59; became chairman of the committee on foreign affairs in 1861; and was removed from it in 1871 for his opposition to Grant’s policy regarding the annexation of Santo Domingo. He was a champion of the Civil Rights Bill for the negroes, and opposed the reëlection of Grant in 1872. His works, in 15 vols., were published 1870–83.

Personal

  My friend Charles Sumner will be with you in the spring. You will not fail to make much of him, as nature has done before you; for he stands six feet two in his stockings,—a colossus holding his burning heart in his hand, to light up the sea of life: I am in earnest. He is a very lovely character, as you will find,—full of talent; with a most keen enjoyment of life; simple, energetic, hearty, good; with a great deal of poetry and no nonsense about him. You will take infinite delight in his society, and in walking old Rome with him.

  Popular Sumner is off to Italy, the most popular of men,—inoffensive, like a worn sixpence that has no physiognomy left. We preferred Coolidge to him in this circle.

  Mr. Charles Sumner dined with me, and spent the evening with my son. He returned yesterday from Europe, having been absent two years from last December. He talked incessantly; is inflated with exaggerated egotism; has been familiar with Bench and Bar of Westminster; has ridden an English Circuit, and been familiar with the gentry and nobility; has seen the best literary characters in France and Germany, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, Heidelberg, and Italy. Mr. Sumner showed me one of the original exchequer tallies, he also gave me the address of M. Mittermaier.

  Sumner’s social success at this early period, before his reputation was established, was most remarkable. He was a welcome guest at most of the best houses both in town and country, and the impression he uniformly left was that of an amiable, sensible, high-minded, well-informed gentleman. But his powers of conversation were not striking; and when you ask me to recall the qualities which account for his success, I most frankly own that it was and is to me as much a puzzle as the eminent and widespread success of your countryman and townsman, George Ticknor. At the same time, I feel satisfied that, in each instance, the success was indisputable and well deserved.

  He was neither Sybarite nor ascetic. To excess of any kind he had the aversion which comes of good breeding as well as good morals; but he did not accept the rule of ethics on which many good people now insist,—that, for example and self-discipline, one ought to abstain from what is very liable to abuse. He seasoned his food with hock and claret, always however with moderation; but these he never took except at meals, and rigidly abstained from the violent drinks. From the political controversy involving legislation for the suppression of intemperance, which beginning as early as 1837 has continued ever since, he kept entirely aloof.

  Mr. Sumner was never successfully attacked when living, except with bludgeon,—and his friends have more than sufficiently vindicated him since his death.

  About 1828, I became acquainted with Charles Sumner. He was then a tall, bony, and not graceful youth, with a great deal of brown, waving hair. He was natural, ingenuous, enthusiastic, had a way of blushing frequently when interested in his subject. He was full of ideas, and fond of expressing them.

  It was the misfortune of Sumner that, more than any other public man of his time, he was subjected to the extremes of adulation and obloquy. His real character can hardly be discerned amid the tumult of puffs and scoffs, of exultations and execrations, which the mere mention of his name excited during his public career. Sumner himself was inclined to take the compliments at more than their real worth, while he experienced another though different satisfaction in reading the calumnies…. He never swore as an individual; nobody ever heard an oath slip from his lips even in his ecstasies of philanthropic rage; but he was the best swearer by proxy and quotation that I ever listened to. The oaths launched at him by his Southern enemies, the oaths which some Republican Senators would occasionally hurl at him when they were vexed by his obstinacy in clinging to his own view of a party question that had been decided against him by a majority of Republican statesmen,—these, in narrating his experiences in political life to a friend, he would roll over on his tongue in quite an unsanctified but still innocent fashion, and laugh at the profanity as something exquisitely comical. The more people swore at him, the more delighted he was; and it is a pity that he did not have the same sense of humour in estimating the hyperboles of panegyric addressed to him by his admirers, which he unquestionably had in estimating the hyperboles of execration shot at him by his assailants.

