Ii.
The facts, then, are these.
It was well-known that the only reason alleged for the removal by the Senate of
Mr. Sumner from the position he had for many years filled with such consummate ability, as
Chairman of the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, was, that he was not upon friendly social terms with the
President and the Department of State.
He prepared, at the time, a careful statement showing why the cordiality of those relations had been disturbed; and it was known that he intended to deliver that speech in the Senate.
But his friends
Mr. Trumbull and
Carl Schurz, to whom his intention was made known, dissuaded him from his purpose, by appealing to his generous nature; and to this appeal he yielded.
During three years ‘he refrained from delivering it, suffering in silence the most offensive imputations from those who were unable to appreciate his loyal support, or his disinterested opposition.’
These words I have quoted from the New York
[
562]
Tribune of this—Monday morning, April 6, 1874—in which the editor says:
In the opinion of his friends, the time has come when this speech, suppressed by its illustrious author from the highest considerations of dignity and patriotism, should be given to the country, in explanation of the circumstances which lost to the Senate the influence of its greatest and purest member, and by which the Administration deprived itself of a friend as powerful as he was unselfish.
We presume the essential facts of this disclosure will remain undisputed.
As to the inferences to be drawn from them, there are many who will disagree with Mr. Sumner as to the share of responsibility which should rest upon the Secretary of State for the course pursued by the Administration towards Mr. Motley.
It is probable that the Senator may have revised his own judgment at a later day, as it is certain that he gave his hearty support and approval to the course of the Secretary of State in reference to the seizure of the Virginius. The facts here brought forward would seem to point to what every candid person must regard as the vulnerable feature of the Secretary's administration—his tendency to yield to the vulgar malice and ignorant caprices of the President, instead of obeying his own instincts, and resisting or resigning.
The chief discredit, however, as we have said before, falls upon the Senate of the United States.
Their most valuable and distinguished member opposed, in a frank and open manner, with his usual energy, but with his usual courtesy also, a plan of the President to acquire, by unconstitutional means, a neighboring island.
He succeeded in defeating this scheme in the Senate.
The President, upon this, dismissed our Minister at London, because he was an intimate friend of Mr. Sumner; he also said ‘that if he were not President he would call Mr. Sumner to account;’ his aide-de-camp, the messenger between the Executive Mansion and the Senate Chamber, said, ‘if he were not an officer of the army he would chastise Mr. Sumner.’
The Senate, far from resenting these indecent attacks, sided with the Executive against their colleague, and hastened to propitiate the angry President by depriving the Massachusetts Senator of his places on the Committees where he had no rival.
Into the vast vacancy which he made at the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Simon Cameron was put by the vote of a Senate which seemed to have lost with its conscience its sense of honor, and the most scholarly statesman of our time was further grossly
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insulted by being placed fourth in the Committee on Education, presided over by Mr. Flanagan of Texas.
The document we print to-day will show how much excuse they had for this piece of folly and slavish subservience.
It is a part of the history of the country, and an important chapter in the biography of one of its first statesmen.
It is due also to the fair fame of the most brilliant historian America has yet given to the world, that the insult to him should be hurled back where it came from; and that another illustration may be given of the glorious fact, that the fame of such men as
John Lothrop Motley and
Charles Sumner, is in the keeping of the Muse of History, and not of the politician.
She presides serenely over the tribunal of justice, and from her stern awards there is no appeal.
In preserving this speech, we have reproduced it with typographical accuracy from the
Tribune. The circumstances under which the speech was prepared and suppressed, were stated by the eminent author himself, in the subjoined note, with which the
Tribune introduces the speech itself:
