Senators who Voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, Abolishing Slavery, 38th Congress

MORGAN, Edwin Dennison, 1811-1883, merchant, soldier, statesman.  Member of the Whig Party, Anti-Slavery Faction.  Republican U.S. Senator from New York.  Chairman of the Republican National Committee, 1856-1864.  Governor of New York, 1858-1862.  Commissioned Major General of Volunteers, he raised 223,000 troops for the Union Army.  U.S. Senator, 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


EDWIN DENNISON MORGAN is the seventh of her Governors whom New York has honored with a seat in the US Senate of the United States. The others were DeWitt Clinton, Van Buren, Marcy, Wright, Seward, and Fish.

Mr. Morgan is a native of the town of Washington, Massachusetts, where he was born on the eighth of February, 1811. He here enjoyed the opportunities afforded by the public schools, until the age of twelve years, when his father removed to Windsor, Connecticut, where he attended the high school, and subsequently was a student in the Bacon Academy at Colchester. In the family exodus to Windsor, this youth of a dozen years drove an ox team loaded with household effects, performing a good share of the journey, some fifty miles, on foot. At the age of seventeen he entered the wholesale grocery and commission house of an uncle, in Hartford, as clerk. Anecdotes illustrative of his mature judgment and penetration are extant, qualities which early commanded his relative's attention, and, at the end of three years, procured for him admission to a partnership. He remained here engaged in mercantile pursuits until his removal to the city of New York, whither, in 1836, he went with a view to larger business opportunities. The period for such a change was perhaps fortunately chosen, for the financial crisis of 1837, which occurred a few months after his advent there, afforded, to a practical observer like himself, valuable lessons in the ethics of trade. At all events, his commercial house, since so successful, was established about this time on a sound and permanent basis. Enterprise, resolution, and honorable dealing, marked its course, and soon acquired for Mr. Morgan a leading place among those engaged in pursuits like his own.

While vigilant in business, he was not unmindful of the claims implied in the right of citizenship, and from 1840 to the close of the canvass that resulted in the overwhelming defeat of General Scott, he labored assiduously in the Whig ranks, though realizing that the non-election of Mr. Clay, to whom he was devoted, destroyed the prestige of his party. He acted as Vice-President of the Republican National Convention held at Pittsburg, in 1856, and was there made Chairman of the National Committee. In that capacity he opened the Convention at Philadelphia, in 1856, that nominated Fremont, that at Chicago, in 1860, which nominated Lincoln, and also that of 1864, at Baltimore, which re-nominated Mr. Lincoln. In 1866, he was made Chairman of the Union Congressional Committee?

In 1849, he was elected to the Board of Assistant Aldermen in New York, of which he was chosen President. A few weeks after taking his seat in the latter body, the Asiatic Cholera broke out, and owing to the unfavorable sanitary condition of the city, it spread so rapidly as to create great alarm. Mr. Morgan was placed upon the Sanitary Committee, and so imminent appeared the danger from this pestilence that his whole time was devoted to the details of the position. Hospitals were to be improvised, the sale of food to be regulated, streets, yards, and places to be cleansed-indeed, many and pressing were the thankless duties incident to a critical moment like this, in a great city whose population is drawn from all quarters of the world. The efforts of the Board were attended with signal success, and in the fall of that year the Whig electors of the Sixth Senatorial District indicated their sense of his services by giving him a seat in the State Senate, and re-electing him two years afterward. In the Senate he was placed at the head of the Standing Committee on Finance, where he remained through his term. At the Session of 1851 he was made President pro tempore of that body, serving also in the same capacity at the extra meeting of that summer; and although the Democratic party had gained control of the Senate in 1852, he was unanimously chosen again as its temporary President, and also for the fourth time in 1853.

In 1855, he was appointed a Commissioner of Emigration, which place was held until 1858, when he was elected Governor. To the latter office, before the end of his term, two years afterward, he was re-elected by the largest majority ever given to a governor in the State of New York. Important duties lay in the four years he was destined to fill the gubernatorial chair; and as events proved, he possessed rare qualifications for, their performance. A knowledge of men, a high standing in the commercial community, a thorough business training, and practical knowledge of the complex finances of the State, coupled with clear and enlightened views on questions falling within the scope of his functions, and freedom from petty prejudices, blended happily in the new Governor. He had need of all these advantages, as also of his tireless industry, equable temper, and robust physique. His first term, though marked with vigor and the initiation of important reforms, was preparatory to the second, whose duties in extent and importance no other Governor of the State has been called upon to perform.

On entering office, he found the State's high credit threatened, the public works still unfinished, though millions had been expended for their completion.

Popular expectation, disappointed often, and wearied at length by the languid progress of the enlargement, was giving way to a disposition, adroitly fostered, to sell the canals, thereby to create a great and controlling monopoly, most baneful in its character. The militia, as an organization, had by degrees, through years of peace, quite lost its efficiency, and the condition of the military property and arsenal supplies was sorry enough. His first message to the Legislature, like all his others, shows a clear and searching insight into the condition of the State in its varied interests. These papers are eminently clear and frank, and are wanting neither in force of diction nor soundness of doctrine. In his first communication to the Legislature occurs this sentence: “Upright intentions, a heart devoted to the interests of the commonwealth, and unceasing application, are all the pledges I can give for the faithful execution of the trusts delegated to me by the people of New York."

Pledge was never better kept, and he proceeded at once to make it good. The Canal finances received the first attention. The Canal revenues had fallen largely below the constitutional claims upon them, owing, in part, to an immense reduction in tolls, but most of all to a lax system of expenditure by the use of drafts upon the treasury, anticipatory of appropriations, to the extent of millions of dollars, in express defiance of the laws and the Constitution. This illegitimate paper was hawked in the markets, where it was known as “ floating debt,” a new form of obligation to New York's ledger of State indebtedness. It was daily growing in volume, and was prejudicing other forms of the State's credit. The proceeds were being used, it is true, though not with economy, in completing the Canals. He did not hesitate to present the whole subject to the Legislature, and to recommend early provision for its liquidation. “The people, thereby,” said he, “ are placed in the dilemma of paying an unauthorized debt, or seemingly incurring the stain of repudiation;" and while protesting against the whole system, adds, “ but under no circumstances will the State of New York ever refuse to acknowledge and pay every and all just claims existing against her, or that have been contracted by any of her recognized agents.” The question was submitted to a vote of the people, who legalized the debt, though by a majority so limited as to afford wholesome warning to any who might hereafter be tempted to repeat so evil a practice. As respected the current management of the Canals, he urged that the tolls be largely increased, and the cost of maintenance be essentially lessened. Both recommendations were adopted with most satisfactory results. He took decided ground against the sale of the Canals, and, with characteristic energy, urged their completion. Before retiring from the Executive office he had the satisfaction of announcing the Canal enlargement as fully effected.

The inadequate defenses of the harbor of New York were early adverted to by him with earnestness, and the series of labors performed by him in this connection, and also in conjunction with others, afford honorable example of public economy and practical wisdom. In response to an inquiry from the Inspector-General of the Army, he says, in December, 1867:

“You ask what steps were taken by me, as Governor of New York, in response to Mr. Seward's circular letter of October, 1861, upon the subject of perfecting harbor and coast defenses, and the amount of expense incurred by the State for that purpose. Immediately on the reception of Mr. Seward's letter, I proceeded to ascertain what mode of defense would be the most judicious to adopt, with a view to making temporary provision therefor. I had called the attention of the Legislature to the inadequate defenses of the harbor of New York in January, 1860, and, in view of dangers not necessary here to detail, the subject had not been lost sight of. Hence, I was the more ready to co-operate with the General Government in providing for the safety of the lake and sea-ports of the State, when the letter reached me to which you have called my attention.

“To the Legislature, on its assembling, I referred the whole subject, with the recommendation that, in default of prompt action on the part of the national authorities, it was the duty of the State to proceed without delay with such portions of the defense as prudence should dictate.

“Under apprehensions of hostilities growing out of the Trent affair, I had, in December, 1861, purchased a large quantity of timber for floating obstructions, at an aggregate cost of about $80,000, for use, if need be, in the form of cribs or rafts, connected by chain cables, to be anchored at the Narrows. The plan for its use, an eminently feasible one, had been carefully matured. When no longer necessary, the timber was sold, without loss to the State treasury.

“No expense was therefore incurred, either in 1861 or 1862, for the specific object of your inquiry. But early in 1863, the defenseless condition of the harbor of New York was again the occasion of disquietude, because of the unfavorable aspect of this country's relations with the two principal naval forces of Europe, and the liability to ravages of privateers. Accordingly, the Legislature appropriated $1,000,000 for the purchase of cannon, sub-marine batteries, and iron-clad steamers, and for providing such other means to protect the harbors and frontiers of the State as were deemed necessary by the commissioners named in the act, Governor Seymour, Lucius Robinson, comptroller, and myself.

“Popular apprehensions had, doubtless, magnified dangers sufficiently grave, and the commissioners lost no time in personally examining in detail all the fortifications in the harbor, and conferring with engineers thoroughly conversant with the subject. As Government was then rapidly placing the largest and most improved guns in the forts and progressing with the fortifications, there remained little to be done in that direction by the State authorities, whose duties could therefore be best performed by supplementing the labors of the Federal agents. And after due consultation with the Federal officers and other practical engineers, whose services, with the exception of the engineer in charge, it is but just to say, were gratuitously rendered, it was concluded to again resort to floating obstructions. Plans were at once advertised for, and, in due time, proposals for materials invited. As a precaution, my associates formally authorized me, in case of an unexpected attack upon the city of New York, to take such instant measures for defense as I might deem necessary, with liberty to use the whole appropriation, if required, for that purpose.

