USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 30
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49
When the eminent Judge Story died, in 1845, Mr. Sumner was universally conceded to be the fittest person to succeed him in the professorship of the law school. Story himself had fre- quently remarked, " I shall die content, so far as my professor- ship is concerned, if Charles Sumner is to succeed me;" while Chancellor Kent declared the young man "the only person in the country competent "to wear the mantle of his departed friend." But Sumner had chosen to enter upon the arena of political life; and, indeed, had already boldly planted there the banner, under whose folds he had elected to fight, viz. : the cause of human freedom and universal liberty. On the 4th of No- vember, 1845, when it was proposed to annex Texas to the Union as a slave State, he had delivered a thrillingly eloquent protest, at a public meeting in old Faneuil Hall, against such an extension of the slave power. Within the same venerable
380
MEN OF OUR DAY.
walls, consecrated by so many memories of revolutionary patri- otism, he again, on the 23d of September, 1846, addressed the Whig State Convention on the Anti-slavery Duties of the Whig Party, and, not long after, published a letter of rebuke to Hon. Robert C. Winthrop for his vote in favor of the war with Mex- ico. On the 17th of February, 1847, he delivered, before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, a brilliant lecture on White Slavery in the Barbary States, a production of rare schol- arship and research, possessing great interest to every philan- thropist and lover of liberty. At Springfield, September 29, 1847, he made a powerful speech, before the Massachusetts Whig State Convention, on Political Action Against the Slave Power and the Extension of Slavery ; and, at a mass convention at Wor- cester, Massachusetts, on the 28th of June, 1848, he gave another of his eloquent and able speeches, For Union among Men of all Parties against the Slave Power and the Extension of Slavery, in which he forcibly characterized the movement of the day, as a revolution, "destined to end only with the overthrow" of the tyranny of the slave power of the United States. Mr. Sumner, meanwhile, had withdrawn from the Whig party, and had asso- ciated himself with the "Free-soil" party, who favored the claims of Mr. Van Buren for the presidency in 1848. On the 3d of October, 1850, he delivered, before the Free-soil State Conven- tion, at Boston, a masterly and glowing speech on Our Recent Anti-slavery Duties, which was a most exalted triumph of gen- uine oratory, and produced the profoundest impression upon those who heard it. It bore with terrible severity upon the Fugitive Slave bill, then recently passed, and upon President Fillmore, who had signed it, of whom he said, "Other Presi- dents may be forgotten ; but the name signed to the Fugitive Slave bill can never be forgotten. There are depths of infamy, as there are heights of fame. I regret to say what I must; but
381
HON. CHARLES SUMNER.
hath compels me. Better for him had he never been born Better far for his memory, and for the good name of his chil- dren, had he never been President."
On the 24th of April, 1851, Mr. Sumner was elected by a coalition of the Free-soilers and Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature, to occupy the seat in the United States Senate, pre- viously occupied by Daniel Webster, who had recently accepted a position in Mr. Fillmore's cabinet. He took his seat in the national council, fully and firmly pledged to "oppose all sec- tionalism, whether it appear in unconstitutional efforts by the North to carry so great a boon as freedom into the Slave States, or in unconstitutional efforts by the South, aided by northern allies, to carry the sectional evil of slavery into the free States ; or in whatsoever efforts it may make to extend the sectional domination of slavery over the national Government." Soon after his introduction to the Senate, he appeared as the able advocate of aid to railroads through the new Western States. His first grand effort, however, in the Senate, was his speech, on the 26th of August, 1852, on his motion to repeal the Fugitive Slave bill, entitled, Freedom National, Slavery Sec- tional. He had been for a long time deprived-through the action of the pro-slavery members of the Senate, who were de- termined to trample upon the freedom of speech on the ques- tion of slavery-of the chance of speaking on this question ; but when, seizing a parliamentary opportunity, he at length gained the floor, he rebuked, in terms of lofty but scathing rebuke, the attempt to muzzle public debate; and, with indig- nant eloquence, denounced the Fugitive Slave bill as cruel, tyrannical, and unconstitutional. His next great effort was his speech before the Senate, February, 21, 1854, entitled, The Landmark of Freedom ; Freedom National; against the repeal of the Missouri prohibition of slavery south of thirty-six degrees
382
MEN OF OUR DAY.
