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

Chapter 53: New home in Washington.—retaliation again.—a New York senator.—impeachment of the President.—sacredness of the public debt.—resumption of specie payments.—the national election of 1868.—fourth election to the senate.—the fifteenth amendment.—the senator's ‘works.’ 1867-1869.

The senator's house in Washington² was for the remainder of his life to be his home. The site was then the most attractive in the city. It stood on a corner, well exposed to sunlight, looking out on Lafayette Park, and across the park to the Executive Mansion, convenient for reaching the departments and the foreign legations. Just before Christmas, 1867, he moved into it,—taking the step with some hesitation, partly related to his domestic trouble and partly to the expense of housekeeping, which he feared was beyond his means, but yielding to advice from Mr. Hooper, who was very desirous that he should occupy it. He wrote, December 13, to his friend J. B. Smith: ‘It is a large house for a solitary person. I am now in the midst of preparation. This is something of a job for one inexperienced in such things. I am to examine carpets to-day.’ Smith in Boston and Wormley in Washington, both of the race which he had served, assisted him in purchases of stores, the hire of servants, and other arrangements. Some furniture came from the old family house, and later arrived from Boston his personal souvenirs, marbles, bronzes, engravings, and books,—‘household companions,’ as he called them. Gradually the rooms became home-like; but it was some months before the furnishing was completed. The dinnig-room, library, and drawing-room were below, but he and his guests remained in this story only at meals or for a few moments after. His time was passed chiefly on the second floor, in a large room in the centre taken for his study, —opening into his bedroom at one end, whence the Executive Mansion was visible, and into the guest chamber at the other. The walls of each room—even the doors and the hall as well were covered with paintings, engravings, and photographs, many of them having a personal or historical interest. Bronzes and vases, with here and there a piece of sculpture, filled each nook and niche. In the study, tables, chairs, shelves, and floor were piled with books and documents, which it was necessary to disturb in order to find a seat for a visitor.³ In one corner, the [339] one farthest from his chamber, was his desk, above which, on a shelf, were kept five books,—Harvey's Shakespeare and Hazlitt's Select British Poets (both bought with college prize-money), Roget's Thesaurus, fickey's Constitution, and the Rules and Usages of the Senate. On his desk, always littered with papers, lay a Bible, the gift of Mr. Seward's daughter.⁴ In a movable bookcase within reach were Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries, Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, and Smith's Classical dictionaries. Near the door of his bedroom, against the wall, was his secretary's desk.

During his visit to Europe in 1858-1859 he had secured for himself a costly collection of books, often richly bound, missals, manuscripts and autographs of celebrated persons, and authors' copies of their own works with corrections by themselves for a new edition.⁵ Among these were Madame de Pompadour's copy of Cicero's Letters to Atticus; Milton's Pindar; Melancthon's Aulus Gellius; Erasmus's St. Luke, with original pen-and-ink designs by Holbein on the margins; Bunyan's Bible; Dryden's Greek exercise-book studied by the poet when a boy at the Westminster School; Voltaire's tragedy of Mahomet, with his corrections; Pope's Essay on Man, with his revision in ink for a new edition; a gift copy of Thomson's Spring, with verses in the author's handwriting on the titlepage; Dr. Parr's Hobbes;⁶ and books which had belonged to Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth, a doge of Venice, Ben Jonson, Wordsworth, Turgot, and Napoleon. With these were autographs of reformers, popes, kings, statesmen, poets; and choicest of all to Sumner was the Album kept at Geneva, 1608-1640, in which Milton had recorded his name, an extract from Comus, and a line of Horace.⁷ [340] Quaritch and other dealers in curiosities in London and Paris, as well as Sypher in New York, found in him a customer who rarely questioned their prices. He bought a large number of oil paintings, chiefly in Washington and Boston,—some well done and others quite indifferent, paying extravagant prices, and being easily imposed upon as to value and artist.⁸ He had a large number of engravings,—for these he had a better eye than for paintings,—many of them from the old French masters.⁹ His bronzes were from the well-known Paris house of Barbedienne. His fancy led him to clocks, vases, and porcelain. His gratification of his tastes in the way of rare books, autographs, and works of art must have cost him twenty thousand dollars, a fifth of all he had.

Lonely as he was, without wife or sister as companion, he nevertheless found satisfaction in his new mode of living. At the age of fifty-seven he was now for the first time dwelling in his own house, arranged just as he would have it. There came to him a sense of freedom as well as of proprietorship in his surroundings. He enjoyed the ample space, the opportunity to reciprocate hospitality, the companionship of pictures, books, and souvenirs which met his eye at every glance. He delighted to escort visitors, friends or strangers, through his rooms, pointing out his treasures, naming artist and period, reticent however as to cost and pedigree. If connoisseurs, they sympathized too much with his pride of possession to question the authenticity of any painting which was attributed to some famous Dutch or Italian artist. Among his callers to whom he showed his treasures were Dr. Holmes and Mr. Winthrop; but the larger number were undistinguished or quite young persons, who will ever recall his kindly welcome and his enthusiasm as he passed from one picture or old book or autograph to another.

A few friends occupied his guest chamber,—Dr. Palfrey, E. L. Pierce, Dr. S. G. Howe, G. W. Greene, J. B. Smith, and M. Milmore,—while [341] Emerson, Whittier, Agassiz, Bemis, G. W. Curtis, and James A. Hamilton received invitations which they were unable to accept. To Whittier he wrote: ‘It will be a delight and a solace to me if I know that you are under my roof.’ he kept aloof from parties, but he could now return the courtesies which he had been receiving as a bachelor.¹⁰ Members of the diplomatic corps were often at his round table. He was catholic in his relations with men, and his guests were of no one political class. Caleb Cushing was perhaps oftener with him than any one, and William Beach Lawrence, whenever he was in Washington, was invited. In February of his first winter in the house, Charles Dickens, whom he had first known in 1842, dined with him in company with Stanton, when one of the topics was the experience of Sumner and Stanton on the night of Mr. Lincoln's assassination.¹¹ Ladies were very rarely at his table,—only Mrs. Charles Eames, widow of his early friend, Mrs. J. E. Lodge, and Mrs. Claflin, who came with her husband. The Marquis de Cliambrun dined often with him, and few foreigners of distinction came to Washington without partaking of his hospitality. He would say to Schurz, who entered the Senate in 1869, ‘Come and dine with me to-day, and I will show you another Englishman.’

Those who sat at his table recall his ‘cordial greeting and genial smile, with conversation embroidered with both wisdom and mirth, when he exhibited the full and varied attractions of his head and heart.’¹² He sought to make all happy, and avoided everything that could give pain. One who was fixed in opposition to his most cherished ideas said of him: ‘I never knew him in a mixed company to introduce any topic that might prove disagreeable to any one present; and when by inadvertence or otherwise such a topic was introduced by others, he was always [342] one of the first to divert the conversation to some other subject.’¹³ Though not a humorist himself, he enjoyed humor as it flowed from others, and often greeted it with a ringing laugh.¹⁴

His ordinary hours for meals were 8.30 A. M. for breakfast and 5.30 P. M. for dinner, and he took food only at these meals.¹⁵ He seldom dined alone, and was in the habit of bringing from the Capitol one or two friends to take ‘pot-luck’ with him,—as Ben Perley Poore, the journalist, or Henry L. Pierce, an old friend who entered the House in 1873, or any constituent who happened to be in Washington.