  Mr. Sumner stood six feet two inches high without his shoes, and he was so well built that his height was only noticeable when he was near a person of ordinary size. But there was a manner about him, a free swing of the arm, a stride, a pose of his shaggy head, a sway of his broad shoulders, that gave to those who knew him best the idea that he was of heroic size. Then, too, there was something in the intent look of his deep-set eye, his corrugated brow, the frown born of intense thought, and his large head, made to seem yet larger by its crown of thick, heavy, longish gray hair, all of which gave the idea of physical greatness; but with his frequent smile the set frown passed, his whole appearance changed, and his face beamed like a dark lantern suddenly lighted. His smile effected a wonderful transformation in his whole appearance, and it set up a peculiar sympathy between himself and its recipient.

  Mr. Sumner was interesting by both his merits and his faults. He was a ripe scholar, an elegant and instructive writer. As an orator, he had few if any superiors. His style was ornate, his delivery impressive. His speeches in the Senate were carefully prepared, and were worthy of the close attention which they received from most of the senators, although they were better fitted for the platform than the halls of legislation. His face was handsome and highly intellectual. He was tall, well formed and of commanding presence, a “man of mark” in the street or in an assembly. He was also a pure man, a man of unsullied and unassailable integrity. All this can be justly said of him. On the other hand, his prejudices were hastily formed and violent. His self-esteem was limitless. Impatient of contradiction, his manner to those who differed with him was arrogant and offensive. His ears were ever open to flattery, of which he was omnivorous. His friendship was confined to the very few whom he acknowledged to be his equals, or to the many who looked up to him as a superior. His sympathies were for races—too lofty to descend to persons. For the freedom of the slaves he was an earnest worker; of their claims to all the privileges of freedom, after their emancipation, he was an able and eloquent advocate and defender; but to appeals of needy colored people to his charity, or even his sympathy, he was seemingly indifferent. These constitutional defects in his character did not greatly impair his usefulness, nor lessen the estimation in which he was held by those who knew him well and properly appreciated his excellent qualities and the value of his public services. He was one of the most distinguished of that gallant band whom the slavery question, made prominent in the United States, and his name will be at all times and everywhere honored by the lovers of freedom.

  He, was a light-haired, light-complexioned man, of agreeable presence and kindly manner.

  Few public men whom I have seen had as commanding a presence as Charles Sumner. He had all the stature and the bulk of Bismarck; but he had a very handsome, finely cut face, which Bismarck certainly had not.

Statesman

  After a long trial and much anxiety, our grand object in Massachusetts has been attained. We have sent Charles Sumner into the United States Senate,—a man physically and spiritually head and shoulders above the old hackneyed politicians of that body. The plan for this was worked out last summer at Phillips Beach, and I sounded Sumner upon it the evening we left you at that place. He really did not want the office, but we forced it upon him. I am proud of old Massachusetts, and thankful that I have had an humble share in securing her so true and worthy a representative of her honor, her freedom, and intellect, as Charles Sumner. He is a noble and gifted man, earnest and truthful. I hope great things of him, and I do not fear for his integrity and fidelity, under any trial.

  First, he was the most accomplished man in public life in America; second, the ablest orator in Congress; third, of unblemished private character; fourth, of unblemished public character, which no breath of calumny had ever reached, and whom no one had ever dared approach with a dishonorable proposition; fifth, a man whose zeal and talents had been expended, not upon selfish schemes, but upon measures and policies looking to the improvement of the condition of society,—such ends as, whatever difference of opinion may prevail as to the adaptation of his means to secure them, must possess the sympathy and respect of all good citizens; sixth, he is very amiable; and seventh, a man whose decorum of character and whose talents have done and are doing more than those of any other man in the Senate to arrest the gradual decline of that body in the estimation of the country, in itself a service which those who feel the important rôle the Senate ought to play in our constitutional system know how to appreciate.