“When the bids were opened it was found that the enhanced price of timber and iron would so increase the cost of the proposed work as to render a further appropriation necessary, and, as meantime the relations of our country with certain foreign governments had become more pacific, it was decided to defer action until the regular meeting of the Legislature. Practically, however, the means for providing a defense were at all times within reach. Timber in sufficient quantities and suitable iron cables were at command in case of emergency, and as the plans for the use of these were well understood by a competent board of engineer officers who could be speedily convened, it was deemed unnecessary to urge further action. It only remains to be stated that of the appropriation but $5,000 were used ; the balance of the million remains untouched in the State treasury.”

The subject of executive pardons received more than ordinary consideration from him, and considered in proportion to the applications presented, he granted fewer pardons than any of his predecessors. The matter of special legislation and the want of specific accountability for appropriations to charitable objects engaged particular attention.

In common with close observers, le from the first held as serious the threats of secession that followed the election of Mr. Lincoln, but lent his influence to calm the popular mind, and to remove, so far as was consistent with principle, any pretext for the course finally pursued by the South. But the attack on Sumter ended all disposition on his part to placate that section. “This gratuitous violence, and this deliberate insult to the flag, conclusively proves to all,” said he, “ that it is the design of the leaders to break up the Government." Thenceforward, day by day, he bent every energy to the work of putting down the rebellion. No other State was looked to for so many men and so much money as New York. Her quota was about one-fifth part of all the troops called for. The Legislature was about to adjourn when the news from Charleston harbor reached Albany. A few earnest words served to present his views to the two Houses. In forty-eight hours they had appropriated three millions and a half in money for war purposes, and authorized the raising of 30,000 volunteers. With the aid of the State Military Board this number was soon enrolled and fully organized, and, by the third week in May, was hurried into the field, whither nine regiments of State militia, serving as minute men, had preceded them. So extensive had been the preparations of the rebels, as to leave it obvious that a single campaign would not end the struggle of the insurgents. Hence, Governor Morgan was averse to refusing volunteers after the State's quota was filled ; and when the battle of Bull Run occurred, he was in Washington seeking authority to establish camps of instruction at two or three points in the State, with a view to greater efficiency of recruits, and to keep aglow the spirit of enlistment. Following the first great rebuff to Union arms, came the President's call upon New York for 25,000 men, and this demand was so far increased that on the first of January the State had raised 120,600 troops. On that day he was able to assert that “no requisition had been made by the Government that remained unhonored.”

The city of New York was a common rendezvous for the several States; and many independent regiments were there forming, thereby impeding the State authorities. In view of these facts, and to secure other practical advantages, at the same time to express his sense of the important services rendered by Governor Morgan, the President, in September, 1861, appointed him a Major-General of Volunteers, and created the State into a military department under his command. It is proper to add that he declined any emolument for this duty of sixteen months.

Succeeding the ardent spirit of volunteering of the earlier months of the war, came a period when the disposition wholly ceased. The tardy movements of the eastern army and the unsuccessful series of battles of midsummer of that year had done the work. But the disaster that culminated at Malvern Hill, rendered a call indispensible, to be quickly followed by a second requisition of equal extent.

The quota of New York under the two was 120,000 men. Prompt action was vital, and a special incentive to secure the new levies became necessary. The public clamored for an extra session of the Legislature to authorize a bounty. But this involved the delay of days, possibly of weeks, when time was so precious. It was clear that the people of the commonwealth favored a bounty, and Governor Morgan did not hesitate to assume the responsibility of offering one. Accordingly he announced that the State would give $50 to each man enlisting for three years. The stimulus proved sufficient, and volunteering at once began again in earnest. A class of volunteers inferior to none who had ever taken up arms, were brought into the service. The aggregate sum expended for this object was about $3,500,000, which the Legislature at its next session, acting on the recommendation of Governor Seymour, lost no time in legalizing. The mode employed in this emergency, that of raising local regiments by committees of leading citizens for their respective Senate districts, proved to be wisely chosen. In a few days a regiment was ready for the field, and they followed each other with steady pace, at the rate of one a day until the great quotas were filled. Several of these regiments were equipped with arms purchased by the Governor, and most of them were uniformed and otherwise supplied from his purchases. They reached the field in time to take part in the battle of Antietam, inspiriting by their presence the hearts of the veterans whose rapid marches northward had prevented communication with friends, and who were needing such a stimulus. By the end of his term he had sent no less than 320,000 men into the field, being more than a fifth part of all that had yet entered the service. In addition to these, the State militia regiments were on three several occasions dispatched to Washington, to answer emergencies. The thanks of the President and the Secretary of War were frequently tendered Governor Morgan, for his promptness and efficiency in responding to their demands, and the extent of the aid that as executive of New York he was enabled to render. When he left the office, New York stood credited with an excess over all quotas.

Contracts for rations, clothing, arms and ordnance, to the extent of many million dollars, had been made by him in behalf of the General Government, in addition to what had been purchased for the State. All these business transactions have received the approval of the Federal authorities.

There were, during his latter term, causes of grave uneasiness to which the public gave no particular heed, but which occasioned him no little anxiety. The disorderly element in the city of New York, stimulated by persons not unfriendly to the South, and which a few months after his retirement originated the riot there, was watched by him with unceasing care. The rebel element in Canada, too, and the threatening aspect of the relations of this country with Great Britain in the earlier part of the war, made necessary, considering the proximity of the State to Canada and its extended and exposed frontier, a provision for prompt defense or retaliation; and in the winter of 1862, a plan was matured, the execution of which he would have intrusted to General Wadsworth, with the latter's approval, to secure the State from hostile dangers in that quarter. The subsequent raid at St. Albans and elsewhere along the northern borders, was but a feeble indication of what might have been in the earlier stages of the rebellion.

In February, 1862, he was elected to the Senate of the United States for the term of six years, to succeed Preston King. He took his seat at the called session of March of that year, and has served on the Committees on Commerce, Finance, the Pacific Railroad, as Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library, on Manufactures, Military Affairs, Mines and Mining, and on Printing.

In February, 1865, on the retirement of Mr. Fessenden, he was asked by Mr. Lincoln to accept the position of Secretary of the Treasury. This he declined; but not disposed to forego the advantages which he believed Mr. Morgan's presence in the Cabinet at the head of the Finances would bring, the President, disregarding his expressed wishes, nominated him without his knowledge, and it was only after earnest objections on his part that Mr. Lincoln consented to withdraw his name and leave him in the Senate.

At its commencement, in July, 1867, Williams College, which is located in his native county of Berkshire, Massachusetts, conferred upon him the Degree of Doctor of Laws.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.

His career in the Senate was not characterized by oratorical display but by hard work both in the committee room and on the floor. In 1865 he declined appointment as secretary of the treasury. He voted with the minority on President Johnson's veto of the Freedman's Bureau Bill and for Johnson's conviction. In 1869 he was defeated for reelection after a bitter contest with Ex-Governor R. E. Fenton [q.v.]. From 1872 to 1876 he was again induced to head the Republican Committee, and in the latter year his name was mentioned in connection with the presidency. He stood for sound currency and civil service reform. In 1876 he was again nominated for governor, but the machine element of his party headed by Senator Conkling was dissatisfied with him, and he was defeated by Lucius Robinson. When Chester A. Arthur [q.v.], his old and ardent friend, succeeded to the presidency, he nominated Morgan for secretary of the treasury, but although the appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, Morgan for a second time declined. During his last years he retired from all active participation in politics.

Morgan's fortune at the time of his death was estimated to be between eight and ten million dollars. His gifts during his lifetime totaled over a million dollars. Williams College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Women's, Presbyterian, and Eye and Ear hospitals in New York City especially benefited from his generosity. He was a patron of art well known both in America and on the continent of Europe, and a director of many business concerns. He was tall, well-proportioned, dignified, rather aristocratic in bearing. In 1833 he married his first cousin, Eliza Matilda Waterman, daughter of Captain Henry and Lydia (Morgan) Waterman, of Hartford, Connecticut. Of their five children only one reached maturity, and he died in 1881, before his parents. The elder Morgan died at his home in New York City and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 168-169.



MORRILL, Lot Myrick, 1813-1883, lawyer, temperance advocate, opposed slavery, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, 1876, two-term Republican Governor of Maine, U.S. Senator, 1861-1869.  Joined the Republican Party due to his position against slavery and its expansion into the new territories.  Supported the bill in Congress that emancipated slaves in Washington, DC.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. After the war, he supported higher education for African Americans.  In 1866, he supported voting rights for African Americans in Washington, DC. 


LOT M. MORRILL was born at Belgrade, Maine, in 1815. He studied at Waterville College, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. In 1854 he was a member of the Maine Legislature. and in 1856 he was President of the State Senate. In 1858 he was elected Governor of Maine, and was twice re-elected. In 1861 he was elected United States Senator from Maine for the unexpired term of Vice-President Hamlin. In 1863 he was re-elected to the Senate for the term ending in 1869.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, pp. 28, 204, 205, 207, 408, 484, 485, 489, 530.