Sumner had most cordial relations with his secretaries; they were clerks of the foreign relations committee while he was chairman, being, according to the practice, designated by him. As early as 1855, A. B. Johnson assisted him in clerical and kindred services, and though engaged afterwards in professional or official work, came to his aid at intervals and was a devoted friend to the end. Other secretaries in succession, from 1863 to 1872, were Francis V. Balch, Charles C. Beaman, Moorfield Storey, and Edward J. Holmes, all graduates of Harvard College. The last, son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, died in 1881; the other three hold an honorable place in the legal profession. Sumner's interest in them was personal and affectionate. He gave always a welcome to Johnson, and from time to time remembered his children with gifts. When Balch resigned to enter on his profession, the senator made him the custodian and manager of his funds, and afterwards the sole executor of his will. He was earnest in assisting Storey to an appointment, which was the latter's first start in his profession. This secretary writes: ‘He showed me a side of his character that few except his intimate friends saw,—a paternal, personal kindliness, of which I have a very grateful rememberance.’ He entered heartily into the connections for life which his young friends made, giving a dinner to Storey and his fiancee, a Washington lady, and writing to Beaman, Sept. 10, 1873, when the latter became engaged to Mr. Evarts's daughter, as follows: ‘It is as it should be, and I wish [343] a great deal of happiness to both of you. I remember Miss Evarts well. Lafayette would have said of you, “Lucky dog!” and knowing you, I say of her, “Happy maiden!” ’¹⁶

At a meeting in Boston, April 7, 1888, commemorative of Sumner, Mr. Balch gave the following estimate of the senator's character:—

I was intimately acquainted with Mr. Sumner during two of the war years. I was then just out of college and beginning work at the bar, immature and inexperienced. Although a stranger to him, he treated me as if I were his tried friend. My belief is that he had absolutely no secrets from me. He received his visitors in the room where my desk stood. I cannot recall that I was once asked to leave the room, or that there ever were asides. His whole correspondence was, as I believe, submitted to me. Such letters as I could answer I was expected to draft a reply to for his signature; as to the rest, I had to take his instructions. Then there were authorities to be hunted up, and material to be prepared for speeches or reports,—perhaps reciprocity, perhaps the French spoliation claims. Soon I was expected to sign his name on the outside of letters, to frank them. The relation was most confidential and close. Never was he impatient or inconsiderate. Working himself to an extent to me before unimagined, sitting at his desk till late in the night, and sometimes till the morning, so that a change of linen stood to him in place of the night's rest, he was careful not to overwork those about him. He was never arrogant, but always ready to listen to objections or suggestions, however crude, and most generous in his appreciation of honest effort, however ineffective.

I was brought up a conservative Whig, and of course was far from agreement with Mr. Sumner's views; but again and again I found myself pulling up my conservative stakes and planting them nearer his position, until it came to seem to me only a question of time when I should be brought into entire agreement with him.

I wish I could reproduce the impression he made upon me when I first new him. He was to me strikingly handsome, large-framed, majestic, though somewhat ungainly. His familiarity with history, with letters, with society, with art, was to me simply astonishing. Of his style I am not an admirer.

He stands in my mind a picture of manly vigor, of absolute integrity of character, of purity without stain. It may be a small matter, but it seemed to me characteristic that he never appeared to enjoy the so-called “broad” stories which some visitors might retail. He was magnanimous. He had warm friendships and warm antagonisms, but he was not revengeful.

Mr. Sumner was a man not ready to yield to his equals. “Domineering” is a strong word; but he felt a superiority which really existed, and his manner asserted it. To his subordinates no one could be more considerate, more generous. [344]

He was not religious, in the sense that religious ordinances entered much into his life, but he had the essence of the matter. I never knew a man with a firmer grasp upon the faith in the good God. He once said to a friend in my presence that he would not turn over his hand to know whether he should consciously live again or not, so sure was he that all was for the best.—He was a man to inspire devotion. Perhaps I am a laudator temporis acti in so saying; but he seems to my memory a giant, and I see no more of his kind.

Sumner wrote to Mr. Bemis, Jan. 5, 1868:—

I would not press you to any exertion inconsistent with health. But cannot you undertake a direction and supervision of the proposed compilation without applying yourself injuriously? If you turn away, I do not know where to look fort this work. You are, as the Germans said of Goethe “The only one.” You have fitted yourself for it, and have obtained all the needful information. Of some matters you are the sole depositary.

‘I am anxious that you should complete your own articles on this subject, and then collect them in the a volume, to take an honorable place on the shelves of libraries, alter having exercised an immediate influence over your own generation. This has been my desire, often communicated to you. I have it now as strong as ever; but meanwhile the interests Of the country must not suffer. You must take the field, not for a protracted campaign, but long enough to drill the undisciplined squads of the state department. I am sanguine that in a fortnight you might do enough to obtain an honorable discharge. I have a chamber for a friend, opening from my own study, which shall be at any desired temperature, according to the exigencies of your case. Come and make yourself at it home with me. I have seen Mr. Seward who is anxious as ever that you should carry on the proposed compilation.’¹⁷

To Lieber, March 28:—

I think you will like the German treaty. To my mind it is essentially just.¹⁸ It embodies the claim originally made by Cass, and for a long time denied by Prussia. His claim represented “high-water mark” on this question in our country, and now Germany reaches this point. The treaty was carried, after debate, by thirty-nine to eight.

The House passed at this session a bill concerning the rights of naturalized citizens. It came up for consideration late in January, and was voted upon April 20, 1868. N. P. Banks, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs, reported it, and led in the debate. He had been a conspicuous ‘Know-Nothing,’ and was elected to Congress in 1854 by that secret order. He [345] made a speech the next winter in the House in favor of its methods of secrecy and against foreigners and Catholics.¹⁹ He continued that connection until the ‘Know-Nothing’ or ‘American’ party lost its power, and he had now swung to the opposite extreme. He seemed bent, in order to suit what he thought the passion of the hour, on breaking down our neutrality system, provoking collisions with foreign powers, and imposing on the country practices which had been disowned by civilized States. Sumner was obliged in the Senate to watch and counteract the House committee acting under Banks's leadership. The bill itself maintained very properly the right of individuals to dissolve their native allegiance and assume a new citizenship, thus settling a long controverted question; and this right was at the time, through diplomacy, being acknowledged by Great Britain and Germany. The bill, however, added a provision, which was stimulated by the Fenian party, that in case an American citizen was arrested and detained by a foreign government in contravention of its intents and purposes, the president was empowered to suspend commercial intercourse with such government, and to order the arrest and detention of any subject or citizen of such government found within our jurisdiction. Contrary to all modern ideas, it undertook to hold an innocent person responsible for acts with which he had no connection; indeed, to punish the innocent for the guilty. It violated the rights of hospitality to travellers which civilized nations have been careful to respect. It was condemned in debate as setting up a policy of retaliation and revenge of a most personal kind, exacting ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;’ putting into the hands of the President, whoever he might be, the power to seize and imprison persons (a traveller like John Bright),—an arbitrary power to be exercised without judicial warrant, without indictment by grand jury or trial by jury, with no right of appeal by the arrested person to the writ of habeas corpus. The bill disregarded moral distinctions, the safeguards of public law, and the traditions of the government. The provision for stopping commercial intercourse came from General Butler; but the [346] manager of the bill, while resisting all attempts to conform it to just principles, made no opposition to this or other provisions which only extended the principle of retaliation.

