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

[156] admitted to its conferences. Adams's illustrious name and career insured for him respectful treatment; but the social pressure fell on Giddings. Society was closed to him; even the Speaker, in giving a reception, left his name off the list, which included all other members.¹ Few Southern men (Mr. Clay, to his honor be it remembered, was an exception) recognized him in the lobbies or on the street.² All this he met with dignity and serenity. He entered Congress in the prime of his powers, and he left that body an old man stricken with disease; but no crown was ever deserved by old age nobler than was his by right of heroism in the cause of humanity.³

Giddings had been deeply interested in Sumner's Fourth of July oration and other addresses. They met first at Springfield in the autumn of 1846, and again when Giddings followed as a mourner the remains of his veteran colleague, Mr. Adams, to Massachusetts. During the whole of 1847 and until the nomination of General Taylor, their correspondence concerned the probable course of parties and public men, and they were in entire accord on questions of principle and policy. Sumner relied on Giddings for full statements as to movements at Washington, and to no one outside of Ohio did Giddings write so freely as to him. Giddings was early in 1847 more hopeful than Sumner that the Whigs would assume an antislavery position in the coming national election; but both from the first agreed that in case they failed to assume it, the duty of separate action would be incumbent on antislavery men.

Sumner's other correspondents at Washington were Palfrey, from December, 1847, and Horace Mann, who took J. Q. Adams's seat early in 1848. He had requested Mann to undertake the defence of Drayton and Sayres, indicted in the District of Columbia