Charles Sumner held a place in the public life of the country which no other man ever shared with him. He held a place in the public life of the world shared by very few indeed. He was an idealist. He subjected every measure to the inexorable test of the moral law. Yet, at the same time, he was a powerful political leader, and in a time when the fate of the Republic was decided accomplished vast practical results. Where duty seemed to him to utter its high commands he could see no obstacle in hostile majorities, and no restraint in the limitations of a written Constitution. It is right, therefore Constitutional, was the logical formula with which he dealt with every question of State. We should be deaf and blind to all the lessons of history, if we were to declare it to be safe that men trusted with Executive or even with Legislative power should act on that principle. Unfortunately, humanity is so constituted that the benevolent despot is likely to work more mischief even than a malevolent despot. His example of absolute disregard of constitutional restraints will be followed by men of very different motives. Yet the influence of one such man pressing and urging his companions forward in a Legislative body like the Senate of the United States, keeping ever before the people the highest ideals, inspired by the love of liberty, and ever speaking and working in the fear of God, is inestimable.
Charles Sumner lacked that quality which enables the practical statesman to adjust the mechanism of complicated statutes. He had no genius for detail. It would not have been safe to trust him with Appropriation Bills, or Bills for raising revenue. But he was competent to deal with questions of the greatest moment to the State. He knew what are its governing forces. He retained his hold on those forces. He directed them. He caused sound principles of action to take effect in the Government of the State in great emergencies. He converted the people to his opinion. He inspired the people with lofty desires. He accomplished wise public ends by wise means. He maintained his hold on power in an important time. He took a prominent part in great debates and was the acknowledged leader of one side of the question. He believed that the conscience of the people was a better guide than individual ambitions. He always did the thing he could best do. He did the thing that most needed to be done, the thing most effective at the time, the thing that no other man did or could do. He left to others to do what hundreds of others could do well enough. He contributed largely to the Government of his country, in the most trying period of our history, its motive and its direction. That is a pretty practical contribution to the voyage which furnishes to the steamship its engine and its compass. His figure will abide in history like that of St. Michael in art, an emblem of celestial purity, of celestial zeal, of celestial courage. It will go down to immortality with its foot upon the dragon of Slavery, and with the sword of the spirit in its hand, but with a tender light in its eye, and a human love in its smile. Guido and Raphael conceived their "inviolable saint,"
Invulnerable, impenetrably armed:
Such high advantages his innocence
Gave him above his foe; not to have sinned,
Not to have disobeyed. In fight he stood
Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained
By wounds.
The Michael of the painters, as a critic of genius akin to their own has pointed out, rests upon his prostrate foe light as a morning cloud, no muscle strained, with unhacked sword and unruffled wings, his bright tunic and shining armor without a rent or stain. Not so with our human champion. He had to bear the bitterness and agony of a long and doubtful struggle, with common weapons and against terrible odds. He came out of it with soiled garments and with a mortal wound, but without a regret and without a memory of hate.
It was fortunate for Sumner and fortunate for the Commonwealth and the country that he had Henry Wilson for his colleague. Wilson supplied almost everything that Sumner lacked. I cannot undertake to tell the story of his useful life in the space at my command here. If I were to try I should do great injustice to him and to myself.
He was a very impressive and interesting character, of many virtues, of many faults. His faults he would have been the first to acknowledge himself. Indeed, I do not know of any fault he had that he would not have acknowledged and lamented in a talk with his near friend, or that he would have sought to hide from the people.
The motives which controlled his life from the time when he snatched such moments as he could from this day's work on a shoemaker's bench and studied far into the night to fit himself for citizenship, down to the time when he died in the Vice-President's chamber—the second officer in the Government—and if his life and health had been spared, he very likely would have been called to the highest place in the Government—were public and patriotic, not personal. He was not without ambitions for himself. But they were always subordinate in him to the love of liberty and the love of country. He espoused the unpopular side when he started in life, and he stuck to it through all its unpopularity.
He was a skilful, adroit, practised and constant political manager. He knew the value of party organization, and did not disdain the arts and diplomacies of a partisan. He carried them sometimes farther, in my judgment, than a scrupulous sense of honor would warrant, or than was consistent with the noble, frank, lofty behavior which Massachusetts and the American people expect of their statesmen. The most conspicuous instance of this was his joining the Know Nothing Party, in whose intolerance he had no belief.
But it was done as an instrument for destroying the existing political parties, which were an obstacle to freedom, and clearing the field for a new one. This object was successfully accomplished, and in its accomplishment Wilson had a large share. But it was, in my judgment, doing evil that good may come. Wilson freely admitted this before he died, and said— I have no doubt with absolute sincerity—that he would give ten years of his life if he could blot out that one transaction.
He was a very valuable legislator. He was the author of many important measures in the war, during which he was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, and showed much ability in the way of practical and constructive statesmanship. I do not believe any man in the Senate in his time, not even Sumner, had more influence over his colleagues than he.