The retaliatory provisions of the bill encountered earnest remonstrance in the louse from its foremost members,—Jenckes of Rhode Island, Eliot and Dawes of Massachusetts, Woodbridge of Vermont, Baker and Judd of Illinois, and Schofield of Pennsylvania. The first three did their best in debate to eliminate the obnoxious feature from the measure. Garfield read, as in conflict with it, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution; but Banks could not see the point. At last, when the vote was taken, there occurred one of those scenes which illustrate the pusillanimity of public men when serving for short terms. The yeas were one hundred and four, and the nays four only. Baker and Jenckes gave two of the negative votes; Eliot, Garheld, and Judd voted for the bill; while Dawes and Woodbridge and seventy-nine more did not vote.²⁰

Attempts were made in the Senate to force the committee on foreign relations to prompt action on the House bill, and also on resolutions of kindred purport.²¹ After holding the bill two months, Sumner reported it (all the members of his committee agreeing) with an amendment, substituting for the retaliatory clauses a provision requiring the President to report to Congress cases of the arrest and detention of American citizens by foreign governments, with the purpose of having prompt action taken to secure their rights. He opened the debate, July 18, with a brief speech, and continued the discussion the next day.²² He maintained that our government had been strenuous and steadfast in the maintenance of the rights of our citizens, whether nativeborn or naturalized, and that foreign powers—Prussia, for instance–had met us fairly in controversies concerning them, particularly in negotiations concerning the right of expatriation. He denounced the retaliatory clauses of the House bill as ‘nothing less than monstrous, and utterly unworthy of a generous republic hoping to give an example to mankind;’ as ‘an [347] outrage to the stranger within our gates;’ as ‘conferring on the President prodigious powers never lavished before in our history;’ ‘without precedent,’ and ‘inconsistent with the requirements of modern civilization;’ as holding, against all sense of justice, a private individual responsible for the acts of his government. He was equally emphatic in rejecting the suspension of commercial intercourse²³ and the arrest of private individuals for public wrongs as peaceful remedies, denying that either proceeding was in accord with just principles or the practice of enlightened States. He said:—

Suppose the law is passed, and the authority conferred upon the President. Whom shall he seize? What innocent foreigner, what trustful traveller, what honored guest? It may be Mr. Dickens or Mr. Trollope or Rev. Newman Hall; or it may be some merchant here on business, guiltless of any wrong and under the constant safeguard of the public faith. Permit me to say, sir, that the moment you do this, you will cover the country with shame, of which the present bill will be the painful prelude. You will be guilty of a barbarism kindred to that of the Abyssinian king Theodorus; you will degrade the national name, and make it a byword of reproach. Sir, now is the time to arrest this dishonor. See to it by your votes that it is impossible forever.

The Senate rejected the House retaliatory provisions by a vote of thirty yeas to seven nays, but yielded to clamor far enough to insert Williams's amendment requiring the President, ‘whenever an American citizen was unjustly deprived of his liberty by a foreign government, to use such means, not amounting to acts of war, as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate a release.’ Sumner opposed this amendment as conferring undefined powers, even those of reprisal.²⁴ He approved the definition in the bill of the rights of citizenship growing out of expatriation, but Williams's amendment left the measure in such an unsatisfactory shape that he did not vote upon it. The bill passed with only five negative votes.²⁵ [348]

Agassiz, referring in a letter, July 21, 1868, to talks with Sumner at Washington on the progress of culture in the United States, which he wished to renew, said:—

Your last speeches, especially the two on the funding bill and protection to American citizens abroad, have given in so much pleasure; they are so high-toned and truly human in the elevated sense, and honorable, of that kind of honor which nothing can tarnish,—that I want to make an opportunity for thanking you for my part of the good I trust they may do in every direction.

Dixon, late senator from Connecticut, wrote to Sumner concerning his resistance to the retaliation bill: ‘It is a noble and brave utterance. You never lack the nerve to say what you think right in the face of present apparent unpopularity. If I have differed from you, it has not been without pain.’

Roscoe Conkling of New York entered the Senate March 4, 1867. He had on well known occasions turned the House into a bear-garden, finally provoking Mr. Blaine to speak of his ‘cheap swagger,’ his ‘haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, super-eminent, overpowering turkey-gobbler strut.’²⁶ His subsequent quarrels with three Presidents (Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur), his melodramatic resignation as senator, and his abortive effort to obtain a re-election, have given him a place in the history of the times out of proportion to any record of his public work.²⁷ His career was marked by a jealsousy of associates who had rendered meritorious service or gained a position in the public esteem unattainable by himself. He had no respect for age or high service or the common feelings of men. The more sensitive they were to reproach or insult, the more they felt bound by the limitations of decent speech,—the more his nature prompted him to say offensive things of them. He was not happy without some one at hand whom he could make uncomfortable. The condition of good-fellowship with him was that one should pay court to him and minister to his arrogance. Rather than encounter his insolence, his associates generally were inclined to let him have his way. But his party grew [349] restive under the domination which he acquired by the use of patronage during General Grant's two terms; and the resistance to a third term for the Ex-President in 1880 was partly due to the fear that it would restore the New York senator to the power which he had lost under Hayes's Administration. At last, when he had resigned his seat abruptly to obtain a popular approval of himself and a condemnation of President Garfield, the Republicans of New York felt a sense of relief, and seized the occasion to bar his entrance from that time to public life. His last interference in politics was after the election of 1884, when he received a large fee as counsel for Mr. Cleveland's supporters on the count of the electoral vote of New York against his old antagonist in the House, Mr. Blaine.

Conkling was antipathetic to Sumner, as any one who knew the two men might expect he would be. He had sat in the Senate scarcely thirty days before he made some offensive remarks concerning Sumner, to which the latter paid no attention.²⁸ At the next session, in June, 1868, he returned to the same kind of treatment, when the question was one of a mere order of business or some clerical provision for the state department, and set upon Sumner very much in the style of a terrier.²⁹ Sumner at first ignored the malice; but Conkling was not to be put aside in that way, and kept up his hectoring from day to day. In putting a question to Sumner, he called him, in irony, ‘a fountain of light,’ and the latter returned a civil answer; notwithstanding this, Conkling went on with his offensive thrusts and imputations. His perseverance had such an air of puerility that it reminded one of school-days, when a coarse-grained boy would pick continuously on a sensitive youth. He imputed to Sumner an assumption of infallibility, the expression of opinions ex cathedra, and the uttering of ‘stately phrases, which the senator employs with a view to convincing the Senate that he knows more about this matter than anybody else;’ described him as ‘the great orb of the state department who rises periodically in his effulgence,’—continuing further in this style of stilted rhetoric. Sumner bore it all without retort, never failing to answer civilly Conkling's questions; till finally, when the latter had been four or five times on his feet with no apparent purpose other than to annoy and provoke, Sumner took notice of these [350] personal thrusts, and replied with dignity and calmness, although Mr. Blaine's style of treating such an antagonist would have been more effective. He said:—

Mr. President, the senator from New York has a passion for misunder-standing me at least, and he has a manner of expressing it imported from the other end of the Capitol, to which we have been less accustomed, I believe, in this chamber than others have been in the House of Representatives. I am sorry. I wish it were otherwise. I have tried to make a frank statement; I have no personal interest; I am seeking nothing but the public interest. I do not doubt that the senator from New York is also seeking the public interest; I make no suggestion to the contrary, though I do not see that the public interest requires the peculiar line of argument and cross-examination, and the manner which the senator has chosen to adopt; but that is for him to choose, and not for me.³⁰

Sumner then went on to restate his positions. Conkling did not rise again, and Sumner was sustained on the contested point (not an important one) by a vote of twenty-two to fourteen. the incident is of some importance as bearing on later controversies.³¹ From other senators, like Anthony, Frelinghuysen, Sherman, and Dixon, though often or generally voting against him on measures which he had greatly at heart, Sumner received most friendly treatment.