  Strange as, in looking back upon the past, the assertion may seem impossible, it would have been ten years ago to make it, it is not the less true that to-day Mississippi regrets the death of Charles Sumner, and sincerely unites in paying honors to his memory. Not because of the splendor of his intellect, though in him was extinguished one of the brightest of the lights which have illuminated the councils of the government for nearly a quarter of a century; not because of the high culture, the elegant scholarship, and the varied learning which revealed themselves so clearly in all his public efforts, as to justify the application to him of Johnson’s felicitous expression, “He touched nothing which he did not adorn;” not this, though these are qualities by no means, it is to be feared, so common in public places as to make their disappearance, in even a single instance, a matter of indifference; but because of those peculiar and strongly marked moral traits of his character, which gave the coloring to the whole tenor of his singularly dramatic public career; traits which made him for a long period, to a large portion of his countrymen, the object of as deep and passionate a hostility, as to another he was one of enthusiastic admiration, and which are not the less the cause that now unites all these parties, once so widely differing, in a common sorrow to-day over his lifeless remains.

  We are commanded by the Senate to render back to you your illustrious dead. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, you dedicated to the public service a man who was even then greatly distinguished. He remained in it, quickening its patriotism, informing its councils, and leading in its deliberations, until, having survived in continuous service all his original associates, he has closed his earthly career. With reverent hands we bring to you his mortal part, that it may be committed to the soil of the renowned Commonwealth that gave him birth. Take it; it is yours. The part which we do not return to you is not wholly yours to receive, nor altogether ours to give. It belongs to the country, to freedom, to civilization, to humanity. We come to you with the emblems of mourning, which faintly typify the sorrow which dwells in the breast they cover. So much we must concede to the infirmity of human nature; but in the view of reason and philosophy, is it not rather a matter of high exultation that a life so pure in its personal qualities, so lofty in its public aims, so fortunate in the fruition of noble effort, has closed safely without a stain, before age had impaired its intellectual vigour, before time had dimmed the lustre of its genius? Our mission is completed. We commit to you the body of Charles Sumner. His undying fame the Muse of History has already taken into her keeping.

  That a man should go through the fiery furnace of Washington politics, nay, live in it half a lifetime, and be found at his death like an ingot of finest gold, is something for a country to be proud of. I do not think we ever had exactly such a public man, and it will be most difficult to replace him. What was remarkable about him, it always seemed to me, was his progressiveness. As a scholar he was always improving, always a hard student. As a statesman he had always an ideal goal far ahead of present possibilities, and yet he lived to see the nation come up to the mark which had seemed so long in the cloudland of fanaticism, while he had again moved far in advance of those original aims. The great gift of keeping his eyes fixed on something far away which was to benefit the nation and the world, of stopping his ears against the chatterings and howlings which made so many others turn back and so be changed to stone, was never more marked in a public man in any country, while the utter absence of self-seeking and vulgar commonplace ambition was equally remarkable. His loss is irreparable to the country and to his personal friends.

  Among Americans the distinctive Puritan statesman of our time, the worthy political descendant of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams, whose name can never be mentioned at this New England table without affection and honor, who added to that indomitable conviction of the Roundhead the cultivated graces of the Cavalier, and whose lofty character and unstained life was a perpetual rebuke of mercenary politics and mean ambitions, was Charles Sumner.

  Sixty-three years this man had lived upon earth. For more than a score of them he had been counted among her great men, with what reason his life has shown. A child of New England, and the product of her traditions, he was a citizen of the world; a scholar, he neglected learning that he might act nobly; a statesman, he taught his country that greatness was only greatness when it was founded upon justice; loving the praise of men, he cast it aside as a thing of no worth that he might serve the lowest of his brethren; very human, he made of his faults an offering, and hesitated not before suffering, and welcomed scorn, if so be these were the fiery tokens of duty; a man of eloquent speech, he trained his lips to speak no word that did not express a purpose of his soul, till men taunted him with his constancy. Strong for the right, he was fierce against wrong; loving liberty, he looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, but pursued her with a single eye, and forgot the lions in the way that he might the sooner bring his people to her pleasant paths; the sworn knight of righteousness and freedom, he dallied not with pleasure nor hesitated for danger: all things were his, that he might use them for mankind,—and mankind crowned him with great glory, and laid in his right hand the gift of fame.

