The Findlay Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio) 1870-1881, 1874-03-20
MisreHaneons.
From the Cincinnati Gazette. i
CHARLES SUMMER.

The death of this great statesman will
be received with sorrow throughout the
nation, by all, without distinction of
party, who are capable of admirinS a
noble life. Charles Sumner is an honor to
the American name, and an example for
future generations OF young Americans
who aspire to be statesmen. He has
shown them a way TO honor and fame
through the highest paths of rectitude,
and through devotion TO the cause of the
oppressed and down trodden.
In government in which it is COM
monty accepted that the public man
must make compromise between his
conscience and the popular debasement
or ignorance, he made infiexible princi-
pie the law of his conduct In an age
which is commonly called corrupt, he
maintained a purity of character upon
which not even partisan SANDER has east
a breath of suspicion.
If in his public life he had human
ambition for honor and fame, he pur-
sued it by devotion to the welfare of the
whole people. In a country where fire.
quent elections and universal suffrage
make a hOtbed to propagate demagogues,
he scOrned to appeal for popularity to
anything lower than principles and the
public conscience. In a government in
which the ignorant presume to aspire to
high places, and superficiality is the
common falling of the successful, he
qualified himself for craftsmanship by
thorough learning in the history and
principles of law, and in the human ex-
periences that can furnish u lesson for
the future, as we'll as by culture in gen
eral literature, which gives grace to
scholarship.
His public speeches have the qualities
of high cause, of method, logical argUI-
ment, rhetorical force, and oratorical
grace which entitle them to rank as ora
tiOns, and as such they will stand in
American literature as history of the
time, and as models of OratOry TO future
statesmen.
Charles Sumner was peculiarly an
apostle of the anti-slavery cause When
he entered public life that supremacy
of the slave holding interest in our gov
ernment, which was called the slave
power, ruled the nation with a savage
despOtism. Mr. Summers first public
utterances were against the slavery on
which this political power was founded.
To its destruction he devoted his life
To it he subOrdinated party association.
For this cause he was chosen to repre-
sent the people of Massachusetts,, and he
lived to see this naughty slave power
utterly PROSTATE and subdued.
Even at this early day, when it is little
more than decade since the downfall
of the slave power, the multitude have
almost forgotten the savage spirit which
it infused into society and politics, and
the insolence with which it ruled the
government; how it excluded from places
in the national government every man
who did not bow the knee to slavery;
how it violated the public mails and eX-
cluded from them the newspapers not
known TO be- favorable to slavery; how,
upon mere suspicion of opinions against
the rightfulness of slavery, it made the
South more dangerous TO Northern men
than the regions inhabited by the most
savage tribes in Africa; how it 50 dOmin-
ated, even the Northern States, as TO
raise fierce mobs there against men of
anti-slavery opinions and against anti
slavery papers
1t has passed from the minds of the
multitude how this arrogant slave power
so dominated society at the capital of
the nation that the representatives Of
anti-slavery opinions were deprived Of
the protection of law, and how il estab-
lished in the national Congress the code
of the bully and assassin against anti
slavery members. There are those even
who presume 50 much upon the short
ness OF the public memory a. to call this
the good old time of peace and union,
and of the Constitution a. II was -
The slave power had conquered the na-
ton that was created by an exalted
spirit of liberty. To talk of freedom, or
even of the equal political rights Of citi-
zens who did not believe Ill slavery, was
held TO be reasonable, and in the great
er part of the nation was dangerous to
life and property.
Mr. Sumner, after having achieved
distinction by learning III the law, and
by his accomplishments as an orator, ell
listed in the contest against this despOtic
power. and thereby came into public life.
His first public speech in this cause was
in Faneuil Hall, November, 1915. against
the annexation of Texas-ttat PandOra's
box of evils 10 the United States. whose
end is not yet reached-because of its
extension OF the slave power. From
this time his anti-slavery labOrs were
constant. In September, 1916. he ad-
dressed the Wing State Convention on
the 'Anti-Slavery Duties OF the Wing
Party In 1S47 he delivered, before the
Boston Mercantile Library Association,
brilliant lecture on White Slavery in
the Barbary States"
In 1S47 he addressed the Wing State
Convention Oh political Action Against
the Slave Power and the Extension OF
Slavery In 1S4S ne addressed mass
convention at Worcester. For Union
Among Men of All Parties Against the
Slave Power and the Extension of Sla-
very" He had withdrawn from the
Wing and joined the Free Soil party.
who supported Van Buren, for the presi
dency. In 1850 he delivered before the
Free Soil State Convention an Grafton
on Our Recent Anti-Slavery Duties"
This was after the passage Of the infa-