Men of Our Times. Or, Leading Patriots of the Day

Now, Sumner's superb vitality, that hardy yeoman blood which his ancestors brought from England, stood him in excellent stead. His strong and active brain was based on a body muscular, vigorous, and healthy, incapable of nervous tremor, bearing him with a steady aplomb through much that would be confusing and weakening to men of less physical force. Sumner had not the character of a ready debater; not a light-armed skirmisher was he; he resembled rather one of the mailed warriors of ancient tourney. When he had deliberately put on his armor, all polished and finished down to buckle and shoe-latchet, and engraved with what-not of classic, or Venetian, or Genoese device; when he put down his visor, steadied his lance, took sure aim, and went man and horse against his antagonist, all went down before him, as went down all before the lance of Cœur-de-Lion.

Such a charge into the enemy was his first great speech, "Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," which he directed against the Fugitive Slave Law. It was a perfect land-slide of history and argument; an avalanche under which the opposing party were logically buried, and it has been a magazine from which catapults have been taken to beat down their fortresses ever since.

If Daniel Webster merited the title of the great expounder of the constitution, Sumner at this crisis merited that of the great defender of the constitution. In this speech we see clearly the principle on which Charles Sumner, while holding the same conscientious ground with Mr. Garrison in regard to the wickedness of slavery, could yet see his way clear to take the oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States.

It was because he believed ex animo, that that constitution was an agreement made TO PROMOTE AND DEFEND LIBERTY, and though including in itself certain defective compromises, which never ought to have been there, had yet within itself the constitutional power of revoking even those compromises, and coming over entirely on to the ground of liberty.

The fugitive slave law, as it was called, he opposed on the ground that it was unconstitutional, that it was contrary to the spirit and intention of the constitution, and to the well known spirit and intention of the men who made that constitution. In this part, Mr. Sumner, going back to the history of the debates at the formation of the constitution, gave a masterly resumé of the subject, showed that the leading men of those days were all strong anti-slavery men, that they all looked forward to the gradual dying out of slavery as certain, and that with great care they avoided in the constitution any legal recognition of such an unlawful, unnatural relation. That the word slave did not exist in the document, and that when the slaves of the South were spoken of in relation to apportioning the suffrage, they were spoken of as "persons," and not as chattels; that even the very clause of the constitution which has been perverted into a foundation for the fugitive slave law, had been purposely so framed that it did not really describe the position of slaves under southern law, but only that of such laborers as were by law denominated and recognized as persons. By slave law the slaves were not regarded as "persons held to service and labor," but as chattels personal, and it was only apprentices and free persons to whom the terms could literally be made to apply.

He showed by abundant quotations from the debates of the times that this use of language was not accidental, but expressly designed to avoid corrupting the constitution of the United States with any recognition of the principle that man could hold man as property. He admitted that the makers of it knew and admitted that under it slaveholders could recover their slaves, but considering slaveholding as a temporary thing, they had arranged so that the language of their great national document should remain intact and uncorrupt. From this masterly speech we extract the concluding summary:

"At the risk of repetition, but for the sake of clearness, review now this argument, and gather it together. Considering that slavery is of such an offensive character that it can find sanction only in positive law and that it has no such 'positive' sanction in the constitution; that the constitution, according to its Preamble, was ordained to 'establish justice,' and 'secure the blessings of liberty;' that in the convention which framed it, and also elsewhere at the time, it was declared not to 'sanction slavery;' that according to the Declaration of Independence, and the address of the Continental Congress, the nation was dedicated to 'liberty' and the 'rights of human nature;' that according to the principles of common law, the constitution must be interpreted openly, actively, and perpetually for Freedom; that according to the decision of the Supreme Court, it acts upon slaves, not as property, but as persons; that, at the first organization of the national government, under Washington, slavery had no national favor, existed nowhere on the national territory, beneath the national flag, but was openly condemned by the nation, the church, the colleges and literature of the time; and finally, that according to an amendment of the constitution, the national government can only exercise powers delegated to it, among which there is none to support slavery; considering these things, sir, it is impossible to avoid the single conclusion that slavery is in no respect a national institution, and that the constitution nowhere upholds property in man.

"But there is one other special provision of the constitution, which I have reserved to this stage, not so much from its superior importance, but because it may fitly stand by itself. This alone, if practically applied, would carry freedom to all within its influence. It is an amendment proposed by the first Congress, as follows: 'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' Under this ægis the liberty of every person within the national jurisdiction is unequivocally placed. I say every person. Of this there can be no question. The word 'person,' in the constitution, embraces every human being within its sphere, whether Caucasian, Indian, or African, from the President to the slave."

