y and
pro-slavery Hunkerism, he appealed confidently to that large, unknown
quantity of courage and righteousness, dormant in the North, to set the
balked wheels again moving.

An ardent Peace advocate, he nevertheless threw himself enthusiastically
into the uprising against the Disunionist. Not to fight then he saw was
but to provoke more horrible woes, to prevent which the man of Peace
preached war, unrelenting war. He was Anglo-Saxon enough, Puritan and
student of history enough to be sensible of the efficacy of blood and
iron, at times, in the cure of intolerable ills. But his was no vulgar war
for the mere ascendancy of his section in the Union. It was rather a holy
crusade against wrong and for the supremacy and perpetuity of liberty in
America.

As elephants shy and shuffle before a bridge which they are about to
cross, so performed our saviors before emancipation and colored troops.
Emancipation and colored troops were the powder and ball which Providence
had laid by the side of our guns. Sumner urged incessantly upon the
administration the necessity of pouring this providential broadside into
the ranks of the foe. This was done at last and treason staggered and fell
mortally hurt.

The gravest problem remained, however, to be solved. The riddle of the
southern sphinx awaited its Oedipus. How ought local self-government to be
reconstituted in the old slave states was the momentous question to be
answered at close of the war. Sumner had his answer, others had their
answer. His answer he framed on the simple basis of right. No party
considerations entered into his straightforward purpose. He was not
careful to enfold within it any scheme or suggestion looking to the
ascendancy of his section. It was freedom alone that he was solicitious of
establishing, the supremacy of democratic ideas and institutions in the
new-born nation. He desired the ascendancy of his section and party so far
only as they were the real custodians of national justice and progress.
God knows whether his plan was better than the plans of others except in
simpleness and purity of aim. Lincoln had his plan, Johnson his, Congress
its own. Sumner's had what appears to me might have evinced it, on trial,
of superior virtue and wisdom, namely, the element of time, indefinite
time as a factor in the work of reconstruction. But it is impossible to
speak positively on this point. His scheme was rejected and all
discussion of it becomes therefore nu