—Thomas C. Platt came from the Binghamton district of New York. He had been an active man of business and had gained personal popularity. He developed an aptitude for public affairs and soon acquired influence in his State. He was not a trained debater, nor had he, when he entered Congress, official experience of any kind. But he was gifted with strong common sense, and had that quick judgment of men which contributes so essentially to success in public life.
—William Walter Phelps came from the Passaic district of New Jersey. He is a member of the well-known Connecticut family of that name,—a family distinguished for integrity and independence of character, and for success in great financial enterprises. Mr. Phelps received a thorough intellectual training and graduated with distinction at Yale College in 1860. He was soon after admitted to the bar of New York, and took part in the management of various corporations. He has an admirable talent for extempore speech. The inheritance of a large fortune has perhaps in some degree hindered Mr. Phelps's success in a political career; but it has not robbed him of manly ambition, or lowered his estimate of a worthy and honorable life.
—Stewart L. Woodford entered from one of the Brooklyn districts. Graduating at Columbia College in 1854, he was soon after admitted to the bar, but left his practice to enlist in the Union service when the civil war began. He was a good solider, and reached the rank of Brigadier-General. He was elected Lieutenant-Governor of New York in 1866 at thirty-one years of age. He has acquired wide popularity as a platform speaker. He enjoys the unlimited confidence and respect of friends and neighbors,—the best attestation that can be given of a man's real character.
—Stephen B. Elkins was for four years a most efficient delegate in Congress from New Mexico. He was a distinguished graduate of Missouri University, and though reared in a community where Southern influences prevailed was an earnest Union man. He went to New Mexico soon after attaining his majority, served in the Legislative Assembly, became prominent at the bar, was Attorney-General of the Territory, and afterwards United-States District Attorney. He entered Congress in his thirty-second year.
—Two other delegates who were in Congress at the same time, Richard C. McCormick of Arizona, and Martin Maginnis of Montana,—the one a Republican and the other a Democrat,—became distinguished for the zeal and ability with which they guarded the interests of their constituents.
The long and honorable service of Edward McPherson as Clerk of the House, terminated with the close of the Forty-third Congress. He had held the position for twelve consecutive years—a period which followed directly after four years of service as representative in Congress from the Gettysburg district. When first elected to Congress he was but twenty-eight years of age. The Clerkship of the House is a highly responsible office, and no man could discharge its complex duties with greater intelligence, fidelity and discretion than did Mr. McPherson throughout the whole period of his service.(2) Beyond his official duties he rendered great service to the public by the compilation of political handbooks for Presidential and Congressional elections. The facts pertinent to political discussion were impartially presented and admirably arranged. Mr. McPherson's larger works, the histories of the Rebellion and of Reconstruction, are invaluable to the political student.
On Friday, the sixth day of March, 1874, Charles Sumner was in the Senate chamber for the last time. He took active part in the proceedings of the day, debating at some length the bill proposing an appropriation for the Centennial celebration at Philadelphia. On Monday, the 9th, to which day the Senate adjourned, his absence was noticed, but not commented on further than that one member remembered Mr. Sumner's complaining of a sense of great fatigue after his speech of Friday. The session of Monday lasted but a few minutes, as the Senate adjourned from respect to the memory of Ex-President Fillmore, who had died the day before at his home in Buffalo. On Tuesday there were rumors withing the circle of Mr. Sumner's intimate friends that he was ill, but no special anxiety was felt until near nightfall, when it was known that he was suffering from a sudden and violent attack of angina pectoris, and grave apprehensions were felt by his physicians. By a coincidence which did not escape observation, it was the anniversary of the day on which three years before he was removed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He died in the afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, March 11 (1874). On Thursday the funeral services were held in the Senate chamber, and were marked with a manifestation of personal sorrow on the part of multitudes of people, more profound than had attended the last rites of any statesman of the generation,—Abraham Lincoln alone excepted. Formal eulogies were pronounced upon his life and character on the 27th of April, his colleague Mr. Boutwell presenting the appropriate resolutions in the Senate, and his intimate friend of many years, E. Rockwood Hoar, in the House. The eulogies in both branches were numerous and touching. They were not confined to party, to section, or to race.
Whoever was first in other fields of statesmanship, the pre-eminence of Mr. Sumner on the slavery question must always be conceded. Profoundly conversant with all subject of legislation, he yet devoted himself absorbingly to the one issue which appealed to his judgment and his conscience. He held the Republican party to a high standard,—a standard which but for his courage and determination might have been lowered at several crises in the history of the struggle for Liberty. He did not live to see the accomplishment of all the measures to which he had dedicated his powers. He died without seeing his Civil Rights Bill enacted into law. For that only he desired to live. To his colleague and faithful friend, Henry Wilson, who followed him so soon, he said mournfully: "If the publication of my works were completed and my Civil Rights Bill passed, no visitor could enter the door that would be more welcome than Death." He was weary of life. He was solitary, without kindred, without domestic ties. He had been subjected at intervals for eighteen years to great suffering, which with the anxieties of public life and the solitude which had become burdensome wore away his energy. However much his wisdom may be questioned by those who were not his political friends, whatever criticism may be made of the zeal which not infrequently was assumed to be ill-timed and mis-judged, Mr. Sumner must ever be regarded as a scholar, an orator, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a statesman whose splendid and unsullied fame will always form part of the true glory of the Nation.
An incident related by Mr. Dawes in his eulogy of Mr. Sumner strikingly illustrates the shortsightedness and miscalculation of the Southern statesmen preceding the Rebellion. Mr. Sumner's first term in the Senate began just as the last term of Colonel Benton closed. Soon after his arrival in Washington the Massachusetts senator met the illustrious Missourian. They became well acquainted and friendly. In the ensuing year the two eminent men had a conversation on public affairs. The Compromise of 1850 had been approved by both the great parties in their National Conventions, and Franklin Pierce had just been chosen President. The power of the South seemed fixed, its control of public events irresistible. To the apprehension of the political historian the Slave power had not been so strong since the day of the Missouri Compromise, and its statesmen looked forward to policies which would still further enhance its strength. Colonel Benton said to Mr. Sumner: "You have come upon the stage too late, sir. All our great men have passed away. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster are gone. Not only have the great men passed away, but the great issues, too, raised from our form of government and of deepest interest to its founders and their immediate descendants, have been settled, sir. The last of these was the National Bank, and that has been overthrown forever. Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive-slave laws, involving no National issues."
It is instructive to remember that in little more than eight years after this conversation, and but three years after Colonel Benton's death, the civil war began, and opened to Mr. Sumner the opportunity of leading in a political and social revolution almost without parallel in modern times.