thirty minutes, in the Kansas and Nebraska bill. Speaking of that " Question of questions,-as far above others as liberty is above the common things of life-which it opens anew for judgment," he said, "Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass, is at once the worst and the best bill on which Congress has ever acted. Yes, sir, WORST and BEST at the same time. It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In a Chris- tian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, will be read with uni- versal shame. Do not start. The tea tax and stamp act, which aroused the patriotic rage of our fathers, were virtues by the side of your transgression ; nor would it be easy to imagine, at this day, any measure which more openly and perversely defied every sentiment of justice, humanity, and Christianity. Am I not right, then, in calling it the worst bill on which Congress ever acted ?
" But there is another side to which I gladly turn. Sir, it is the best bill on which Congress ever acted ; for it annuls all past compromises with slavery, and makes all future compromises impossi- ble. Thus it puts freedom and slavery face to face, and bids then grapple. Who can doubt the result ? It opens wide the door of the future, when, at last, there will really be a North, and the slave power will be broken ; when this wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our Government, no longer impress- ing itself upon every thing at home and abroad; when the national Government shall be divorced in every way from slavery ; and, according to the true intention of our fathers, freedom shall be established by Congress everywhere, at least beyond the local limits of the States. Slavery will then be
383
HON. CHARLES SUMNER.
driven from its usurped foothold here in the District of Colum- bia, in the national territories and elsewhere beneath the national flag; the Fugitive Slave bill, as vile as it is unconstitu- tional, will become a dead letter; and the domestic slave trade, so far as it can be reached, but especially on the high seas, will be blasted by Congressional prohibition. Everywhere, within the sphere of Congress, the great Northern hammer will descend to smite the wrong; and the irresistible cry will break forth : 'No more slave States.'
"Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of freedom in Nebraska and Kansas, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection, by which freedom will be secured, not only in these territories, but everywhere under the national Govern- ment. More closely than ever before, I now penetrate that " All-hail hereafter," when slavery must disappear. Proudly I discern the flag of my country, as it ripples in every breeze, at last become in reality, as in name, the flag of freedom- undoubted, pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the best on which Congress ever acted ?
"Sorrowfully, I bend before the wrong you are about to com- mit ; joyfully, I welcome all the promises of the future."
On the 26th and 28th of June, 1854, Mr. Sumner, on the Boston memorial for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave bill, replied to Messrs. Jones of Tennessee, Butler of South Carolina, and Mason of Virginia, in eloquent speeches, full of interesting facts, and fine oratory. These were followed, July 31st, by his memorable speech on the " struggle for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave bill," in support of a motion for repeal of said bill, the introduction of which the Senate finally refused, although, in so doing, they overturned two undoubted parliamentary rules.
After the close of the Congressional session, he addressed the Republican State Convention, at Worcester, Massachusetts, on
384
MEN OF OUR DAY.
the 1st of September, 1854, on the duties of Massachusetts at the present crisis ; and during the following Congressional session of 1854-5, he was again found at the front, stoutly battling for human rights. When, in February, 1855, Mr. Toucey, of Con- necticut, moved his "bill to protect officers and other persons acting under the authority of the United States," Mr. Sumner took the floor with his masterly speech on the Demands of Free- dom-Repeal of the Fugitive Slave bill. Again, on the 9th of May, 1855, in the Metropolitan theatre of New York, he delivered a public address on the Anti-slavery Enterprise, which produced a profound impression upon the community. On the 2d of November, 1855, he spoke before a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, on the Slave Oligarchy and its Usurpations-the Outrages in Kansas-the Different Political parties-the Republican party-a concise, forcible and eloquent presentation of the his- tory of the great American question.
On this question, indeed, Mr. Sumner had now become the recognized leader of the anti-slavery party in the Senate. Favored with a commanding and attractive person, a dignified and captivating delivery, a strong and melodious voice, a mind endowed with rare capabilities and still rarer acquired graces of education, and treasures of knowledge; and, beyond all, a truthfulness of character which gives additional emphasis to every word which he utters, Charles Sumner was a repre- sentative of whom the Old Bay State had every reason to be proud; a champion of freedom, justice, and humanity, whose influence and integrity were undoubted. The moment was now at hand when the eloquent orator was to become a bleeding witness, and well nigh a martyr to that " barbarism of slavery," which he had so often denounced with unsparing tongue. On the 19th and 20th of May, 1856, during the animated and protracted debate on the admission of Kansas as a State of the
385
HON. CHARLES SUMNER.
