The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-04-12
SENATOR SUMMERS REMOVAL.
An English Estimate Of the American
Statesman's Character.

Statesman's Character.
From the London Daily Netos March 2s.
But apart from the regret felt by some who
voted against Mr.. Sumner arising from belief
that he was trying to do his duty by his country
in these particular matters, deeper regret is
felt by many of the best men in America at the
humiliation of a man who had long been a re-
preventative of what was noblest in their inter-
nal politics.
And whatever may be our sense of Mr.. Sum-
ner's errors on the issues between England and
America, we cannot help sharing the feeling
which has made his removal the occasion of
earnest tributes to his general course as states
man. OF those who suffered in the cause of
emancipation in the sorrowful years of its weak
Hess and danger Mr.. Sumner is one of the few
who survive to share the glories of its triumph.
He was among those who, amid the SCOTS of
the Senate and the threats of slavery, cast the
ventures of freedoms seed into the hard and
frozen soil; with it he endured through the win
ter of contention, and at last was able to put in
his sickle to the harvest and join in the harvest
home.
Generally men pay the homage due to the
martyrs only to their dust. 1t was so when
monument was raised on the spot where Love
Joy fell, beside the Mississippi, beneath the bull
lets of slavery, while defending the printing
press he had devoted to freedom; it was so
when Captain Brown was borne from Virgil
nian scaffod to rise again in the battle-hymn, in
which "his soul kept marching on" with the
armies of the Union. But Charles Sumner,
after he had fallen under the Shareholders blud-
resent to the Senate where he had been struck
down, for the eloquence of his scars no less than
the eloquence of his speech; and in 1851, when
the power whose feroetv he had fearlessly faced
left the Congress it could no longer control, 1t
was with genuine enthusiasm that the Repub.
lican party raised him to the chief place on its
most important committee, and gathered around
him as Il leader.
There were circumstances which, as they had
rendered Mr.. Sumner especially obnoxious to
| the party of slavery, caused him to be all the
more esteemed and trusted by the friends of
| freedom. Unless we except Mr.. Seward, who
| had been more deadly than outspoken in his
hostility to the reigning institution, the Massa-
| chusetts Senator was the first scholar who had
repres ented in the National Legislature the anti
| slavery principles of New England Passing
from the honors of Harvard to the Capitol, he
| bad borne with him the sympathies OF the lite
rary class of his State, aud was sign that it had
forever abandoned the compromising attitude OF
| Daniel Webster.
The history of the United States had so uni.
formy embodied the sense of New England
town meetings in national laws, that when Mr.
Sumner came to show that the mind of thai
section was made up that slave-hunting should
cease, and slavery be Imprisoned in its existing
domain, it was recognized by the South as an
omen of coming struggle. The struggle came
with what issue the world knows, and through
it the Senator bore himself bravely. Again and
again was he iDsulted and threatened, and more
than ever did he show himself utterly fearless
scorning all temporizing methods.
| That 1earleSsne6S Wnlcn was nls culcl CuardC
teristic he displaye ed when he withstood Presi
dent Lincoln in his desire to admit Louisiana tC
the Union before its laws were purged of pro
slavery features; and in the recent conflict witt
President Grant 1t at least cannot be charged
that he has acted with timidity or with an ey'
to his personal interest.
Mr.. Sumner unqucstionably had faults as I
party leader, and these became more notice
able when the slavery question no longer occu
pied the foremost place In American politics
He sometimes showed disposition to rails
questions of detail into matters OF eterna
principle, and perhaps rendered himself liabl
to the old criticism of being "always so con
foundedly in the right" Mr.. Summers mind
intensely theoretical, and the degree to which
theory fixed in his mind drew after 1t the fact
was shown in his unfortunate speech con
cerning the Anglo-Amercan difficulties. Thes
are, indeed, such faults as might be expecte
of a sensitively conscientious man and studer
somewhat removed from contemporary affairs
but they are grave, and, while we may symp'
thze with him under ahumiliatlon that does NJ
seem attributable to them, we cannot but sui
pect that he is leaving field where few gres
successes awaited him, to be all the more d.
voted to those where a man of his culture an
eloquenee may still hope to add to the laure
which, in his case, mean twenty years of Sem
torial career marked by industry and heroisn
untouched by any suspicion of dishonor.