What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?Though unpractised in debate, he had studied his subject à profond: his integrity was unimpeachable, his armor closely welded, and his position the impregnable rock of truth. What, then, had he to fear? The arrest of Thomas Sims as a fugitive slave, in Boston, April 3 of this year, and his mock trial, with the decision of the court remanding him to slavery, threw the city into an intense excitement. On receiving Theodore Parker's Fast-Day sermon, which in no measured terms rebuked this outrage, Mr. Sumner addressed to him the following letter:--
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with unjustice is corrupted.
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and none a loftier patriotism, or a profounder sympathy for the sufferings of humanity.
In the strength and beauty of manhood, he came to public office as a splendid representative of the advanced ideas of his time.
A battle was before him,--hailstones and coals of fire; but well could he affirm,--
B. B. Russell, 1874.
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