Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/65

Rh tween Lincoln and Sumner was complete, and could not be healed. But those who said so did not know the men. On the night of the 6th of March, two days after Lincoln's second inauguration, the customary inauguration ball was to take place. Sumner did not think of attending it. But towards evening he received a card from the President, which read thus: “Dear Mr. Sumner, unless you send me word to the contrary, I shall this evening call with my carriage at your house, to take you with me to the inauguration ball. Sincerely yours, .” Mr. Sumner deeply touched, at once made up his mind to go to an inauguration ball for the first time. Soon the carriage arrived, the President invited Sumner to take a seat in it with him, and Sumner found there Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Colfax, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Arrived at the ball-room, the President asked Mr. Sumner, to offer his arm to Mrs. Lincoln; and the astonished spectators, who had been made to believe that the breach between Lincoln and Sumner was irreparable, beheld the President's wife on the arm of the Senator, and the Senator, on that occasion of state, invited to take the seat of honor by the President's side. Not a word passed between them about their disagreement.

The world became convinced that such a friendship between such men could not be broken by a mere honest difference of opinion. Abraham Lincoln, a man of sincere and profound convictions himself, esteemed and honored sincere and profound convictions in others. It was thus that Abraham Lincoln, composed his quarrels with his friends, and at his bedside, when he died, there was no mourner more deeply afflicted than Charles Sumner.

Let me return to the year 1862. Long, incessant and arduous was Sumner's labor for emancipation. At last the great Proclamation, which sealed the fate of slavery, came, and no man had done more to bring it forth than he.