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with the Republican party by his votes in the national elections of 1864, 1868, and 1872, and also approved the constitutional amendments and the measures of reconstruction.1 His loyalty had been recently assumed by his confirmation as minister to Spain.2 Withal, he was genial, and opened generously his stores of knowledge to all who sought them.
Nothing in his life commended him to lawyers, as he had done almost everything but practise law. He was a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for only a few months, appointed by Governor Boutwell and confirmed by a majority of one, which was obtained only after considerable pressure on the council.
The Massachusetts men, on whom Sumner most relied for advice, were all against Mr. Cushing's appointment,—among them F. W. Bird, Dr. S. G. Howe, Wendell Phillips, and George F. Hoar, who signified in letters to the senator their earnest opposition to a confirmation.
One Massachusetts lawyer, P. W. Chandler, alone took a different view.
Sumner, as soon as the nomination was made, decided to support it by speech as well as vote; and this decision was almost as much a surprise as the President's action in making it. He knew all the points against Cushing as well as the others, and some of them were more likely to stand with him as vital objections than with most men. No two men could have been further apart than the two had been before the Civil War in their ideas of the Constitution and of political duty; but Sumner was catholic in his views of men, was disposed to credit their sincerity when they changed for the better, and bore no personal grudges, as others in his place might have borne against Cushing, who had been for three months an impediment to his first election.3 Cushing had, in profession at least, come to adopt Sumner's views of the new order of things, and Sumner believed fully in the genuineness of his conversion.
Indeed, his sincerity at this point of his career was as credible as at any other.
He was by
1 Cushing supplied Sumner a brief, which stated his political action and his relations to the government during the Civil War. His letter to the President requesting the withdrawal of his name also contained a similar statement. New York Tribune, Jan. 15, 1874.
2 Shortly after the withdrawal of his nomination as chief-justice, he left on his mission to Spain, which he filled creditably. I-e was always friendly to that country, and deplored the proceedings in the ‘Virginius’ case.
3 R. H. Dana, Jr., in drawing Sumner's character in Faneuil Hall, March 14, 1874, stated that his action as to individuals was never affected by wounded sensibilities. ‘He did not deal with men as units. . . . He dealt with them by classes and races.’
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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