Part 1 (1/2)

Charles Sumner Centenary.

by Archibald H. Grimke.

The American Negro Academy celebrated the centenary of Charles Sumner at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., Friday evening, January 6, 1911. On this occasion the program was as follows: ”A Mighty Fortress is our G.o.d,” by the choir of the church; Invocation, by Rev. L. Z. Johnson, of Baltimore, Md.; the Historical address was next delivered by Mr. Archibald H. Grimke, President of the Academy, after which Justice Wendell Phillips Stafford made a brief address. A solo, by Dr. Charles Sumner Wormley, was sung; Vice-President Kelly Miller delivered an address. A Poem, ”Summer,” by Mrs. F. J. Grimke, was read by Miss Mary P. Burrill. Hon. Wm. E. Chandler made the closing address; after which the Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung by the congregation, led by the choir. The benediction was p.r.o.nounced by Rev. W. V. Tunnell.

The oil painting of Mr. Sumner which occupied a place in front of the pulpit, was loaned by Dr. C. S. Wormley.

CHARLES SUMNER.

Every time a great man comes on the stage of human affairs, the fable of the Hercules repeats itself. He gets a sword from Mercury, a bow from Apollo, a breastplate from Vulcan, a robe from Minerva. Many streams from many sources bring to him their united strength. How else could the great man be equal to his time and task? What was true of the Greek DemiG.o.d was likewise true of Charles Sumner. His study of the law for instance formed but a part of his great preparation. The science of the law, not its practice, excited his enthusiasm. He turned instinctively from the technicalities, the tergiversations, the gladiatorial display and contention of the legal profession. To him they were but the ephemera of the long summertide of jurisprudence. He thirsted for the permanent, the ever living springs and principles of the law. Grotius and Pothier and Mansfield and Blackstone and Marshall and Story were the s.h.i.+ning heights to which he aspired. He had neither the tastes nor the talents to emulate the Erskines and the Choates of the Bar.

His vast readings in the field of history and literature contributed in like manner toward his splendid outfit. So too his wide contact and a.s.sociation with the leading spirits of the times in Europe and America.

All combined to teach him to know himself and the universal verities of man and society, to distinguish the invisible and enduring substance of life from its merely accidental and transient phases and phenomena.

He was an apt pupil and laid up in his heart the great lessons of the Book of Truth. His visit to Europe served to complete his apprentices.h.i.+p. It was like Hercules going into the Nemean forest to cut himself a club. The same grand object lesson he saw everywhere--man, human society, human thoughts, human strivings, human wrong, human misery. Beneath differences of language, governments, religion, race, color, he discerned the underlying human principle and pa.s.sion, which make all races kin, all men brothers. In strange and distant lands he found the human heart with its friends.h.i.+ps, heroisms, beat.i.tudes, the human intellect with its never ending movement and progress. He found home, a common destiny wherever he found common ideas and aspirations. And these he had but to look around to behold. He felt himself a citizen of an immense over-nation, of a vast world of federated hopes and interests.

When the plan for this visit had taken shape in his own mind, he consulted his friends, Judge Story, Prof. Greenleaf, and President Quincy, who were not at all well affected to it. The first two thought it would wean him from his profession, the last one that Europe would spoil him, ”send him back with a mustache and a walking-stick.” Ah! how little did they comprehend him, how hard to understand that this young and indefatigable scholar was only going abroad to cut himself a club for the Herculean labors of his ripe manhood. He went, saw, and conquered. He saw the promised land of international fellows.h.i.+p and peace, and conquered in his own breast the evil genius of war. He came back proud that he was an American, prouder still that he was a man.

