ted and
superseded by more moderate men.

Charles Sumner was a high-minded idealist and a scholar, devoted to
noble ends, but not well versed in human nature. He was a lover of Man,
but with men he was not much acquainted. His oratory was elaborate and
ornate, and he unduly estimated the power of words. Sometimes, says
Senator Hoar, he seemed to think the war was to be settled by
speech-making, and was impatient of its battles as an interruption--like
a fire-engine rumbling past while he was orating. But he had large
influence, partly from his thoroughly disinterested character, and
partly because beyond any other man in public life he represented the
elements of moral enthusiasm among the people. His counterpart was
Henry Wilson, his colleague in the Senate. Wilson had risen from the
shoe-maker's bench, and knew the common people as a cobbler knows his
tools. He was genial in temperament; public-spirited and generous in his
aims; a most skilful tactician, and not over-scrupulous. He joined the
Know-nothings, with no sympathy for their proscriptive creed, but in the
break-up of parties using them for the anti-slavery cause,--and to
secure his own election to the United States Senate. He was a good
fighter, but without rancor; and he was an admirable interpreter of the
real democracy. Senator Hoar, in his autobiography, graphically
describes how at some crisis Wilson would travel swiftly over the State,
from Boston to Berkshire, visit forty shops and factories in a day, talk
with politicians all night, study the main currents and the local
eddies; and after a week or two of this--seeming meanwhile to be backing
and filling in his own mind--would "strike a blow which had in it not
only the vigor of his own arm, but the whole vigor and strength of the
public sentiment which he had gathered and which he represented."

Prominent in the Senate was "bluff Ben Wade" of Ohio, an old-time
anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a stout friend and foe. Another
conspicuous radical was Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in
New Hampshire, went West early in life, and was a chief organizer and
leader of the Republican party in Michigan. He was a mixture of Yankee
shrewdness and Western energy; patriotic, masterful, somewhat
coarse-grained and materialistic; and, like many of his associates,
better suited for controversy and war than for conciliation and
construction. Of a higher type were three men who stood near the head in
t