lay. A graduate of Harvard College at the age of
nineteen, he had entered upon the study of law in the newly organized
law school in which Joseph Story held one of the two professorships.
He was admitted to the bar in 1834, but three years later he left his
slender law practice for a long period of European travel. This three
years' sojourn brought him into intimate touch with the leading spirits
in arts, letters, and public life in England and on the Continent, and
thus ripened his talents to their full maturity. He returned to his
law practice poor in pocket but rich in the possession of lifelong
friendships and happy memories.

Sumner's political career did not begin until 1847, when as a Whig he
not only opposed any further extension of slavery but strove to commit
his party to the policy of emancipation in all the States. Failing in
this attempt, Sumner became an active Free-Boiler in 1848. He was twice
a candidate for Congress on the Free-soil ticket but failed of election.
In 1851 he was elected to the United States Senate by a coalition
between his party and the Democrats. This is the only public office he
ever held, but he was continuously reelected until his death in 1874.

John Quincy Adams had addressed audiences trained in the old school,
which did not defend slavery on moral grounds. Charles Sumner faced
audiences of the new school, which upheld the institution as a righteous
moral order. This explains the chief difference in the attitude of the
two leaders. Sumner, like Adams, began as an opponent of pro-slavery
aggression, but he went farther: he attacked the institution itself as a
great moral evil.

As a constitutional lawyer Sumner is not the equal of his predecessor,
Daniel Webster. He is less original, less convincing in the enunciation
of broad general principles. He appears rather as a special pleader
marshaling all available forces against the one institution which
assailed the Union. In this particular work, he surpassed all others,
for, with his unbounded industry, he permitted no precedent, no legal
advantage, no incident of history, no fact in current politics fitted
to strengthen his cause, to escape his untiring search. He showed a
marvelous skill in the selection, arrangement, and presentation of
his materials, and for his models he took the highest forms of classic
forensic utterance.

Sumner exhibited the ordinary aloofness and lack of familiarity with
actual conditions in the South