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Many friends called at once at 20 Hancock Street to welcome him home.
He was in time to attend on the same day the funeral of Dr. Marshal S. Perry, his physician in 1856.
He declined a serenade which was proposed for the evening, and a public dinner also proposed for a later date.
He was present a few days after his arrival at a lecture in the Parker Fraternity course given by Carl Schurz, who had just come into prominence as a public speaker in the Eastern States.
His presence drew out long and hearty cheers; and being persistently called for, he at length came forward, on the appeal of the chairman, and made a brief response, in which he paid a tribute to Mr. Schurz, and spoke of himself as, after a long struggle, at last a well man. The same evening he attended in Cambridge a political reception at the house of J. M. S. Williams.
He visited both branches of the Legislature, then holding an extra session for the revision of the statutes.
Wherever he went he was cordially and tenderly taken by the hand.
On his way to Washington he was the guest of Mr. Fish in New York and of Mr. Furness in Philadelphia.
His many friends in both cities, as well as those in Massachusetts, were gladdened to find him fully established in health, and ready with unimpaired physical and intellectual vigor to resume his career in the Senate, which had been interrupted for so long a period.
The people of Massachusetts were loyal to Sumner during his prolonged disability.
His vote in the Senate was wanting not only on the trials of strength between slavery and freedom, but also on questions involving the interests of his State.
With all this there was no murmuring, no call from any respectable quarter for his resignation.
Here and there a politician might suggest a resignation as desirable; but the feeling was almost universal among the Republicans, then in a very large majority, that the State was best served by his remaining senator so long as there was any reasonable prospect of his restoration, and any suggestion that he should give place to another was promptly rebuked by leading journals1 and public men. If Massachusetts was
1 Worcester Spy, Dec. 29, 1858; Boston Advertiser, Sept. 16 and 18, 1858; Boston ‘Atlas and Bee,’ Sept. 13, 1858; Springfield Republican, Dec. 21, 1858; New York Tribune, Jan. 24, 1857, June 11, 1858: J. G. Whittier in Boston Advertiser, Sept. 18, 1858. An attempt of the Democratic journal, the Boston Post, to torture the meaning of a resolution of the Republican convention so as to make it reflect Upon his absence from his post, was met by replies in the ‘Atlas and Bee,’ Sept. 10 and 22, 1858; New York Tribune, September 15 and October 2.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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