MORRILL, LOT MYRICK (May 3, 1812-January 10, 1883), governor of Maine, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, one of the fourteen children of Peaslee and Nancy (Macomber) Morrill, was born in Belgrade, Maine. After attending the common-school and the local academy he taught in order to obtain money to attend Waterville (now Colby) College, which he entered at the age of eighteen. He remained there but a short time, however. For a year he was principal of a private school in western New York. Returning to Maine, he began the study of law under Judge Fuller of Readfield. Admitted to the bar in 1839, he built up a considerable law practice chiefly among Democratic friends. Being much in demanc1 as a speaker on temperance and political subjects, he won some local fame so that when he moved to the state capital, Augusta, in 1841, he was frequently employed before legislative committees. This was his school of politics. His law partners in Augusta were James W. Bradbury and Richard D. Rice. Becoming chairman of the state Democratic committee in 1849, he held that office until 1856, when he refused to attend the meetings of the state committee, writing, "The candidate [Buchanan] is a good one, but the platform is a flagrant outrage upon the country and an insult to the North" (Talbot, post, p. 232). The breach with his party, thus made complete, began in 1855 when he opposed pledging the Democratic party to further concessions to the slave states. The same step had already been take n by his brother, Anson Peaslee Morrill, and his friend, Hannibal Hamlin [qq.v.]. He was a member of the state House of Representatives in 1854 and of the Senate in 1856. His immediate election to the presidency of the Senate by the Democratic majority, from whom he had already shown divergence of principles, has been explained on the ground that his ability on the floor was more feared than his prestige as president. His Republicanism became definite in 1856 and, although his nomination to the governorship was opposed by some because of his late conversion, he was elected and twice ree1ected governor, serving in 1858, 1859, and 1860. Both in the legislature and as governor he was a strong opponent of the repeal of Maine's prohibition law, against which there ha d been a reaction.

When Hannibal Hamlin resigned from the Senate to accept the vice-presidency under Lincoln, the state legislature, in January 1861, elected Morrill as his successor. Reelected, he served to March 4, 1869, being succeeded by Hannibal Hamlin, who defeated him by one vote J in the Maine Senate. In the so-called peace convention of February 1861 he opposed with conspicuous ability the arguments of Crittenden (L. E. Chittenden, A Report of the Debates and Proceedings ... of the Conference Convention, 1864, pp. 144-50), and he maintained the same position when the Crittenden Resolutions were presented to Congress in March. In March 1862 he spoke in favor of a bill to confiscate the property and to emancipate the slaves of "rebels," seeing clearly that the question was not one of law but one of placing in the hands of the military authorities a weapon to help them win the war (Speech ... Delivered in the Senate ... March 5, 1862, 1862, also in Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, pp. rn74-78). In April 1862 he led the debate which resulted in the act emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia (Ibid., p. 1516). Later, in June 1866, he was a prominent advocate of the act th at conferred suffrage on the colored citizens of the District (Ibid., 39 Congress, I Session, pp. 3432-34). He was a strong adherent of congressional Reconstruction (Reconstruction. Speech in the Senate ... February 5, 1868, 1868; also in Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, app. pp. 110-17), and voted for the impeachment of President Johnson, although his colleague from Maine, William P. Fessenden [q.v.], voted for acquittal. On the death of Fessenden in September 1869 he was appointed to fill out the unexpired term. He was reelected by the state legislature in 1871.

Although he had previously refused to accept appointment as secretary of war, resigning from the Senate on July 7, 1876, he accepted Grant's appointment as secretary of the treasury to succeed Benjamin H. Bristow [q.v. ]. His studies as chairman of the Senate committee on appropriations had fitted him for the duties of this office and he was a worthy successor to Bristow. When he left the treasury on March 8, 1877, President Hayes offered him the ministry to Great Britain. Enfeebled health, following on a severe illness of 1870 and another attack of 1877, influenced him to accept the lucrative post of collector at Portland rather than a more important and responsible position. He held the collectorship at the time of his death in Portland. His wife, Charlotte Holland Vance, whom he had married in 1845, and four daughters survived him.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 199-200:



NESMITH, James Willis, 1820-1885, jurist, lawyer.  U.S. Senator from Oregon.  U.S. Senator 1861-1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


JAMES W. NESMITH (D) was born in Washington County, Maine, July 23, 1820. When quite young, he removed to New Hampshire, emigrated to Ohio in 1838, subsequently spent some time in Missouri, and finally settled in Oregon in 1843. In 1853 he was appointed United States Marshal for Oregon. In 1857 he was appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon and Washington Territories. In 1861 he became United States Senator from Oregon for the term ending in 1867, when he was succeeded by Henry W. Corbett.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868,

NESMITH, JAMES WILLIS (July 23, 1820- June 17, 1885),. pioneer, lawyer, soldier, legislator, was born in New Brunswick, Canada, while his parents were visiting there. Descended from James Nesmith, a Scotch-Irish founder of Londonderry, New Hampshire, he was the son of William Morrison Nesmith, of Washington County, Maine, and Harriet Willis, who died before he was a year old. His father's extensive holdings in New Brunswick were destroyed in 1825 by a forest fire from which the family barely escaped, the step-mother dying from resulting exposure. James then lived with various relatives in New England, learning at a tender age to earn his own living. Winters he attended common-schools desultorily, and as a strapping boy worked near Cincinnati for some years where he had his last chance at schooling. But he loved books, mastered their contents almost without effort, and retained what he had learned, an aspiring spirit in a superb body. At seventeen or eighteen he drifted to Missouri, then to western Iowa, and spent the season of 1842 working as a carpenter at Fort Scott, Kansas. From there he joined the Great Emigration of 1843 which established the Oregon colony. He was a natural leader of men, for he was handsome, rugged, democratic, and fun-loving. He was elected orderly sergeant of the Emigrating Company. In Oregon he read some law, was elected supreme judge under the provisional constitution in 1845, was a member of the legislature later, was commissioned captain of volunteers in the Cayuse War in 1848 and in the Rogue River War of 1853, and colonel in the Yakima War of 1855-56. In the years 1857-59 he was superintendent of Indian affairs.

In 1860, as a Douglas Democrat, he gained one of two United States senatorships owing to a combination of Republicans and Douglas men in the legislature against the Lane followers, Edward Dickinson Baker, Republican, winning the other. Powerful in debate, whole-hearted in defense of the Union, Nesmith was a tower of strength to the Lincoln cause. He took an independent stand as a Democrat to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment and he came to the administration's rescue in several critical situations. But fallible judgment betrayed him into supporting McClellan for the presidency in 1864, and this mistake, together with his ardent friendship for Andrew Johnson, virtually terminated his political course. In 1873, as a purely personal triumph, he was elected to Congress, and in 1876 he had the votes to be chosen senator but lost the prize. He had married in 1846 Pauline Goff and settled on a farm at Rickreall, Oregon, which was thereafter his home, and there he was buried. Though most men loved him, others hated or feared him. Few were indifferent. He nourished bitter animosities, and George H. Williams, for preventing Nesmith's confirmation as minister to Austria, later found himself checkmated by Nesmith when Grant wished to make him chief justice of the Supreme Court. But he was essentially genial, humorous, and kindly.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 430-431



POMEROY, Samuel Clarke, 1816-1891, Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas.  Appointed financial agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854, he accompanied the second party of settlers to Kansas Territory in the fall of that year. Active in Kansas “Free State” convention of 1859.  U.S. Senator 1861-1873.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


SAMUEL C. POMEROY was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, January 3, 1816. He entered Amherst College in 1836, and in 1838 went to Monroe County, New York, where he resided four years. He returned to his native town in 1842, and having espoused the Anti-Slavery cause, he labored zealously to advance its principles. Annually for eight years he ran on the Anti-Slavery ticket for the Massachusetts Legislature, without success, until 1852, when he was elected over both Whigs and Democrats. In 1854 he aided in organizing the New England Emigrant Aid Society, and was its financial agent, and the same year he conducted a colony to Kansas. He was a member of the Territorial Defense Committee, and was active in his efforts to protect the settlers from the border ruffians. During the famine in Kansas, he was Chairman of the Relief Committee. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1856 and 1860. In 1861 he was elected a Senator in Congress from Kansas, and was re-elected in 1867 for the term ending in 1873.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, pp. 404, 487, 495.

POMEROY, SAMUEL CLARKE (January 3, 1816-August 27, 1891), Kansas Free-State advocate and United States senator, was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel and Dorcas (Burt) Pomeroy, and a descendant of Eltweed Pomeroy who emigrated from England to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. Samuel entered Amherst College in 1836 but withdrew shortly afterward. Later he spent four years in Onondaga County, New York, where he taught school and engaged in business. Returning to Southampton in 1842, he joined the Liberty party, filled several local offices, and served in the General Court in 1852. Appointed financial agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854, he accompanied the second party of settlers to Kansas Territory in the fall of that year. During the Wakarusa War of November-December 1855 he started for Boston to secure aid, but was captured and detained until the crisis was over. When Sheriff Jones assembled "border ruffians" before Lawrence in May 1856, Pomeroy was chosen chairman of a committee of public safety, but he failed to prevent the destruction of the town. He was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention and received eight votes for vice-president. In a sensational speech he declared that freedom for Kansas must be accompanied by reparation and atonement by the South for depredations committed and lives destroyed. The following year he settled at Atchison, where he served as mayor, 1858-59. During the drought and famine in Kansas, 1860-61, he headed a relief committee which distributed eight million pounds of provisions and seeds, besides clothing and medicine.

