The resolution, adopted by the House March 14, and the Senate April 7, 1866, was as follows:—
“Resolved, That, while thus expressing our confidence in our Senatorial and Representative delegations in Congress, and the determination of the people to stand by them, we are also impelled to take notice of the recent charges made by name against one of the Senators of this State, Hon. Charles Sumner, in the lately published speech of the President of the United States, and to declare that the language used and the charges made by the President are unbecoming the elevated station occupied by him, an unjust reflection upon Massachusetts, and without the shadow of justification or defence founded upon the private or public record of our eminent Senator.”
A copy of the resolutions, containing the foregoing, engrossed on parchment, was forwarded to Mr. Sumner by the Governor of Massachusetts, Hon. Alexander H. Bullock, with a letter, saying, “This I take great personal pleasure in asking you to accept and preserve.”
The Aldermen of Boston, by a resolution, under date of March 2d, interposed their “indignant conviction of the utter falsehood” of the charges against Mr. Sumner.[209]
This testimony may be closed by that of a Massachusetts pen. In the New York Independent, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, replying to the President, said:—
“Let any man capable of forming an opinion independent of party prejudice look candidly at the whole course of the Hon. Charles Sumner, and say whether any nation was ever blessed with a public man intellectually more able and consistent, and morally more courageous, pure, and noble. What a tower of strength he has been in times of difficulty and danger! How brave and steadfast he has been in the midst of denunciations and threats! How much he has suffered in the cause of Freedom! and how calmly and heroically he suffered, never boasting or complaining! What herculean labor he has performed, and every particle of that labor to sustain and advance those principles of justice and freedom which form the only sure basis of a republic! I am glad to see that Boston has, at last, by the voice of its city government, shown due appreciation of the services rendered to the country by that truly great and good man.”
Such was the conflict then raging, with Truth gaining new strength daily.
PERSONAL SAFETY.
From his first arrival in Washington as a Senator, as far back as 1851, Mr. Sumner had been pursued by menace of personal violence. At the beginning of the present session he received a warning,[210] while the head of the military police reported to him at least one conspiracy against his life, with regard to which he had evidence. The prevailing bitterness, especially after the speech of President Johnson, arrested the attention of Hon. A. P. Granger, a retired Representative in Congress from the State of New York, whose experience in the anxious days of Kansas, when Mr. Sumner suffered personal violence, put him on his guard. In a letter from Syracuse, New York, he expressed his present anxiety:—