The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1874-05-07
A Southern Eulogy upon the late Charles
Sumner.

On the 9th of April, both Houses of Con-
gress devoted the time to eulogies upon the
late Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts, Per
haps the most notable effort that delivered
by Hon. L. O. G. Lamar, Of Mississippi, which
we give in full:
Mr.. SPEAKER-I rise to second the resolu-
tions presented by the member from Massachu-
sets. I believe that they express sentiment
which pervades the hearts of all the people
whose Representatives are here assembled.
Strange, as in looking back upon the past the
assertion may seem impossible, as it would
have been ten years ago to make it, it is not
the less true that to-day Mississippi regrets the
death of Charles Sumner, and sincerely unites
in paving honors to his memory. Not because
of the splendor of his intellect, though in him
was extinguished one of the brightest lights
which have illustrated the councils of the
government for nearly quarter of century.
Not because of the high culture the elegant
scholarship and the varied learning, which re-
vealed themselves so clearly in all his public
efforts, as to justify the application to him of
Johnson's felicitous expression: He touched
nothing which he did not adorn." Not this,
though these are qualities by no means, it is
to be feared, so common in public places as to
make their disappearance in even single in
stance matter of indifference, but because of
those peculiar and strongly marked moral traits
of his character, which gave the coloring to
the whole tenor of his singularly dramatic
public career, making him, for a long period,
to a large portion of his countrymen the object
of as deep and passionate a hostility as to an
other, he was one of enthusiastic admiration,
and which are not the less the cause that now
unites all these parties, so widely differing, in
a common sorrow to-day over his lifeless re-
mains. It.is of these hi gh moral qualities that
1 wish to speak for these have been the traits
which have, in after years, as have considered
the successive acts and utterances of this re-
markable man, fastened most strongly my at
tention and impressed themselves most forcibly
upon my Imagination, my senslblllties, and my
heart. Let me speak Of the characteristics
which brought the llustrious Senator who has
just passed away, into direct and bitter antago-
nsm for years with my own State and her
sister States of the South.
SUMMERS MAGNANIMITY.
But here let me do this great man the justice
which, amid the excitements of the struggle
between the sections, now past l may have
been disposed to deny him. In his fiery zeal
and his earnest warfare against the wrong, as
he viewed it, there entered no enduring person
al animosty towards the men whose lot it was
to be born to the system which he denounced
1t has been the kindness of the sympathy
which in thc,e later years he has displayed
towards the impoverished and suffering people
of the Southern States that have unveiled to
me the generous and tender heart which beat
beneath the bosom of the zealot and has forced
me to yield him the tribute of my respect
might even say of my admiration Nor in the
manifestation of this has there been anything
which proud and sensitive people, smartlng
under sense of recent discontinue and pres
which would give them just cause to suspect its
sincerity. For, though he raised his voice as
soon as he believed the momentous issues Of
this great military conflict were decided in be-
half of amnesty to the vanquished, and though
he stood forward ready to welcome back as
brothers, and to re-establish in their rights as
citizens those whose valor had SO nearly rlven
asunder the Union he loved, he always insisted
that the most ample protection and the largest
safeguards should be thrown around the liber-
ties of the newly -enfranchised African race.
Though he knew very well that of his con-
ouered fellow-citizens of the South, by far the
larger portion, even those who most heartily
acquiesced in, and desired the abolition of
slavery, seriously questioned the expediency Of
investing in a single day, and without any
preliminary tutelage, SO vast body of mex
perienced and uninstructed men with the full
rights of citizenship and suffrage, he would
tolerate no halfway measures upon point to
him SO vital Indeed, Immediately after the
war. while other minds were occupying them
selves with different theories of reconstruction,
he did not hesitate to impress most emphati-
cally on the administration, not only in public,
but in the confidence of private intercourse,
his uncompromising resolution to oppose to
the last any and every scheme which should
fail to provide the surest guarantees for the
personal freedom and political rights of the
race which he had undertaken to protect
Whether these measures show him to be a
practical statesman or theoretical enthusiast
is question which any decision we may pro-
nounce to-day must await the inevitable revs-
ion of postcrity. The spirit of magnanimity,
therefore, which breathes in his utterances and
manifests itself in all his acts affecting the
South was as evidently honest as it WAS CRATE
full to the feeling of those to whom it was dis
played.
GRATITUDE OF THE SOUTH.
1t was certainly gracious act toward the
South, though unhappily it Jared upon the
sensibilites of the people at the other extreme
of the Union. to propose to erase from the
banners of the national army the mementoes
of the bloody internal struggle, which might
be regarded as assailng the pride or wounding
the sensibilities of the Southern people, That
proposal will never be forgotten by that people
SO long as the name of Charles Sumner lives
in the memory of man. But, while it touched
the heart and elicity her profound gratitude,
her people would not have asked OF the North
such an act of sclfdenunciation. Conscious
that they themselves were animated by devo-
tiou to constitutional liberty, and that the
brightest pages of history are replete with evi
dences of the depth and sincerity of that
devotion. thew can but cherish the recolections
of the battles fought and the victories won in
defence of their hopeless cause, and respecting,
as all true and brave men must respect the
martial spirit with which the men of the North
vindicatcd the integrity of the Union and their
devotion to the principles of human freedom