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The spirit of barbarism and slavery struck him down 18 years ago. He never fully recovered.
There is, too, among some of us, a sort of idea, that, to be a great man, one must have been poor, ignorant and somewhat coarse.
We rejoice that the genius of our Government is such that men coming from the lowest place, may go to the highest; but we must not forget that poverty and ignorance are a great drawback, and that when men rise from these conditions, they rise in spite of these hindrances, and not because of them.
Mr. Sumner's life from first to last was along a different line.
He was born to position and wealth.
He was born heir to a glorious inheritance.
He was born of ancestors who were scholars, gentlemen, Christians.
He received a fine body, a glorious intellect, and a noble heart.
His leisure and his wealth might have been a curse to him; they might have taken away from him, as from many others, all ambition and desire for scholarship and promotion.
They, however, quickened the desire for both, as they furnished the opportunity for the attainment of either.
He was just such a man as we can least afford to lose.
American society and political life have too few such men. Who can take the place which Charles Sumner filled?
The great principles of the science of political economy are not studied, far less understood, by the majority of our public men. The days of scholars and thinkers of the higher order, the days of Seward, Chase, and Sumner, seem to be numbered.
A species of rowdyism, Butlerism, with an obliquity of moral vision which looks past the right, and mistakes success for honest ability, is imminent and greatly to be dreaded.
A radical reform is needed here.
Precisely here is Mr. Sumner's life peculiarly valuable.
We need to learn the necessity of patient and untiring perseverance, if we are to accomplish great things for God or man.
The Louisville
Courier-Journal, in a long and feeling notice, says—
Fifteen years ago, the news that Charles Sumner was dead, would have been received with something like rejoicing by the people of the South; ten years ago they would have hailed it as a message from Heaven, telling them that an enemy had been removed from the face of the earth.
To-day, they will read it regretfully, and their comment will be, ‘He was a great man, he was an honest man; as he has forgiven us, so have we long ago forgiven him.’
