The weekly Louisianian., 1874-04-04

bothered about them. He was maj
of t~ireless industry, with a facility Of
perfect order; at that while he was
mastering the great authors and orators
of the past he found time to attend to
the humble correspondent in the land.
Such, in brief, vas tie man, such i'm
perfectly stated were the qualifications
he brought to his great and lifelong
work, and now what are the results Of
his labor?
have told you what we were when Mr..
Sumner found us; let us see in what con.
dition he left us. Ipoint to the building,
lovingly named after him, to this meeting,
to the various features of this solemn
scene, as On epitomized answer to the in
terrogation as to what We now are. !
point to this magnificent temple of learn
ing, replete with every form of school up
paratus, made comfortable by the best ap-
pliances that the ripest experience can
suggest for school purposes, peopled in
the daytime with a score of teachers who
have drawn aspiration for their work and
gathering experience for the application of
their noble art from the common schools
Of the District Of Columbia no less than
from the best seminarics of the land, and
who preside in rooms that swarm with
nearly a thousand children every school
day in the year. I point to these high
school rooms, in one Of which we are as
sembled, in which negro capacity has been
tested, to its Astounding credit, in the
teaching and in the learning the most diff
ficult tasks Of mental discipline. This
edifce and its inhabitants are part of the
glory of Simmer; yet this is but one of q
half dozen such buildings iu Washington
city, where such teachers instruct and
such children learn, over which nine OF
such trustees govern, with equal ability
and ,;uccess, while upon them I'll such q
superintendent casts the light of his guild
ancc and the warmth of his interest to the
exceeding advantage and happiness of oil,
amid such universal approval US Sumner
longel and labored to secure.
But though Washington is. in these re-
spccts, the garden spot of our people, still
the wilderness of the South is everywhere
b%lossoming with roses, which shall emit a
fragrance and display a beauty as melli-
fous and as gorgeous as freedom, educa-
ton and virtue can produce, and Charles
Sumner, more than any other man, was
instrumental in assisting US to drop the
Incorporating cotton basket that we
might pick up and study the ~all-revealing
pages of the school-book.
Who can count the number or accurate.
ly measure the value of the agencies of
progress he has helped to put in our
hands? He, along with every other
liberty-loving person on the globe joyously
saw the applause of u triumph over
chattelism, but the keen emotions OF
delight soon gavo place in his bosom to
the deeper emotions of solicitude that our
emancipation should be developed into a
perfect freedom, and that freedom itself
should be made worth the having by
crowningg it with every immunity Of citizen
ship. To his mind the thirteenth amend
ment to the Constitution was worse than
worthless-it was o delusion and q snare
without the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments, and be thought and said
that even these last amendments will be
robbed of the larger share Of their proper
influence unless the negro is clothed by
imperial legislation with the sanction Of a
civil rights bill which will secure to him
the enjoyment of every public privilege
granted in common to the other races Of
the republic.
His labors to this end have been ardu-
GUS, unrcmitting, herculean; and he
seemed on the very threshold of success
when the angels bore him away to a sphere
of higher activities and holier enjoyments.
But the cadences Of his dying voice still
ring through the land, conveying all bis
tenderness for the d~own-trodden, all the
frmness Of his fidelity to principle. all
sonorousness of martyrdom, and all the
pathos of his patriotic desires in those
last words to Mr.. Hoar, "Don't let thu
civil rights bill fail"
May we hope that the saddening and
softening influences of his semi-tragit
death will steal over the hearts of Senator.
and Representatives in Congress with th.
a~ll-persuading powers ct hallowed reminis
cences, with the pathetic suggestions o
our i%noonsolable anguish over our loss a
O race, and move them to crown the ediac'
of their work and his by giving us i'm
mediately and completely the boon fo'
which we ask, and enactipg into law tn
only epitaph he would have chosen TO
| the base Of that statue which is soon Il
adorn the Capitol-''the civil rights bill.
The choir of the school then sang 6
! piece of music, entitled 'tLet the dead ant
the beautiful rest; after which Hon. james
T. Rapier, of Alabama, read = resolntio,
adopted by the colored citizens of Mont
gon,cry, Alabama.