Here let me be frank. Nothing could make any speech for Slavery tolerable to me; but when I think how much opinions are determined by the influences about us, so that a change of birth and education might have made the Abolitionist a partisan of Slavery and the partisan of Slavery an Abolitionist, I feel, that, while always unrelenting toward the wrong, we cannot be insensible to individual merits. In this spirit I offer a sincere tribute to a departed Senator, who, amid the perturbations of the times, trod his way with independent step, and won even from opponents the palm of character.
EQUALITY IN CIVIL RIGHTS.
Letter to the Committee of Arrangements for the Celebration of the Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, April 16, 1873.
The long procession stopped before Mr. Sumner’s house, where one of the bands played “Auld Lang Syne.” Arriving in front of the City Hall of Washington, they were addressed by R. T. Greene, Esq., and also by Hon. Frederick Douglass. Letters were read from President Grant, Senators Anthony, Pratt, and Sumner, Hon.’s Horace Maynard, B. F. Butler, A. G. Riddle, S. J. Bowen, N. G. Ordway, and A. M. Clapp. Mr. Sumner’s letter was as follows:—
Washington, April 16, 1873.
DEAR SIR,—I regret that it is not in my power to be with you according to the invitation with which you have honored me. This is a day whose associations are as precious to me as to you.
Emancipation in the national capital was the experiment which prepared the way for Emancipation everywhere throughout the country. It was the beginning of the great end.