Mr. Burlingame possessed an immense reserve of that subtle, forceful, overwhelming power which the word magnetism is used to signify. What he believed he believed with such intensity, what he spoke he spoke with such fervour, that the unbidden impulse was to believe and assent to be convinced." 1

A leader by force of character as well as of personal attraction, he was made president of the Young Men's Whig Republican Association, and thus early connected with a political group which he consistently supported to the end of his career. It was a notable triumph of personality over diverse elements of opposition, for this association was composed of two incongruous components -the "North Enders," the most obstreperous campaigners of Boston, who were bitterly hostile to "high-brow" domination in politics, and a small but eminent band of Whigs belonging to the aristocratic class, whose opinions were at variance with those of their kind. From the time of his marriage, in 1847, with Miss Livermore, a member of one of the old Cambridge families, he began to make his way into the influential element of the community, amongst whom he made many enduring friendships. But his political

1 James G. Blaine, "Mr. Burlingame as an Orator," Atlantic Monthly, November, 1870.

battles were fought against the majority of these conservatives, and in alliance with a few who, like Sumner, Dana, and the older Charles Francis Adams, had resolutely abandoned that company to join the Free Soil party. That he should end by becoming the accredited representative of those who began by violently opposing his ideas was a presage of the kind of success against great odds he achieved in after life, the significance of which is not only personal but moral. After returning from a trip to Europe, in 1852, he was elected to the State senate, where his chief act, characteristic of his independent spirit, was his opposition to the Maine liquor law in defiance of the platform of the party that elected him. In the following year he became a member of the convention for revising the State constitution. The reputation he gained in this body secured for him a nomination by the American party and an election to Congress.

In his three successive terms as congressman he served on the committee on foreign affairs, but his chief claim to distinction was his recognised place among the foremost anti-slavery controvertists in the House. His famous achievement was a speech entitled "A Defence of Massachusetts," pronounced June 21, 1856. The incident inspiring it was one of the most dra

matic in the history of our national legislature. Senator Sumner, a month before this date, had addressed the Senate upon the Kansas Resolution in a speech the virulence of which, rather than its trenchant argument, exasperated the Southern members beyond endurance. Unable to await a reply in kind, a congressman, Preston Brooks, a kinsman of Andrew Pickens Butler, senator from South Carolina,-one of the Democrats upon whom Sumner had poured the acid accumulation of his contumely,-undertook the task of vindicating the honour of his family and State by entering the Senate chamber when the Massachusetts statesman was engrossed in writing at his desk, and beating him senseless with a stick. An intimate defended the champion from interruption, while the few senators present, all Southern men, delicately refrained from disturbing the assailant until his victim fell helpless to the floor. It was thought at first that Sumner's extraordinary physique might be equal to sustaining without grave danger an assault which in the case of an ordinary man would have been an assassination; but after some days the spine was found to have been injured. Four years passed before he regained vigour sufficient to enable him to resume his seat in the chamber.

The Northern States, and especially their representatives in Congress, were naturally indignant at the outrage. It is but slight palliation to the sensitive patriot to be told that this was the single instance in which the courtesies of Congress were violated during the trying decade before our Civil War; but the rough-hewn nature of our social behaviour at that period is revealed, and the arbitrary character of the "Southern oligarchy" appraised, by the fact that the House failed to expel Brooks for his ruffianly conduct and murderous intention, and no other power on earth could punish this stark assassin. It is a sufficient commentary upon the culture and condition of South Carolina to add that, upon resigning his seat, he was justified in the opinion of his native State by being immediately returned by a unanimous vote to Congress. As spokesman for outraged Massachusetts, Mr. Burlingame was admirably fitted both by temper and ability. Upon rising, after Brooks's re

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1 "The Sumner assault became a leading event in the great slavery contest between North and South. . . . In result the incident was extremely damaging to the South, for it tended more than any single border-ruffian crime in Kansas to unite hesitating and wavering opinion in the North against the alarming flood of lawlessness and violence which as a rule found its origin and its defence in the pro-slavery party. Certainly no phase of the transaction was received with such popular favour as some of the bolder avowals by the Northern representatives of their readiness to fight, and especially by Burlingame's actual acceptance of the challenge by Brooks." (Hay and Nicolay, “Abraham Lincoln," vol. II, p. 55.)

turn to the House, to denounce the malignant spirit which had usurped the place of reason in the South, he assailed the record of South Carolina with vehemence fairly supported by historic fact, and concluded in a burst of old-fashioned eloquence which served its turn many years thereafter as a favourite piece for declamation in the schools of the North.

So much for the occasion of the speech. A word, and I shall be pardoned, about the speaker himself. He is my friend; for many and many a year I have looked to him for guidance and light, and I never looked in vain; he never had a personal enemy in his life; his character is as pure as the snow that falls on his native hills; his heart overflows with kindness for every being having the upright form of man; he is a ripe scholar, a chivalric gentleman, and a warm-hearted, true friend. He sat at the feet of Channing and drank in the sentiments of that noble soul. He bathed in the learning and undying love of the great jurist, Story; and the hand of Jackson, with its honours and its offices, sought him early in life, but he shrank from them with instinctive modesty. Sir, he is the pride of Massachusetts. His mother Commonwealth found him adorning the highest walks of literature and law, and she bade him go and grace somewhat the rough character of political life. The people of Massachusetts-the old and the young and the middle-aged-now pay their full homage to the beauty of his public and private character.

Such is Charles Sumner. On the twenty-second