The impeachment of President Johnson consumed the attention of Congress during the larger part of this session. The House, after refusing, Dec. 7, 1867, by a decisive vote, to order it (the Republicans being divided), voted it, Feb. 24, 1868, by a large majority,—a strict party vote. Between the two votes the Senate voted, January 13, not to concur with the President's suspension of Secretary Stanton, which took place the preceding August; but the president, notwithstanding the refusal to the concur, removed Mr. Stanton, February 21, in violation, as alleged, of the Tenure-of-Office Act.³² The Senate began its session, March 5, for the trial of the impeachment, Chief-Justice Chase [351] presiding; and the vote was taken May 11, resulting in an acquittal,--thirty-five declaring the President guilty, and eighteen declaring him not guilty, which was not the two-thirds required. Among the nays were six Republicans, including Fessenden, Grimes, Henderson, and Trumbull. The change of a single vote would have effected the President's deposition from office. As often occurs in such contests, the personal element had a part in the result. Some of the senators had been in controversies with Wade, president of the Senate, who would have succeeded an impeached President; and his style and temperament were more or less publicly referred to as objections to his becoming Mr. Johnson's successor. The chief-justice bore himself with dignity and impartiality, but his undisguised sympathy with the defence, Republican as he had been, weakened the support of the prosecution in public opinion. Nor was the case against the President strengthened with the Senate or the people by the fact that the manager who was most in the public eye was General Butler.

Sumner wrote to Lieber in May, 1868:--

I take it that the whole story in the “ Sun” is a quiz. Wade assures me that he has not spoken with a human being about appointments, and that every story to the contrary was an invention. He has spoken with me on some possibilities of the future, telling me that I was the only person he had spoken with on the matter. I advised him at the proper moment, and before taking any decisive step, to see General Grant. The latter is earnest for the condemnation of the President.

The strictly legal charge against the President was the removal of Stanton; but the weight of argument, though verbal and technical, was with those who insisted that the Tenure-of Office Act did not protect an officer appointed, as Stanton was, before the President came into office. Other charges set up “his intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues,” and his denial in speeches that Congress was a legal and constitutional body. The moral justification of the proceeding was aside from these formal averments, and must be found, if anywhere, in Johnson's conduct and methods, which had obstructed the pacification of the States lately in rebellion, brought on bloody conflicts of race, and renewed in that vast region the spirit of civil war. His acts in this respect would have justified and insured a judgment of removal if a transcendent necessity had existed for so extraordinary a remedy. But it is plain now that no such necessity then existed. He had been hampered by successive [352] acts of Congress. The Republicans held both houses firmly by a two-thirds vote in each, and could pass over his veto any measure they were agreed upon. They retained in the Senate control over the appointments. They held the military power of the government through the sympathy of General Grant, its chief, and most of the generals of high rank. Only eight months of tile President's term remained when the vote was taken on the articles of impeachment; and though he had wrought mischief, it was not in his power to aggravate it materially. During the whole proceeding a large number of Republicans in the country, while not openly opposing it, dreaded an event which was for the first time to break the continuity of the government; with these added to the Democrats, probably at no stage would the proceeding have been sanctioned by a popular vote. Congress rather than the people were behind it. After the national election in the autumn, the great trial soon dropped out of sight, with no one wishing there had been a different verdict. The Republicans have never counted the attempted impeachment among their achievements.³³ The spectacle, so profoundly interesting at the time, excites now only an academic interest. One who lived through the contest can hardly bring back to mind at a distance of twenty or more years the hopes and fears which he then felt profoundly, and readers not then living will have all the greater difficulty in comprehending the spirit of the actors.

Sumner was among the first to favor the impeachment, being impressed with the infinite harm which the President had done. He regarded it as a political rather than a judicial proceeding, as it involved expulsion from office without punishment of any kind, to be conducted without technicality in procedure or in the admission of evidence,--a remedy which, though extraordinary, was not to be shrunk from in a great emergency; one which, without confining attention minutely to each act or word of offence, was intended to rid the government of an officer who had destroyed the public peace, and had brought the country to the verge of civil war. If the time had been 1861-1865 instead of 1868, this view would have prevailed. No nation would, in a struggle for life, have spared a President on the fine points which upon the record secured the acquittal. [353]

Sumner, taking the view that the proceeding was political and not judicial, did not consider that a senator was bound beforehand to reserve his opinion in comments upon the conduct of the President, or that he was exempt afterwards from public criticism and disapproval for his action or final vote.³⁴ His Opinion, one of several given by senators, reviewed the case at length. He dwelt upon the political character of the proceeding, the true construction of the Act concerning the tenure of office, the various offences of the President standing by themselves and as illustrated by his general character, speeches, and conduct; and he rebuked, after the manner of Burke in the Hastings trial, the professional dialectics which had been the reliance of his defenders at the bar and among senators.³⁵

Early in the proceedings he argued for the right of Senator Wade, the president pro tern. of the Senate, to vote on all questions during the trial, notwithstanding he would become the President's successor if the impeachment should be carried. He also made an argument in which, with a complete survey of the authorities, he contended that the chief-justice, not being a senator, was not entitled, in performing his limited duty to ‘preside,’ to decide or vote upon any question interlocutory or final.³⁶ Sumner made a reluctant protest against the decision of the chief-justice that he had the power to decide on interlocutory questions, in which he referred to their fellowship for long years, and acknowledged his old friend's fidelity and services.³⁷

The idea of a practical repudiation of the public debt, which three years after the war amounted to twenty-five hundred millions of dollars, had seized on large masses of voters, especially in the Western States. The burden seemed heavy, heavier than it proved to be; it was a choice opportunity for demagogues, and they improved it well. Very few openly advocated repudiation, but generally the scheme was put forward in the more plausible shape of a payment of the national bonds, known as the ‘fivetwenties,’ [354] by legal-tender notes, or greenbacks, either already issued or to be issued, which were not redeemable in gold, and were at the time greatly depreciated from the gold standard. Another scheme was the taxation of the bonds. The Democratic party under Pendleton's leadership espoused this plan, which became known with its friends as ‘the Ohio idea,’ and with its opponents as the ‘rag baby.’ Republicans in the West were carried away by the frenzy, but they came out of it sooner than the Democrats;³⁸ and some Republican leaders in that section, notably Hayes and Garfield, remained always steadfast in favor of an honest payment of the public debt.³⁹ Sherman, chairman of the Senate finance committee, made a speech, Feb. 27, 1868, in which, taking ground against Edmunds and New England senators generally, he maintained the right of the government to redeem the principal of the debt in existing depreciated currency, although, by a nice distinction, denying the right to make a new issue of currency for the purpose. The speech caused general alarm for the safety of the national honor. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, wrote to Sumner, February 29: ‘Sherman's speech has created more distrust here than anything that has yet taken place.’⁴⁰ William Endicott, Jr., of the same city, wrote the same day, invoking Sumner ‘to remonstrate against the national perfidy proposed by Mr. Sherman.’⁴¹ These correspondents, and also George B. Blake, the Boston banker, were very anxious that Sumner should at this session expose the financial heresies. His colleague had little taste for such discussions; and General Butler, of Massachusetts, a champion of ‘the Ohio idea’ in the House, had encountered no reply from any colleague. Sumner had indeed no aptitude for abstruse questions of finance; but he was ready to [355] set himself to any task, however uncongenial, where national honor and safety were concerned.⁴² On technical points he had excellent advisers in Atkinson and Endicott, both experts in finance, and distinguished for disinterested patriotism. It was a characteristic of Sumner, that on subjects on which he did not claim to be a specialist he knew by instinct whom it was safe to follow.

