Henry McNeal Turner

“ But the last humanitarian act, for which the distinguished Senator labored with such indefatigable devotion, as to merit the praise, the love the honor and admiration of our race forever, was in trying to secure the passage of the Civil Rights' Bill, and thus abolish all distinctions between races, colors and nationalities, as well as to give to his country what few, if any, upon the face of the globe can claim, a code of cosmopolitan laws. In this the great senator rises to a grandeur that will enshrine his name in the affections of men of every clime. ”

“ Mother of American liberty! a brilliant light you have given to illuminate this world of sin and vice; a true friend of humanity; nobly hast thou repaid us for the blood of Chrispus Attucks, that baptised thy bosom in 1770, by the noble deeds of chaste Charles Sumner, whom we have lost. ”

“ And this, too, at a time when it was dangerous even for a congressman of the United States to express his honest convictions based upon the first principles of the government, that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as we have seen in the brutal and terrible assault committed upon Mr. Sumner by the South Carolina representatives in 1856, within the sacred walls of the senate for exercising the dearest rights of citizenship—the rights of freedom of speech. ”

“ Charles Sumner finds no expression in words, no relief in tears, and no comfort in the sighs of millions.
A statesman who stood head and shoulders above any of his day and generation. A scholar who had no superior in legal lore or moral ethics. A philanthropist whose capacious affections and great heart encircled the children of every race, clime, and nationality. A citizen whose character was untarnished, a reformer who stood as a watch tower in the van-guard of a revolutionary host. ”

“ And this is the man God gave us!—the most abjectly oppressed people the world ever knew—as our champion, the champion of our rights among the law-making powers of the land. Pure in his Saxon blood, purer in his principles, a gentleman and a scholar, disinterested in his politics, of spotless virtue, loved, respected and honored by the good and great of Europe as well as America, associated with the brightest, holiest spirits and the largest souls inhabiting this planet ”

“ But the Missouri compromise, admission of Texas, and the Wilmot proviso, blended with the doctrine of squatter-sovereignty, which were to grow out of the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, was destined, under an over-ruling Providence, to embolden the advocates of liberty, and usher in a brighter dispensation, and thus the cause of liberty required a Sumner—a man like Bonaparte with iron nerves, and a will as defiant as the Word of God—a man whose erudition none could gainsay, but whoso gigantic intellect towered above them all. ”

“ Sumner display the majesty of a statesman, and dwell in such convincing power as he did on giving the negro the ballot. Here he showed the resources of his exhaustless intellect as no other statesman living did or could. He challenged the world—he met our foes from every clime and of every dialect, he rebutted their objections by quotations from the reformers of all nations, he made the moralists, the poets, the theologians, the jurists, the scientialists, and the axiomatics of every age and clime contribute to this object. ”

“ Sumner died.
About twenty-three years ago, a tall, spare looking man crowned with a majestic brow, and presenting the aspects of great natural ability and the highest acquirable attainments, walked into the senate of the United States, possibly to the consternation of many, and after taking the oath of office, sat down in the midst of those he was destined to eclipse both in glory and renown in a few years. ”

“ Sumner having witnessed the first great aim of his life in the extinction of slavery, turned his mighty intellect to the bestowal of the full rights of citizenship, and the recognition of the equality of all men before the law, with the fullest guarantee of civil and political rights upon the emancipated colored men of the country. ”

“ Too noble to do wrong, too great to be mean, too wise to make a blunder too high to contenance a low act, too solid to be a trickster too pure to be a politican, too just to be partial, too brave to cower before men or devils, too spotless to be slandered in the most calumnious age the world ever witnessed, armed with the helmet of right, and panoplied with a code of principles, as irreversible as the flowing current of the Mississippi river, he stood out as grand and as majestic before the world as thundering Sinai did, when the shuddering hosts of Israel trembled at its base. ”

“ Sumner never relaxed his exertions in the cause of his choice a moment. In Congress or out of it, in debates on the floor of the Senate or in addresses, he continued to denounce the evil of slavery, the tyranny of its advocates, and to urge on the free people of the North the duty of its suppression. He became the recognized leader of the Anti-slavery Party in the Senate, and Massachusetts had reason to be proud of her talented and gifted son, whose name was in every one's mouth. ”

“ One of the best evidences of human affairs remaining in statue quo, at least for a time, is to see little men coming to the surface. God never places third rate officers to man his vessels when a fearful gale and angry billows are just ahead.
When Mr Sumner was called from the ranks of the private citizen to the Senate without having to serve an apprenticeship in the lower house of Congress, or in the executive chair of his State, any one familiar with the history of nations and kingdoms might have known it was portentous of a gathering storm. ”

“ Sumner did not feel that white men needed his help like the poor negro whose mouths were locked and whose hands were tied, yet, his great abilities were not by any means restricted to our race, for when the nation stood in need of one to champion her cause, measure arms with the diplomats of the world, and vindicate her honor with foreign powers, to whom did she look but to Charles Sumner? ”

“ With such a powerful champion declaiming in our favor, one by one the iron barriers of prejudice were overcome and equality before the law, and full political rights were made secure for all citizens, for all time to come. Mr. Sumner now gave the largest portion of his time to the enactment of a law to protect all citizens in their civil rights, and for that purpose prepared the celebrated Civil Eights Bill now pending before the Senate of the United States, and which is now occupying a great share of the country's attention. ”