When Kansas was admitted into the Union, Pomeroy was elected to the United States Senate. He joined the radicals in opposition to Lincoln's administration, and in 1864 became chairman of a committee to promote the candidacy of Salmon P. Chase [q.v.] for president. The "Pomeroy Circular," a campaign document widely distributed, asserted that the reelection of Lincoln was neither possible nor desirable, and that Chase was an able administrator who possessed just those qualifications which would be needed by a president during the next four years. In a speech before the Senate he declared that old political alignments were dead and recommended the creation of a new party with a vigorous program (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, pt. 2, pp. 1025-27). The movement, however, met with little popular response. Pomeroy's unexpected election to the Senate in 1861 was not free from charges of bargain; his reelection in 1867 was investigated by a committee of the legislature which reported unanimously that he had bribed members of the General Assembly. He was slated for a third term in 1873, but when the legislature convened in joint session Senator A. M. York announced dramatically that Pomeroy had bargained for his vote for $8,000. The belief in Kansas was almost unanimous that he was guilty, and both houses demanded his resignation. Pomeroy asserted before a select committee of the United States Senate that the money was intended to assist in establishing a bank, and the committee concluded after hearing voluminous testimony that the affair was a plot to defeat him for reelection. Nevertheless, the incident ended his political career, although he was nominated for president in 1884 by the American Prohibition National Convention. After his failure to secure reelection in 1873, he continued to live in Washington for several years, hut eventually returned to Massachusetts, making his home at Whitinsville, where he died. He was married three times. His first wife was Annie Pomeroy, who died in 1843. On April 23, 1846, he married Lucy Ann Gaylord, who died July 30, 1863. His third wife was Mrs. Martha Whitin of Whitinsville.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 54



RAMSEY, Alexander, 1815-1903.  Republican U.S. Senator and governor from Minnesota.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  U.S. Congressman (Whig Party) elected 1842, serving until 1847, from Pennsylvania.  First Territorial Governor of Minnesota, 1849-1853.  Governor of state 1860-1863.  Elected U.S. Senator 1863, serving until 1875.  Appointed Secretary of War in 1879.     


ALEXANDER RAMSAY was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 8, 1815. In 1841 he was elected Clerk of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. From 1843 to 1847 he was a Representative in Congress from Pennsylvania. In 1849 he was appointed, by President Taylor, the first Territorial Governor of Minnesota, and held the office until 1853. During his term of office, he negotiated some important Indian treaties. From 1858 to 1862 he held the office of Governor of the State of Minnesota. In 1863 he was elected a United States Senator from Minnesota for the term ending in 1869.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868,

RAMSEY, ALEXANDER (September 8, 1815- April 22, 1903), governor of Minnesota, United States senator, secretary of war, was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Kelker and Thomas Ramsey. His ancestry was Scotch and German. As a youth Ramsey, who was orphaned at the age of ten, was employed in the store of a grand-uncle, was clerk in the office of register of deeds, and worked for a time as a carpenter, meanwhile pursuing his studies as best he could. At the age of eighteen he entered Lafayette College, but he left before completing his course to study law. After his admission to the bar in 1839 he practised law at Harrisburg and became a zealous worker in the interests of the Whig party. In 1840 he was secretary of the Pennsylvania electoral college, and the year following, chief clerk of the House of Representatives. From 1843 to 1847 he represented his district in Congress. In 1848; as chairman of the Whig central committee of Pennsylvania, he labored diligently for the election of Zachary Taylor, who, after his inauguration, rewarded Ramsey with a commission as governor of the newly organized territory of Minnesota. When Ramsey assumed his new duties, on June 1, 1849, he found himself governor of a large territory, of which only a small portion, containing a few thousand white inhabitants, was open to settlement, the remainder being Indian country. After declaring the territorial government established, he ordered an election and when the first legislature assembled in September he read a message abounding in practical suggestions for the benefit of the territory, many of which were later adopted. The outstanding event of his territorial administration was the negotiation in 1851 of treaties of cession with the Sioux, with Ramsey as one of the two government commissioners, which opened an immense area in southern Minnesota to settlement. He was later charged with fraud in the conduct of the negotiations; but the United States Senate, after an investigation, completely exonerated him (Senate Executive Document 61, 33 Congress, 1 Session). His territorial governorship ended in 1853, with the appointment of a Democratic governor under President Pierce, and he retired to private life in St. Paul, devoting much of his attention to judicious investments in real estate. He was mayor of St. Paul in 1855. In 1857 he was defeated by only a few votes as Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, soon to be admitted as a state. Two years later, however, he was elected to that office by a decisive majority, and he was reelected in 1861. During his administration the legislature, following his recommendations, materially reduced state expenses, simplified county government, and took effective measures to safeguard the state's school lands against premature sale at low prices. Ramsey's official duties were greatly complicated by the responsibilities connected with the Sioux outbreak of 1862 and the Indian war following it and with providing troops for the Civil War. He was in Washington when Fort Sumter was fired on, and made the first offer of armed troops to Lincoln. Ramsey retired from the governorship in July 1863 to take his place in the United States Senate, to which he had been elected the preceding January. His senatorial career, which was extended by a reelection in 1869 to twelve years, was marked by the industry and practical ability that had characterized his administrations as governor. He served on several important committees, and as chairman of the committee on post offices and post roads he made important contributions to postal reform. From 1879 to 1881 he was secretary of war under President Hayes, and in 1882 he was made chairman of the commission to carry out the provisions of the Edmunds bill to suppress polygamy in Utah. Upon his resignation from the commission in 1886 he retired permanently to private life. He was president of the Minnesota Historical Society from 1849 to 1863 and from 1891 to 1903 and was the author of several papers in the Minnesota Historical Collections. On September 10, 1845, he married Anna Earl Jenks. They had three children, two of whom died in childhood. Ramsey is described by a contemporary as "the finest specimen of a physical man in the Northwest" (T. M. Newson, Pen Pictures of St. Paul,. 1886, p. 123). He was clear-headed, cautious, and judicious, above all a man of practical sense. He was a shrewd politician and an excellent judge of human nature, with a gift for making friends. Although he was not an orator, his public addresses were forceful and direct. One of the first counties established in Minnesota bears his name. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 341-342.



SHERMAN, John,  1823-1900, statesman.  Whig U.S. Congressman, 1855.  Republican U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Brother of Union commander, General William T. Sherman. 


IN 1634, three Shermans—two brothers and a cousin—emigrated from Essex, England, to the infant colony of Massachusetts Bay. One of them settled in Connecticut, where his family remained and prospered for many years. A great-grandson of the emigrant, who had become a Judge of one of the Connecticut Courts, dying in 1815, his son, Charles Robert Sherman, himself a thoroughly educated lawyer, removed to Ohio, where he soon acquired an extensive practice, and in 1823 became one of the Judges of the Supreme Court. He married young, and had a family of eleven, children. In 1829, he died suddenly of cholera, leaving his family in destitute circumstances. One of his sons was William Tecumseh Sherman, now General of the Army. The eighth child of the family was John Sherman, who was born in Lancaster, Ohio, May 10,1823. He went steadily to school at Mount Vernon; Ohio, until he was fourteen years old. He was then sent to the Muskingum Improvement, to earn his own support, and to learn the business of a civil engineer, and was placed under the care of Colonel Samuel R. Curtis, the resident engineer of the work. He was thus employed for two years, in which he acquired the best part of his early education, in learning the methods and forms of business, and acquiring habits of industry and self-reliance. The election of 1838, which brought the Democratic party into power, was followed by the removal of Colonel Curtis from his position, and the consequent loss of employment by John Sherman.

His engineering apprenticeship closing thus abruptly, he commenced the study of law with his brother, Charles T. Sherman, now United States District Judge in Ohio, who was then engaged as a lawyer, in Mansfield, Ohio. The day after he was twenty-one years old, be obtained a license to practice law, and immediately entered into a partnership with bis brother, which lasted for eleven years. Entering at once upon an extensive practice, he soon obtained a wide reputation as a laborious, honest, and successful lawyer.

In politics, John Sherman took a profound interest, although, as an ardent Whig, in a strongly Democratic district, he had no hope of obtaining office. He was sent as a delegate to the Whig National Conventions of 1848 and 1852, and in the latter year was chosen a Presidential Elector.

When the Nebraska issue arose in 1854, he felt the necessity of combining all the elements of opposition against the further extension of Slavery, and earnestly labored to build up the political organization which soon developed into the Republican party. He accepted a nomination for Representative in Congress, from the Thirteenth Ohio District, and, to his surprise, was elected. He entered .the House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Congress, fully equipped for useful and successful public service. Fluent in debate, patient of details, laborious in investigation, conciliatory in temper, and persistent in purpose, he entered at once upon a successful congressional career.

In the first session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, he served upon the Kansas Investigating Committee, and prepared the famous report which the Committee presented to the House of Representatives and to the country. This brought him at once into honorable prominence before the people. At the close of the session the Republican members of the House, through the influence of Mr. Sherman, adopted the amendment to the Army Bill, denying the validity of the slavery-extending laws of Congress. Had the Republican party stood upon that declaration as a platform, they would probably have carried the presidential election of 1856. Mr. Sherman wrote an address to the people of the United States, elaborating the principle contained in that declaration. Although it was agreed upon by the Republican members of the House, Mr. Seward and other Senators dissented, and the doctrine was not promulgated.

In the Thirty-fifth Congress, Mr. Sherman took an active part in the heated contest over the Lecompton Constitution and the English Bill, and made many powerful speeches. He served as Chairman of the Naval Investigating Committee which made a most damaging exposure of the complicity of Buchanan and Toucey with the crimes of the slavery propagandists. He made an important speech upon the public expenditure, which was widely circulated as a campaign document.

At the opening of the Thirty-sixth Congress occurred the memorable contest for the Speakership, in which Mr. Sherman was the candidate of the Republicans. He had signed a recommendation of Helper's " Impending Crisis," and this was made the pretext by the Southern members for a violent opposition to his election. Through a long series of ballotings he lacked but one or two votes of an election. In order to secure an organization, his name was finally withdrawn, and Mr. Pennington was elected. Mr. Sherman was at once honored with the Chairmanship of the Committee of Ways and Means, by virtue of which he became leader of the House of Representatives. He distinguished himself as chairman of this committee by putting through the House the Morrill Tariff, a measure greatly promotive of material prosperity to the country.

In an important speech, delivered in reply to Pendleton, February, 1861, he displayed a statesmanlike perception of the result of the conflict to which the South was rushing with such arrogant confidence, predicting that slavery would be destroyed, and that the North would triumph.

