NOTE TO PAGE 360.

THE personal allusion on this page was understood at the time to have reference to Mr. CHARLES SUMNER, who had just addressed the Convention in one of those inflammatory appeals on the subject of Slavery, by which he prepared the way for his final secession from the Whig party.

This gentleman, having failed, on this and other occasions, to provoke me into public controversy with himself, has thought fit to devote some twenty or thirty pages of the second volume of his recently published Orations and Speeches, to a consideration of some passages of my public life. Fifteen of these pages are taken up by a verbose and vituperative letter, dated October 26, 1846, and addressed to me personally, but of which no copy was ever sent to me, and which I only heard of by accident, sometime after its original publication, in a Free Soil or Abolition newspaper.

It has been suggested to me, that some reply to this effusion might possibly be expected in this volume. But I really must be excused from entering into controversy with Mr. Sumner. Sixteen or seventeen years of public service must be left to be their own interpreter, and to furnish their own answer to any amount of reckless perversion or flippant personality. And, indeed, I may well be content to take my share of the abuse of a volume, which consigns President Fillmore to immortal "infamy," and which includes so many of the most distinguished men of both parties within the range of its sweeping fulminations. The very most that I can persuade myself to do, is to append to this concluding Note, as an act of simple justice to myself, my original reply to another letter which Mr. Sumner actually sent to me in August, 1846, when our correspondence terminated.

Meantime, however, if anybody, at home or abroad, should desire to examine into the character or motives of his persevering attacks upon me, they will find ample materials, both in the foregoing speeches of mine, and in the record of his own subsequent poli. tical course, as it has been in process of curious development during the past year or

two.

Of this course, it is enough to say two things. One, that, having professed, usque ad nauseam, that he was no politician and sought no place, he has grasped at office at the first instant at which it was within his reach, and under circumstances from which some, even, of his best political and personal friends recoiled. The other, that, having. for six or seven years past, arraigned and reproached almost all who have preceded him in Congress from this quarter, for their alleged inaction on the subject of Slavery, and having just before his own election, laid down a formal platform, — pledging himself to demand "the instant repeal of the Fugitive Slave Bill,” the Abolition of Slavery

in the District of Columbia and of the domestic Slave Trade, and the overthrow of the Slave Power, “so that the Federal Government may be put openly, actively, and perpetually on the side of Freedom," — he has, since his election, ignored the entire subject, and has sat in his place in the Senate, for five months and a half, without venturing to open his lips on any question in any way connected with it; — and this, too, although the whole subject of the Compromises has been repeatedly under consideration by the Senate. How long this mysterious and prudent silence is to be observed, remains to be seen. It may, perhaps, have been broken, even before this volume shall have made its appearance. And I doubt not, that, at some time or other, it will be made the subject of a most plausible explanation. It is intimated, already, in some quarters, that he is only waiting to gain influence at Washington, in order to turn it more effectively against Southern Institutions. Personally, I cannot regret that he has laid aside, whether for a shorter or a longer time, the character of an Agitator. He would do well to abandon it altogether. It is quite too late for him, however, to explain away this signal "disloyalty to Freedom,” as he has been accustomed to call it;—and, whatever the explanation may be, the fact will remain on the record, in most ridiculous, or, as some will think, in most lamentable contrast, both with his ferocious attacks upon others, and with his fervent professions for himself. Non hoc pollicitus.

But I hasten to dismiss a subject, which nothing but the recent republication of his unprovoked and offensive invectives, in the deliberate and permanent form of a stereotyped volume, could have induced me to notice in any way whatever.

The subjoined letter, which has never before been published, is given here precisely as it was originally written, the sentence inclosed in brackets, being that referred to in the Postscript.

SIB,

BOSTON, 17th August, 1846.

Your communication of the 10th instant, directed to Washington, reached me here, at a late hour, on the day before yesterday.

Some strange hallucination has come over either you or myself. It is certain that we do not agree as to what belongs to the intercourse of friends, or even of gentlemen. I have read afresh the newspaper articles of which you have informed me that you are the author, and I am only confirmed in the opinion which I formed of them when they first met my eye. They seem to me to abound in the grossest perversions, and in the coarsest personalities. They are not content with arraigning my acts, but are full of insinuations as to my motives, and imputations on my integrity. They arrogate for their author an exclusive privilege of pronouncing upon matters both of truth and of conscience, and deny to me all right of judgment as to either. They proceed upon the offensive assumption, that under some influence of ambition or moral cowardice, I have knowingly and deliberately committed an unworthy and wicked act. They remonstrate with me, as with a confessed or convicted criminal. And they invoke upon me the reproach and scorn of the community, now and hereafter. [It would be difficult to say, which was the predominating element in these compositions, intolerance or insolence.] I am willing to believe that you have not weighed the force of your own phrases. Your "periculosa facilitas" has betrayed you. Your habitual indulgence in strains of extravagant thought and exaggerated expression, alike when you praise and when you censure, has, perhaps, impaired your discrimination in the employment of language. You must have been deaf, however, to every thing but the voices of admiration at your clbow, if you have not heard expressions of astonishment and indignation on all sides

at the fanatical and frantic spirit which your articles exhibit, - not unmingled with regrets that their whole text and tenor should be so little in harmony with that cause of Peace, of which you are a zealous, and, I doubt not, a sincere advocate.

