This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[212]
recognized.
The marriage which he contracted late in life was not based on enduring principles, and soon came to a grievous end. It was more like the marriages that princes make than a true republican courtship.
Sumner apparently wanted a handsome wife to preside at his dinner parties in Washington, but he chose her from among his opponents instead of from among his friends.
Since there has been much foolish talk upon this subject, it may be well to state here that the true difficulty between Mr.Sumner and Mrs. Sumner was owing to the company which he invited to his house.
She only wished to entertain fashionable people, but a large proportion of Sumner's friends could not be included within these narrow limits.
As Senator from Massachusetts that would not do for him at all. This is the explanation that was given by Mrs. Sumner's brother, and it is without doubt the correct one; but women in such cases are apt to allege something different from the true reason.
Sumner's most signal triumph happened on the occasion of President Johnson's first Message to Congress in January, 1865.
He rose from his seat and characterized it as a “whitewashing document.”
That day he stood alone, yet within six weeks every Republican Senator was at his side.
Sumner knew how to be silent as well as to
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.