Mr. Sherman was elected as a Representative to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but on the resignation of Mr. Chase, as a United States Senator, he was elected by the Legislature to a seat in the Senate. He was placed upon the most important committee of the Senate, that of Finance. He introduced the National Bank Bill, and had charge of that important measure, as well as of the Legal Tender Acts, on the floor and in the debates.

His labors were chiefly confined to finance and taxation—to providing money and maintaining credit to carry on the war. In January, 1863, he delivered a speech against the continuance of the State Banking system, and one in favor of the National Banks, both of which were of decisive influence. In the Thirty-ninth Congress he introduced a bill to fund the public indebtedness, which if passed, would have resulted in the saving of $20,000,000 of interest per annum, the wider dissemination of the loan among the masses, and the removal of the debt from its present injurious competition with railroad, mercantile, manufacturing, and all the other vital interests of the country. Unfortunately for the public interests, the bill was mutilated in the Senate and defeated in the House.

In the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Sherman proposed the substitute for the Reconstruction bill which finally became a law.

In the Fortieth Congress, Mr. Sherman was Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and in this important position exerted a marked effect upon Congressional legislation. In the second session he reported a new bill for funding the National Debt, and converting the notes of the United States. He advocated this bill as a measure of just and wise public policy, in a speech of remarkable ability.

In person, Senator Sherman is tall and spare, with a large head, and countenance expressive of decision, firmness and self-control. He speaks smoothly and rapidly, making no effort at display, aiming only to produce conviction by clear statement of facts and arguments.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.

Sherman of Ohio remained an official part of the Washington scene continuously through nearly a half century; as representative, 1855-61; as senator, 1861-77; as secretary of the treasury, 1877-81; as senator, 1881-97; as secretary of state, 1897- 98. This was an astounding feat, considering the fact that during these years Ohio four times elected a Democratic governor and thrice sent Sherman a Democratic colleague in the Senate. The explanation lies in Sherman's temperament and situation. His heritage, his mother's oft-repeated precepts, his victory over youthful excesses, and his quick success in local law and business combined to overlay his naturally hot temper with a cautious reserve that was excellently adapted to Ohio's uncertainties. Economically, the conservative, creditor point of view became his personal preference; but, politically, he understood the radical, debtor psychology that flourished among his constituents during the three major and four minor depressions that punctuated his tenure of office. He carefully studied the attitude of the Middle West and helped to stamp national legislation with the influence of that section. While he was compromising his conservative personal preferences with more radical demands from the Ohio electorate, the East was compromising with the West on each piece of major legislation. Thus he and his work in some sense became typical of his political generation.

He had been elected in 1854 because he was a compromise candidate on whom warring factions could agree; and, at Washington, his more moderate utterances on slavery, contrasted with those of men like Joshua R. Giddings and Owen Lovejoy [qq.v.], quickly aided his rise. Membership on a House committee investigating unsavory Kansas affairs was exploited; Sherman wrote a report, scoring the Democracy and all its Kansas works, which was used effectively in the 1856 campaign (House Report No. 200, 34 Congress, l Session, "Kansas Affairs"). He became a hardworking and effective laborer in the young Republican vineyard and at the beginning of his third term (December 5, 1859) was the caucus nominee for speaker. A forgotten indorsement carelessly given Helper's Impending Crisis deprived him of the coveted honor, and increased thereafter his leaning toward compromise and caution in legislative matters. The successful candidate, William Pennington [q.v.], adopted Sherman's committee slate and named him chairman of the ways and means committee. Here his tariff convictions insured equable relations with Eastern Republicans. From loyalty to party he never deviated. 

Campaign labors of 1860 fortified Sherman further, making him, in spite of Ohio's Republican factions, the successor to Senator Chase, whom Lincoln elevated to the Treasury. On a widened stage the tall, spare, impressive junior senator was ready to play his part, especially in his favorite field of finance, for he at once became a member, and in 1867 became chairman, of the finance committee. In the din of war, with its necessities, he helped give the greenbacks the status of legal tender; but he never completely forgot that there must be a clay of reckoning, that order must be wrought out of a chaotic currency. He sometimes tried to encourage a policy of "paying as you go" and led in planning, with Secretary Chase, the national banking system (embodied in the act of February 25, 1863). If Sherman's program of economies and rigorous taxation, especially income taxes, had seemed politically expedient, fewer bond and greenback issues might have sprouted during the war. As it was, he quieted his uneasiness over the greenbacks by reiterating the popular doctrine that the country would "grow up to" the expanded currency.

On the reconstruction issue, war between Sherman's personal preferences and popular dicta waged unremittingly, for political rivalries in Ohio, as elsewhere, imposed irrational tests of party loyalty and defined patriotism without humanity. His desire for moderation was sufficiently well known for many Southerners to write him concerning tolerance, and he spoke out against the fiery Sumner's program. But he did not carry his efforts at moderation so far from the radical path as to stray outside the confines of dominant Republicanism. Opposing Thaddeus Stevens' drastic military reconstruction plan, he advanced a substitute little less rigorous, which became law March 2, 1867; and he voted for most of the radical program. For his former friend, Andrew Johnson, Sherman openly expressed sympathy; he admired Johnson's "combative propensity," and asserted his right to remove Stanton (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, l Session, Appendix, p. 129). But, knowing the ostracism suffered by the President's supporters, he voted to convict him. When seven other Republicans prevented conviction, he felt "entirely satisfied" (Recollections, I, 432).

On post-war finance Sherman dominated national policy, because of his Senate chairmanship, his interest, and his ability; like most congressmen he was swayed by the strong tide of inflationist sentiment, although as a private individual he cherished anti-inflationist desires. He saw in cancellation of greenbacks the most direct route to specie resumption and declared that a beneficial fall in prices must mark resumption; yet on these very grounds he opposed McCulloch's currency contraction policies of 1866 and 1868. The Middle West being then strongly inflationary, he claimed that resumption would speedily come if the government merely met current obligations. The greenbacks outstanding, he thought, were not too much for the condition of the country. When public opinion blamed McCulloch's contraction policy for the stringency of 1868, Sherman said contraction should cease in deference to that opinion. It did. He realized that national credit must be safeguarded by resumption as soon as political conditions permitted; and he entertained dreams of financial reforms international in scope, aiding Emperor Napoleon Ill's scheme for a stable, unified currency among the great trading nations (Recollections, I, 406-12). His work on the funding act of July 14, 1870, r educed th e burden of public interest and helped restore national credit. While the dollar was still at a premium, he pushed the mint-reform bill which ended the coinage of silver dollars, so that after silver fell he was labeled the arch marplot of the "Crime of '73." On the resumption act of January 14, 1875, he had to yield his own excellent plan, of funding greenbacks into bonds, for the substitute of George F. Edmunds. His preeminence in financial matters, and his aid to Hayes's candidacy, made him the natural choice for the Treasury in 1877.

As secretary of the treasury, Sherman occupied a congenial place, for responsibility for the national finances gave rein to his native skill at economical management and deafened him to inflationist outcry. He strengthened the resumption act by his interpretation of it, declaring that it empowered the secretary to issue bonds after, as well as before, resumption (a position for which John G. Carlisle had reason to be grateful in 1893); and, in the face of congressional clamor, he convinced hard-headed bankers that the government would redeem its bonds in gold, thus immensely enhancing the national prestige. He disappointed bankers who were confidently expecting concessions from the government and amazed them by discarding their advice and achieving sale abroad at a bond price above that of the op en market. Thoroughly informing himself beforehand, he coolly bargained with London and New York syndicates and bankers, playing them off against one another, even when they fought him in the gold market and when exchange rates and London discounts went against him. He facilitated direst sales to investors, independent of syndicates. The loans of 1878 and 1879 were especially skilful.

Sherman's statesmanship while secretary was proved by the political obstacles he surmounted. The political odds against him in Hayes's administration were terrific. Hayes's title to office was uncertain; the House was Democratic for four years, and the Senate for two; and the populace was discouraged by a wearisome depression. Business failures, especially in the West, increased in Sherman's first and second years, magnifying opposition to resumption, while mine-owners and inflationists joined hands in a concerted effort to obtain "free silver." With both parties torn sectionally on this issue, it appeared late in 1877 that inflation politics would prevent Sherman from attaining his main objectives, resumption of specie payments and funding of the public debt. The House stopped resumption operations temporarily by passing two bills: Bland's for a silver dollar with unlimited legal tender and unlimited coinage, and Ewing's for indefinite postponement of the date of resumption (November S. 23, 1877). While these bills awaited Senate action, Sherman's Republican successor, Stanley Matthews, fathered a concurrent resolution (which lacks the force of law) declaring government bonds payable in silver; and both Houses passed it, thus humiliating Sherman.

However, divisions among inflationists ultimately gave Sherman sufficient support to defeat the more extreme objectives of Bland and Ewing. The Bland-Allison Act (February 28, 1878) stipulated a limited coinage of silver, rather than free coinage; and instead of postponing resumption indefinitely Congress, on May 31, 1878, forbade further retirement of greenbacks. Sherman has been severely criticized for failure to oppose the Matthews resolution originally or to support Hayes's veto of the Bland-Allison bill finally. Faced by a fiscal and political exigency, he labored to obtain maximum concessions from the extremists. He judged resumption and funding might be achieved, in spite of Bland-Allison dollars and of 348,000,000 outstanding greenbacks; and they were.

After the passage of the silver bill, Sherman helped to rally conservative support behind the administration, and the insurgents were somewhat discredited in the 1878 elections. Henceforward comparatively free from the opposition that had been hounding him, and aided by favorable trade developments, he carefully protected the final preparations for resumption. He had the New York sub-treasury made a member of the clearing houses at Boston and New York, and made payments to the government receivable in either legal tenders or coin. Consequently, the premium on gold disappeared (December 17, 1878) after nearly seventeen years; and on January 2, 1879, specie payments were smoothly resumed, to the general astonishment.