He wrote to Mr. Bright,⁴³ February 4:—

I wish I could answer your inquiry directly and without explanation. Evidently the idea of paying the five-twenties in greenbacks has made an impression, especially at the West, destined to predominate in the approaching Presidential election. I say this of the West, and not of the idea, for I trust that this will never predominate. But I do not disguise my anxieties at times. And yet, as I reflect upon the question and confer with my associates, I am encouraged to believe that the public faith will not be tarnished. There can be no declaration of Congress that the five-twenties must be paid in coin;⁴⁴ but I do not think there can be any declaration that they shall be paid in greenbacks. The question will be postponed, or, if dealt with, settled without deciding the meaning of the original obligation. It may be settled by the arrival of specie payments, when every obligation will be payable in coin. Another solution, which is now under the consideration of our financial committee, is the creation of a new stock, principal and interest declared to be payable in coin, probably at five per cent, into which the five-twenties will be convertible as they become due, at the option of the holder. In other words, the holder of the five-twenties can have these coin bonds if he will take them, even if specie payments have not arrived. The more I reflect upon the situation, the more I feel the impossibility of any act of repudiation. And yet anything short of payment in coin is, I fear, in the nature of repudiation. I wish I could write more positively: you will see that I write frankly. So much do I trust to the public faith, that, although sometimes disturbed by adverse menaces, I cannot bring myself to believe that there is any real danger. My only sister, who is in California, has all her small means in five-twenties, but I have not counselled any change. I fear that this is a very unsatisfactory letter. Mr. Thornton⁴⁵ has arrived. We have exchanged calls without meeting. I hear him called amiable and interesting. I cannot cease to deplore the blow dealt at arbitration by the English government, through whose representative [356] it was recognized at the Congress of Paris as the proper mode of deciding questions between nations.

Sumner made an elaborate speech in favor of a return to specie payments, in which he reprobated various schemes for tampering with the public debt,—such as State taxation of the national bonds, or their payment in a depreciated currency, or in anything less than coin;⁴⁶ and he further advocated a simplification of the system of taxation, confining it chiefly to whiskey and tobacco, and the funding of the public debt at long terms, without attempting the strain of a rapid payment. He dwelt on the evils of a continued suspension of specie payments, and contended for a reduction of the paper currency as essential to that end. Foremost, recurring to it again and again, he put the supreme importance of maintaining the public faith.⁴⁷ This speech on finance greatly strengthened Sumner's position with the commercial and conservative classes, who, though approving his prudent course on foreign relations, were rarely in accord with his action on questions growing out of slavery and reconstruction.⁴⁸ Mr. William Amory, a worthy representative of the Boston merchants of the old type, who had been accustomed to regard Sumner as an enthusiast of dangerous ability, and had been severe in his strictures on the senator, thus expressed the opinion of his class at this time:—

But this is no reason why I should not feel and express to you my great admiration for the cogent, simple, but masterly manner in which you have treated the practical question of financial reconstruction, in language eloquent with truth, sound sense, and comprehensible simplicity. The country is largely indebted to you for such outspoken truth, so forcibly, plainly, and irresistibly set forth, by one whose influence is so great, if not always exerted in the right direction. Let me add, as some amends for my freedom,—which I am sure you will excuse,—that I have generally with equal approval and admiration watched your course and read your speeches as chairman of the committee [357] on foreign relations through the critical period of the war and since, and am at a loss to reconcile your eminent and sound statesmanship in that department with the errors of your reconstruction and impeachment policy upon any other theory than that I am wrong myself,—which, of course, can't be!

In his autumn address to his constituents Sumner advanced another step, and called for the resumption of specie payments in eight months,—July 4, 1869,—thus anticipating an event which did not take place till ten years later.⁴⁹ His proposition alarmed those of his constituents on whose wisdom in finance he had relied,—Atkinson, Endicott, J. M. Forbes, Amasa Walker, and J. S. Ropes,—all insisting that the measure was premature, and would derange business without a previous reduction of the currency.⁵⁰ But Sumner, who always assigned to moral forces (in this case confidence and a fixed purpose) a larger share in a desired consummation than others could admit, adhered to his view; and the event proved his faith to be well founded. The final resumption came without a further reduction of the currency, which, under McCulloch's wise administration, had been already withdrawn to the extent of $160,000,000, and brought down to $580,000,000 before his power to contract it further was taken away by Congress in January, 1868. After this no further reduction took place before the resumption, but rather an increase by $26,000,000 in 1873-1874. Other causes were at work which rendered resumption safe without so great a contraction of the currency as conservative financiers thought necessary. The great West, hitherto limited to the line of States bordering on the western shore of the Mississippi, was now, by the opening of the Pacific Railway and kindred enterprises, to develop commercial needs sufficient to absorb the full amount of the existing currency.

During the last year of the Civil War it became evident that General Grant would, if he chose, be a candidate for the Presidency in 1838, with the chances altogether in favor of his election; but it was quite uncertain whether he was to be the Republican or the Democratic candidate. His last vote at a [358] national election had been for Buchanan. His report read in Congress in December, 1865, on the state of the South, his accompanying of President Johnson on the latter's political tour in 1866, and his acceptance of the portfolio of the war department upon Mr. Stanton's removal were interpreted as showing leanings towards the party with which he had acted before the war. But his later misunderstandings with President Johnson, growing out of the manner of his leaving the war department in January, 1868, led to a bitter antagonism between them; and henceforth the general was in close relations with the Republicans, and an earnest supporter of the impeachment. His nomination by them, notwithstanding the disadvantage to which they had been put by the impeachment proceedings, insured their success in the national election of 1868. The only hope of the Democrats was in presenting a candidate of undoubted loyalty in the Civil War,—which at one time was thought likely in the person of Chief-Justice Chase, now parted from his old associates; but that hope they threw away when they nominated Horatio Seymour.

One with Sumner's ideas of what a statesman should be would not, if the choice had been left solely with him, have selected for President a military officer, however meritorious his services, who had had no civil experience. Sumner probably accepted General Grant's candidacy rather as a necessity than as a fortunate event. He is, however, not on record as objecting to it in any letter or public way; and, as far as known, he acquiesced without protest in the final decision of his party.⁵¹ He took the best view of the General's qualities,—writing to Lieber, November 1: ‘Grant will be our President, with infinite opportunities. I hope and believe he will be true to them.’ [359]

Sumner wrote to the Duchess of Argyll, July 28:—

The duke's letter came to sustain the reports by the cable and the press of the reception of Longfellow. I am charmed to know this; he deserves it all. He is too modest for a lion, and has too little sympathy with public dinners and meetings. But you seem to have made him docile; I imagine him now like that saintly lion of Jerome.

The cable this morning tells us that Lord Cranworth is lead. He was not a great man, but of a sweet and gentle nature, who seemed to do everything well and kindly. I liked him always from my first visit to England thirty years ago, and am sad to think that he has gone. I am not satisfied that Lord Brougham is not buried in Westminster Abbey. The next generation will often ask where he lies, and will wonder that there was not room for him in the Abbey. I know something of his eccentricities, moral and political; but he did fight a good fight, and has left one of the foremost names in English history. Some of his speeches will be read always. I am inclined to think that there are two or three sentences from him which are among the best in the English language. Dr. Johnson used to give the palm to that famous sentence of Hooker on law; but I think that Brougham has matched it. And yet he lies obscurely in a village burial-ground far away in the south of France!

