Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/31

Rh proud of it, for such a biography condenses in the compass of a single life the great story of the American Nation, as from the feebleness and misery of early settlements in the bleak solitude it advanced to the subjugation of the hostile forces of nature; plunged into an arduous struggle with dangers and difficulties only known to itself, gathering strength from every conflict and experience from every trial; with undaunted pluck widening the range of its experiments and creative action, until at last it stands there as one of the greatest powers of the earth. The people are fond of seeing their image reflected in the lives of their foremost representative men.

But not such a life was that of Charles Sumner. He was descended from good old Kentish yeomanry stock, men stalwart of frame, stout of heart, who used to stand in the front of the fierce battles of Old England; and the first of the name who came to America had certainly not been exempt from the rough struggles of the early settlements. But already from the year 1723 a long line of Sumners appears on the records of Harvard College, and it is evident that the love of study had long been hereditary in the family. Charles Pinckney Sumner, the Senator's father, was a graduate of Harvard, a lawyer by profession, for fourteen years high sheriff of Suffolk county. His literary tastes and acquirements and his stately politeness are still remembered. He was altogether a man of high respectability.

He was not rich, but in good circumstances; and well able to give his children the best opportunities to study, without working for their daily bread.

Charles Sumner was born in Boston, on the 6th of January, 1811. At the age of ten he had received his rudimentary training; at fifteen, after having gone through the Boston Latin School, he entered Harvard College, and plunged at once with fervor into the classics, polite