I write for no purpose of returning railing for railing. I am quite ready to forgive the injury you have done me; and I shall wish you nothing but success and happiness in your future carcer. But were I to maintain relations of social intercourse (as you propose) with one who has thus grossly assailed my public morality, it would be an admission of the truth of one of the charges which has been arrayed against me in this case. It might fairly be construed into an acknowledgment, that I recognized different rules of action for my private and my political life. I feel compelled, therefore, to decline all further communication or conference, while matters stand as they now do between us.

Sir, I am conscious of having done nothing inconsistent with the cause of Freedom, of Right, of Humanity, of Truth, or even of Peace. I yield to no one in my attachment to one and all of these great interests. I am no stranger, either, to those Christian Churches, from which one of your articles would seem to excommunicate me; nor do I know any thing in my moral or religious character, which should fairly subject me to be schooled even by yourself. If by any vote I have given, I have wounded the conscience of anybody else, I sincerely regret it. I certainly have not wounded my own conscience. I well knew that my vote on the War Bill would expose me to misrepresentation. I felt painfully the perplexity of the case. I freely acknowledge, that it was a doubtful question, upon which, as was well said by Mr. Charles Hudson and Mr. George Ashmun, (two of the fourteen,) in their printed speeches, "men of honesty of purpose might come to different conclusions." I ask no man to vindicate my vote, or to agree with me in opinion. I blame no man for charging me with error of judgment. But knowing for myself, that my vote was given honestly, conscientiously, with a sincere belief that it was the best vote which an arbitrary and overbearing majority would permit us to give, I shall allow no man to cast scandalous imputations on my motives and apply base epithets to my acts in public, and to call me his friend in private. My hand is not at the service of any one, who has denounced it with such ferocity, as being stained with blood.

One or two of the topics in your last private communication, require a few words of notice, before this painful correspondence is brought to a close.

1. I am utterly unconscious of having "scattered widely unambiguous voices of condemnation" in regard to your Fourth of July Oration last year. I certainly differed entirely from some of the views of that address, and considered them to be disorganizing and dangerous. I never attacked you in a Newspaper. I never libelled your character or motives. Nor have I ever gone out of my way to say a word on the subject.

2. Nothing could be more utterly unfounded,—not even the preamble of the War Bill, than your assertion that my sentiment, on that occasion, "set country above right." Such an assertion proves only, that in your haste to condemn, you have confounded Geography with Morals.

3. Judge Story and myself had an hour of most friendly and cordial conversation within one week of his lamented end. At Washington, I was in frequent consultation with him on the Texas question, as well as on other subjects, up to the very last moment of his leaving there. If he would have arrested me, (as you intimate,) a few days before his death, in "the path which I seemed to have adopted," it was owing either to his own misapprehensions, or to the misrepresentations of others. My path has been

1

one and the same, unchanged and unchangeable, from the moment I entered public life to the present moment.

4. I have the strongest reason to think that Judge Story and myself agreed entirely as to some of the more ultra doctrines of your address, and, unless I have been greatly misinformed, he expressed himself without reserve as to their impracticable and extravagant character.

5. You cite the opinions of many anonymous persons in favor of your views of my vote. I am quite willing that its propriety should be tested pondere non numero. And opportunities may still occur, when it may be seen, whether there was not a weight of character in my favor, against which the gross charges of "lie,” “falsehood," "immorality," "wickedness,” and the rest, will strive in vain to prevail.

And now I must repeat the expression of my sincere regret at being compelled to address you in such terms. I had no purpose of entering into any public controversy with you, or any one else, in relation to my vote; nor have I now. Nor should I have written to you at all, but for your own letters to me. I will still hope that the day may not be distant, when you may realize that you have wronged me, and when our old relations may be resumed without the sacrifice of our own self-respect. Yours respectfully,

CHARLES SUMNER, ESQ.

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

P. S. As I am just leaving home for a week's relaxation at Newport, it is impossible for me to rewrite this letter. I might otherwise have omitted a sentence over which I have drawn my pen, as I am as little disposed to give offence as to take it.

THE END.