You approach your election as we approach ours. With you it is Gladstone; with us it is Grant,—two G's. I do not doubt the success of each.

Mr. Reverdy Johnson came to see me last evening. He will begin on the naturalization question, and has every reason to believe that it will be settled harmoniously. He is more truly a lawyer than any person ever sent by the United States, except, perhaps, Pinkney. He is essentially pacific, and detests the idea of war or wrangle with England. On this account I am sorry to lose him from my committee in the Senate.

The suffering at the South is great, through the misconduct of the President. His course has kept the rebel spirit alive, and depressed the loyal, white and black. It makes me very sad to see this. Considering the difficulties of their position, the blacks have done wonderfully well. They should have had a Moses as President; but they have found a Pharaoh, as I have often said. Reconstruction should have had sympathy and support, with gentle breezes always in the right direction, while it has had enmity and position, with adverse gales and storms. I hope that we can save it under the next Administration. I read the duke's speech with great interest, and the bishop's, and am glad Longfellow was there.

To Mr. Bright, August 11:—

It is long since we have exchanged letters, and I now employ my last moments before leaving for Boston to keep alive our correspondence. Events have been in more active than any pens, whether in England or the United States. I watch with constant interest the increasing strength of the liberal cause, and look forward to its accession to power with you as home secretary, at least, if you choose to enter a cabinet.⁵² I remember Mr. Cobden thought [360] that you and he ought never to take a cabinet place; but this opinion was founded on the public sentiment of his day. Would that he were now alive to enjoy the prodigious change! Meanwhile, we too have had our vicissitudes. The President is still in office, but checked and humbled. His removal seemed inevitable; he was saved by the delays of the trial. Grant will be his successor; of this I cannot doubt. I am happy to be able to assure you that repudiation is dead in all its forms and aliases. Long before the five-twenties can mature, specie payments will be the law of the land, and meanwhile the repudiators will be powerless. Had the President been removed, we might have had specie payments just so much sooner. I do not see why it should not follow the election of Grant.

Our new minister at London is more a lawyer than a diplomatist. The lawyers ought to make much of him, for he is ,one of them. He is easy, affable, and naturally courteous, and disposed to peace. For several years he has been on my committee, and I believe has uniformly harmonized with me, except on party questions and nominatios. He hopes to settle all outstanding questions. I think he will be successful on the naturalization question. But I do not see signs of .accord on the other question. Our recent bill on naturalization, with all its abominations, was Seward's work. He desires to he known as its author. It passed the House of Representatives by a large vote, and on coming to the Senate was referred to the committee of foreign relations. The committee was unanimous for postponing it till the next session. Meanwhile, the Fenians and their sympathizers of both parties came on by committees to press it the Presidential election was at hand, and the committee did not feel authorized to stand in the way. I reported the bill with amendments, taking out its worst features, and these were adopted. I thought it better to settle the question by a treaty. The Fenians pressed it, as furnishing possibilities of embroilment with England. I hope to hear from you soon, invigorated with salmon fishing.

Again, August 13 :—

I have been detained here by the death of Mr. Stevens. He was a hero, but no financier. On slavery and the suppression of the rebellion he was always austere and fixed. His death will make no essential change except on the financial question, where his activity and authority will no longer perplex. Here he erred; but in all else he was a great leader, to whom be all gratitude and honor! It is hard that the United States should be so misrepresented by the London press. The ‘Times’ has a correspondent who sees through rebel spectacles and writes with a rebel pen. I doubt if my name is ever mentioned without a misrepresentation. But it is harder to bear the pretentious liberalism of the ‘News’ correspondent, who is more mischievous than the other from his pretences. It is strange that the ‘News’ will tolerate such hostile perversion. I wish you well through your great election.

Congress took a recess July 27.⁵³ Sumner lingered at the capital, as was his custom, attending there the funeral of Thaddens [361] Stevens,⁵⁴ at which he served as pall-bearer, and arriving in Boston in the middle of August. Just before leaving Washington, he wrote to E. L. Pierce: ‘I am hot and weary, with many things to trouble me. You cannot enter into the depths of my sorrows, which revive at every stage. To think that in Boston I am homeless is very bitter.’

To Dr. Howe he had already written:—

I hear much of a new hotel in Boston,—the St. James. Is this the place for me? And how are its charges? Nothing perhaps can show how entirely homeless I am in Boston better than this inquiry. The old house belongs to another, and there is no roof for me in the city of my birth. I had thought of Parker's, hut this will be hot and crowded. Better still would be a couple of good rooms, which I might occupy permanently, in some private house. I have put so much money into house and pictures here, to say nothing of trees and shrubs and green grass, that I must economize elsewhere. I hope you are well, and your children. When will Flossy be married?

Shortly after arriving, Sumner attended in Boston the municipal banquet given to his old Free-Soil coadjutor, Anson Burlingame, who was now the head of an imperial embassy from China,—a festivity remarkable for the distinction of its guests. Sumner had carried the treaty with China unanimously in the Senate, and had recently taken the lead in a formal reception to the Chinese embassy by that body. In his remarks at the dinner the senator compared the romantic career of Burlingame with that of Marco Polo.⁵⁵

To Bemis, September 22, from Washington:—

There seems to be a new and favorable turn. Seward is sanguine, and Johnson writes that he shall settle everything. Nothing just yet, but everything very soon. The naturalization treaty comes first. Seward then expects a commission to hear and determine everything; therefore, the time is at hand for your work. I wish I could lend you my physical strength and power of work, everything but my hoarse voice. But with your knowledge,—of which you have a monopoly,—is there not a patriotic duty which you cannot avoid?

An obstinate throat trouble, for which Sumner sought the advice of an eminent specialist, Dr. H. I. Bowditch, withdrew him from any general participation in the political canvass of the [362] autumn. General Grant's candidacy had settled in advance the result of the national election. Sumner's third term as senator was expiring, but his return was altogether unopposed. The Republican State convention, meeting at Worcester, nominated him for re-election by a resolution⁵⁶ passed unanimously, which was drawn by E. L. Pierce, and presented by R. H. Dana, Jr., the latter having been the opponent six years before of a similar declaration. Sumner declined invitations from other States,— among the those of H. C. Bowen, Woodstock, Conn., and W. B. Allison of Iowa. He spoke only twice during the canvass, once briefly at a flag-raising in his own ward,⁵⁷ and again at Cambridge shortly before the election,—where, after a brief reference to his own public activity, covering as he maintained the various interests of the country, he defended the reconstruction acts, and renewed the discussion of financial questions, urging the speedy resumption of specie payments⁵⁸ He had hoped to deliver some lectures to meet what he called his ‘extravagances in house and pictures,’ but he reconsidered this purpose under the orders of his physician.

He missed during this vacation his communings with Longfellow, now making his last journey in Europe. Other friends, however, were thoughtful. Amos A. Lawrence offered him, shortly after he arrived in Boston, a room in his house at Longwood; but this welcome was declined. In the autumn Mr. Lawrence brought guests together whom he thought would be most agreeable for the senator to meet at dinner, saving, in his note of invitation, ‘The company shall not exceed the Muses in number; and though they may not be distinguished, they shall be “all honest men.” ’ Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop, always liberal in thought and genial in personal relations, invited him to meet the Wednesday Club at his house. His colored friend, J. B. Smith, gave him a dinner, with Rev. Dr. Potter of New York, Moses Kimball, and Edward Atkinson among the guests.

