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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
