EULOGY ON CHARLES SUMNER[1]
When the news went forth, “Charles Sumner is dead,” a tremor of strange emotion was felt all over the land. It was as if a magnificent star, a star unlike all others, which the living generation had been wont to behold fixed and immovable above their heads, had all at once disappeared from the sky, and the people stared into the great void darkened by the sudden absence of the familiar light.
On the 16th of March a funeral procession passed through the streets of Boston. Uncounted thousands of men, women and children had assembled to see it pass. No uncommon pageant had attracted them; no military parade with glittering uniforms and gay banners; no pompous array of dignitaries in official robes; nothing but carriages and a hearse with a coffin, and in it the corpse of Charles Sumner. But there they stood,—a multitude immeasurable to the eye, rich and poor, white and black, old and young,—in grave and mournful silence, to bid a last sad farewell to him who was being borne to his grave. And every breeze from every point of the compass came loaded with a sigh of sorrow. Indeed, there was not a city or town in this great Republic which would not have surrounded that funeral procession with the same spectacle of a profound and universal sense of great bereavement.
Was it love; was it gratitude for the services rendered to the people; was it the baffled expectation of greater service still to come; was it admiration of his talents or his virtues that inspired so general an emotion of sorrow?
He had stood aloof from the multitude; the friendship of his heart had been given to but few; to the many he had appeared distant, self-satisfied and cold. His public
- ↑ Delivered before the city government and citizens of Boston in Music Hall, April 29, 1874.