  There is no statesman of his time whom we can compare with Charles Sumner for unerring instinct, save Lincoln alone,—and Lincoln owed much to his counsels…. He was a leader and not a follower. He never studied the direction of the popular breeze. He did not gather other men’s opinions before he formed or uttered his own. He was courageous, and absolutely without regard to personal consequences when great principles were involved…. If we judge him by the soundness of his principles, by the wisdom of his measures, by his power to command the support of the people, by the great public results he accomplished, there is no statesman of his time to be named in the same breadth with him, save Abraham Lincoln.

  He brought, first, a magnificent physical organization, just in its prime. There is an Arabian proverb that no man is called of God till the age of forty; and Sumner was just that age when he entered the Senate. He had a grand, imposing presence, strong health, and athletic habits. He was, if I mistake not, one of the few persons who have ever swum across the Niagara River just below the Falls. Niagara first; slavery afterward. He felt fully the importance of bodily vigor, and I remember that once, in looking at a fine engraving of Charles Fourier, in my study, after I had remarked “What a head!” he answered: “Yes; and what a body! A head is almost worthless without an adequate body to sustain it.” His whole physique marked him as a leader and ruler among men; and I remember well that when I first visited the English Parliament, I looked in vain among Lords and Commons for the bodily peer of Charles Sumner.

  The field of his success is to be found in the argumentative power that he possessed and in its use for the overthrow of slavery. Of the anti-slavery advocates who entered the Senate previous to the opening of the war, he was the best equipped in learning, and his influence in the country was not surpassed by the influence of any one of his associates. In his knowledge of diplomacy, he had the first rank in the Senate for the larger part of his career. His influence in the Senate was measured, however, by his influence in the country. His speeches, especially in the period of national controversy, were addressed to the country. He relied upon authorities and precedents. His powers as a debater were limited, and it followed inevitably that in purely parliamentary contests he was not a match for such masters as Fessenden and Conkling, who in learning were his inferiors.

  Charles Sumner was an idealist and a politico-moral revolutionist. He acted with enthusiasm and intense feeling, and was the representative of the anti-slavery extremists. In regard to all the phases of the question of slavery, he was as unyielding as cast iron…. Few persons conscious of their political power have been less selfishly ambitious than Sumner. Although egotistical, vain, and overbearing, he never sought control and glory chiefly for his own advancement. To him public life was not a personal affair. If there ever was a brutal, cowardly act, it was Brooks’s assault. It made Sumner an invalid for years, and permanently injured his health; yet the victim bore the bully no grudge…. He was preëminently a man of principles and strong personality. Sumner also possessed some of the best attributes of statesmanship; he was a great student, and always commanded a vast fund of information. By far his best work was done as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Oratory

  Mr. Sumner is distinguished for his learning, especially in history and public law. In his efforts on great occasions his citations of authorities are absolutely bewildering. His mind is comprehensive and logical, his methods direct and forcible, his spirit vehement and indomitable. As he moves on he leaves no point untouched, no matter how trite or familiar it may be. There are no gaps in his sentences, and no ellipses in his thought. He leaves nothing for the imagination. Proposition is riveted to proposition until the whole statement is like a piece of plate armor. But this scrupulous gathering up of details, and the copiousness of illustration by historical parallels, though effective with audiences and useful for popular instruction, often render portions of his speeches, when printed, tedious to cultivated readers, who are oppressed by the amplifications, the repetitions, and the profusion of learned quotations with which the argument is loaded. The field he has passed over is sure to be thoroughly swept. The audiences who listen, whether friendly or otherwise, are always profoundly impressed with his power and sincerity. The antagonist who follows him has always a task demanding his best efforts. His style has unconsciously acquired a certain professional or state-paper tone. We see by the formal and stately manner that it is the statesman and the author of didactic treaties that is writing. The elevation of his thought is a moral elevation. As we read we seem to be on high ground, and breathe pure mountain air. There is no compromise with wrong, no paltering with worldly policy. Political discussions conducted in such a spirit rise to the dignity of pure ethics, and are as inspiring as they are impressive. Much of the effect of Mr. Sumner’s speeches is due to this pervading moral element. He is not greatly imaginative, and his ample utterances, unlike the copious and glowing diction of Burke, appear to be the results of painstaking industry.

