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Lincoln, and the seat of honor.
This was Mr. Lincoln's method of terminating personal animosities.
By the surrender of the rebel army, under Gen. Robert E. Lee, to Gen. Grant, April 9, Mr. Sumner saw with inexpressible delight the Union saved, and the chains of the bondmen rent asunder.
But the hour of gladness often changes unexpectedly to the hour of sorrow.
The joy attendant on the realization of his long-cherished hope of peace and freedom was on the evening of the 14th turned to the keenest agony, by the assassination of his noble and beloved friend the president of the United States.
Mr. Sumner attended the illustrious patriot in his dying hour; and none shed tears more freely at the sad announcement, “Abraham Lincoln is no more.”
“This is the only time,” said an intimate friend of the senator, “I ever saw him weep.”
On the first day of June Mr. Sumner delivered in the Music Hall, before the citizens of Boston, a most touching and appropriate eulogy on the martyred president, portraying his sterling virtues, and his services to the colored people and to the nation, in words of pathos and of power.
His constant and high regard for the race whose wrong the nation was so tardy to redress is seen in the following letter, which he wrote to Thomas Garfield in respect to the
B. B. Russell, 1874.
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