Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

The discussions of 1846 and 1847, which had discredited the character of the managers for efficiency, fairness, and breadth of view, were a fatal blow to the Society, and it never recovered public confidence. In May, 1848, Sumner appeared before the managers, and sought in vain to impress them with his views in favor of more vigorous action. the same month, the Society decided to hold no more public meetings, and recalled the notice of one already announced. Mr. Ticknor and George T. Curtis attended the meeting where this decision was made, and both were chosen officers for the first time. They had taken no interest in the subject before, and their political hostility to Sumner and Dr. Howe, as well as Mr. Ticknor's kinship with Mr. Eliot, account for their selection. Eliot became president; and Dwight continued in office till his death, in 1854. In 1855 no officers were chosen, and Mr. Eliot took the chair in the presence of three reporters and only two members. The officers recommended a dissolution of the Society, for the reason that no suitable successor to Dwight could be found. There was a week's adjournment to consider the disposition of the funds, and there the record ends. A part of the amount still in the treasury was spent in the useless republication, in three huge volumes, of Dwight's reports, which were of little value in themselves, and already sufficiently distributed. The Society was in its later years kept alive for his support, and with his death it disappeared.

Sumner did not again recur to the controversy as to the two rival systems of prison discipline. As is often the case in human life, He doubtless came to see that its importance had been overrated, or that it called rather for scientific treatment than for excited debate. Once, late in life, he had a practical connection with the construction of a prison, in 1872, when, as a member of the Senate committee on the District of Columbia, he insisted that there should be a house of correction established with the jail about to be built in Washington, and after applying to E. L. Pierce for suggestions as to a proper model, caused one hundred