The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-13
FIRST EDITION
The Republican Crisis
The Case Of MIR. Sumner.
Harmt ny r estoredin Missour
Rtc.s ETC.. Etc.. Etc.. Rtcs
CHARLES SUMNER.

His Claims on the Country. and the Mistake
Made BY the Senate.
For nearly twenty years Mr.. Sumner has been
the special target of abuse and defamation from
the Democratic press. His virtues, which are
many and great, have been denied and scouted
his faults, which are few and venial, have been
magni1ed and paraded.
Whenever Gas in 1862 few Republicans have
tried to oust him from the Senate, every Demo-
cratic heart and voice have instnctively SYM
pathized with the effort and cheered on its
engineers. Nay, the most imperative dictates
of propriety and decency have been overridden
by Democratic malevolence, and the sanctities
of his home and hearth have been ruthlessly,
cruelty invaded and defed, and a domestic
affiiction which he had no wise deserved nor
provoked has been dragged into glaring pub
licity, and made the theme of gross exaggera-
tion and malignant, exulting criticism, though
no one believed Mr.. Sumner at fault in the
premises. The man was most cruelty assailed
and traduced only because the statesman was
eminent and his character invulnerabe.
Mr.. Summers failings at one arrest attention.
dogmatic temper, which render him impatient
of contradiction and unable readily to coinpre-
hend that another may differ widely from him
and yet be honest, % stateliness of manner which
distances from him all but the few, an honest but
somewhat too manifest, pride in his position and
we'll earned fame-these exhaust the catalogue:
and whose faults are fewer or less grave? On the
other hand are an eye so single, a heart so pure,
a career so spotless that the most ribald and
licentious press that ever impeded the progress
of civilization has never yet dared to impeach
the purity of his motives or the loftiness of his
aims. In an age when nearly every public
man is accused of venality-often most unjustly
no one has even ventured to suggest or
insinuate that Charles Sumner ever gave o
vote or made q motion in Difference to any
sordid impulse or in the expectation that
his always modest income would thereby be
increased, The most reckless and scurrilous
Democratic partisan orator, while abusing Mr..
Sumner without scruple or stint under the
stimulus of applaudipg yells, would have in
stantly checked the flow of his hearers enthu-
siasm had he ventured to assall the integrity and
moral worth of him whom they all detested as q
fanatic and o deadly foe to the integrity and
perpetuity of our Union.
After all fair deductions and qualifications
have been made, Mr.. Sumner stands to-day the
foremost American Senator.
That IL was mistake in the Senate to remove
Mr.. Sumner from the craftsmanship of its Com
mittee on Foreign Relations we cannot doubt.
And yet the position to which he was transferred
was better adapted to his genius, and more
accordant with his lofty renown. For, while
we have had no Senator since Salmon P. Chase
entitled to rank Charles Sumner, and though
that must be a very meagre compend of Ameri-
| can history which omits his name, yet his hon.
| orable eminence has been nowise achieved
| through the craftsmanship aforesaid, but wholly
| through that eager uncOmpromising, unsleep-
| ing devotion to the equal rights of man which
| the position just assigned him by the Senate
| must afford him the largest opportunities to
subserve.
If Mr.. Sumner had been great enough to say
| 10 his fellow Senators, "Put me on any COM
| mittee, or on none, as you judge most conducive
ou Enrolled Bills If you think l can be most
| useful there" he would have won a triumph
greater than that of any ancient or modern
warrior.-N. Y. Tribune, editorial, to-dag.