Union, Mr. Sumner delivered in the Senate a speech of sur- passing eloquence and power on the Crime against Kansas-the Apologies for the Crime-the True Remedy. In the course of this speech, which has been well esteemed as "one of the grandest efforts of modern oratory-one of the most commanding, irre- sistible, and powerful speeches ever made in the Senate of the United States," he vindicated, in fervid terms, the fair fame of his native State, and with keen sarcasm, severe invective, and irre- sistible argument, traced the course of slavery arrogance and domination in Kansas, concluding with the following feeling peroration : "In just regard for free labor in that territory, which it is sought to blast by unwelcome association with slave- labor; in Christian sympathy with the slave, whom it is pro- posed to task and sell there; in stern condemnation of the crime which has been consummated on that beautiful soil ; in rescue of fellow-citizens, now subjugated to a tyrannical usurpation ; in dutiful respect for the early fathers, whose inspirations are now ignobly thwarted ; in the name of the Constitution, which has been outraged-of the laws trampled down-of justice banished-of humanity degraded-of peace destroyed-of free- dom crushed to earth ; and in the name of the Heavenly Father whose service is perfect freedom, I make this last appeal." This speech greatly incensed the southern members in Con- gress, and was the alleged provocation for the cruel and cowardly assault made upon him.
On Thursday, May 22d, two days after this speech, as Mr Sumner was sitting at his desk in the Senate chamber, busied with his correspondence, after the adjournment of the day, he was suddenly attacked by Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House, from South Carolina, a nephew of Senator Butler, to whom Mr. Sumner had replied, who felled him to the floor with a heavy cane, with which he continued to belabor his unconscious 25
386
MEN OF OUR DAY.
victim over the head, while Mr. Keitt, another South Carolina Congressman, stood by, with arms in hand, to prevent any interference on the part of Mr. Sumner's friends. The few gentlemen who were present in the Senate chamber, were at first apparently paralyzed by the scene, but Messrs. Morgan and Murray of New York, and Mr. Chittenden, rushed to his aid, and finally succeeded in wresting the infuriated scions of "chivalry" from the object of their fiendish malevolence; and they were subsequently censured by the House, and resigned their seats, both ultimately dying miserable and dishonorable deaths. The brutal attack thoroughly aroused the citizens of the Northern States to the realization of the true character of slavery as manifested in its advocates. Large indignation meetings were held in many towns and cities of the land, from the east to the west; and this attempt to stifle freedom of speech resulted in a concentration of public sentiment in regard to the assumptions of the South, which tended greatly to diffuse and promote the spirit of true liberty.
The injuries inflicted upon Mr. Sumner were of the severest character, and resulted in a long continued and alarming disability, which obliged him to seek recreation and medical advice and treatment in Europe. For more than three years, he was a great and constant sufferer, and his final recovery was due, under God, to the skill of the eminent French surgeon, Dr. Brown-Sequard, and to his own remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution. In 1860, having recovered his health, he took an active part in the presidential canvass, which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln.
During this year, also, he delivered his great oration on the "Barbarism of Slavery," the complement of the one for which he was so brutally assaulted.
During the discussions in the Senate, which were finally
387
HON. CHARLES SUMNER.
terminated by the secession of the Southern States, he earnestly opposed all concession and compromise; and was one of the earliest advocates of emancipation as a speedy mode of bringing the war to an end. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1863, for a term ending March 4th, 1869, and his course has since been in perfect accordance with his previous career.
As chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, the most important of all the Senate committees, in many respects, he has maintained the honor of the country through a period of extraordinary difficulty. He was also a member of the Com- mittee on the District of Columbia, and was mainly instrumen- tal in procuring the abolition of slavery and impartial suffrage in the district.
