Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/54

28 of yielding to any demand of slavery, of making a compromise with it, in however tempting a form, was, to his nature, an absolute impossibility.

Mr. Sumner s courage was of a peculiar kind. He attacked the slave-power in the most unsparing manner, when its supporters were most violent in resenting opposition, and when that violence was always apt to proceed from words to blows. One day, while Sumner was delivering one of his severest speeches, Stephen A. Douglas, walking up and down behind the President's chair in the old Senate-chamber, and listening to him, remarked to a friend: “Do you hear that man? He may be a fool, but I tell you that man has pluck. I wonder whether he knows himself what he is doing. I am not sure whether I should have the courage to say those things to the men who are scowling around him.”

Of all men in the Senate-chamber, Sumner was probably least aware that the thing he did, required pluck. He simply did what he felt it his duty to his cause to do. It was to him a matter of course. He was like a soldier who, when he has to march upon the enemy's batteries, does not say to himself, “Now I am going to perform an act of heroism,” but who simply obeys an impulse of duty, and marches forward without thinking of the bullets that fly around his head. A thought of the boldness of what he has done may occur to him afterwards, when he is told of it. This was one of the striking peculiarities of Mr. Sumner's character, as all those know who knew him well.

Neither was he conscious of the stinging force of the language he frequently employed. He simply uttered what he felt to be true, in language fitting the strength of his convictions. The indignation of his moral sense at what he felt to be wrong was so deep and sincere that he thought everybody must find the extreme severity of his expressions as natural as they came to his own mind.