previous next
[177] On the other hand, I have heard him say that mathematics always remained a sealed book to him; and that his professor at Harvard once exclaimed, ‘Sumner, I can't whittle a mathematical idea small enough to get it into your brain.’

The period between 1851 and the beginning of the civil war found Mr. Sumner at his post in the Senate of the United States. His position was from the outset a difficult one. His election had displaced a popular idol. His views regarding the heated question of the time, the extension of slavery to the territories, were far in advance of those held by the majority of the senatorial body or by the community at large. His uncompromising method of attack, his fiery utterances, contrasting strangely with the unusual mildness of his disposition, exasperated the defenders of slavery. These, perhaps, seeing that he was no fighting man, may have supposed him deficient in personal courage. He, however, knew very well the risks to which he exposed himself. His friends advised him to carry arms, and my husband once told old Mrs. Sumner, his mother, that Charles ought to be provided with a pistol. ‘Oh, doctor,’ said the old lady, ‘he would only shoot himself with it.’

In the most trying days of the civil war, this same old lady came to Dr. Howe's office, anxious to learn his opinion concerning the progress of

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Charles Sumner (3)
Julia Howe (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1851 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: