served nearly four months from the commencement of drill in the companies. We were paid off in gold by Major Thomas H. Halsey, and then the First Vermont Infantry ceased to exist, and its component members scattered, to return to the field,-the greater number of them, -in other organizations. Six hundred of them re-enlisted, and two hundred and fifty became commissioned officers. Of the Woodstock Company one attained the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers, another became colonel of the Sixth Vermont, seven were captains and ten lieutenants.

One of the proprietors of the grocery store we frequented when the company was organizing and drilling was Daniel Stearns, an old Mexican soldier, and formerly a resident of Skowhegan. "It makes me laugh," he used to say to us, "to hear you boys talking of getting out after your three-months' service. You'll find that when you have begun to follow the drum you will have to keep on just as long as the music holds out." And we found it so.

For myself, I had greatly enjoyed my initiation into the soldier's life. I was glad that I had begun by carrying a musket and had received so good a training as a soldier in the ranks. The spirit of comradery was strong in the company and there never was any strife or bickering among its members. I had a friendly regard for them all, and I made many friends, too, in other companies of the regiment. In the course of the war I met many of my comrades of the 1st Vermont. On the way to Gettysburg we marched past the 16th Vermont, which under Veazey did such gallant service on that field, halted by the roadside, and three or four old messmates in the 1st Vermont, officers of the 16th, came out to see me. There was but one opportunity in the company for promotion, caused by the resignation of a lieutenant, and the advancement of the ranking non-commissioned officer left a vacancy for a corporal which was filled by my appointment. On being mustered out the offer was made me of a captaincy in Colonel Stoughton's regiment (4th Vermont), then forming. I declined because I proposed to return to the field with men of my own state. Several weeks before the expiration of my service I was informed that a company had been raised in my native town, Fairfield, and that I had

been chosen captain, and I was urged to get my discharge and take the company at once. I preferred, for some reason, to serve out my enlistment. I arrived in Augusta the twenty-first of August, and learned that my company had been assigned to the 7th Maine, and that, by some misunderstanding, both Captain T. W. Hyde, of the Bath Company, and I had been elected Major. Governor Washburn arranged the matter by appointing me lieutenant-colonel. The 7th was mustered in the next day and left for Baltimore where I joined it a fortnight afterwards.

The first instalment of the boys of '61, the seventy-five thousand of the President's first call, constituted a limited association which was considered to have an option on putting down the Rebellion in ninety days. The new association was practically unlimited; there was a chance for everybody who wanted to help and was willing to stand by the Union for three years at least. The events of the three months had given a more serious aspect to the situation. Yet with equal readiness the second instalment of volunteers enlisted under the flag, to suffer and to die under it, or to triumph with it.

PORTLAND, ME.

SELDEN CONNOR.

I

CHARLES SUMNER

(Second Paper)

N 1848, Sumner's name stood second on the call, sent forth from his office, for the convening at Worcester of all the citizens of the Commonwealth opposed to the nominations of Cass and Taylor; and his was the speech which at this beginning of the separate Free Soil organization in Massachusetts-the forerunner of the Republican Party— did most to fire the patriotism of the thousands there assembled. The line soon became clearly drawn between the "Conscience Whigs" and the "Cotton Whigs." In the months that followed, balked in all efforts to induce the Whig Party as a whole to take a positive stand against the advance of slavery, the Free Soilers turned to the Democrats, and in coalition with them fought through the State campaign of 1850. Sumner, on the eve of the election, summed up the issues in a great speech in Faneuil Hall. Denouncing the new fugitive slave law in scathing terms, he invoked not violence but "the contempt, the indignation, the abhorrence of the community" as "the weapons which should drive the slave-hunter out of Massachusetts." Referring to the fact that he himself was commissioner of a United States Court, and that before him "the panting fugitive might be dragged for the decision whether he is a freeman or a slave," Sumner said "I cannot forget that I am a man, although I am a commissioner." To the oft-urged claim that the Compromise had settled the slavery question, came his ringing retort: "Nothing, sir, can be settled which is not right!"

That speech made Sumner the Free Soilers' inevitable choice for the Senate. Yet such was the reluctance to send to Washington so radical a leader that, in violation of their caucus pledge, Democratic members of the Legislature refused to support him. For more than three months the election was deadlocked, till finally recourse was had to a practice disused almost from the days of the Revolution: in several towns the citizens met in special town-meeting, and adopted express instructions to their representatives to vote for Charles Sumner. Obedience to this mandate secured his election by a majority of one vote. The event was hailed not only in Massachusetts but in other States with

beacon fires, the ringing of bells, the firing of guns and holding of public meetings. Yet it brought to Sumner no exultation. "From the bottom of my heart," he wrote to his brother, "I say that I do not wish to be Senator. The honors of the post have no attraction for me; and I feel a pang at the thought that I now bid farewell to that life of quiet study which I had hoped to pursue I am met constantly by joyful faces but I have no joy; my heart is heavy." From Theodore Parker came a greeting which was also a prophecy:-"You told me once that you were in morals, not in politics. Now I hope that you are still in morals, although in politics. I hope that you will be the senator with a conscience."

In this year, when Sumner entered upon his new career, the Senate underwent a great transformation. Calhoun had died during the previous session. Webster had become Secretary of State, and his voice was never again to be heard in the Senate. Henry Clay, the father of three great compromises, for the last time tottered feebly out of the Senate Chamber the very day that Charles Sumner, the inveterate foe of compromise, entered its doors. Benton, just defeated for re-election because of his opposition to the Compromise, greeted Sumner warmly, but told him that "he had come to the Senate too late. All the great men were gone. There was nothing left but snarling over slavery, and no chance whatever for a career.

To the surprise of friends and foes alike, Sumner set himself quietly to study the routine duties of a senator, and to understand his new environment. Months passed, and not a word came from him upon the burning issue of the day. Only three weeks of the nine month's session remained, when he sought to address the Senate, only to find-so great was the reluctance of men of both parties to have slavery discussed on the eve of a presidential election-that by a vote of three to one he was denied a hearing. Alert, he bided his time. Finally, there was introduced an appropriation bill, which, as Sumner knew, covered certain expenses incurred in the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. Instantly he was upon his feet with an amendment to exclude from the bill payment for all such charges, and to provide that the "Fugitive Slave Act" be thereby repealed; and forthwith, as a matter of parliamentary right,

which none could gainsay, he launched into the speech which he had long been preparing. "Freedom National, Slavery Sectional" was its key-note. That speech marked an epoch in American history. Chase caught its true significance at the time: he declared that it marked the day when the advocates of the restriction of slavery, "no longer content to stand on the defensive in the contest with slavery, boldly attacked the very citadel of its power [in that doctrine of finality, which two of the political parties of the country, through their national organizations, are endeavoring to establish as the impregnable defense of its usurpations."] And Horace Mann wrote home to Massachusetts: “The 26th of August, 1852, redeemed the 7th of March, 1850." But by the champions of slavery the speech was held in quite a different light. An Alabama senator urged his colleagues to make no reply to it, adding: "I shall only say, sir, that the ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm." In a later debate Sumner denied that the Constitution imposed upon him any such obligation "as to aid in sending back a fugitive slave." For this statement of his interpretation of the Constitution, he was denounced as "a miscreant,' a sneaking, sinuous, snake-like poltroon," one who could not "in a moral point of view find anyone beneath himself." Sumner bore a heavy part in the opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, with its repudiation of the Missouri Compromise restriction of slavery. Soon that measure brought forth its legitimate fruit in bloody strife. Men sent from New England by the Emigrant Aid Company sought to save the new territories for freedom, while "border ruffians" from Missouri, with recruits from Alabama, and even from far-away South Carolina fought for the prize. Everywhere there was a boding sense of coming disaster. At just this time there came before the Senate two reports which precipitated a discussion of Kansas affairs. Anticipation grew tense. Sumner had been the man most viciously assailed by the pro-slavery speakers, and no one doubted that he would now reply with utter fearlessness, and set forth the naked truth as he saw it. His text was at hand, for at the moment when he rose to speak, everyone in Washington knew that blood would soon be shed in Kansas, and before night fell, news came that the Free-state town of Lawrence lay at the mercy of the mob. "The Crime against Kansas was the

99 66