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1 Dr. I. Ray,2 Francis J. Troubat,3 John B. Wallace,4 David Hoffman,5 and Jonathan C. Perkins.6 He corresponded with Judge Story when the judge was at Washington, and, when himself absent from home, with Hillard.
His letters were always rapidly written, were not easily read by those who were not familiar with his handwriting, and contained many verbal abbreviations.
They expressed in an unstudied way his thought at the instant; and he gave to them none of the careful reflection and emendation which he bestowed on whatever he printed.
The beginning of the acquaintance of Dr. Francis Lieber7 and Sumner at Washington has already been referred to. From 1834 until Dr. Lieber's death in 1872, excepting the period of 1851-61, when their correspondence was interrupted, they wrote often to each other, the letters of Dr. Lieber being much more frequent and longer than Sumner's.8 At this early period he addressed Sumner in familiar and endearing terms, and appears to have cherished a real affection for him. He availed himself often of Sumner's friendly offices in negotiating with publishers in Boston, and bringing his works before the public.
He had then partly ready for the press his translation of Feuerbach's ‘Casper Hauser,’ a German Grammar, a ‘Dictionary of Antiquities,’ a series of school-books, ‘Political Hermeneutics,’9
1 [158] present Chief-Justice of Maine. In a letter of May 18, 1837, Sumner wrote: ‘Mr. Appleton is a writer of great nerve, boldness, and experience, with a Benthamic point and force.’
2 Dr. Ray then lived at Eastport, Maine, and afterwards became superintendent of the Butler Asylum for the Insane, at Providence, R. I. In 1837, he submitted to Sumner for criticism the manuscript of his ‘Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity.’
3 Author of a treatise on the ‘Law of Limited Partnerships,’ and editor of law reports. He died in 1868.
4 Reporter of Cases in the Court of the United States for the Third Circuit. He died in Philadelphia, Jan. 7, 1837.
5 Author of ‘A Course of Legal Study’ and ‘Legal Outlines.’ He resided in Baltimore, and later in Philadelphia, and died in 1854.
6 One of Sumner's friends, younger in the profession than himself, then practising law at Salem, afterwards a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and the editor of ‘Daniell's Chancery Pleading and Practice’ and other law books. He died in 1877, aged sixty-eight.
7 Dr. Lieber was born in Berlin, in 1800. Having been a student, soldier, and exile, he came to this country in 1827, and lived successively in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In 1835, he became professor of History and Political Economy in the South Carolina College, at Columbia, where he remained more than twenty years. In 1857, he was appointed to a similar professorship in Columbia College, New York, and held the position till his death, Oct. 2, 1872. He is well known by his Encyclopaedia; but his fame is to rest permanently on his ‘Manual of Political Ethics,’ and his ‘Civil Liberty and Self-Government.’
8 Sumner preserved nearly a thousand of Lieber's letters to him.
9 Sumner published the ‘Political Hermeneutics’ in the ‘American Jurist,’ Oct. 1837, Vol. XVIII. pp. 37-101. Jan. 1838, Vol. XVIII. pp. 281-294.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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