Sumner wrote to Whittier, November 13:—

Last evening I was told that you were in Boston, and to be found at the Marlboroa House. I hurried there at once, and was pained to learn that you had left for home. This was hard for me, for I longed to see you. Why did you not let me know of your visit? It would have been pleasant to review [363] our days and note the great progression of events; and I wished also to look with you at the future, and compare the destinies as we each see them. I confess my anguish when I think of the rebel States, and the brutalities to which good people are exposed. Opportunity has been sacrificed during the last four years. I hope we can recover it. Under proper influences, those States could have been moulded into republican commonwealths, where every man should enjoy equal rights. But they have been hardened and bedevilled.

I hope you are well, dear Whittier, and happy. Except in my throat, I am reasonably well; but there is very little happiness for me. This is my lot, and I try to bear it. I am very sorry to have missed you. Good-by.

The Legislature of Massachusetts, meeting in January, 1869, promptly re-elected Sumner for his fourth and last term, with a unanimity rare in the election of senators, and contrasting with the long and close contest which first sent him to the Senate,— his vote in the State Senate being thirty-seven out of thirty-nine votes cast, and in the House, two hundred and sixteen out of two hundred and thirty-two. He was now to be the senator of longest continuous service in the distinguished body which he entered in 1851,⁵⁹ and he had been since 1861 its most conspicuous presence. The strength of his position was generally recognized through the country in tributes from the public journals.⁶⁰ He was treated, even by those who did not agree with him, as an historical figure, always maintaining the dignity of his high office, laborious and faithful, specially discreet and highly informed, by studies and correspondence, in matters of an international character.

In a letter at this time, Mr. Garrison thus bore testimony to Sumner's career:—

I take up my pen to congratulate you and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the whole country upon your re-election to the Senate of the United States by an almost unanimons vote of the State legislature, in accordance with the all—prevailing sentiment of the people. This fresh expression [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.⁶¹ [365]

The chief Act of the third session of the Fortieth Congress, Dec. 7, 1868, to March 4, 1869, was the passage of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, which ordained that ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ This form was only reached after disagreements between the two houses, shifting votes in each, and serious differences among the supporters of the measure; and, in the end, the terms adopted were not satisfactory to many Republicans, because the prohibition did not extend to discriminations in the holding of office or exclude other tests, like those of education and property, which might be used to effect indirectly the practical disfranchisement of the colored people.

Sumner thought that if such an amendment were to be adopted it should cover all civil and political rights;⁶² but his chief insistence was that the amendment was unnecessary, Congress having already the power to forbid such discriminations; and he feared to admit, by the submission of the amendment to the States, that they had already the power to disfranchise on account of race and color, and that they would retain it in the event that the amendment failed to be approved by three fourths of the States. He therefore took no part in the votes, preliminary or final, upon the proposition. He moved as a substitute a bill⁶³ establishing the right to vote and hold office without discrimination as to race or color, in all national, State, territorial, and municipal elections, which received only nine votes, including those of Edmunds, Wade, and Wilson. In a speech he traversed familiar ground, in which he maintained that disabilities of race and color, at once irrational and beyond the power of any individual to remove, were not ‘qualifications’ or ‘regulations’ of suffrage which the States could prescribe.⁶⁴ He affirmed, as the supreme rule of interpretation, ‘Anything for human rights is constitutional. . . . Whatever you enact for human rights is constitutional. There can be no State rights against [366] human rights.’ To him it was incomprehensible that all publicists, all reasonable men, should not see the question as he saw it, and he had full faith in the efficacy of a statute. Somewhat unfairly he treated those who held to the existing power of the States to maintain the discrimination of race which still prevailed in many of the States, even at the North, as partisans of ‘State rights,’ in the sense that those rights had been heretofore set up in defence of slavery; and those to whom this imputation was applied could not be expected to do otherwise than resent it. He failed, as many others failed at this time who were seeking the means to meet novel exigencies, to recognize the permanent distinction between the unconstitutional pretensions of secession and the constitutional autonomy of the States.⁶⁵

Few of the radical Antislavery men agreed with Sumner in his preference for an Act of Congress as an effective remedy against discriminations of race as to suffrage. Wendell Phillips expressed his doubts upon this point, and in a letter urged Sumner, on personal as well as public grounds, to support the amendment. He wrote:

I know you will pardon this private hint from one who loves your fame, and is jealous for it. Give us all your weight for the amendment; and if it fails, rally the ranks on the next best line—your bill. Dispute the ground, as you have always done, inch by inch. “Before you've gone over all Judea, the Lord will come.”

The fifteenth amendment failed to attract the public interest which had been connected with the two preceding amendments. The New York Evening Post, still a Republican journal, did not mention it in its leaders, and hardly any journals of wide influence gave it special attention. Sumner's failure to support it and his preference for an Act of Congress did not provoke criticism in the newspapers or among his constituents; but senators opposed to him in later debates did not forego the opportunity to recall his peculiar action at this time. He however yielded a ready assent to the amendment after it had passed, promoted its adoption by the States,⁶⁶ and joined in congratulations when it was proclaimed a part of the Constitution.⁶⁷ [367]

Shortly after the close of the war, claims for injury by our army to private property situated in the rebel States and belonging to persons domiciled there (loyal, or pretending to be so) were urged on Congress, often with the assertion of special merit and hardship and an appeal to good nature rather than to sober judgment. Sumner, treating the question, as was his habit, under the light of history and international law, insisted that such petitions should be entertained with caution, and only upon some well-defined principle,—maintaining, with a citation of the authorities, that under the rules of public law the appeal could be made, not to any legal right, but only to favor and charity.⁶⁸

There was a spirited debate in the Senate on the question whether Massachusetts, having already in 1859 received the principal, was entitled to the interest on her advances to the United States in 1812 in the war with Great Britain. The claim was historically connected with Governor Strong's refusal to comply with President Madison's call for the State militia. Maine, as a part of Massachusetts in 1812, was entitled to a share in the amount to be recovered; and Massachusetts had in advance appropriated her own share to the aid of the European and North American Railway, in which Maine was greatly interested. Sumner took the lead in supporting the claim,⁶⁹ and slowed to good advantage his capacity for a running debate, which would have been always conceded but for his too great proneness to prepare himself with elaborate speeches.⁷⁰ The debate brought together in pleasant relations Sumner and Fessenden in their encounter with the Western senators, who were led by Sherman and supported by Frelinghuysen and Conkling. The measure failed at this time, but was carried at a later session.⁷¹

Other subjects to which Sumner gave attention during this session were the death of Mr. Hinds of Missouri, a member of the House, to whom he paid a tribute;⁷² a resolution of sympathy [368] with Spain in her effort for liberal institutions, with an appeal for the abolition of slavery;⁷³ the maintenance of mixed courts in Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade under the treaty with Great Britain, and the payment of salaries to the judges.⁷⁴

He wrote to Dr. Howe, Jan. 1869:—

It is difficult to understand the precise position of Crete. Can the late telegraphic news be true? I suspect it as an invention of the Turk. I regret that there is no good sympathetic Russian minister here with whom I could confer. Stoeckl has gone home; and even he was little better than an old Democrat, with a Massachusetts wife steeped in Webster whiggery; so, we fight our great battle generally with little support or sympathy.