The moral influence of these doctrines on the political abolitionists was very great. Garrison's sharp, clear preaching of the Bible doctrine of sin and repentance, had awakened a great deal of moral feeling in the land, and it became a real case of conscience to a great many, how they could in any way take the oath to support a constitution which they thought supported slavery. On this subject, in all pure and noble minds, there began to be great searchings of heart, but the clearness, the fulness, the triumphant power with which Sumner and others brought out the true intention of the constitution, and the spirit of its makers, gave a feeling of clean and healthy vigor through the whole party. Even the Garrisonians could perceive at any rate, that here was a ground where honest Christians might plant their feet, and get a place in the government to fight on, until by the constitutional power of amendment they might some day cast out wholly the usurping devil of slavery, which had lived and thriven so much beyond the expectations of our fathers.

Sumner's mind is particularly remarkable for a nice sense of moral honor. He had truly that which Burke calls "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound," and he felt keenly the disgrace and shame of such an enactment as the fugitive slave law. He never spoke of it as a law. He was careful to call it only an enactment, an attempt at law, which being contrary to the constitution of the country, never could have the binding force of a law.

Next in the political world came the defeat, disgrace, fall and broken hearted death of Webster, who, having bid for the Presidency, at the price of all his former convictions, and in the face of his former most solemnly expressed opinions, was treated by the haughty Southern oligarchy with contemptuous neglect. "The South never pay their slaves," said a northern farmer when he heard that Webster had lost the nomination. Webster felt with keen pangs, that for that slippery ungrateful South, he had lost the true and noble heart of the North. In the grave with Webster died the old Whig party.

But still, though this and that man died, and parties changed, the unflinching Southern power pushed on its charge. Webster being done with, it took up Douglas as its next tool, and by him brought on the repeal of the Missouri compromise and the Kansas and Nebraska battle. The war raged fiercer and hotter and in the fray, Sumner's voice was often heard crying the war cry of liberty.

And now the war raged deadlier, as came on the struggle for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, when the strokes of Sumner's battle axe, long and heavy, were heard above the din, and always with crushing execution. The speech on "The Crime against Kansas," wrought the furnace of wrath to a white heat. What was to be done with this man? Call him out and fight him? He was known to be on principle a non-resistant. Answer him? Indeed! who ever heard of such a proceeding? How could they? Had he not spoken the truth? What shall we do then? Plantation manners suggested an answer. "Come behind him at an unguarded moment, take him at a disadvantage, three to one, knock him down and kill him."

So said – and but for his strong frame, wonderful in its recuperative power, and but for the unseen protection of a higher power, – it would have been so done.

Everybody knows the brutal history of that coarse and cowardly assault, and how the poor bully who accomplished it was fêted and caressed by Southern men and women in high places, who hastened by presents of canes, and snuff boxes, and plate, to show forth how well he had expressed the Southern idea of chivalry.

Three or four years spent abroad, under medical treatment, were necessary to enable even Sumner's vigorous vitality to recover from an assault so deadly; but at last he came back to take his seat in the Senate.

The poor cowardly bully who had assailed him, was dead – gone to a higher judgment seat; Butler was dead – and other accomplices of the foul deed were gone also. Under all these circumstances there is something thrilling in the idea of Sumner rising in the very seat where he had been stricken down, and pronouncing that searching speech to which his very presence there gave such force, "The Barbarism of Slavery."

If he had wished revenge he might have had it, in the fact that he had the solemn right, as one raised from the dead, to stand there and give in his awful testimony. How solemn and dignified, in view of all these circumstances, seem the introductory words of his speech:

"Mr. President, undertaking now, after a silence of more than four years, to address the Senate on this important subject, I should suppress the emotions natural to such an occasion, if I did not declare on the threshold my gratitude to that Supreme Being, through whose benign care I am enabled, after much suffering and many changes, once again to resume my duties here, and to speak for the cause which is so near my heart, to the honored commonwealth whose representative I am, and also to my immediate associates in this body, with whom I enjoy the fellowship which is found in thinking alike concerning the Republic. I owe thanks which I seize this moment to express for the indulgence shown me throughout the protracted seclusion enjoined by medical skill; and I trust that it will not be thought unbecoming in me to put on record here, as an apology for leaving my seat so long vacant, without making way, by resignation for a successor, that I acted under the illusion of an invalid, whose hopes for restoration to his natural health constantly triumphed over his disappointments.

"When last I entered into this debate it became my duty to expose the crime against Kansas, and to insist upon the immediate admission of that Territory as a State of this Union, with a constitution forbidding slavery. Time has passed, but the question remains. Resuming the discussion precisely where I left it, I am happy to avow that rule of moderation which, it is said, may venture even to fix the boundaries of wisdom itself. I have no personal griefs to utter; only a barbarous egotism could intrude these into this chamber. I have no personal wrongs to avenge; only a barbarous nature could attempt to wield that vengeance which belongs to the Lord. The years that have intervened, and the tombs that have been opened since I spoke, have their voices too, which I cannot fail to hear. Besides, what am I – what is any man among the living or among the dead, compared with the Question before us? It is this alone which I shall discuss, and I open the argument with that easy victory which is found in charity."