Among Mr. Sumner's oratorical efforts, we may especially mention an oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Howard university, on the 27th of August, 1846, entitled, the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist, a series of elo- quent and touching tributes to the memory of a rare quaternion of noble spirits, John Pickering, Joseph Story, Washington Allston, and William Ellery Channing; an oration, delivered August 11th, 1847, before the literary societies of Amherst college, on Fame and Glory, being an unanswerable argument in behalf of peace; an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Union college, July 25th, 1848, on the Law of Human Progress ; and an admirable address, Nov. 15, 1854, before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, on " the Position and Duties of the Merchant ; illustrated by the life of Granville Sharp." His col- lected speeches have passed through many editions, and he is also the author of a work on " White Slavery in the Barbary States."
Mr. Sumner is, in the highest sense of the term, a statesman; his views are broad and comprehensive, and every measure
388
MEN OF OUR DAY.
presented by him is subjected at once to the conclusive test of principle. Even his bitterest enemies have never dared to whisper the shadow of a doubt of his integrity and purity of character. He is not faultless ; no public man can lay claim to entire freedom from faults, but his foibles and infirmities never have, and never will, impair his lofty patriotism, his proud devotion to his country, or his uprightness and unspotted repu- tation. If there were more like him in the Senate, that body would be purer and better than it now is.
HON. HENRY WILSON,
U. S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
ROM the lowliest to the loftiest station-from extreme penury, the hard grinding poverty which knows the bitter experiences of hunger, and insufficient clothing, and wearisome toil, even in childhood, from the early dawn far into the hours of night, to the comforts and enjoy- ments of refined society, and a position in the highest legisla- tive body in the world, the American Senate-these are the vicissitudes through which more than one of our eminent states- men have passed. Senator Wilson is one of those whose lives have not been all sunshine, and who have attained their present high station only through labor and struggles, which less reso- lute, earnest men would have deemed beyond human power and endurance.
HENRY WILSON was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, February 16th, 1812. His parents were extremely poor: and this son they were driven, by their poverty, to bind out to a farmer, as an apprentice, when he was but ten years of age. The apprenticeship was for eleven years, an age to a boy. It would seem, however, that he fell into good hands; for, though faring much as other bound-boys do, in regard to the labor of the farm, he had his fair share of schooling, and by some appro- priation of the hours usually devoted to sleep, and a careful
389
390
MEN OF OUR DAY.
husbanding of those which he could rightfully call his own, he had managed, in those eleven years, to read eagerly and treasure, in part at least, in his memory, more than a thousand volumes of history, biography, travel, discovery, etc. There was no reason to fear that a boy, so ravenously hungry for knowledge, would remain through life in a position as humble as that from which he sprung. Senator Wilson has none of that miserable snobbishness, which leads some men to desire to conceal their humble birth. No! he glories rather in being "a son of the soil." . Witness his reply to that infamous speech of Governor Hammond, of South Carolina, in which he characterized work- ing men as mudsills, and asserted that, "the hireling manual laborers," who lived by daily toil, were "essentially slaves." To these taunts, Mr. Wilson replied :
"Sir, I am a son of a hireling 'manual laborer;' who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, ' lives by daily labor.' I, too, have 'lived by daily labor.' I, too, have been a 'hire- ling manual laborer.' Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood; and want was some- times there-an unbidden guest. At the age of ten years-to aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt spectre from the hearth of the mother who bore me,-I left the home of my boyhood, and went forth to earn my bread by 'daily labor.'"
A noble, manly avowal, which ought to have won the respect of the haughty slavocrat, who was himself not more than two generations removed from the "mudsills," whom he contemned.
When Mr. Wilson was twenty-one years of age, he left New Hampshire, and entered a shoe-shop at Natick, Massachusetts, to learn the art and mystery of shoemaking. He labored at this trade for three years, and, at the end of that time, having, as he supposed, earned a sufficient sum to enable him to obtain a collegiate education, he returned to New Hampshire, and, in
ยท
391
HON. HENRY WILSON.
1836, entered Strafford Academy, to complete his preparation for college.