To Mr. Bright, January 17:—

Of course I read carefully all that you say, whether to the public, or better still, to myself. Your last letter was full of interest. All the treaties⁷⁵ have been sent to the Senate in copy. They would have been ratified at any time last year almost unanimously. I fear that time will be needed to smooth the way now. Our minister has advertised the questions by his numerous speeches, so that he has provoked the public attention if not opposition. The Senate is not removed from popular influence; and I doubt if it will act until it begins to hear the public voice. Thus far nothing has been said on the question in the Senate or in my committee, but I have heard loose talk from senators to the effect that our minister has made it impossible to adopt anything he has done. I mention this, not to vindicate it, but only to give you a glimpse of floating impressions. All this troubles me. I think that never at any time have I felt so powerless over the question. This may change; but I think time will be needed. You are aware, of course, that the feeling towards Mr. Seward will not help the treaties. At this moment I do not know well enough the views of General Grant, which will necessarily exercise great influence. It is some time since I spoke with him on the subject. He was then very exacting.

Tuesday, January 19. I finish this letter at my seat in the Senate. Last evening I met General Grant at dinner, and conversed with him briefly on the new treaties. I would not commit him, and do not think that he has any very precise policy. He did not seem to object to the naturalization and San Juan negotiations, but I think he had a different feeling with regard to the Claims convention. He asked why this could not be allowed to go over to the next Administration? This morning I called up the subject in my committee. [369] There was nothing but general conversation, in the course of which it was remarked that Great Britain had never appreciated the wrong, the terrible wrong, done to us, not only in the cases of ships destroyed, but also in driving our commerce from the ocean. You know that I have never disguised the opinion that the concession of belligerent rights was wrongful; that there can be no ocean belligerency in a power without the capacity of administering justice on the ocean,—in other words, without prize-courts and ports. Of course, therefore, such a concession to pretenders without this capacity must be at the cost of the power which makes it. As a principle of law and justice I cannot see how this can be doubted. Denied or questioned, it must ultimately be adopted as essential to the safeguard of the seas. To what extent it will enter into our settlement I cannot now say. I wish I could write more fully and carefully, and see the future more clearly; but I write as well as I can under pressure and with business going on about me. There are topics in your letter of great interest.

To R. H. Dana, Jr., January 26:—

The Claims question with England will go over to the next Administration, and will probably become one of the greatest international litigations in history.

To Whittier, February 26:—

Last evening I received your note, which saddened me. I was sorry to know that you are not well, besides being disappointed in not having you under my roof; the time will come, I trust. I shall write to Emerson, who likes the experience of life, and hope to have him. I am sorry to know that Stanton has not seen Grant since the election. He has been too ill to call; and Grant has called only once, when Stanton was too ill to see him. Stanton says that he hears of declarations by Grant in favor of economy, retrenchment, and the collection of the revenue, but nothing about the rights of man to be maintained in all their fulness; but I hope for the best.

Early in 1869 a plan was brought to a head which Sumner had long had in mind,.—a complete edition of his speeches and writings, revised and annotated by himself. Literary friends counselled him to undertake it; and he was prompted also by calls for copies of speeches long out of print, from different parts of the country. S. Austin Allibone wrote, Jan. 9, 1868: ‘I have it much in my heart that there should be a handsome octavo edition (like Everett's) of your orations, etc. They should have a copious index; and do prepare autobiographical memoranda, with notices of your eminent friends in Europe and America.’ The senator had a statesman's ambition to place what he had done in permanent volumes, accessible for all time; and the American edition of Burke's works furnished the model. He [370] had an instinct that it would not do to defer longer the cherished plan. To Dr. Howe he wrote:—

I wish to be the executor of my own will in this respect. . . Latterly I have been led to think more than ever of the uncertainty of life. Perhaps the little interest I have in it has made notice symptoms that in a gayer mood I might have neglected. Suffice it to say that I have now but one solicitude,—it is to print a revised edition of my speeches before I die. If this were done I should be ready to go. These speeches are my life. As a connected series they will illustrate the progress of the great battle with slavery, and what I have done in it. I lope it is not unpardonable in me to desire to see them together, especially as I have nothing else. Sometimes I think of giving up my house, or cutting off expenditures, in order to devote my means to this object; but I am so comfortable in my surroundings, and at my time of life and in my public position feel their necessity so much, that I hesitate.

As the printing was beginning, he wrote to Longfellow:—

The revision tempts me to great work, beyond my anticipation. I have filed and amended those two early volumes so that it would have been as easy to re-write. If I could throw them into the fire I would, and have an end of them; but since this is impossible, next to their destruction is a good edition revised and amended before I die.

The enterprise was undertaken by Messrs. Lee and Shepard, of Boston. The prepration of the volumes occupied the senator's spare time for the remainder of his life; and it was unfinished at his death. His work comprehended changes of the text,–mostly verbal, but sometimes modifying the substance, —verification of authorities, notes explanatory of the occasion and circumstances, and extracts from public journals and his correspondence, sometimes, as in the case of the speech which preceded the assault in 1856, extended to great length. The edition was to be comprised in ten volumes, one or two of which were to be reserved for a biography to be prepared by another; but the notes and later speeches lengthened it to fifteen, even without a biography. The senator was assisted in verbal criticisims and verifying references by an accomplished proof-reader, George Nichols, of Cambridge. The printing began in July, 1869; and the first volume, beginning with the oration (July 4, 1845) on ‘The True Grandeur of Nations,’ came out in May, 1870. Ten volumes were printed under the author's eye,⁷⁶ and he supplied notes for the eleventh; but with the exception of [371] the ‘Prophetic Voices concerning America,’ which at the time of his death he was enlarging for a separate publication, it fell to his literary executors to complete the enterprise, with the assistance of proof-readers, acting under Mr. Longfellow's immediate direction. The last two volumes, the proofs of which were read by Mr. A. W. Stevens, did not appear till May, 1883, on account of a suspension of the work, the completion of which Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Nichols did not live to see. The announcement of the proposed complete edition of his Works called out a large number of notices, which dwelt at length on his habits of mind, his style, and his position as a statesman. The one contributed to the New York Independent, May 12, 1870, was from the distinguished scholar, Moses Coit Tyler.

Sumner's name had at different times been mentioned for Secretary of State and for the missions to England and France. Mr. Lincoln, at the time he called for the resignation of Mr. Blair, Postmaster-General, in 1864, contemplated a change in the state department after the election in 1864;⁷⁷ and in that event it is likely that he would have invited Sumner to be Seward's successor. Sumner's name was mentioned in connection with the Cabinet which Wade might have formed if Johnson had been removed by impeachment; and it was now again, after General Grant's election, canvassed in connection with the state department. It is not likely that Sumner would have consented to pass from the Senate to the Cabinet except at an exigent call; certainly he never indicated any wish to make the change, or any disappointment that he had not been called to make it. The duties of the place he had long held were congenial to him; its tenure was secure, and work remained to be done in it on the completion of which he had set his heart. His friends also, who took the most interest in his personal fortunes, were averse to his leaving the Senate. E. L. Pierce wrote to him, Jan. 20, 1869: ‘By your service in the Senate you are to live in the history of the country. Is it not best to remain there? With it there is fixedness and independence; beyond, there is uncertainty of tenure and a measure of subordination.’⁷⁸ Sumner was reticent when his name was mentioned for the Cabinet as among the probabilities. The most that he said was in a letter [372] to Lieber, written the day after the election in November in reply to the latter's suggestions on the subject:—

The headship of the first committee of the Senate is equal in position to anything in our government under the President; and it leaves to the senator great opportunities. Had Mr. Lincoln lived, I think I should have been obliged to determine then if I would supersede Mr. Seward. The thought troubled me at the time; for how could I leave reconstruction and equal rights unsettled in the Senate? Nobody has ever heard me say that I would accept any place out of the Senate, if it were offered to me. I admit, however, that my country has a right to determine where I can work best.