phrase in which Sumner epitomized his speech, [-a crime which he declared was aggravated by the motive, "the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery, force being openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution."] The Kansas-Nebraska bill he denounced as "in every respect a swindle,

the only word which could adequately express the mingled meanness and wickedness of the cheat." In the course of his speech, he vindicated the work of the Emigrant Aid Company, exposed the effrontery of the boast that to the South had belonged the credit of victory in the Revolutionary War, contrasted Kansas with South Carolina, greatly to the disadvan tage of the latter in educated talent. He characterized Butler as the Don Quixote, "who has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight,-I mean the harlot, Slavery. As the Senator from South Carolina is the Don Quixote, so the Senator from Illinois is the squire, of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do its humiliating offices." Douglas and Butler writhed under this excoriation, and the debate became fiercely personal.

Angered by Sumner's words, two days later Preston S. Brooks, a distant cousin of Butler's, with two accomplices, stalked him in the Capitol. As the Senator sat at his desk, absorbed in his writing, suddenly he heard his name called. Looking up, he saw a tall, dark-faced stranger, who said: "I have read your speech over twice carefully; it is a libel on South Carolina and on Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine "-and down upon the head of the defenseless man crashed a blow from a heavy cane. Half stunned, Sumner struggled to rise, but the desk pinioned him, until he wrenched it from its fastenings. As he staggered toward his assailant, Brooks seized him by the collar, and kept raining blows upon his head and shoulders. The cane broke, but the furious blows did not cease till Sumner sank bleeding upon the floor of the Senate Chamber.

An assault, a crime of violence against a public servant, may be without political or historical significance. Three Presidents of the United States have fallen victims of the assassin's bullet, but in each case

the deed of the unbalanced wretch awoke only universal horror; not a voice was raised in its defense. But this assault in the Senate Chamber was totally different in its motive and effect. Scores of men in Congress applauded the deed. Representatives, on the floor of the House, declared that Brooks, instead of deserving punishment, merited the highest commendation, and that "Sumner did not get a lick more than he deserved." The vote for the expulsion of Brooks fell far short of the requisite two-thirds. After making a braggart's speech, he announced his resignation, and strode from the Chamber to be overwhelmed at its door by the kisses and embraces of Southern women. Within three weeks he returned to his desk with South Carolina's vindication: in his entire district only six votes had been cast against him. The Southern press bestowed ardent praise upon his act as a valiant deed for the honor of the South. "Good in conception, better in execution, and best in consequences," was the comment of the Richmond Enquirer. Jefferson Davis wrote a personal letter to Brooks, commending his character and his act, while tributes of admiration were showered upon him as the champion of Southern chivalry from many places in the Slave States. especially from the University of Virginia, the foremost centre of culture in the South.

But what of his victim? For Sumner the assault meant three years of pitiful struggle to regain his health. Again and again he went to Europe, where he literally underwent tortures by fire (the moxa) in the effort to secure healing for his shattered nerves. Hardest of all for him to bear was his enforced inaction in so grave a crisis. "I would give one year of life for one week now to expose this enormous vil lainy." "I long for work, and especially to make myself felt in our The ghost of two years already dead haunts me." "I must get well! I will get well! My place is in the Senate, and there I long to be. It is terrible to be thus stricken down when there is so much to do!" Meantime, Massachusetts had loyally re-elected him, the belief that his chair, vacant year after year in the Senate Chamber, was bearing more eloquent witness than could any human tongue to the great cause for which Charles Sumner was one of the first martyrs.

cause.

Upon his return to the Senate in 1859 Sumner found conditions

vastly changed. The Republicans had now a strong and growing representation, and their influence was seen in the placing of Sumner for the first time upon an important Committee,-that of Foreign Relations. Sumner entered actively into the campaign for Lincoln's election, and, in the critical months which preceded the inauguration, was one of the sturdiest opponents of compromise. Beset by a Congressman with the question what concession he was ready to make, he replied: "There is one: I will consent to be silent yet a little longer."