  An accomplished, careful speaker, trained under Everett and Webster, Charles Sumner approached and retained much of their peculiar grace; but he never equalled them. His voice wanted Everett’s sweetness, although fine, sonorous, deep; his action was less graceful; he had little of Webster’s mental clearness and strength. Yet animated by the great cause in which he was engaged, filled with the ardor of truth, Sumner wielded an instrument of offence sharper and more powerful than Webster or Everett had ever ventured to use. He lived in stormier, sadder days. His eloquence aroused nations and aided freedom.

  His speeches, elaborate, logical, clear, and eloquent, needed no adventitious aid to fasten them in the public mind. Twelve compact volumes contain his chief speeches in Congress and elsewhere. They are virtually a history of the anti-slavery movement, in and out of Congress, and of the legislation which secured to the freed negroes their civil rights…. Lacking the quick fire of Garrison’s or Phillips’ words, their lofty scorn of wrong, their intense enthusiasm, and their loyal devotion to the “genius of universal emancipation” make them seem, even now, like words from the heights. Sumner’s speeches mirror the character of the man: ever devoted to principle, free from sordid aim or mercenary ambition, intolerant of subterfuge or disloyal compromise, eager to lay at the feet of freedom the spoils of learning and of time…. He lacked those important equipments of a great orator: wit, and the power to see and to make visible all sides of a subject. His speeches, even the great argument for peace, called “The True Grandeur of Nations,” sometimes seem heavy and dull, save when he spoke in anger. But his words would last in the literature of oratory, if only because, with all their faults, they expressed and vindicated the right of free speech at a time when too many were timid.

  There have been greater orators than Sumner in the direction of native ability and of acquired art, but they have been few. Some have been devoted to their respective causes with a similar earnestness, but they have been fewer still. If, however, one be sought for in all the illustrious succession who has combined surpassing talent for public speech with wide learning, profound convictions, and uncompromising surrender of self to a righteous purpose, none will be so able to stand the test as this man, who was deaf to every solicitation to swerve from the single aim of his public life. This is the secret of his oratorical power—the whole heart was in it, the entire life was given to it. His opportunity was great, and his strength was equal to his opportunity. Equally great was the moral power, the ethical force, the strongest element of all, buttressing and fortifying every other.

  As an orator Sumner was logical and convincing. While he had not the tact and fire of Phillips, his orations were, nevertheless, impetuous and overwhelming. They forced conviction, point by point, by a culmination of arguments seemingly unanswerable. The power of his orations has not departed with the occasions that called them forth. They are still full of life and beauty. The reader is surprised at the wealth of scholarly allusions, and the brilliancy, at times, of the rhetoric. The style is stately and finished. Many of the orations, strongly in contrast with those of Phillips, rise at times almost to sublimity. On the whole, the orations of Sumner are an addition to American literature only less important than the work of Webster, Choate, and Everett.

  Came nearer to Webster as an orator than any one I remember.

  He was a man of great ability but not of the highest intellectual power, nor was he a master of style. He was not incisive in thought or speech. His orations were overloaded, his rhetoric was often turgid, he was easily led into irrelevance and undue stress upon undisputed points. His untiring industry as a reader had filled his memory with associations which perhaps he valued unduly. Originally modest and not self-confident, the result of his long contest was to make him egotistical and dogmatic.

General

  Charles Sumner is a stockholder in the bank of original thought. We may know he has considerable bullion there, for his drafts are honored at sight, and our first men are his endorsers. He has great power of condensation, without the wearisome monotony which often accompanies the writings and sayings of close thinkers and rigid reasoners. There is a vigorous and graceful stateliness, an easy felicity, a fastidious accuracy, and an imperial dignity in his style, which is both commanding and fascinating. There is a vast breadth of comprehension and a vast depth of meaning in his matter. There is also a luminous beauty, a Gothic grandeur, a sublime gorgeousness, in his labored and polished essays, which entitle them to the appellation of prose poems.

