This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[192]
in ten thousand.
It is well known that at first he declined to be a candidate.
He did not think he was fitted for the position, and when Caleb Gushing urged him to court the favor of fortune he said: “I will not leave my chair to become United States Senator.”
Whatever vanity there might be in the man, he was entirely free from the ambition for power and place.
There were several prominent public men at the time who would have given all they owned for the position, but they were set aside for the man who did not want it,--the bold jurist who dared to set himself against the veteran statesmen of his country.
It reads like a Bible-tale, or the story of Cincinnatus taken from his plow to become dictator.
The gates of his alma mater were now closed to Sumner, not only during his life but even long after that.
Such is the fate of revolutionary characters, that they tear asunder old and familiar bonds in order to contract new ties.
In Washington he found a broader and more vigorous life, if less cultivated, and the Freesoil leaders with whom he now came in contact in his own State were much more akin to his own nature than Story, and Felton, and Hillard.
Sumner was never popular in Washington, as he had been among the English liberals and Cambridge men of letters; but he was respected
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
Tufts University. provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.