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Sumner wrote to
John Jay, March 3:—
I send you a copy of a bill1 now pending in Massachusetts, out of which you may draw ideas for your bill.
Let me refer you also to the Michigan law; also to those of Connecticut and Vermont.
In my speech the other night you will find these laws briefly vindicated.
I am glad you have your hand on this work.
Now is the day and now is the hour.
The free States must be put in battle array, from which they will never retreat.
I know you will do your part of the work.
Late in May
Sumner left
Boston on a journey to the
West, his first visit to a section of the country which he had greatly desired to see. At
Yellow Springs, Ohio, he called on
Horace Mann, then president of Antioch College.
At
Cincinnati he was glad to meet
Chase, then preparing for the
State election, in which he was to be the
Republican candidate for governor.
The two friends drove to the beautiful suburbs and to the cemetery at
Clifton, destined to be the last resting-place of one of them.
At
Lexington, Ky.,
Sumner visited the home and grave of
Henry Clay.
He was
Cassius M. Clay's guest at
White Hall, in Madison County, in company with whom he examined the former's breeds of cattle, sheep, and horses, for which that State is famous.
They drove together over fine roads to the well-equipped farm of
Mr. Clay's brother,
Brutus J., near
Paris.
This was the first and only time in his life that
Sumner could freely inspect the condition of slaves on a plantation.
Thirty years later,
Mr. Clay gave the following account of the visit:
Mr. Sumner's acquaintance I first made, I believe, in 1853, at the banquet given to John P. Hale in Boston.
Subsequently I invited him to visit me in Kentucky at my present home in Madison County, which he did. I was a breeder of pure-blooded short-horns and Southdown sheep, in seeing which he seemed much interested.
The Kentucky trees and landscape grounds about my house (thirty acres), with every indigenous tree of my own State and some exotic evergreens, seemed also to please him. In these things, however, he did not seem to be permanently concerned, as his conversation returned to politics and literature.
After spending a few days with me I took him through Lexington, when having shown him some noted places we went on in my buggy over fine macadam roads, through Paris to the stock farm of my brother Brutus J. Clay, four miles from that town.
the had the finest farm in the State, in its proportions and natural soil, but mostly noted for its superior culture and equipments.
It was. outside of the cultivated fields, a natural park of great trees and blue-grass sward, without weeds.
In addition to shorthorns and Southdown sheep, he bred horses, mostly the English Cleveland bays, the well-known coach-horse.
In these horses Mr. Sumner was more