Though Sumner was thus moderate in allusion to himself or others, it was still the constant suggestion to the minds of all, of the perfect reason he, of all men, had, to know the truth of what he spoke, that gave a vehement force to his words. That was a speech unanswerable, unanswered. The South had tried the argument of force, and it had failed! There he was again! – their accuser at the bar of the civilized world!

In the present administration, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Sumner has with his usual learning and power defended American honor against the causeless defamations and sneers of those who should have known better. None of our public men, perhaps, is more favorably known in the Old World. His talents and accomplishments, as well as his heroic stand for principle, have given him the familiar entrée to all that is best worth knowing in England; and it is for that reason more admirable that he should, with such wealth of learning and elegance of diction, have remonstrated with that great nation on her injustice to us. His pamphlet on "Our Foreign Relations" carries a weight of metal in it that is overpowering; it is as thoroughly exhaustive of the subject as any of his greatest speeches, – grave, grand, and severely true. It is the strong blood of England herself speaking back to the parent land as sorrowfully as Hamlet to his mother.

In the recent debates on Reconstruction, Sumner has remained true to that "chastity of honor" in relation to the United States Constitution, which has been characteristic of him, in opposing that short sighted republican policy which proposed to secure the political privileges of the blacks by introducing the constitutional amendment, providing that any state disfranchising negroes should be deprived of a corresponding portion of its representation in Congress.

Sumner indignantly repelled the suggestion of introducing any such amendments into the constitution, as working dishonor to that instrument by admitting into it, in any form, or under whatsoever pretext, the doctrine of the political inequality of races of men. In this we recognize a faultless consistency of principle.

Sumner was cheered in the choice which he made in the darkest hour, by that elastic hope in the success of the right, which is the best inheritance of a strong, and healthy physical and moral organization. During the time of the Fugitive Slave Law battle, while the conflict of his election was yet uncertain, he was speaking incidentally to a friend of the tremendous influences which the then regnant genius of Daniel Webster could bring to crush any young man who opposed him. He spoke with feeling of what had to be sacrificed by a Boston young man who set himself to oppose such influences. The friend, in reply, expressed some admiration of his courage and self-sacrificing. He stopped, as he was walking up and down the room, and said, with simplicity, "Courage! No, it doesn't require so very much courage, because I know that in a few years we shall have all this thing down under our feet. We shall set our heel upon it," and he emphasized the sentence by bringing his heel heavily down upon the carpet.

"Do you really think so?"

"I know so; of course we shall."

Those words, spoken in the darkest hour of the anti-slavery conflict, have often seemed like a prophecy, in view of all the fast rushing events of the years that followed. Now they are verified. Where is the man who counselled the North to conquer their prejudices? Where is the man who raised a laugh in popular assemblies at the expense of those who believed the law of God to be higher than the law of men? There is a most striking lesson to young men in these histories.

The grave of the brilliant and accomplished Douglas lay far back on the road by which Lincoln rose to fame and honor, and the grave of Webster on that of Charles Sumner, and on both of those graves might be inscribed "Lo, this is the man that made not God his trust." Both scoffed at God's law, and proclaimed the doctrine of expediency as above right, and both died broken down and disappointed; while living and honored at this day, in this land and all lands, are the names of those, who in its darkest and weakest hour, espoused the cause of Liberty and Justice.

CHAPTER V

SALMON P. CHASE

England and our Finances in the War – President Wheelock and Mr. Chase's seven Uncles – His Uncle the Bishop – His sense of Justice at College – His Uncle the Senator – Admitted to the Bar for Cincinnati – His First Argument before a U. S. Court – Society in Cincinnati – The Ohio Abolitionists – Cincinnati on Slavery – The Church admits Slavery to be "an Evil" – Mr. Chase and the Birney Mob – The Case of the Slave Girl Matilda – How Mr. Chase "Ruined Himself" – He Affirms the Sectionality of Slavery – The Van Zandt Case – Extracts from Mr. Chase's Argument – Mr. Chase in Anti-Slavery Politics – His Qualifications as a Financier.

When a future generation shall be building the tombs of our present prophets, and adorning the halls of the Capitol with the busts of men now too hard at work to be sitting to the sculptor, then there will be among the marble throng one head not inferior to any now there in outside marks of greatness – a head to which our children shall point and say, "There is the financier who carried our country through the great slavery war!"