Whether or not Sherman could continue specie payments thereafter depended upon the demand for gold. The law of May 31, 1878, to which he had agreed, not only had stopped cancellation of legal t enders redeemed in gold but also had directed their reissue. Later, realizing the potential drain, he fabricated a theory that notes once redeemed need not be reissued when the gold reserve became less than 40 per cent. of outstanding notes. Fortunately for him, rainswept Britain and Europe in 1879 had to buy huge quantities of American wheat, corn, and cotton, paying in gold. Trade rebounded beautifully, and specie payments seemed so secure that the Secretary described legal tenders as "the best circulating medium known" (Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury . . . 1880, p. xiv). Not so the Bland-Allison dollars. They soon worried Sherman, since their intrinsic worth was declining, business men were forcing them back on the government, and treasury channels were so choked with them as to threaten the placing of the United States on the silver standard. The Secretary made a futile plea to Congress to impose new limitations on their coinage. Then a rise in interior trade temporarily removed his apprehension and he soon returned to th e Senate and to his political point of view on silver. As the end of his cabinet service approached, the United States still stood on the gold standard. Resumption was an admitted success.

The most distinguished phase of Sherman's career was closing, but he did not suspect it. He planned further achievements in the White House: refunding the public debt at lower interest, perfecting disbursements, settling the silver question without banishing gold or displacing paper, reducing taxes, freeing the civil service from "infernal scramble," breaking down sectionalism in party politics, and turning politics from outworn war issues to "business and financial interests and prosperity" (Sherman, to Richard Smith June 14, 1880, Sherman MSS.). His dreams were of the stuff that made the inner man, but his success at resumption had made him a failure as a candidate for the presidential nomination. He felt that the business cl ass in general and the party in particular owed him th e office; but the unparalleled prosperity that he had helped to create made Republican victory in 1880 so certain as to insure bitter competition for the nomination. Poorly organized Sherman forces, although they helped defeat the unit rule, could not rout the Grant phalanx, or match the Blaine magnetism. Worse, ten Ohio delegates stubbornly refused to vote for Sherman. The nomination fell to the popular and available Garfield, whose presence at Chicago Sherman had thought essential to his own success. In 1880, as in 1888 and to a less degree in 1884, Sherman failed of the nomination because he lacked unscrupulousness in the use of patronage, color in personality and appeal, cordial unity in the Ohio delegation, and skill in manipulating politicians, and because he had an abundance of inflationist opposition. In 1888 he reached the exciting total of 249 votes on the second ballot; but the thread of Ohio intrigue, tortuously unwinding through the correspondence of Foraker, Garfield, Hanna, Hayes, McKinley, and Sherman, shows how futile was his dearest hope.

Through his second period of sixteen years in the Senate (1881-97) Sherman played the role of prominent politician, so cast by his adaptation to the plot of the play in Ohio and in the nation at large. Ohio gave him Garfield's seat only after a contest and he had to keep watch lest he should be shelved, in 1879 and later, with the governorship. Democrats won the state thrice, but luckily Republicans controlled when he came up for reelection in 1885 and in 1892 he succeeded in postponing the candidacy of Foraker (until 1896). In national politics, also, the atmosphere was one of continual uneasiness. Neither Republicans nor Democrats obtained simultaneous control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency for more than a single period of two years during this time (Republicans, 1889-91; Democrats, 1893- 95); and all the political veterans were confused by uncertainties rising from the economic revolution and by cleavages between East and West that were disruptive of party strength. In such a situation Sherman's services seemed indispensable, because of his long experience in legislative compromise, his understanding of Western demands, and his reputation for astuteness in estimating reactions. The newer group of Senate managers--Nelson W. Aldrich, Eugene Hale, O. H. Platt, and John C. Spooner [qq. v. ]-left Sherman out of much of their basic planning, for he, unlike William B. Allison [q.v.], never joined them on terms of close intimacy; but when the time came to compromise with the West, they leaned heavily on him. He functioned most strikingly in connection with the anti-trust and silver-purchase laws of 1890. The final draft of the first came from the pen of Edmunds and the important purchase provisions of the second never had Sherman's hearty approval; but on the one he carried the responsibility, for the finance committee, of initiating tentative drafts during two experimental years (1888-90), and on the other he so adjusted a conference committee stalemate between the two Houses as to save his party from a silver veto and from the defeat of the McKinley tariff. Then, as often during his legislative career, the immediate political exigency faced by him and his fellow partisans warped his judgment on "sound" currency and the protection of the Treasury.

Republican colleagues honored Sherman with the position of president pro tempore (1885-87) and listened deferentially whenever the famous ex-Secretary spoke on finance. He was important in campaigns as keynoter on currency and tariff subjects. Insistence of Ohio wool-growers on protection led him into yeoman's service regimenting Middle-Western Republicans behind a high tariff. His assignment (1886) to the chairmanship of the foreign relations committee proved none too congenial. On minor issues he shifted his position, not always in conformity with popular trends. His economic philosophy always remained basically conservative; for example, he favored general regulation of interstate commerce but questioned the right of Congress to establish maximum and minimum rates and opposed the prohibition of pooling. After he recovered from his nomination fiasco of 1888, Sherman was content in the familiar Senate environment. There were leisure for profitable business undertakings, a never-forgotten sense of service, long evenings alone in his peaceful study and, latterly, preoccupation with the work, published in two volumes in 1895 as John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabin et. In 1879 he had publish ed Selected Speeches and Reports on Finance and Taxation, from 1859 to 1878. Things might have drifted into the usual peaceful Senate demise if Hanna and the embarrassed McKinley had not translated Sherman to the State Department to give Hanna a Senate seat. In the unaccustomed place, under stress of Cuban excitements, it became all too evident that Sherman h ad a growing and humiliating weakness of memory which incapacitated him for functioning out of his usual routine. The fur-seal, Hawaiian, and Spanish negotiations were taken out of his hands. When the cabinet decided for war with Spain he rose to the defense of his anti-expansionist views, and resigned in protest. Two years of unhappy private life ensued before his final release.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 84-88



SPRAGUE, William,  1830-1915, Union officer.  Governor of Rhode Island, 1860-1863.  Republican U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. He was one of twelve war governors who met at Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1862 to pledge themselves to support President Lincoln's policies. That same year he was reelected governor but resigned to become federal senator. He took his seat on March 4, 1863, and served until March 3, 1875.


WILLIAM SPEAGUE was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, September 11,1830. He is a nephew of William Sprague, who was Governor of Rhode Island in 1838, and United States Senator in 1842. He received an academical education at Tarrytown, New York, and subsequently engaged in the calico print works founded by his father and uncle, in which he is now a partner. He engaged also in other branches of manufactures, became president of several banks, and a director of various insurance companies. In his eighteenth year he joined an artillery company in Providence, and became a colonel.

In 1860, he was nominated for Governor of Rhode Island by a portion of the Republican party, and elected, in consequence of a coalition between them and the Democrats. In February, 1861, foreseeing the outbreak of the civil war, he offered to the President and General Scott 1,000 men and a battery of artillery, and as soon as the call for troops was made, hastened to raise regiments, and went with them to the field. The commission of Brigadier-General of Volunteers was offered to him in May, but he refused it. He fought with the Rhode Island troops at Bull Run, and in several engagements of the Chickahominy campaign. He was chosen United States Senator for six years from March 4, 1863, and was re-elected for the term ending in 1875. A few years ago he married a daughter of Chief-Justice Chase.

In the Senate he served as Chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, a position for which he was fitted by his business-like habits and thorough understanding of commercial law.

In the Impeachment trial he voted the President guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, as charged in the indictment. During his first term in the Senate, he seldom spoke, but in March and April, 1869, he startled the Senate and the country by a series of remarkable speeches on national affaire. The first was on " The Financial Condition," and depicted ruin in store for the country unless it should pause in the "forced policy pursued since the close of the war." Two speeches on the Civil Tenure Act drew glowing pictures of the future of the country under "a government of lawyers and judges, educated in one line, practiced in one pursuit; educated upon the quarrels and the exhibitions of the worst passions of human nature; practiced in the dissensions, influenced by the vices of the people." Speeches on " The National Currency" and "The Tax Bill " presented the injurious effects upon the country of large accumulation of capital, illustrated by reference to prominent citizens of Rhode Island.

Mr. Sprague is somewhat slight in person—with a grave expression, and thoughtful attitude. Retiring and reticent, he has none of the qualities of the noisy demagogue. Although the richest man in Congress, he makes no personal ostentation of wealth. As a speaker he is slow and deliberate, uttering his convictions rather with the earnestness of the conversationalist rather than the art of an orator. 

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.

Senator Sprague took his seat on March 4, 1863, and served until March 3, 1875. On November 12, 1863, Sprague was married to Kate Chase (see Sprague, Kate Chase), the very beautiful and much courted daughter of the secretary of war, Salmon P. Chase [q.v.]. They had four children. During his first term in the Senate he took little part in its business, but soon after his reelection he delivered a series of five speeches (National Affairs, Speeches ... in the Senate ... March 15, 17, 24, 30 and A p-r. 8, 1869, 1869), attacking what he described as the grip of capital and industry upon the organs of government. Gideon Welles (Diary, 1911, III, 565) wrote that, in spite of efforts to answer him, "Sprague's remarks remain"; but the speeches angered many of his constituents, because of bitter personal attacks and because they thought that he betrayed a distinct lack of responsibility as a legislator. In December 1870 he introduced a resolution providing for an investigation of charges against him of illicit trading for cotton in Texas during the war. The committee appointed held the charges were not sustained by the evidence at their disposal and was discharged on the ground that the session was too short for going into the matter further (Senate Executive Document 10, pt. 4, 41 Congress, 2 Session, 1871, volume I; Senate Report 377, 41 Congress, 3 Session, 1871).