It is the judgment of the most authoritative historian of the epoch, Mr. James Ford Rhodes, that at the time of Lee's surrender Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner were "the two most influential men in public life." The one spent his boyhood in a log cabin on the frontier, the other in a dignified house on Beacon Hill; the one was the son of a shiftless rover, the other, the child of a learned lawyer, a trusted officer of the State; the one taught himself to read by the flickering light of the fireplace, the other had the best advantages that could be drawn from America's leading university and from years of foreign study and travel; both were lawyers, the one a shrewd pleader before juries,—the other an erudite editor of law texts; both were writers and orators of high rank,—the one terse, direct, master of the homely but telling phrase,— the other an orator of the schools, with a wealth of classical models and allusions; both were great political leaders, the one an opportunist, struggling ever to achieve the highest ideals,-the other an idealist, impatient of all compromise or delay. Both, in the prime of life, were summoned to important tasks in the nation's service, and together they bore a hand in the heavy labors that saved the Union and freed the slave. Lincoln's was the hand that signed the Proclamation of Emancipation, but Sumner was the first statesman to demand emancipation as a war measure, and no man's influence was greater than his in preparing the way for emancipation or in making the public mind ready to support that great act. Nor was Sumner content merely to free the slave. He sought to give him a freeman's opportunities. He won for the freedman the ballot. If, as some modern critics say, the ballot to the ex-slave proved a doubtful boon, abused and speedily taken away, let it be remembered that equal suffrage was but a part of Sumner's plan: he sought also to secure for the freedman a free school and a free homestead,-the basis

the Civil Rights Bill,-my bill, the Civil Rights Bill," these were almost the last words that fell from the dying Sumner's lips.

Sumner's place in our American public life was that of a prophet. His was a prophet's insight into the future, discerning things hidden from the astute politicians at his side. Witness his solemn warning, in the Kansas-Nebraska debate: "In passing such a bill as is now threatened you scatter, from this dark midnight hour, no seeds of harmony and good will, but broadcast through the land dragon's teeth, which haply may not spring up in direful crops of armed men, yet I am assured, sir, will fructify in civil strife and feud. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the best on which Congress has ever acted? Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you commit;-joyfully I welcome the promise of the future." Again and again, Sumner showed a prescience far beyond the party leaders' calculations.

But Sumner was as one of the Hebrew prophets not mainly in the foretelling of future events, but in showing forth present abuses, and in preaching the righteousness that exalteth a nation, as well as a judg ment to come. He rebuked slavery with the fierce denunciation of an Amos; he scrupled as little as did Ezekiel at the use of harsh and repellant language, if only thereby he might "make my people hear." But his eye was single to what he believed righteousness demanded for his country; his arraignment of public injustice was never in the spirit of the demagogue, seeking his own advancement. He aroused men's souls by his philippics, but his bitterest opponent could never justly accuse him of an appeal to men's passions in a cause in whose justice he did not believe with all his heart.

GEORGE H. HAYNES.

WORCESTER, MASS.

(To be Continued)

A

BOURBON COUNTY, GEORGIA

COMPLETE and historically correct account of the fruitless effort of the State of Georgia to form the county of Bourbon, so named in honor of the reigning house of France, has not hitherto been published. The territory in and contiguous to what is now the city of Natchez, Mississippi, but known then to the English as Fort Panmure, was the district in dispute. The present counties of Wilkinson, Adams, Jefferson, Claiborne and Warren, in the State of Mississippi, are included in this territory.

The correspondence referred to in this article is to be found in the Archives of Georgia, office of Secretary of State, and consists of some bundles of letters, marked " Foreign Affairs," written more than a century ago, all yellowed by age and gnawed by the tooth of time.

The grant by the British government to General Oglethorpe and the other Trustees comprised what are now the entire States of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, except that portion of Alabama and Mississippi lying below the thirty-first degree of north latitude, which portion of those States were originally a part of West Florida. The French settlements, before their capitulation to the Spaniards in 1779, extended up the Mississippi, embracing both its sides above the mouth of the Red River, which discharges into the Mississippi in the thirty-first degree of north latitude. The east side of the Mississippi, from the mouth of Bayou Manchac, fourteen miles below Baton Rouge, up to the thirty-first degree of north latitude, was the boundary line between West Florida and Louisiana. Above this point Spain claimed jurisdiction; but Georgia disputed jurisdiction on the east bank and claimed all territory lying between the thirty-first and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude, There were many settlements made by Americans upon this territory at a very early day, at Natchez, Fort Adams, several on the Tombigbee river, Saint Stephens, McIntosh's Bluff and Bassett's Creek. These settlements were the nucleus of the American populaton in Alabama and Mississippi, principally Tory refugees and fugitives from justice in the colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas The soil and climate of this territory were conducive to the production