The downfall of the Whigs of Ma.s.sachusetts, brought about by a coalition of the Free Soil and the Democratic parties, resulted after a contest in the Legislature lasting fourteen weeks, in the election on April 24, 1851, of Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States. He was just forty, was at the meridian of the intellectual life, in the zenith of bodily vigor and manly beauty. He attained the splendid position by sheer worth, unrivalled public service. Never has political office, I venture to a.s.sert, been so utterly unsolicited. He did not lift a finger, scorned to budge an inch, refused to write a line to influence his election. The great office came to him by the laws of gravitation and character--to him the clean of hand, and brave of heart. It was the hour finding the man.

As Sumner entered the Senate the last of its early giants was leaving it forever. Calhoun had already pa.s.sed away. Webster was in Millard Fillmore's cabinet, and Clay was escaping in his own picturesque and pathetic words, ”scarred by spears and worried by wounds to drag his mutilated body to his lair and lie down and die.” The venerable representative of compromise was making his exit from one door of the stage, the masterful representative of conscience, his entrance through the other. Was the coincidence accident or prophecy? Were the bells of destiny at the moment ”ringing in the valiant man and free, the larger heart, the kindlier hand, and ringing out the darkness of the land”?

Whether accident or prophecy, Sumner's entrance into the Senate was into the midst of a hostile camp. On either side of the chamber enemies confronted him. Southern Whigs and southern Democrats hated him. Northern Whigs and northern democrats likewise hated him. He was without party affiliation, well nigh friendless. But thanks to the revolution which was working in the free states, he was not wholly so. For William H. Seward was already there, and Salmon P. Chase, and John P. Hale, and Hannibal Hamlin. Under such circ.u.mstances it behooved the new champion of freedom to take no precipitate step.

A smaller man, a leader less wise and less fully equipped might have blundered at this stage by leaping too hastily with his cause into the arena of debate. Sumner did nothing of the kind. His self-poise and self-control for nine months was simply admirable. ”Endurance is the crowning quality,” says Lowell, ”And patience all the pa.s.sion of great hearts.” Certainly during those trying months they were Sumner's, the endurance and the patience. First the blade, he had to familiarize himself with the routine and rules of the Senate; then the ear, he had to study the personnel of the Senate--and lastly the full corn in the ear, he had to master himself and the situation. Four times he essayed his strength on subjects inferior to the one which he was carrying in his heart as mothers carry their unborn babes. Each trial of his parlimentary wings raised him in the estimation of friends and foes. His welcome to Kossuth, and his tribute to Robert Rantoul proved him to be an accomplished orator. His speech on the Public Land Question evinced him besides strong in history, argument and law.

No vehemence of anti-slavery pressure, no shock of angry criticism coming from home was able to jostle him out of his fixed purpose to speak only when he was ready. Winter had gone, and spring, and still his silence remained. Summer too was almost gone before he determined to begin. Then like an August storm he burst on the Senate and the Country. ”Freedom national: slavery sectional” was his theme. Like all of Mr. Sumner's speeches, this speech was carefully written out and largely memorized. He was deficient in the qualities of the great debater, was not able usually and easily to think quickly and effectively on his feet, to give and take hard blows within the short range of extemporaneous and hand to hand encounters. Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams were pre-eminent in this species of parliamentary combat. Webster and Calhoun were powerful opponents whom it was dangerous to meet. Sumner perhaps never experienced that electric sympathy and marvellous interplay of emotion and intelligence between himself and an audience which made Wendell Phillips the unrivalled monarch of the anti-slavery platform. Sumner's was the eloquence of industry rather than the eloquence of inspiration. What he did gave an impression of size, of length, breadth, thoroughness. He required s.p.a.ce and he required time. These granted, he was tremendous, in many respects the most tremendous orator of the Senate and of his times.

