Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

[191] for the consequences. It was only at such a time that so uncompromising a statesman as Sumner could have entered into political life; for the possibility of compromise had passed away with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and Sumner's policy of “no compromise” was the one which brought the slavery question to a successful issue. For fifteen years in Congress he held to that policy as faithfully as a planet to its course, and those who differed with him were left in the rear.

Sumner's first difference was with his conservative friends, and especially with his law-partner, George S. Hillard, a brilliant man in his way, and for an introductory address without a rival in Boston. Hillard was at heart as anti-slavery as Sumner, and his wife had even assisted fugitive slaves, but he was swathed in the bands of fashionable society, and he lacked the courage to break loose from them. He adhered to the Whigs and was relegated to private life. They parted without acrimony, and Sumner never failed to do his former friend a service when he found an opportunity.

His difference with Felton was of a more serious kind. Emerson, perhaps, judged Felton too severely,--a man of ardent temperament who was always in danger of saying more than he intended.

Sumner's election to the Senate was a chance