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Sumner's old teacher,
Edward T. Channing, the well and gratefully remembered
Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard College, wrote Aug. 25, 1849:—
my dear Charles,—You will remember, I hope, that I am justified in addressing you thus familiarly by the mistake you made at P. B. K. of supposing that I took the same liberty there.
Moreover, I was glad to see that you would not have been displeased If your construction had been correct. . . . I am pleased to see a man stand up with your zeal and courage for what I hold to be the right upon some of the gravest questions that agitate our own time, and concern the comming ages beyond your calculation or mine.
I am glad to see so much information touching these questions brought near to very many who are waiting for day; so perpetual and urgent insisting upon their religious and moral aspects and bearing; so, earnest appeals to men to feel that they all can and should do something to put down mischief, set right error, and substitute long-concealed or oppressed truth and justice.
Burke was ready to pardon something to the spirit of Liberty.
Certainly I may do as much to you spirit of benevolence, when I meet with passages or even a whole paper with opinions or reasons which I cannot adopt, or a tone with which I cannot sympathize.
Professionally I might allude to your style; and I must confess that true to my calling, in reading the Union College oration, I more than once them theme-corrector.
“Nineteen zodiacs” have gone round since I was occupied in that exhilarating office in your behalf; and I assure you, my dear sir, that I rejoice in a supposed fault, now and then, which reminds me of those days and of you.
Rev. Andrew P. Peabody wrote from
Portsmouth, Sept. 29, 1846:—
Permit me to express with my thanks for the copy of your address [at Phi Beta Kappa anniversary] my intense personal gratification in its perusal, and my deep sense of the services which you are rendering to the one great cause of peace, freedom, and progress.
Upon that cause you have concentrated the memories and influence of the illustrious men commemorated in your address (I was going to say with consummate art, but it is not so) with a naturalness and spontaneity which shows under what associations all subjects of thought must habitually group themselves in your mind.
You are acquiring an influence inconceivably higher and more euduring than could possibly accrue from the more direct and beaten track to professional fame or political elevation; while I trust that the time is not far distant when these goals will be more surely reached by the route which you have taken than by the grovelling path on which they are wont to be sought
Rev. Convers Francis wrote Sept. 26, 1846:—
In common with the scholars and good men of our community, I thank you most heartily for this powerful exhibition of noble and beautiful truths, with which society among us has abundant need to be quickened and purified.1
