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

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California had been admitted to the Union with a Constitution forbidding slavery. A hateful institution which thus far, without check, had travelled with the power of the Republic westward, was bidden to stop, and a new and rising State guarded from its contamination. Freedom—in whose hands is the divining rod of magical power, pointing the way not only to wealth untold, but to every possession of virtue and intelligence—whose presence is better far than any mine—is now at last established in an extensive region on the distant Pacific, between the very parallels of latitude so long claimed by slavery as its peculiar home. Here is a moral and political victory: a moral victory inasmuch as Freedom has secured a new foothold where to exert her far-reaching influence; a political victory also, inasmuch as, by the admission of California, the free States have obtained a majority of votes in the Senate, and the Balance of power between Freedom and Slavery—so preposterously claimed by the Slave States, in forgetfulness of the true spirit of the Constitution, and in mockery of human Rights—has been overturned. May Free California, and her Senators in Congress, never fail hereafter, amidst the trials before us, in loyalty to Freedom! God forbid that the daughter should turn with ingratitude or neglect from the mother that bore her.

Congress had also abolished the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and banished from the national Capital the odious traffic, thus affixing upon the trade in human flesh everywhere in the broad domain of the Republic, the brand of Congressional reprobation. True, Congress had not, as in the case of the Foreign Slave-Trade, stamped it as piracy, and awarded to its perpetrators the doom of pirates; but it had condemned the