He was called arbitrary, but had great love for his soldiers, especially for old companions in arms. A New York colonel told me a laughable story of applying to him for a ten days' furlough, when the rule against them was imperative. Sumner peremptorily refused it. But the officer sat down beside him, and began to talk about the Peninsular campaign—the battles in which he had done his duty, immediately under Sumner's eye; and it was not many minutes before the general granted his petition. "If he had only waited," said the narrator, "until I recalled to his memory some scenes at Antietam, I am sure he would have given me twenty days instead of ten!"
His intercourse with women and children was characterized by peculiar chivalry and gentleness. He revived the old ideal of the soldier—terrible in battle, but with an open and generous heart.
To his youngest son—a captain upon his staff—he was bound by unusual affection. "Sammy" was his constant companion; in private he leaned upon him, caressed him, and consulted him about the most trivial matters. It was a touching bond which united the gray, war-worn veteran to the child of his old age.
We have had greater captains than Sumner; but no better soldiers, no braver patriots. The words which trembled upon his dying lips—"May God bless my country, the United States of America"—were the key-note to his life. Green be the turf above him!
Traveling Through the Northwest.
Louisville, Kentucky, April 5, 1863.
For the last week I have been traveling through the States of the Northwest. The tone of the people on the war was never better. Now that the question has become simply one of endurance, their Northern blood tells. "This is hard pounding, gentlemen," said Wellington at Waterloo; "but we will see who can pound the longer." So, in spite of the Copperheads—"merely the dust and chaff on God's thrashing-floor"—the overwhelming sentiment of the people is to fight it out to the last man and the last dollar.
You have been wont to say: "The West can be depended on for the war. She will never give up her great outlet, the Mississippi." True; but the inference that her loyalty is based upon a material consideration, is untrue and unjust. The West has poured out its best blood, not on any petty question of navigation, or of trade, but upon the weightier issues of Freedom and Nationality.
The New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian may believe in the greatness of the country; the Kansan or Minnesotian, who has gone one or two thousand miles to establish his prairie home, walks by sight and not by faith. To him, the Great Republic of the future is no rhetorical flourish or flight of fancy, but a living verity. His instinct of nationality is the very strongest; his belief the profoundest. May he never need Emerson's pungent criticism: "The American eagle is good; protect it, cherish it; but beware of the American peacock!"
Have you heard Prentice's last, upon the bursting of the Rebel bubble that Cotton is King? He says: "They went in for cotton, and they got worsted!"