“ Sumner appears to have watched every plan introduced in Congress for the restoration of the conquered States with jealous interest. Early in the war he had advocated the unconditional emancipation of the slaves as the speediest and most effectual means to end it, and when that emancipation was effected, he stood prepared to oppose any and everything which might seem, however remotely, to militate against the perfect freedom and equality of the colored race under the law. ”

“ We may hang upon his last hours and his last words, for those of a faithful friend, stay with us, are precious, and we treasure them. His last words in this life were characteristic of this great statesman, and peculiar. They seem to intimate that his great work of life was not quite finished. "Take care of the civil rights bill; do not let it fail." Here was a great thought for the nation, and the negro, whose champion he gloried in being. "Tell Emerson I love and revere him;" Heavenly passion in the breast—love and reverence—the brightest of the train, and strengtheners all the rest. ”

“ Congress can only honor him by the passage of his bill, any memmorial services in Congress that does not involve the passage of his civil rights bill, will be a farce, a fizzle and a dishonor of the sacred name of Charles Sumner.
Among the great men of the world, we reckon the names of Cicero, Caesar, Socrates, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Hamden, Tell, Bonaparte, Burke, Pitt, Fox, Washington, Tousant, Louverture, Webster, Brougham, and a host of other statesmen, reformers, poets, philosophers, scientists, inventors and benefactors. ”

“ He could spare blood to wash the Senate of the United States, and brain-force to deluge the world with ideas. True, he never led a party, but he led the nation—he was greater than a party, besides he lived too far in advance of his contemporaries to lead a party, however noble its aims and commendable its cause ”

“ In a conversation with Chief-Justice Chase in Washington city in 1869, he told me when only three of them were in the Senate (meaning three Abolitionists) they were pointed out and looked at as wild beasts in a cage, but, said he, "Sumner kept them all busy,"
For three quarters of a century the Congress of the United States had never had a fearless champion of liberty. True there had been men there who had assumed timid positions favoring free speech, colonization, &c, but there had never been a man there who took bold grounds in favor of a free country. ”

“ He was too great to be a politician, for he had no policy, he was as far above political wire-pulling and intrigue, as the heavens are above the earth. And yet he was the master politician of the age, because his policy was even handed right. ”

“ The resolutions, after slight amendments by the Senate, were passed in June, and were strongly advocated by Mr. Sumner. Every measure of reconstruction brought before Congress which offered guarantees of protection and equal rights to the negro, up to the introduction of the "Military Government bill" found a warm friend in Mr. Sumner. This bill dividing the Southern States into military districts, to be under the command of a General and military force to maintain peace and order until a stable Government could be formed, and met with an energetic foe in President Johnson. ”

“ He presents, in his own person, a decisive proof that an American gentleman, without any official rank of widespread reputation, by mere dint of courtesy, candor, an appreciating spirit, and a cultivated mind, may be received on a perfect footing of equality in the best circles—social, political, and intellectual ”

“ That, while we bow with reverence and submission to the mandates of our all-wise and Heavenly Ruler, we can but feel and be deeply sensible of the great loss the country has sustained in the death of its great statesman, Charles Sumner. ”

“ All eyes were directed and all the energies of the nation were concentrated on its armies, until it became apparent, that the Southern power was falling. The war was not ended, but its close was near at hand, and the statesman of the North began the consideration of a reconstruction policy. In what manner should the conquered States be readmitted to the Union? ”

“ It is safe to say that to-day there are no American statesmen better known or more highly esteemed in England than Charles Sumner and Charles Francis Adams. Mr Sumner was a close attendant at the debates in Parliament, and in the courts at Westminister, where he was frequently invited by the Judges to sit-by their side at the trials. ”

“ Sumner's life when he was to become known through all the United States as the advocate of human freedom. When Judge Story died in 1845, hoping that the young student he had trained up would succeed him in the professorship of the law school. Charles Sumner had just chosen another path in life. He delivered his oration before the Boston municipal authorities, and the author of the True Grandeur of Nations therein unfolded the banner under which he was to enter political life. ”

“ That the best years of his life, distinguished alike for wisdom and patriotism, were devoted to the cause of freedom and the amelioration of our people, and that we are deeply sadden-ed at the loss of so great and dear a friend, whose place it will be hard to fill, but his name shall live forever and remain sanctified upon our memories.
3. That we offer our sincere condolence to the sister and relatives of the deceased, and to the citizens of Massachussets in their bereavement in the death of their illustrious son. ”

“ A cosmopolitan who had no bounds to his generosity, and would have rather been the benefactor of a hottentot than the companion of a prince—but to be short, one of the noblest specimens of humanity of any age, in the history of the world, fell in death from the apex of glory when all that was mortal of Chas. ”

“ A hero whose war weapons were bloodless missiles, but terribly invincible, and fearfully destructive on the field of combat.
A philosopher whose analytical acumen comprehended every phase of human character, and sifted the deeds of kingdoms. ”

“ A gentleman whose culture, refinement and urbanity blended with an aristocratic demeanor, singularly constituting him a model among equals. An orator whose chaste diction and flowery eloquence will be the emmulation of coming generations. ”

“ Gen. Cass was American Minister at the French Court while Mr. Sumner was in Paris, and it was at his request that the latter wrote his masterly defence of the American claim to the North-eastern boundary, which was widely copied at the time of its publication. From France to Italy, and from Italy to Germany, Mr. Sumner continued his travels, stopping long enough in both countries to study all that was best in literature, in art, and in public life, which they could furnish, and everywhere he was received with the same distinguished consideration. ”