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

[81] prohibited slavery forever in all national territory, thus ending a great controversy; made freemen of the slaves in the District of Columbia; established by law a policy of emancipation from which no retreat was possible; gave hope to the colored race in the recognition of Hayti and Liberia; struck the final blow at the African slave-trade. It created a system of internal revenue unknown to the country for more than a generation; secured to actual settlers free homesteads on the public domain; added a department of agriculture to the national system; authorized a railway to the Pacific Ocean, thus to clasp the continent with iron bands; affixed penalties to crimes against the nation, but freely offered pardon and amnesty. In the midst of extraordinary responsibilities, it did not neglect the duties of routine legislation. Whoever shall hereafter study its record will pass lightly over the personal bickerings which come up here and there in the debates, while he contemplates the grand result so creditable to its authors and so fruitful of benefit to mankind.

Sumner was always interested in beneficent internal improvements, especially in those which were immediately connected with the advance of civilization. As early as 1853 he gave a God-speed to a railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by sending a ‘Fourth-of-July’ toast to the mayor of Boston, in which he treated it as ‘marking an epoch of human progress second only to that of the Declaration of Independence.’¹ This enterprise was then regarded—at a period when as yet the Kansas-Nebraska question had not made the intervening territory familiar to the public mind—as visionary, or only practicable at some distant day. Ten years later, and six years before its consummation, he wrote to persons who were promoting it²:—

I have always voted for the Pacific Railroad; and now that it is authorized by Congress, I follow it with hope and confidence. It is a great work; but science has already shown it to be practicable. Let the road be built, and its influence will be incalculable. People will wonder that the world lived so long without it. Conjoining the two oceans, it will be an agency of matchless power, not only commercial, but political. It will be a new girder to the Union, a new help to business, a new charm to life. Perhaps the imagination is most impressed by the thought of travel and merchandise winding their way from Atlantic to Pacific in one unbroken line; but I incline to believe that the commercial advantages will be more apparent in the opportunities the railroad will create and quicken everywhere on the way. New homes and