serious. After two attempts to resume
his place in the Senate, he found that he was unable to remain; yet when
his term expired, he was almost unanimously reelected. Much of his time
for three and a half years he spent in Europe. In December, 1859, he
seemed sufficiently recovered to resume senatorial duties, but it was
not until the following June that he again addressed the Senate. On
that occasion he delivered his last great philippic against slavery.
The subject under discussion was still the admission of Kansas as a
free State, and, as he remarked in his opening sentences, he resumed the
discussion precisely where he had left off more than four years before.

Sumner had assumed the task of uttering a final word against slavery as
barbarism and a barrier to civilization. He spoke under the impelling
power of a conviction in his God-given mission to utilize a great
occasion to the full and for a noble end. For this work his whole life
had been a preparation. Accustomed from early youth to spend ten hours
a day with books on law, history, and classic literature, he knew as no
other man then knew what aid the past could offer to the struggle for
freedom. The bludgeon of the would-be assassin had not impaired his
memory, and four years of enforced leisure enabled him to fulfill his
highest ideals of perfect oratorical form. Personalities he eliminated
from this final address, and blemishes he pruned away. In his earlier
speeches he had been limited by the demands of the particular question
under discussion, but in "The Barbarism of Slavery" he was free to deal
with the general subject, and he utilized incidents in American slavery
to demonstrate the general upward trend of history. The orator was
sustained by the full consciousness that his utterances were in harmony
with the grand sweep of historic truth as well as with the spirit of the
present age.

Sumner was not a party man and was at no time in complete harmony with
his coworkers. It was always a question whether his speeches had a
favorable effect upon the immediate action of Congress; there can,
however, be no doubt of the fact that the larger public was edified and
influenced. Copies of "The Crime against Kansas" and "The Barbarism of
Slavery" were printed and circulated by the million and were eagerly
read from beginning to end. They gave final form to the thoughts and
utterances of many political leaders both in America and in Europe.
More than any other ma