Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

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Chapter 38: repeal of the Missouri Compromise.—reply to Butler and Mason.—the Republican Party.—address on Granville Sharp.—friendly correspondence.—1853-1854.

Chase and Sumner were the only two Free Soil senators in the Thirty-third Congress, the first in the Administration of Franklin Pierce, which began its session Dec. 5, 1853. They missed the readiness and wit of Hale of New Hampshire, who had been succeeded by a Democrat. The Democrats being in a majority in the Senate, designated in caucus from their number a majority of each committee, assigning places to Chase, and leaving the vacancies to be filled by the Whigs, with the expectation that they would assign places to Sumner. Seward's motion in the Whig caucus to put him on certain committees was withdrawn in consequence of the opposition of Everett, who after stating his friendly relations with his colleague, which he wished to have continued, was averse to any action which would ‘recognize him as a Whig,.’¹ The proposed assignment would have carried with it under the custom no such implication, the Democrats finding no difficulty in giving places to Chase; and if it were to be opposed, it would have been more seemly that the opposition should come from another quarter. It is another instance of the intolerance then controlling the dominant party in Massachusetts. The Whigs, however, left intentionally two vacancies at the foot of the committees on pensions and enrolled bills, which the Democrats filled with Sumner's name. The exclusion of members of ‘an unhealthy organization’ was given up, but the responsibility of placing them was still a perplexity. None then foresaw that