Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/29

Rh life had been full of bitter conflicts. No man had aroused against himself fiercer animosities. Although warmly recognized by many, the public services of no man had been more acrimoniously questioned by opponents. No statesman's motives, qualities of heart and mind, wisdom and character, except his integrity, had been the subject of more heated controversy; and yet, when sudden death snatched him from us, friend and foe bowed their heads alike.

Every patriotic citizen felt poorer than the day before. Every true American heart trembled with the apprehension that the Republic had lost something it could ill spare.

Even from far distant lands, across the ocean, voices came, mingling their sympathetic grief with our own.

When you, Mr. Mayor, in the name of the City Government of Boston, invited me to interpret that which millions think and feel, I thanked you for the proud privilege you had conferred upon me, and the invitation appealed so irresistibly to my friendship for the man we had lost, that I could not decline it.

And yet, the thought struck me that you might have prepared a greater triumph to his memory, had you summoned, not me, his friend, but one of those who had stood against him in the struggles of his life, to bear testimony to Charles Sumner's virtues.

There are many among them to-day, to whose sense of justice you might have safely confided the office, which to me is a task of love.

Here I see his friends around me, the friends of his youth, of his manhood, of his advancing age; among them, men whose illustrious names are household words as far as the English tongue is spoken, and far beyond. I saw them standing round his open grave, when it received the flower-decked coffin, mute sadness heavily