Speech of Frederick Douglass at the Sumner Memorial, March 17th, 1874.

He was here to pronounce no formal eulogy upon Charles Sumner, but
to make one of a vast procession of mourners on the day when his dust
had been committed to the soil of his native State amid extraordinary
tokens of sorrow of those who knew him well and loved him extremely.

Mr. Sumner's character was remarkable and singular within our day
and generation. It has been well said of him that he was in some
sense a theorist, and he thought this class of greatness was the high-
est. One of the proudest minds of New England has said there are
three grades of human greatness-- first, the greatness of administra-
tion; second, that of organization; but a higher form still is the
power to discover truth-- to know just where it may be found. In this,
Mr. Sumner excelled. All the distance between man's mind and God's
mind is filled with truths, to be organized into forms for human aid.
Truths which to us are self-evident, known and spoken by our children
at school and the fireside, has cost immensely in feeling and suffer-
ing. Truth is born of agony, sweat, tears and blood. Man's right
to form his own opinions, to think for himself, what has not this
right to think cost? Go back but three centuries, and you view men
torn to pieces for asserting their right to think-- the flesh torn from
the bones-- men and women tied with fagots and burnt up for asserting
this right.

Now, take this right of the black man to his freedom-- very plain
it seems. What was the great truth for which Sumner struggled, and
made his name dear to every colored man's heart? Simply that
each individual man belongs to himself-- that his arms, his conscience,
and his affections are his, and yet on asserting this but a few years
ago, our deceased friend was struck down beneath the dome of yonder
Capitol, and his warm red blood made to stain the floor supposed to be
sacred to freedom of speech.

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Mr. Sumner has been accused of being unpractical. The speaker had once mentioned this to him, and he unraveled the whole mystery. He said to prepare the Senate to vote, was the work, the vote was only the shout of victory. His mission was to rock the cradle of principles until they were able to stand and walk alone. He was far in the advance when the hour for voting came-- he had been to that point and gone on. He could not attempt his eulogy here; notwithstanding his efforts for the fugitive slave bill, and his work to save the virgin soil of Kansas from the hell-born, black curse of slavery. The speaker thought, Mr. Sumner's best work for us was after the close of the late war, when there was a cry to reconstruct the rebellious State governments. He opposed every step towards reconstruction without a full, clear, complete recognition of the rights of the colored man. He chided Massachusetts for her haste, and his voice did more to reconstruct the Union on a true basis than that of any other man in the United States. He sympathized with the beautiful types of the former speakers, but held that there is a rainbow over the chasm made by the death of our friend; the stone crashes amid the solid rock below; the principle still lives though the man has died. The man is now living who will seize the banner laid down by Charles Sumner and lead us to higher plains of privilege. Massachusetts has no second Charles Sumner, but were he to select a man to tread in his footsteps, he could find a champion of liberty still living, and though she has lost Charles Sumner, she has a Wendell Phillips.

Were he an office-seeker he might suppress what he now said. He had one regret about his relations to Charles Sumner, one cause of complaint against himself-- when the Presidential campaign was upon us, having the opportunity, he did not place the name of Charles Sumner at the head of the column of names. He regretted and ever should regret that, as a colored man, he did not lift his name aloft among the broken

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us the more he wanted for us. Each higher level he brought us to only prepared us for another still higher. There are coming up from the North, South, East and West, men who will speak mightier words than any yet spoken.

All might well speak on an occasion like this. Let us go home and teach our children the name of Charles Sumner; tell them his utterances, and teach them that they, like him, can make their lives sublime by clinging to principles. While stars were falling all around us Charles Sumner shone brightly, untainted by corruption-- pure, spotless, stainless. When men of the Young Men's Christian Association were going down, this great man kept his skirts clear. We commend him as the model.