About the same time his financial standing began to be questioned. With the panic of 1873, acrimonious complaints and litigation culminated in a failure involving some $20,000,000 that wiped out all but a fraction of the Sprague wealth. Domestic troubles developed also, and in 1882 he was divorced with a good deal of scandal for both sides. Moreover his name was constantly involved in the difficulties and litigation (citations, post) over the Sprague properties, of which Zechariah Chafee had accepted the responsibilities of trustee on December 1, 1873, when the three trustees first chosen by the creditors refused to act unless the creditors should protect them against personal liability for their conduct of the business. On March 8, 1883, Sprague married Dora Inez (Weed) Calvert. In 1883 he was again candidate for governor, but he was unsuccessful. He retired to "Canonchet," his large estate at Narragansett Pier, which remained a relic of his former splendor. After this house was burned to the ground, he went to live in Paris, his mind and health much shattered. He died there, and his body was brought back to his native state for burial.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 475-476



SUMNER, Charles, 1811-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, statesman, lawyer, writer, editor, educator, reformer, peace advocate, anti-slavery political leader.  U.S. Senatorial candidate on the Free Soil ticket.  Entered the Senate in December 1851.  Opposed the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.  Organizer and co-founder of the Republican party.  He was severely beaten on the Senate floor by pro-slavery Senator Preston S. Brooks.  It took him three and a half years to recover.  Strong supporter of Lincoln and the Union. He was among the first to support emancipation of slaves.  As a U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  


THE ancestors of Charles Sumner were among the early emigrants to New England. His father's cousin, Increase Sumner, was one of the early governors of the State of Massachusetts, and was regarded as a worthy successor of Hancock and Adams. The father of Charles Sumner was a successful lawyer, and for many years held the office of High Sheriff of the County of Suffolk.

Charles Sumner was born in Boston, January 6th, 1811. Having received a preparatory training in the Boston Latin School, and the Phillips Academy, he became a student in Harvard College, where he graduated in 1830. He subsequently entered the Cambridge Law School, where he pursued his studies three years under the direction of Judge Story, with whom he formed an intimate and lasting friendship.

In 1836 he was admitted to the bar, and rose rapidly in his profession. He was appointed Reporter of the Circuit Court of the United States; and, while holding this office, published three volumes of decisions, known as “Sumner’s Reports.” At the same time he edited the “ American Jurist," a law paper of high reputation.

During three winters following his admission to the bar, Mr. Sumner lectured to the students of the Cambridge Law School. Then, as in after life, his favorite subjects were those relating to constitutional law and the law of nations. In 1836 he was offered a professorship in the Law School, and in Harvard College, both of which he declined.

In 1837 he visited Europe, where he remained till 1840, traveling in Italy, Germany, and France, and residing a year in England. His time was improved in adding to his previous literary and legal attainments an extensive knowledge of the languages and literature of modern Europe.

After three years spent abroad, Mr. Sumner returned to his native city, and resumed the practice of law. In addition to his professional duties, he was occupied from 1844 to 1816 in editing and publishing an elaborately annotated edition of “Vesey's Reports,” in twenty volumes.

Mr. Sumner was recognized as belonging to the Whig party, yet for several years after his return from Europe he took but little part in politics. He made his first appearance on the political stage on the 4th of July, 1845, when he pronounced an oration before the municipal authorities of Boston on “ The True Grandeur of Nations.” This utterance was made in view of the aspect of affairs which portended war between the United States and Mexico. This oration attracted great attention, and was widely circulated both in Europe and America. Cobden pronounced it “the most noble contribution made by any modern writer to the cause of peace.”

At a popular meeting in Fanueil Hall, November 4, 1845, Mr. Sumner made an eloquent and able argument in opposition to the annexation of Texas, on the ground of slavery. In the following year he delivered an address before the Whig State Convention of Massachusetts on “The Anti-Slavery Duties of the Whig Party." In this address, Mr. Sumner avowed himself the uncompromising enemy of slavery. He announced his purpose to pursue his opposition to that great evil, under the Constitution, which he maintained was an instrument designed to secure liberty and equal rights. Provisions in the Constitution conferring privileges on slaveholders were compromises with what the framers of that instrument expected would prove but a temporary thing.

In 1846 Mr. Sumner addressed a public letter to Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, who then represented Boston in Congress, rebuking him for his vote in favor of war with Mexico. In this letter the Mexican war was characterized as an unjust, dishonorable, and cowardly attack on a sister republic, having its origin in a purpose to promote the extension of slavery.

The position of Mr. Sumner was too far in advance of the Whig party to admit of his remaining in full fellowship. In 1848 he sundered his old political ties, and aided in the organization of the Free Soil party, whose platform was composed of principles which he had distinctively announced in his public addresses. Van Buren and Adams, candidates of the new party, were earnestly supported by Mr. Sumner in the Presidential contest of 1848.

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act tended to obliterate old party lines and overshadow former political issues. A vacancy in the United States Senate occurring by the accession of Daniel Webster to the cabinet of Mr. Fillmore, the duty of electing his successor devolved upon the Legislature of Massachusetts. By a coalition of Free-Soilers and Democrats in the Legislature, Mr. Sumner was nominated for the office, and was elected after an earnest and protracted contest. The result was regarded as a signal triumph of the anti-slavery party.

In the Senate of the United States, Mr. Sumner's first important speech was against the Fugitive Slave Law. He then announced his great political formula, “Freedom is national, and slavery sectional," which furnished the clue to his subsequent career. He argued that Congress had no power, under the Constitution, to legislate for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and that the act was not only in conflict with the Constitution, but was cruel and tyrannical.

The great debate on the Missouri Compromise and the contest in Kansas elicited all of Mr. Sumner's powers of eloquence and argument. His great speech, published under the title of “The Crime against Kansas,” occupied two days in its delivery. Southern Senators and Representatives were greatly incensed by this speech, and it was determined to meet argument by blows. Two days after the delivery of the speech, Preston S. Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, assaulted Mr. Sumner while writing at his desk in the Senate Chamber. Mr. Sumner, unarmed and powerless behind his desk, was beaten on the head until he fell insensible on the floor. A Committee of the House of Representatives reported in favor of Brooks's expulsion. The resolution then reported received a little less than the two-thirds vote necessary to its adoption. Mr. Brooks, however, resigned his seat, pleaded guilty before the court at Washington upon an indictment for assault, and was sentenced to a fine of three hundred dollars. Having returned to his constituents to receive their verdict on his conduct, he was re-elected to Congress by a unanimous vote. A few days after resuming his seat in Congress, he died suddenly of acute inflammation of the throat.

On the other hand, Mr. Sumner did not fail to receive the endorsement of his constituents. In the following January, while still disabled with his wounds, he was re-elected by an almost unanimous vote, in a Legislature consisting of several hundred members. In the spring of 1857 he went to Europe, by the advice of his physicians, to seek a restoration of his health, and returned in the following autumn to resume his seat in the Senate. His health being still impaired, he again went abroad in May, 1858, and submitted to a course of medical treatment of extraordinary severity. After an absence of eighteen months, he returned in the autumn of 1859, with health restored, again to enter upon his Senatorial duties. It was highly appropriate that the first serious effort of Mr. Sumner, after his return to the Senate, should be a delineation of “The Barbarism of Slavery.” In an elaborate and eloquent speech, which was published under that title, he denounced slavery in its influence on character, society, and civilization.

In the Presidential contest of 1860, which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Sumner took an active part, and was gratified in seeing the signal triumph of principles which he had long maintained. On the secession of the rebel States, he earnestly opposed all compromise with slavery as a means of restoring the Union. He early proposed and advocated emancipation as the speediest mode of bringing the war to a close.

In March, 1861, he entered upon the responsible position of Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. In this position he has rendered great service to the country by his vigilant attention to our interests as affected by our relations with European powers. His influence has always been exerted to promote peace and mutual understanding. On the 9th of January, 1862, he delivered an elaborate speech, arguing that the seizure of Mason and Slidell, on board the steamer Trent, was unjustifiable on the principles of international law which had always been maintained by the United States.

In March, 1863, Mr. Sumner entered upon his third Senatorial term. He advocated with zeal and eloquence all the great Congressional measures which promoted the successful prosecution of the war. The Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, which was the great act of the Thirty-Eighth Congress, was a triumph of the principles long advocated by Mr. Sumner, and forms a crowning glory of his statesmanship.

On the first day of the Thirty-Ninth Congress Mr. Sumner introduced a bill looking to the reconstruction of the rebel States under a Republican form of government, and a measure to confer suffrage on the colored people of the District of Columbia.

He took the high ground that it was the right and duty of Congress, under the Constitution, to guarantee impartial suffrage in all the States. He was bold and eloquent in advocating the securing, by Congressional enactment, of equal civil and political rights to all men without regard to color.

He earnestly opposed the reconstruction policy of President Johnson, and shuddered to see his disposition to leave the freedmen in the hands of their late masters. On the 20th of December, 1865, Mr. Sumner denounced the President's “attempt to white wash the unhappy condition of the rebel States, and throw the mantle of official oblivion over sickening and heart-rending outrages where human rights are sacrificed, and rebel barbarism receives a new letter of license.”

From first to last Mr. Sumner was one of the boldest of the opponents of President Johnson's usurpations. In the great trial of Impeachment he voted to convict the President, and sustained his verdict in the case by a learned and able opinion concerning the law and the evidence.

