C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

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[56] as it may seem, the hardest work in this great battle had to be fought in Massachusetts, where Mr. Sumner was the acknowledged leader of the Liberal host. Clothed with no official dignity or power, to give prestige to his words or actions, he was already commanding a national influence which made every speech delivered in Massachusetts effective far beyond the bounds of the State. John Quincy Adams had died at his post, the last undismayed champion of the Revolutionary school of Freedom, his heart still burning with the love of liberty, and the eloquent utterances of freedom still fresh from his lips. But his son, Charles Francis, had already come forward in the same spirit, to tread in the steps of his father, and in all quarters the roused spirit of insulted American liberty was no longer to cower back from the presence of her foes. But there was yet lacking, as there always is in such reforms, a practical plan of operations, to give effect to the efforts of the friends of freedom. By the great majority of them, the radical Anti-slavery men were still looked upon as fanatical, and generally, as hostile to the Constitution; many of them, like Mr. Garrison, regarding it as the chief impediment, not only to emancipation, but to the spread of slavery itself. Much had been done at Buffalo by the enunciations made in the Platform, and the nomination of candidates pledged to resist the further encroachments of slavery; and around them a large body of voters had gathered at the ballot-box. But the great mass of the people had yet no clear idea of any practical plan of operations, that could be carried out without open war upon the Constitution. At this time—September 12, 1849—a Free-soil Convention met at Worcester, and Mr. Sumner was invited to present an address explaining and vindicating