Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-03-12

Convention of 1916 on "The Anti
Slavery Duties of the Wing Party"
These steps soon led him INTO the camp
of the Freesoilers, whose candidates,
VanBuren and Adams, he supported
warmly in l848. Daniel Webster being
called INTO Fillmore's Cabinet in 1850,
his vacated Senatorship was given to
Sumner by an Anti-Whig coalition in
the Massachusetts, Legislature. He
thus presents very exceptional case of
reaching the most honored station
in b. the land without passing
through any lower political position.
Once a Senator always Senator, he
died in the same Office, being contin-
uously reelected. Nor did he ever
hold any other. His recognized abii-
ties which would have fitted him pecu-
iarly for Secretary of State, seem never
to have suggested his transfer to the
Cabinet He signalized his advent into
the Senate by philippe against the
fugitive slave law, IN which he first
enunciated the once famous dictum,
freedom is national and slavery Sec
tional." He took active part in the
debate on repeating the Missouri Com
promise, occupying two whole days in
the delivery of his great speech on
Kansas. Some passages greatly in
censed the South Carolina members,
and two days after, May %, 1856, Pres
ton S. Brooks assaulted Mr.. Sumner
while writing at his desk IN the Senate
chamber after adjournment, striking
him about the head and shoulders with
a light gutta-percha walking cane,until
he fell to the floor apparently in
sensible. His assailant was a
small, spare man, Of consump-
tive habit, who died only seven
months after. and whom Sumner out
weighed, two pounds for one. The re-
suits of this assault kept him from his
place IN the Senate for two or three
years. He went to Europe in 1857 and
again in 1853 for his health and medi-
cal treatment. His return to the Sem
ate in 1859 was signalized by his IA
nous speech on the 'Barbarism Of
Slavery" in which ne ikened the
South to the Barbary States Of North
Africa. In the Senatorial debates of
1S60-61 on secession, he opposed all
| compromise with the "slave power,
and early in the war urged emancipa-
ton as the quickest means of ending
it. March 1, 1861, he became chair
man of the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, which position he
held through five successive Congress
es, till March, 1871, when his OppOsi-
ton TO Grant on the San Domingo
question made him odious with the
dominant faction of his party, and he
was superseded by Simon Cameron.
| Those who had Grant in training for
a second term deemed It necessary to
put this disgrace on the Republican
who had denounced the President
as a dangerous usurper, exercising
one man power. His structures on the
johnson Clarendon treaty had created
intense feeling IN Great Britain, and it
was said at the time that Summers re-
moval from the Foreign Relations Com
mittee was requested by England, as
paving the way for the Joint High
Commission on the Alabama claims.
With Sumner holding such an infuen-
tial place in the Senate, it was argued
that an amicable adjustment would be
difficult. This affair helped much to-
ward placing him in line with the Liber-
al reaction whichnominated Greeley in
1872. In the fall Of that year he was
nominated for Governor of Massachu-
setts by the Anti-Republican coalitions
but declined the honor, and F. w. Bird
was substituted on the ticket by the
State Committee. Mr. Summers devo-
ton to the cause Of the blacks far out
lived emancipation, filming new fuel to
feed on each year, and dying only with
himself. In 1867, he introduced the
bill abolishing the word white" in all
the laws of the District of Columbia.
Next he attacked the same odiOus
word in the naturalization laws. He
was active in pushing the postbellum
Amendments, the various Ku-Klux
bills and the successive enforcement
and Reconsideration acts. OF
late years his supplementary
negro rights bill because a chronic
affair. always on the calendar in some
stage. but neverreaching a final read
ing. owing to the lack of sympathy
among his Republican fellows; but
always revived by him at the very
| opening Of each successive Congress.
ANY proposition for the removal Of
the political disabilities of Southern
ers was sure to elicit from him an
amendment lacking on this hobby OF
his life. His devotion to this lone
idea almost amounted to a mania
and was one great source of his
strength and prominence. In October
| 1871. a convention Of delegates repre-
senting the negro population Of the
country, was in session at st. LOUIS t.
whom he addressed a letter saying:
Il am glad that our colored fellow
citizens are to have a convention o
their own. lou musU DIT d