this nation in pieces to teach the nations of the earth the guilt and delusion of human bondage. I could not bear it; and many a prayer in this house, many a prayer in my own closet, many a prayer in the highway, and many a prayer in the forest, have I sent up, that this nation might be spared and purged, rather than destroyed for the benefit of posterity.

The mercy of God was seen early, in raising up an army of men to resist the mischiefs that were threatened to the country. Private men there were not a few who enlisted in the cause of freedom. There was Garrison, the uncompromising and harsh truth-teller. There was the fiery Weld, like a second Peter the Hermit. There was the patrician Phillips, who never spoke without piercing-whose tongue was a rapier. There was May, of sweeter heart, and equally noble courage. There was Jackson, who, though not known, was one of those secret sources of supply and influence which determined events. There were the two Tappans, one of whom was long with us. There was Joshua Leavitt, a citizen of Brooklyn until a year or two ago, when he departed. There was Rogers, who died of a broken heart early in the struggle. There were Whittier, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Emerson, and others, of whom I shall speak again.

It is often said that the church of the North was corrupted. At one period, it certainly was guilty. Nor did we have the help of the great majority of the churches of the North in the Eastern States until a comparatively late period of the conflict. But I can say, to the credit of the Newschool Presbyterian church of the West, with which my lot was cast, that, before the year 1837, it was effectually leavened by liberty. The first vote that I ever cast in the Presbyterian church was a vote that the Presbytery of Indianapolis would never receive a licentiate, or would never license any man, who held slaves, unless he would show to us that he held them unwillingly, and that he would as soon as possible give them up. My impression is that there was not in the New-school Presbyterian church in Indiana a minister who was not in favor of liberty. Long before the church in the East was aroused on the subject of slavery, the Western

church stood established in opposition to it. The ministers of the New-school Presbyterian church in the West were early and faithful laborers for emancipation.

There was

There was

There was

Of public men, we shall not soon forget the mission of John Quincy Adams. Many of you have forgotten the noble tasks imposed upon himself by Governor Slade. There was Gerrit Smith and there was Alvan Stewart. Joshua Giddings, who early espoused the Anti-slavery cause. There was Hale, who served it in the Senate. Seward, both in New York and in the Senate. Greeley, foremost among journalists. ner; and Stevens; and later yet, Lincoln, and his great warminister, Stanton. These, and many others whom time would fail me to mention, were the men who appeared to turn back the captivity, and establish the glory and radiance of universal liberty.

Still later was Sum

Then came the blinding of the wise and the weakening of the strong. Then came the fatuity of Southern leadership. Had the leaders of the South been wise, we might still have been enthralled. Time and again it seemed to me that, not being wise, if they had been at least cunning, they still would have held empire. But "whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad."

There has recently been an extraordinary conjunction. Two men have departed from us in the same week. The funeral services of the one overlap those of the other. They were both representative men-he of Boston and he of Buffalo. Mr. Fillmore, in private life, was an irreproachable man, amiable, kind, and universally to be respected; but as a public man, he was a type of that weakness and cowardice which was bred in the North by the accursed influence of slavery in the South. Sumner was the representative man of that reactionary spirit which was developed by liberty contending for its old rights and for its old ground. These two men have died almost at the same time; and although I would not invade the sanctity of the grave, it befits historical reminiscence that these two antithetical men, one representing the old, and the other representing the new. within the period of a week going out from the generation

of the living among the dead, should be mentioned in this contrast.

Personally, privately, I honor Mr. Fillmore; but as a public man he had no political conscience. He was without any apparent sympathy for any of those principles on which this great nation was founded. He gave to a party—a miserable party-that which belonged to the higher interests of humanity and of mankind. He gave up Liberty to be cruci fied between Southern Slavery and Northern Mammon; and then washed his hands, and said, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person.

Of another sort was Charles Sumner. By his birth, by his education, by his social surroundings, he was fitted to be an aristocrat; nor was his disposition averse to such a place and title, for by nature he was self-considering. He was so intense in his own convictions as to become arrogant, and impose his views upon others with a species of oratorical despotism. But from the beginning of his life a romantic moral sense allied him to justice, to rectitude; and since in our day justice was most flagrantly violated by slavery, his love of justice and of truth took him, to his honor and to the glory of mankind, out from his class, and away from aristocracy, and made, essentially, an intellectual democrat of him. Personally he never was democratic. Intellectually he became so, by the force of the struggle of the day in which he lived.