Amid all his official and public labors, Mr. Sumner has been constant in his devotion to literature. He published in 1850 two volumes of “Orations ;" in 1853, a work on “White Slavery in the Barbary States;" and in 1856, a volume of “Speeches and Addresses.” Some of his recent speeches in the Senate are as exhaustive in their treatment of their subjects, as elaborate in finish, as abundant in facts, and as copious in details, as ordinary volumes. Such, for example, is the great speech in the Senate on "The Cession of Russian America to the United States,” in which the geography, history, and resources of our newly acquired territory are set forth more accurately and fully than in any accessible treatise on the subject.

Mr. Sumner is tall and robust in person. He has regular features, which bear the impress of thought and culture. His head is surmounted by an abundance of black hair, which is but slightly tinged with gray. As a speaker he is solemn and impressive in his manner, graceful in gesticulation, and deliberate in utterance. The varied stores of learning are so much at his command that he draws upon them with a frequency which sometimes brings upon him a charge of pedantry. By many he is regarded as too theoretical and too little practical for a successful statesman. It is his happiness, however, to have lived to see many of his theories, once unpopular, adopted as the practical principles of the most powerful party in the nation.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.

During the Johnson administration Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens [q.v.] were brought into a strange cooperation as the Senate and House leaders, respectively, of the opposition to the President's reconstruction policy. Sumner was intent upon securing equality of civil rights for the freedmen, while Stevens' main concern was to prevent the defeat of the Republican party by Democratic reënforcements from the Southern states. It was Sumner's persistence which led the Senate to add to the requirements for "readmission" of the seceded states the insertion in their constitutions of a provision for equal suffrage rights for whites and blacks. In effect this act of Congress, passed over the President's veto, abolished all the Johnson governments in the South. Sumner has been justly criticized for insisting upon the immediate grant of the ballot to the freedmen. It should be remembered, however, that in his own plan federal law was to guarantee to the blacks not only the ballot but also free schools and free farmsteads. In the movement for the impeachment of Johnson, Sumner took a prominent part. His first impressions favorable to the President soon gave way to a settled conviction that he was the chief menace to the country. Sumner regarded impeachment as a political rather than a judicial proceeding; hence neither in the Senate nor elsewhere did he put any curb upon his denunciations of Johnson's "misdeeds," and his opinion, filed with those of eighteen of the thirty-five who voted for conviction; was the longest and most bitter of them all (Works, XII, 318-410). He declared he would vote, if he could, "Guilty, of all [the charges] and infinitely more" (Ibid., XII, 401). In this document Sumner is seen at his worst. Lurid and furious invective largely took the place of argument. In his view, Johnson was the "enormous criminal" of the century.

By temperament, training, and experience President Grant and Sumner were antipathetic, and they soon came into antagonism. Sumner's opposition on constitutional grounds was largely responsible for the rejection of the nomination of Stewart for secretary of the treasury. Though Motley was named minister to England upon Sumner's recommendation, he was later removed. The President seemed to take no serious exception to Sumner's influence in preventing the ratification of the Johnson-Clarendon Convention, nor to his startling assertion of the United States' "national claims," amounting to billions of dollars, against Great Britain, owing to her concession of ocean belligerency to the Confederate States. The most violent clash developed over the President's pet project, the acquisition of Santo Domingo. Sumner's committee brought in an adverse report upon the treaties that had been negotiated by Grant's personal envoy. Motley's removal at this juncture seemed like retaliation. Grant persisted in urging annexation. Finally, in a scathing speech-made more exasperating by his entitling it "Naboth's Vineyard"-Sumner denounced the whole Santo Domingo project (Works, XIV, 89-130; see also, pp. 168--249).

While these controversies were in progress there came to Sumner one of the greatest griefs of his life, his demotion from the chairmanship of the committee on foreign relations. In distinguished qualifications for this position he was without a peer in public life. But the tension had become so great that Sumner was not on speaking terms with the President and the Secretary of State. His champions asserted that this was but "a flimsy pretext" and that "the San Domingo scheme was at the bottom of the whole difficulty" (Haynes, p. 366). A more reasonable explanation of the administration's pressure may have been a fear that his extraordinary views as to "national claims" against Great Britain would prove an obstacle to the adjustment which was then under negotiation. Though thus shut out from any official relations with the joint commission, Sumner was frequently consulted by its members, and was shown great consideration by the British commissioners, whose head told Sumner that without his speech "the treaty could not have been made and that he worked by it as a chart" (Memoir, IV, 491). Despite his demotion, Sumner not only gave his vote for the Treaty of Washington but made the principal speech in exposition and support of it (Memoir, IV, 489-90). It is clear that Sumner himself did not expect that the enormous sums suggested by him would actually be paid by Great Britain. He was reasonably satisfied with the result that the new treaty, at least as construed by the United States, would secure an arbitral adjustment of all claims, whether individual or national, growing out of the cruisers' depredations. He considered this a most important advance in establishing the principle of arbitration, and predicted: "Great Britain will never, in any future wars, place herself in the predicament in which my speech demonstrated she was placed in the matter of the rebel cruisers" (Whipple, post, p. 209).

At the opening of the regular session of Congress in December 1872, Sumner introduced a bill which provided that, inasmuch as "national unity and good will among fellow-citizens can be assured only through oblivion of past difference, and it is contrary to the usage of civilized nations to perpetuate the memory of civil war," the names of battles with fellow-citizens should not be continued in the Army Register, or placed on the regimental colors of the United States (Works, XV, 255). Apparently as a penalty for his opposition to Grant in the preceding campaign a bill of precisely opposite intent was introduced in the House, passed and sent to the Senate, where both bills were temporarily laid on the table because of Sumner's illness. Meantime, in the Massachusetts legislature a report denouncing Sumner's bill as "an insult to the loyal soldiers of the nation" and as "meeting the unqualified condemnation of the people of the Commonwealth" was adopted (Journal of the Extra Session of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1872, 1873, p. 54). Sumner was deeply grieved by this injustice. Forthwith Whittier took the lead in a movement to rescind this resolution of censure, and two years later by large majorities in both houses of a new legislature it was annulled (Journal of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1874, 1874, pp. 131-35).

On March 10, 1874, against his physician's advice, Sumner went to the Senate, for on that clay his colleague was to report the rescinding resolution. His fellow Senators were generous in their expressions of congratulation and goodwill. That evening he was prostrated by a heart attack and the next day he died. His body lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol, and the funeral services were held in Cambridge. On October 17, 1866, at the age of fifty-five, he had married Mrs. Alice (Mason) Hooper, a young widow; but they separated within a year and later were divorced (Shotwell, post, pp. 557-58, 584-85).

At the end of the Civil War, it has been said that the two most influential men in public life we1-e Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner (Rhodes, post, V, 55). Time has dealt very differently with them, for Sumner's figure has been crowded into the background. Unlike Lincoln, he outlived his best clays. His most characteristic and beneficent labors belonged to the epoch closed by the war; their fruits were merged in its triumphs. His later years brought misfortunes in full train: domestic sorrow, racking illness, the loss of friends, and ceaseless struggle over the problems of reconstruction, with some of which he was little fitted to cope. In contrast with most other American leaders of comparable political influence, Sumner entered public life "at the top": when he took his seat in the Senate he had never held public office of any kind. By no effort, he found himself thrust forward as the champion of an unpopular cause. Throughout his many years in the Senate, the goal of his constant striving was "absolute human equality, secured, assured, and invulnerable." He judged every man and every measure by reference to that goal. That any slave could be happy or that my slave-owner could be humane seemed to him impossible. As years passed, he became more intolerant not only of opposition but also of dissent. His arraignments of Johnson and of Grant were extravagant beyond all reason. When George William Curtis, discussing with him some public question, suggested: "But you forget the other side!" Sumner's voice "shook the room, as he thundered in reply: 'There is no other side !' " (C. E. Norton, eel., Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis, 1894, volume I, 256). To a senator's argument that the Constitution gave no authority for action which Sumner was urging, his reply was: "Nothing against slavery can be unconstitutional!" (Haynes, p. 279).

At the end of the war, the senator who for many years had been most vehement in denouncing all owners of slaves as "slave-mongers" was not the man to deal most tactfully and discriminatingly with the reconstruction problems. There is a measure of justice in the comment: "He would shed tears at the bare thought of refusing to freedmen rights of which they had no comprehension, but would filibuster to the end of the session to 'prevent the restoration to the southern whites of rights which were essential to their whole concept of life" (W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, p. 87). Yet in his later years Sumner displayed a kindness of sympathy toward the impoverished and suffering people of the South, and a magnanimity (as in his battle-flag resolution) which Congress did not reach till a full generation had passed.

Despite Sumner's intense devotion to the one "cause" which he championed with a crusader's zeal, he was diligent in the routine work of a senator, and commanded respect in his discussion of such topics as money and finance, the tariff, postal regulations, and copyright. He was much concerned over the abuses of patronage, through presidential favoritism or "senatorial courtesy," and introduced a well-thought-out bill for civil service reform. But his great work was not in the framing of laws. His was, rather, the role of an ancient Hebrew prophet-the kindling of moral enthusiasm, the inspiring of courage and hope, the assailing of injustice. His fearlessness in denouncing compromise, in demanding the repeal of the Fugitive-slave Law, and in insisting upon emancipation made him a major force in the struggle that put an end to slavery. It was his magnanimity and pertinacity that held in check barbarous attempts at retaliation, whether in the grant of letters of marque and reprisal, in the treatment of Confederate prisoners, or in the seizure of unoffending citizens of foreign countries in return for wrongs inflicted upon Americans abroad. Throughout the great national cns1s his service was of inestimable value in keeping the United States at peace with Great Britain and with France, when war with either of them would have meant the disruption of the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 208-214



Sources:
History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volumes 1-2, 1869.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.