New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1874-03-19

such imperfectly stated were the qualifica
tons he brought to his great and lifelong
work, and now what are the results of hi.
labors?
have told you what we were when Mr.
Sumner found us; let us see in what condi
ton he left us. 1 point to this building
lovingly named after him, to this meeting, tC
an epitomized answer to the interrogation as
to what we now are. point to this magni.
ficent temple of learning, replete with every
form of school apparatus. made comfortable
by the best appliances that the ripest eXpe-
rience can suggest for school purposes, peO-
pied i'm the daytime with score of teachers
who have drawn aspiration for their work and
gathered 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. Ipoint to these high-school rooms, in
one of which we are assembled, in which
negro capacity has been tested, to its abound
ing credit, in the teaching and in the learn
ing the most difficult tasks Of mental disci-
pine. This edifice and its inhabitants are
part of the glory of Sumner; yet this is but
one of half dozen such buildings in Wash
ington city, where such teachers instruct and
| such children learn, over which nine of such
trustees govern, with equal ability and sue
cess, while upon them all such superintcn-
dent casts the light of his guidance and the
warmth of his interest to the exceeding adj
vantage and happiness of all, amid such
universal approval as Sumner longed and
labOred to secure.
But though Washington is, in these re-
spects, the garden spot of our people, still
the wilderness of the South is everywhere
blossoming with roses, which shall emit a
fragrance and display beauty as melliflous
and as gorgeous as freedom, education 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-rcvealng pages of the school
book.
Who can count the number or accurately
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 ioyously saw the applause of
our triumph over chattelism, but the keen
emotions OF delight soon gave place in his
bosom to the deeper emotions of sOlictude
that our emancipation should be developed
into a perfect freedom, and that freedom
Itself should be made worth the having by
browning it with every immunity of citizen
ship. TO his mind the thirteenth amend
ment to the Constitution was worse than
worthless-it was delusion and a snare
without the fourteenth and fifteenth amend
ments, and he 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 artluous,
unremttng, herculean; and he seemed on
the very threshold of success when the angels
bore him away to sphere of higher actvi-
ties and ho!icr enjoyments. But the cadences
of his dying voice still ring through the
land, conveying all his tenderness for the
dOwn-troddcn, all the firmness 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 the
civil rights bill fail"
May we not hope that the saddenng and
sOftening influences of his scmi-tragic death
will steal over the hearts of Senators and
Representatives in Congress with the all
persuading powers ofhallOwed "reminiscences,
with the pathetic suggestions of our
incOnsOlable anguish over our loss as a race,
and move them to crown the edifce of their
work an hisd by giving us Immediately and
completely the boon for which we ask, and
enacting into law the only eptaph he would
have chosen for the base of that statue
which is soon to adorn the Capitol-''the
civil rights BILL"
The choir Of the school then sang piece
of music, entitled "Let the dead and the
beautiful rest; after which Hon. James L.
Rapier, of Alabama, read resolution
adopted by the cOlored citlzcns of Montgom-
cry, Alabama.