A few weeks previous to this, however, he had visited the national capital, and listened to the exciting debates in the Senate chamber and the hall of Representatives. There he had seen Pinckney's resolutions, against the reception of anti-slavery petitions, receive a majority vote in the house, and Calhoun's Incendiary Publication Bill, pass the Senate by the casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren. He had visited, too, Williams's slave-pen ; had seen men and women in chains, put upon the auction block, for the crime of possessing "a skin darker than his own," and sold to hopeless slavery in the far southwest. Shoemakers are proverbially thoughtful men, and this one was no exception to the rule. He thought deeply and sadly of the horrors and aggressions of slavery, its inhuman cruelties, its traffic in the souls and bodies of men, its deliberate trampling upon the political as well as social rights of the nation, and from that day forth, the settled purpose of his heart was to make war upon slavery. That purpose he has never changed. His method of conducting the contest may have differed, some. times, from those of other prominent anti-slavery leaders; they may have been as good, or better, or worse; but to one aim he has ever been true, the overthrow of the slave power. At the close of his first term at Strafford academy, at the public exhibition, he maintained the affirmative of the question, "Ought Slavery to be abolished in the District of Columbia ?" in an oration of decided ability. Early the next year, the young men of New Hampshire held an Anti-slavery Conven- tion, at Concord, and Mr. Wilson, who was then attending the academy at Concord, was a delegate to the convention, and took an active part in its deliberations.
The opportunities of our young shoemaker for attaining a
392
MEN OF OUR DAY.
higher education in academies and colleges were destined to be short. The man to whom he had entrusted the hard-earned little hoard which was to pay his way through college, became insolvent, and the money was wholly lost. Sorrowful, but not despondent, he retraced his steps to Natick, and, after teaching school for a time, engaged in the shoe manufacturing business, and prospered. He continued in this pursuit for several years, still employing all his leisure in mental cultivation. In 1840, he took an active part in promoting the election of General Harrison, making more than sixty speeches, during the cam- paign, and proving a very effective political speaker. He was elected the same autumn to the house of representatives of the State legislature, and re-elected in 1841. In 1844 and 1845, he was chosen as State Senator from his district. He took an active part in favor of the admission of colored children into the public schools, the protection of colored seamen in South Carolina, and in opposition to the annexation of Texas. In the autumn of 1845, he got up a convention, in the county of Middlesex, at which a committee was appointed, which obtained nearly a hundred thousand signatures to petitions against the admission of Texas, as a slave State; and with the poet Whit- tier, was appointed a committee to carry the petitions to Wash- ington. In 1846, Mr. Wilson was again a member of the house of representatives. He introduced the resolution, declaring the continued opposition of Massachusetts to " the farther extension and longer existence of slavery in America," and made an elab- orate speech in its favor, which was pronounced by Mr. Garri- son, in " The Liberator," to be the most comprehensive and ex- haustive speech on slavery ever made in any legislative body in the United States.
Mr. Wilson was a delegate to the Whig National Convention at Philadelphia, in 1848; and on the rejection by the Conven-
393
HON. HENRY WILSON.
tion of the Wilmot Proviso, and the nomination of General Taylor, he denounced its action, retired from it, returned home, and issued an address to the people of his district vindicating his action. He purchased " The Boston Republican," the organ of the Free-soil party in Massachusetts, and edited it for more than two years.
In 1850, Mr. Wilson was again a member of the Massachu- setts House of Representatives, and the candidate of the Free- soil members for Speaker. He was the chairman of the State Central Free-soil Committee; was the originator and organizer of the celebrated coalition between the Free-soil and Democratic parties, which made Mr. Boutwell governor in 1851 and 1852, and sent Mr. Rantoul and Mr. Sumner to the Senate of the United States. He was a member of the State Senate in 1851 and 1852, and president of that body in those years. In 1852, he was a delegate to the Free-soil National Convention at Pitts- burg; was made president of the convention, and chairman of the National Committee. He was the Free-soil candidate for Congress in 1852; and though his party was in a minority, in the district, of nearly eight thousand, he was beaten by only ninety-three votes. He was a member of the Massachusetts Con- stitutional Convention in 1853, and took a leading part in its deliberations. In 1853 and 1854, Mr. Wilson was the candidate of the Free-soil party for Governor of Massachusetts ; and in 1855 he was elected to the Senate to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Mr. Everett.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.