Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[364] of popular confidence and appreciation must be extremely gratifying to your feelings,—not on the ground of personal exaltation, but because it is another remarkable proof of the marvellous and substantial change which has taken place in public opinion, pertaining to the cause of impartial freedom, since you espoused that cause as one of its most eloquent advocates, and one of its most successful defenders; when there was a heavy cross to be borne, and for the praises of men you had their bitterest reproaches. Your senatorial career covers the most important portion of American history. For a long period you were in an almost hopeless minority, misunderstood, grossly caricatured, shamefully traduced, in constant peril of your life while discharging the official duties of your position at Washington. In view of the deadly enmity engendered against you at the South, as the most prominent and efficient political opponent of her nefarious slave system, it is a marvel that you are at this day a living man, even aside from the murderous assault made upon you by Preston S. Brooks, himself long since gone to the shades, and his memory as detestable as he hoped to make your own. It was a dark hour when you were beaten down by his merciless blows; but out of that darkness what light has sprung, and out of that humiliation what fame and exaltation have followed! Your blood, staining the floor of the Senate Chamber, was the blood of a martyr; now it is given to you to wear a martyr's crown! This is no human, but a divine triumph; this is not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. His is the glory, yours the reward. But the work which you have had so much at heart, though astonishingly advanced, is not yet fully consummated; and you will assuredly continue to bring to it the same unquenchable zeal, the same heroic devotion, the same unfaltering determination, the same sleepless vigilance, the sale transcendent ability, that have characterized your public labors from the beginning. Whether you will be assigned to a position in the new Cabinet under President Grant, and if so, whether you will deem it advisable to accept of it, I do not know, and presume not to conjecture. Though no one could fill your place in the Senate, yet I confess it would give me, as I believe it would your constituents generally, great satisfaction to see you in the office of Secretary of State, or as minister plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. In either case, it would be “the right man in the right place.” But you will not seek the office; it must seek you.

Three of Sumner's English friends died at this period,—Lord Cranworth, Lord Wensleydale, and the Duchess of Sutherland. he had become intimate with the two former on his visit to England as a youth, and with the duchess on his two later visits. Writing to the Duchess of Argyll, he referred to the many tombs which had opened for those to whom he had been attached. Among English travellers calling on him in this or the preceding year were John Morley, G. Shaw Lefevre, and Leslie Stephen. From his French acquaintance, M. Chevalier, came the expression of the wish that he would take the mission to France.¹