Archibald Henry Grimké

“ Negro citizenship and suffrage he championed not to save the political power of his party and section, but as a duty which the republic owes to the weakest of her children because of their weakness. Equality before the law is, in fact, the only adequate defense which poverty has against property in modern civilized society. Well did Mr. Sumner understand this truth, that wrong has a fatal gift of metamorphosis, its ability to change its form without losing its identity. It had shed in America, Negro slavery. ”

“ Public opinion was error-bound, the North was error-bound, so was the South, parties and politicians were error-bound. Freedom is the heritage of the nation. Slavery had robbed it of its birthright. Slavery must be dispossessed, its extension must be resisted.
As it was in the beginning so it hath ever been, the world needs light. The great want of the times was light. So Sumner believed. This speech of his was but a repetition in a world of wrong of the fiat: “Let there be light.” ”

“ He had the sagacity to perceive that equality before the law could alone avert a revival under a new name of the old slave power and system. He toiled therefore in the Senate and on the platform to make equality before the law the master principle in the social and political life of America.
As his years increased so increased his passion for justice and equality. He was never weary of sowing and resowing in the laws of the Nation and in the mind of the people the grand ideas of the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ CHARLES SUMNER. Every time a great man comes on the stage of human affairs, the fable of the Hercules repeats itself. He gets a sword from Mercury, a bow from Apollo, a breastplate from Vulcan, a robe from Minerva. Many streams from many sources bring to him their united strength. How else could the great man be equal to his time and task? What was true of the Greek Demigod was likewise true of Charles Sumner. ”

“ God grant them wisdom! for they are dressing the wounds of a mighty empire, and of uncounted generations.” The mad act of Brooks had done for Sumner what similar madness had done for similar victims—magnified immensely his influence secured forever his position as an imposing, historic figure. Ah! it was indeed the old, wonderful story. The miracle of miracles was again performed, the good man’s blood had turned into the seed-corn of his cause.
No need to retell the tale of his long and harrowing fight for health. There were two sprains of the spine, besides the terrible blows on the head. ”

“ The downfall of the Whigs of Massachusetts, brought about by a coalition of the Free Soil and the Democratic parties, resulted after a contest in the Legislature lasting fourteen weeks, in the election on April 24, 1851, of Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States. He was just forty, was at the meridian of the intellectual life, in the zenith of bodily vigor and manly beauty. He attained the splendid position by sheer worth, unrivalled public service. Never has political office, I venture to assert, been so utterly unsolicited. ”

“ All the conditions seemed to favor southern aggression—the commission of some monstrous crime against liberty. Webster had gone to his long account, dishonored and broken-hearted. The last of the three supreme voices of the early senatorial splendor of the republic was now hushed in the grave. As those master lights, Calhoun, Webster and Clay, vanished one after another into the void, darkness and uproar increased apace. ”

“ He must needs bestir himself in obedience to the high behest. The performance of this task is the special mission of great men. It was without doubt Sumner’s, for he stood for the manhood of the North, of the slave, of the Republic. For this he toiled strenuously all his life long. It shines in every paragraph of that memorable speech, and of the shorter one in defence of the New England clergy made at midnight on that black Thursday of May, which closed the bitter struggle and consummated the demolition of the old slave wall. ”

“ A smaller man, a leader less wise and less fully equipped might have blundered at this stage by leaping too hastily with his cause into the arena of debate. Sumner did nothing of the kind. His self-poise and self-control for nine months was simply admirable. “Endurance is the crowning quality,” says Lowell, “And patience all the passion of great hearts.” Certainly during those trying months they were Sumner’s, the endurance and the patience. First the blade, he had to familiarize himself with the routine and rules of the Senate ”

“ If disunion and civil war were crouching in the rough way of the Nation’s duty, the Republic was not to turn aside into easier ways to avoid them. It should on the contrary, regardless of consequences, seek to re-establish itself in justice and liberty. ”

“ In strange and distant lands he found the human heart with its friendships, heroisms, beatitudes, the human intellect with its never ending movement and progress. He found home, a common destiny wherever he found common ideas and aspirations. ”

“ For when he issued his Emancipation Proclamation, the South too was weighing the military necessity of a similar measure. Justice was Sumner’s solitary expedient, right his unfailing sagacity. Of no other American statesman can they be so unqualifiedly affirmed. ”

“ Death too was busy. Preston S. Brooks and his uncle had vanished in the grave. Harper’s Ferry had become freedom’s Balaklava, and John Brown had mounted from a Virginia gallows to the throne and the glory of martyrdom. Sumner was not able to take up the task which his hands had dropped until the troublous winter of 1859-60. Those four fateful years of suffering had not abated his hatred of slavery. That hatred and the Puritanical sternness and [Pg 14] intolerance of his nature had on the contrary intensified his temper and purpose as an anti-slavery leader. ”