I cannot but call to mind how strangely, and how very nobly, the old elect families of the commonwealth of the glorious old State of Massachusetts behaved. They were our only aristocracy, either of wealth or of historic association; and yet, what more noble man was there in Massachusetts than Adams? Where have we found a man more nobly allied to liberty in the day of its peril than he was? What higher credit rested upon any household than that which came from the name of Quincy? Fathers and sons-how true they were! Aristocrats do you call them? They were the trues! democrats.

Longfellow, naturally tender and refined, shrinking from struggle and from the rude rush of unwashed multitudes, did not disdain to set his harp, in the earliest hours, and sing

songs of liberty, when it was to bring upon him discords and howlings, and not the music of praise. Emerson, the calm, the observational, the coldly reflecting, had not warmth enough to make him an enthusiast in religion; but he had patriotism and humanity enough to make him bear witness in the teeth of slavery. Whittier, the beautiful singer who wraps indignation and wrath about with such gentleness of spirit, Quaker-like-he could write Ichabod on the name of Webster, and doom him as though he had struck him with lightning, and yet all the time could seem as sweet as the Gospel. And there was the elegant patrician, the son of aristocratic sires, born sovereign, full of culture and of exquisite refinement, a noble man-Phillips, who put aside all ambitions, who devoted himself to the thankless task of speaking to mobs, and who, through good report and through evil report, carried his lance, and never once had it shivered or cast vilely away, and lived to see triumphant the cause which he loved.

In this band, of which I have not enumerated the half, belonged Charles Sumner; and by force of circumstances he became its leader, being advanced to eminent trusts. He came forth at the time when such men as Story, Webster, Choate, and Everett were the heroes of Massachusetts. I remember that it was as much as a man's life was worth then to speak in derogation of Daniel Webster; but how do men feel respecting him to-day? I remember when Choate was as brilliant as a star. Now he is as a meteor, the memory of which has gone with its radiance. And Everett-his last days were his best days; and all that he did in elegant literature was not so much as he did when he wrote in Mr. Bonner's Ledger for the people; because, then, for the first time, I think, Edward Everett stood among common folks, in sympathy with them, and employed his culture, and reason, and taste, and genius, for the masses. In all the great and masterful struggles for liberty, and for the redemption of our land, neither Choate nor Webster nor Everett was found.

Charles Sumner was endowed by nature with a noble presence. He was physically of a most manly type. He had an admirably constituted mind; and yet, he was not a child

of genius. His learning, joined to his high moral sense, constituted him what he was. He was a made man. He was well versed in law, in general literature, in history, in art, and in belles lettres. He was fitted in all these respects to carry to his sphere in the United States Senate great influence and great power. He carried there an industry which was almost unmatched, and a straightforwardness and unchanging intent which was well-nigh without a parallel. The meaning of his life, the force of all his enthusiasm, was, Bondage must be destroyed, and Liberty must be established. For that he became a martyr. He has died, lately, and from the blow that felled him in the Senate chamber, that darkened many years of his life, and that gave to him a shock which his nervous system never recovered from. Not John Brown himself, nor Lincoln, was more a martyr for liberty than Charles Sumner has been. How glorious such a death as his ! How well it beseems his reputation! Better so. Now, no pitying. As, when a man is knighted, the sovereign takes the sword and smites him on the shoulder, and says, "Rise up, Sir Charles !" so the club that smote Sumner on the head did more than knight him-it brought him to honor and to immortality.

His devotion, his suffering, his perseverance, have been without faltering. He filled nobly the place where God put him. And God worked largely by him in the restoration of the conscience in the politics and statesmanship of this nation, and to-day the whole nation stands still to honor the name of Charles Sumner.

No son bears his name. No family will transmit it to the future. No descendant will gaze fondly upon his pictured face, and say, "It was my ancestor." He and his kindred are cut off. But the old State that gave him birth, and that he served so nobly, shall cut his name in letters so deep that time itself shall never rub them out; and no man shall ever read the history of these United States of America, and fail to see, shining brightly, with growing luster through the ages, the name of Charles Sumner. No son, no daughter, weeps for him; but down a million dusky cheeks there are tears trickling. They whom he served weep for him. He