Memorial Services: Tribute to the Hon. Charles Sumner/Preamble and Resolutions
PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTIONS.
Chas. Sumner is dead. What a terrible blow to them to whose welfare he devoted a brilliant and useful life. A great expounder of the constitution, he became indeed the champion of our race. In his death the United States Senate has lost its brightest gem, Massachussetts a noble and honorable son, and the country its greatest statesman. Let the people mourn—for their loss is great.
Mr. Sumner may well be considered as having reached the apex of American statesmanship, and will be deservedly enshrined in the true American heart for his honesty and purity of character; his wisdom and sense of justice, his love of truth and virtue, the sublimity of his eloquence and the greatness of his knowledge. His name will always be proudly remembered and cherished in the palaces of the wealthy, and the homes of the poor and the lowly. Yet there are some who will not praise him now, but their children's children will be taught to emulate the knowledge and principles of the American statesman whose demise we now so sadly mourn.
Charles Sumner devoted his life—one that was full of hope and brightness in the future, to the purification of the government of his country. From the commencement of his public career, the noble determination to make the declaration of independence a living fact instead of a brazen mockery, has occupied his closest attention and called forth his most powerful efforts; how he succeeded cannot be better illustrated than in our action to-day. Standing in the senate of the United States, he was a terror to evil doers and to tyrants, who faltered and cowered before his withering denunciations of the crime of slavery, and his vivid picture of universal freedom, pictured with all the earnestness and eloquence of which he was master. And this, too, at a time when it was dangerous even for a congressman of the United States to express his honest convictions based upon the first principles of the government, that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as we have seen in the brutal and terrible assault committed upon Mr. Sumner by the South Carolina representatives in 1856, within the sacred walls of the senate for exercising the dearest rights of citizenship—the rights of freedom of speech. From the walls of the senate, bleeding and unconscious, the victim of the fanatical party was born to linger for months, suffering from the effects of the blows received in the cause of freedom; but his blood and sufferings served only to enrich the soil of liberty, and to cause the plant of freedom to grow stronger and stronger until seven years later, after many bitter strifes in the forum and legislative halls, and upon the battle fields,it culminated in emancipation—the shackles fell from the limbs of the slave and in the rich panoply of freedom, the former bondman proudly stood.
After the emancipation proclamation issued by our martyred President, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Sumner having witnessed the first great aim of his life in the extinction of slavery, turned his mighty intellect to the bestowal of the full rights of citizenship, and the recognition of the equality of all men before the law, with the fullest guarantee of civil and political rights upon the emancipated colored men of the country. In this he was compelled to meet and combat all the powerful influences brought about by Andrew Johnson's treachery to principle. But with Wilson in the senate, Thaddeus Stevens and others in the house, and General Grant at the head of the army, Mr. Sumner's cause succeeded. Throughout this struggle Mr. Sumner displayed a statesmanship seldom equalled, and never excelled. In his demands for justice and equal rights for all he displayed the persistency of the immortal Wilberforce, the dogmatism of the famous Calhoun, the eloquence of Clay and
"Brougham's scathing power, with Canning's grace combined."
With such a powerful champion declaiming in our favor, one by one the iron barriers of prejudice were overcome and equality before the law, and full political rights were made secure for all citizens, for all time to come. Mr. Sumner now gave the largest portion of his time to the enactment of a law to protect all citizens in their civil rights, and for that purpose prepared the celebrated Civil Eights Bill now pending before the Senate of the United States, and which is now occupying a great share of the country's attention. It is at this time, while hard at work in the noble cause, bending his mighty energies to its enactment into a law of the land, his spirit yielded to the fell destroyer death, and took its flight to Him who gave it.
"Such are the pictures, which the thought of thee,
O friend, awakeneth—charming the keen pain
Of thy departure, and our sense of loss
Requiting with the fulness of thy gain."
The above being in substance our thoughts on this sad occasion, we do resolve:
1. That, while we bow with reverence and submission to the mandates of our all-wise and Heavenly Ruler, we can but feel and be deeply sensible of the great loss the country has sustained in the death of its great statesman, Charles Sumner.
2. That the best years of his life, distinguished alike for wisdom and patriotism, were devoted to the cause of freedom and the amelioration of our people, and that we are deeply sadden-ed at the loss of so great and dear a friend, whose place it will be hard to fill, but his name shall live forever and remain sanctified upon our memories.
3. That we offer our sincere condolence to the sister and relatives of the deceased, and to the citizens of Massachussets in their bereavement in the death of their illustrious son.
| J.H. DEVEAUX, | 
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| L. B. TOOMER, |  Committee on Resolutions.
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| K. S. THOMAS, | 
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