Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

‘ [601] most elegant accomplishments he added the sternest purity of purpose and the highest conception of moral duty. Indeed, a somewhat familiar phrase, current during his lifetime, is none the less true because he is dead,— “There is but one Charles Sumner.” ’ The Evening Post of the same city said: ‘One of the great spirits of the republic, if not already gone, is passing away. . His name is woven with the same immortal wreath which binds the brow of the redeemed and regenerated republic.’ The ‘Independent’ said: ‘History will select for peculiar honor her few grand names; and above the long, low level of shifty statesmen the form of Charles Sumner will long rise grand and solitary, like Teneriffe seen from the sea.’ Henry Ward Beecher, in the ‘Christian Union,’ wrote: ‘It is not too much to say that in the death of Charles Sumner the nation has lost a statesman of a type in which he had no peer. . . The negro race will deplore the loss of their mightiest and faithfulest champion; and all the friends of justice and equality will lament the death of a leader whose flaming torch was carried high above all obscuring vapors, leading them ever in the sure path of victory.’¹ The Springfield Republican began its leader with the words: ‘The noblest head in America has fallen, and the most accomplished and illustrious of our statesmen is no more.’ The Baltimore American wrote: ‘The foremost statesman of America has dropped suddenly from the ranks of his associates.’ These expressions typify the general estimate. His career was likewise the theme of foreign journals.²

The Massachusetts Legislature adjourned upon the announcement of the event, and the flags on public buildings were placed at half-mast. The governor the next day, by a message, recognized the death, ‘from the burden of a disease long and heroically borne,’ of ‘the great orator, scholar, statesman, philanthropist, the champion of universal freedom and the equality of man, . . . whose voice was that of an honest man, whose endeavors were those of an upright statesman, whose moral integrity stands out ’