and who would have wished to save the Union in their own peculiar way.
I wish he may speak, as in all probability he was not alone.

Sumner's resolutions infuse a new spirit in the Constitution, and
elevate it from the low ground of a dead formula. The resolutions
close the epoch of the Stories, of the Kents, of the Curtises, and
inaugurate a higher comprehension of American constitutionalism.
During this session Charles Sumner triumphantly and nobly annihilated
the aspersions of his enemies, representing him as a man of one hobby,
but lacking any practical ideas. His speech on currency was among the
best. Not so with his speech about the Trent affair. It is
superficial, and contains misconceptions concerning treaties, and
other blunders very strange in a would-be statesman.

Ardently devoted to the cause of justice and of human rights, Sumner
weakens the influence which he ought to exercise, because he impresses
many with the notion that he looks more to the outside effect produced
by him than to the intrinsic value of the subject; he makes others
suppose that he is too fond of such effect, and, above all, of the
effect produced in Europe among the circle of his English and European
acquaintances.

It is positively asserted that Lincoln agreed to take Mr. Seward in
the Cabinet, because Weed and others urgently represented that Mr.
Seward is the only man in the Republican party who is familiar with
Europe, with her statesmen, and their policy. O Lord! O Lord! And
where has Seward acquired all this information? Mr. Seward had not
even the first A B C of it, or of anything else connected with it.
And, besides, such a kind of special information is, at the utmost, of
secondary necessity for an American statesman. Marcy had it not, and
was a true, a genuine statesman. Undoubtedly, nature has endowed
Seward with eminent intellectual qualities, and with germs for an
eminent statesman. But the intellectual qualities became blunted by
the long use of crotchets and tricks of a politician, by the
associations and influence of such as Weed, etc.; thereby the better
germs became nipped, so to speak, in the bud. Mr. Seward's acquired
information by study, by instruction, and by reading, is quite the
reverse of what in Europe is regarded as necessary for a statesman.
Often, very often, I sorrowfully analyze and observe Mr. Seward, with
feelings like those evoked in us by the sight of a noble ruin, or of a
once rich, natural panor