Not a small thing that to say of any man; for this war has been on a scale of magnitude before unheard of in the history of wars. It has been, so to speak, a fabulous war, a war of a tropical growth, a war to other wars, like the great Californian pine to the bramble of the forest. A thousand miles of frontier to be guarded, fleets to be created, an army to be organized and constantly renewed on a scale of numbers beyond all European experience – an army, too, for the most part, of volunteer citizens accustomed to generous diet, whose camp fare has been kept at a mark not inferior to the average of living among citizens at home. And all this was to be effected in no common times. It was to be done amid the revolutions of business, the disturbances of trade and manufacture, then turning into new courses; and above all, the breaking up of the whole system of cotton agriculture, by which the greatest staple of the world was produced. These changes convulsed and disarranged financial relations in all other countries, and shook the civilized world like an earthquake.

It is not to be wondered at that a merely insular paper, like the London Times, ignorant of all beyond the routine of British and continental probabilities, should have declared us madmen, and announced our speedy bankruptcy. We all know that paper to be conducted by the best of old world ability, and are ready to concede that the grave writers therein used their best light, and certainly they did their best to instruct us. How paternally did it warn us that we must not look to John Bull for funds to carry out such extravagances! How ostentatiously did the old banking houses stand buttoning their pockets, saying, "Don't come to us to borrow money!" and how did the wonder grow when the sun rose and set, and still new levies, new fleets, new armies! – when hundreds of thousands grew to millions, and still there was no call for foreign money, and government stocks stood in the market above all others in stability.

One thing, at least, became plain; that whatever might be the case with the army, financially the American people had a leader who united them to a man, and under whose guidance the vast material resources of the country moved in solid phalanx to support its needs.

When a blade does good service, nothing is more natural than to turn and read upon it the stamp that tells where and by whom it was fashioned; and so when we see the quiet and serenity in which our country moved on under its burdens, we ask, Whence comes this man who has carried us so smoothly in such a storm?

America is before all other things an agricultural country, and her aristocracy, whether of talent or wealth, generally trace back their origin to a farm. The case of Secretary Chase is no exception.

It is one of the traditions of Dartmouth College that old President Wheelock, in one of his peregrinations, once stopped in the town of Cornish, N. H.; a place where the Connecticut river flows out from the embrace of the White Mountains. Here he passed a night at a farm-house, the dwelling of Samuel Chase, a patriarchal farmer, surrounded by seven sons, as fine, strong and intelligent as those of Jesse of Old Testament renown. The President used his visit to plead the cause of a college education for these fine youths to such good purpose, that five of the boys, to wit: Salmon, Baruch, Heber, Dudley and Philander became graduates of Dartmouth College. Two remained to share the labors of the farm, one of whom was the father of Secretary Chase.

All the boys thus educated attained more than the average mark in society, and some to the highest distinction. Dudley Chase was one of the most distinguished lawyers and politicians of New England – a member of the United States Senate, and for many years Chief Justice of Vermont. It is said that he was so enthusiastic a classical scholar that he carried a Greek Homer and Demosthenes always in his pocket, for his recreation in intervals of public business. He lived to a patriarchal age, an object of universal veneration.

Salmon Chase, another brother, was a lawyer in Portland, the acknowledged leader of that distinguished bar. He died suddenly, while pleading in court, in 1806, and in memorial of him our Secretary received the name of Salmon Portland, at his birth, which occurred in 1808. The youngest of the graduates, Philander Chase, was the well-known Episcopal Bishop of Ohio and Illinois. He was the guardian under whose auspices the education of Salmon P. Chase was conducted.

In regard to Chase's early education, we have not many traditions. His parents were of the best class of New Hampshire farmers; Bible-reading, thoughtful, shrewd, closely and wisely economical. It is said that in that region literary material was so scarce that the boy's first writing lessons were taken on strips of birch bark.

When his father died, there was found to be little property for the support of the family, and only the small separate estate of his mother was left. She was of Scotch blood – that blood which is at once shrewd, pious, courageous and energetic, and was competent to make a little serve the uses of a great deal.

But an education, and a college education, is the goal towards which such mothers in New England set their faces as a flint – and by infinite savings and unknown economies they compass it.

When Chase was fourteen years old, his uncle, the Bishop, offered to take and educate him, and he went to Ohio along with an elder brother who was attached to Gen. Cass's expedition to the upper waters of the Mississippi.

While at Buffalo the seniors of the party made an excursion to Niagara, but had no room in their vehicle for the boy. Young Chase, upon this, with characteristic energy, picked up another boy who wanted to see the falls, and the two enterprising young gentlemen footed it through the snow for twenty miles, and saw the falls in company with their elders.

He remained two years with the Bishop, who was a peremptory man, and used his nephew as he did himself and everybody else about him, that is, made him work just as hard as he could.

The great missionary Bishop had so much to do, and so little to do it with, that he had to make up for lack of money by incessant and severe labor, and with such help as he could get. His nephew being his own flesh and blood, he felt perhaps at liberty to drive a little more sharply than the rest, as that is the form in which the family instinct shows itself in people of his character.