He was tremendous on this occasion. His subject furnished the keynote and the keystone of his opposition to slavery. Garrison, Phillips, Frederick Dougla.s.s and Theodore D. Weld appealed against slavery to a common humanity, to the primary moral instincts of mankind in condemnation of its villanies. The appeal carried them above and beyond const.i.tutions and codes to the unwritten and eternal right. Sumner appealed against it to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, to the spirit and letter of the Const.i.tution, to the sentiments and hopes of the fathers, and to the early history and policy of the Country which they had founded. All were for freedom and against slavery. The reverse of all this, he contended, was error. Public opinion was error-bound, the North was error-bound, so was the South, parties and politicians were error-bound. Freedom is the heritage of the nation. Slavery had robbed it of its birthright. Slavery must be dispossessed, its extension must be resisted.

As it was in the beginning so it hath ever been, the world needs light.

The great want of the times was light. So Sumner believed. This speech of his was but a repet.i.tion in a world of wrong of the fiat: ”Let there be light.” With it light did indeed break on the national darkness, such light as a thunderbolt flashes, shrivelling and s.h.i.+vering the deep-rooted and ramified lie of the century. That speech struck a new note and a new hour on the slavery agitation in America. Never before in the Government had freedom touched so high a level. Heretofore the slave power had been arrogant and exacting. A keen observer might have then foreseen that freedom would also some day become exacting and aggressive. For its advancing billows had broken in the resounding periods and pa.s.sion of its eloquent champion.

The manner of the orator on this occasion, a manner which marked all of his utterances, was that of a man who defers to no one, prefers no one to himself--the imperious manner of a man, conscious of the possession of great powers and of ability to use them. Such a man the crisis demanded.

G.o.d made one American statesman without moral joints when he made Charles Sumner. He could not bend the supple hinges of the knee to the slave power, for he had none to bend. He must needs stand erect, inflexible, uncompromising, an image of Puritan intolerance and Puritan grandeur.

Against his granite-like character and convictions the insolence of the South flung itself in vain.

Orator and oration revealed as in a magic mirror some things to the South, which before had seemed to it like ”Birnam Wood” moving toward ”high Dunsinane.” But lo, a miracle had been performed, the unexpected had suddenly happened. The insurgent moral sense of a mudsill and shopkeeping North had at last found voice and vent. With what awakening terror must the South have listened to this formidable prophecy of Sumner: ”The movement against slavery is from the Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces to be confessed everywhere. It may not yet be felt in the high places of office and power; but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread.”

This awakening terror of the South was not allayed by the admission of California and the mutinous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. The temper of that section the while grew in consequence more unreasonable and arrogant. Worsted as the South clearly was in the contest with her rival for political supremacy, she refused nevertheless to modify her pretentions to political supremacy. And as she had no longer anything to lose by giving loose reins to her arrogance and pretentions, her words and actions took on thenceforth an ominously defiant and reckless character.

If finally driven to the wall there lay within easy reach, she calculated, secession and a southern confederacy.

The national situation was still further complicated by the disintegration and chaos into which the two old parties were then tumbling, and by the fierce rivalries and jealousies within them of party leaders at the North.

All the conditions seemed to favor southern aggression--the commission of some monstrous crime against liberty. Webster had gone to his long account, dishonored and broken-hearted. The last of the three supreme voices of the early senatorial splendor of the republic was now hushed in the grave. As those master lights, Calhoun, Webster and Clay, vanished one after another into the void, darkness and uproar increased apace.

About this time the most striking and sinister figure in American Party history loomed into greatness. Stephen A. Douglas was a curious and grim example of the survival of viking instincts in the modern office seeker.

On the sea of politics he was a veritable water-dog, daring, unscrupulous, lawless, transcendently able, and transcendently heartless. The sight of the presidency moved him in much the same way as did the sight of the effete and wealthy lands of Latin Europe moved his roving, robber prototypes eleven centuries before. It stirred every drop of his sea-wolf's blood to get possession of it.

His ”Squatter Sovereignty Dogma” was in truth a pirate boat which carried consternation to many an anxious community in the free states.

It was with such an ally that the slave power undertook the task of repealing the Missouri Compromise. The organization of the northern section of the Louisiana Purchase into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska was made the occasion for abolis.h.i.+ng the old slave line of 1820.