Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[311] with the Union, and that Congress had the power of reconstruction, press the advantage which the Union arms had won to the upraising of the colored people. He intended that “every drop of American blood that was shed should surely be consecrated to human freedom;” and he soon had the satisfaction to see his long and perilous efforts realized in the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, sweeping the baneful and degrading system of slavery away, and bringing a long and heavily oppressed people to enjoy the right of the elective franchise.

In June of this year (1866) Mr. Sumner came home to stand by the bedside and receive the parting benediction of his dying mother. She had attained the age of more than fourscore years, and had experienced many trials and afflictions, which she bore with womanly fortitude, and retained something of earlier grace and beauty to the last. “She was tall and stately,” said one who knew her well, “with the oldschool dignity of manner; and, if thought distant, you soon forgot, in her genial friendliness and evident superiority of mind, every thing except that she was one of the most admirable of women.” When urged in her last illness to send for her son, she replied that his country had more need of his services than she, and that he had better remain at