that his reputation and honor as a soldier needed this
censure of Charles Sumner. I have before me letters from men, ranking
from orderly sergeant to general, who have looked at death full in the
face on every battlefield where the flag of Massachusetts floated, and
they all thank me for my efforts to rescind this uncalled-for censure,
and pledge me their hearty support. They cordially indorse the noble
letter of Vice-President Wilson offering his signature to the petition
for rescinding the obnoxious resolutions; and if these resolutions are
not annulled, it will not be the fault of Massachusetts volunteers, but
rather of the mistaken zeal of men more familiar with the drill of the
caucus than with that of the camp.

I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner. I have often differed from him
in opinion. I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty
to take during the late presidential campaign. He felt the atmosphere
about him thick and foul with corruption and bribery and greed; he saw
the treasury ringed about like Saturn with unscrupulous combinations and
corporations; and it is to be regretted more than wondered at if he
struck out wildly in his indignation, and that his blows fell sometimes
upon the wrong object. But I did not intend to act the part of his
apologist. The twenty years of his senatorial life are crowded with
memorials of his loyalty to truth and free dom and humanity, which will
be enduring as our history. He is no party to this movement, in which my
name has been more prominent than I could have wished, and no word of his
prompted or suggested it. From its inception to the present time he has
remained silent in his chamber of pain, waiting to bequeath, like the
testator of the dramatist,

"A fame by scandal untouched
To Memory and Time's old daughter Truth."

He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before
our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us. To use the
words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law,
the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will
vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country,
and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its
own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict."

AMESBURY, 3d month, 8, 1873.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833. (1874.)

In the gray twili