ome upon the stage too late, sir. Not only have our great
men passed away, but the great issues have been settled also. The
last of these was the National Bank, and that has been overthrown
forever. Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions
and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive-slave laws, involving
no national interests."

Mr. Sumner had but two coadjutors in opposing slavery and in
advocating freedom when he entered the Senate, but before he died
he was the recognized leader of more than two-thirds of that body.
He was denounced by a leading Whig newspaper of Boston when he left
that city to take his seat as "an agitator," and he was refused a
place on any committee of the Senate, as being "outside of any
healthy political organization," but he lived to exercise a
controlling influence in Massachusetts politics and to be Chairman
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He had learned from
Judge Story the value of systematic industry, and while preparing
long speeches on the questions before the Senate he also applied
himself sedulously to the practical duties of a Senator, taking
especial pains to answer every letter addressed to him.

Mr. Speaker Linn Boyd used to preside with great dignity, sitting
on an elevated platform beneath a canopy of scarlet curtains.
Seated at his right hand, at the base of the platform beside the
"mace," was Andrew Jackson Glossbrenner, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and
on the opposite side was Mr. McKnew, the Doorkeeper. Mr. John W.
Forney officiated at the Clerk's table, having been elected by a
decided majority. His defeat two years previous had been very
annoying to his Democratic friends at the North, who were expected
to aid the Southern wing of the party with their votes, and yet
were often deserted when they desired offices. "It is," said one
of them, "paying us a great compliment for our principles, or great
contempt for our pliancy." Mr. Buchanan wrote to a Virginia
Democratic leader, "Poor Forney deserves a better fate than to be
wounded 'in the house of his friends,' and to vote for a Whig in
preference to him was the unkindest cut of all. It will, I am
confident, produce no change in his editorial course, but I dread
its effect." Mr. Forney did not permit his desertion to influence
his pen, and his loyalty to the party was rewarded by his election,
two years after this defeat, as Clerk of the House.

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JEFFERSON DAVIS was