  As a writer, a lecturer, a debater, and an orator, he had acquired the strongest hold on public attention everywhere, both at home and abroad; and few scholars have brought to the illustration of their topics, whether political or literary, the fruits of greater research. His orations and speeches, of which a new edition, revised by his own hand, is understood to be approaching a completion, cannot fail to be a rich storehouse of classical and historical lore, and will certainly furnish a most valuable series of pictures, from his own point of view, of the stirring scenes to which they relate.

  Mr. Sumner is known widely as a student and scholar. His speeches were invariably injured by his too faithful memory. Indeed, he was not unfrequently carried away by the aptness of some analogy which he recollected in some bit of recondite history; and you had the contrast, fairly droll, of the work of an extreme idealist and that of a dry antiquarian. The Senate detested his historical and classical allusions. Men said they were dragged in by way of presumptuous boast of his superior attainments; while, in truth, he could as easily have spoken without vowels as without quotations. His memory was too good for the balance of his other intellectual qualities; and his citations, whether apt or not, only weakened the positions for which he introduced them.

  Mr. Sumner’s efforts in literature were almost exclusively in the department of oratory, and the many volumes of his published works are mainly filled with speeches. Many of these have a place among the masterpieces of American eloquence. Unlike most American public men, he was not a politician; he held himself aloof from the petty obligations and entanglements of party, and maintained a lofty and unswerving independence. His integrity and purity of purpose were never questioned by those to whom his political doctrines were most abhorrent. By his profound intellectual ability, his thorough and elegant scholarship, and above all by his high-mindedness and unimpeachable probity, he commanded the respect of the whole country. His speeches were rather scholarly than statesmanlike. Though his mastery of whatever subjects he grappled with was thorough, and his presentation of them vigorous and effective, there is an excess of elaboration, an ultra-classicism in all his writings that never, or very rarely, accompanies the highest spontaneous oratory. As specimens of careful, finished composition, his speeches are hardly surpassed in the annals of American eloquence.

  Throughout his career Sumner was felt as a force as well as an intelligence, and probably the future historian will rank him high among the select class of American public men who have the right to be called creative statesmen. He always courted obloquy, not only when his party was depressed, but when it was triumphant. “Forward!” was ever his motto. When his political friends thought they had at last found a resting-place, his voice was heard crying loudly for a new advance. Many of his addresses belong to that class of speeches which are events. His collected works, carefully revised by himself, have now become a portion of American literature. They quicken the conscience of the reader, but they also teach him the lesson that moral sentiment is of comparatively small account unless it hardens into moral character, and is also accompanied by that thirst for knowledge by which intellect is broadened and enriched, and is trained to the task of supporting by facts and arguments what the insight of moral manliness intuitively discerns.

  No Fourth of July oration ever attracted so much attention as the one to which this chapter is devoted. For a considerable time it was the frequent topic of society, as well as of the public journals. No American tract or address has probably ever had so wide a circulation in Great Britain. Its questionable proposition so startled the public, that they commanded the more attention for its unmistakable truths. It touched the hearts of Christian people, whether accepting or holding back from its logical statements. Its style, less academic than Everett’s, less weighty than Webster’s, glowed as theirs never glowed with moral enthusiasm…. The oration on “The True Grandeur of Nations” was the most important epoch in Sumner’s life. All he had written before was in the style of the essay,—ornate and vigorous in expression, but wanting the declamatory force and glow of passion by which the masses of men are swayed.

  A somewhat heavy person, with little sense of humor.

  His addresses are learned, logical, elegant, impressive. They do not, however, have the spontaneity, the flash and fire, of the true orator. Probably the most effective speech he ever made was an oration before a popular audience, on “The True Grandeur of Nations.”

  Of cold and egotistic personality but of high principles and stainless integrity, in his somewhat labored orations also fought a courageous fight for freedom and national honor.