Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[316] but three of the rebel States, had been virtually concluded at this session of Congress, Mr. Sumner said he should not consider the work completed until he saw a colored member in the Senate. During the presidential campaign of this year he favored the election of Gen. Grant, although he believed a better nomination might have been made.

On the 3d of February, 1869, he strongly advocated in the Senate the enactment of a law by Congress for equal suffrage in opposition to the constitutional amendment.

Why amend, “said he,” what is already sufficient? Why erect a supernumerary column? . . . Let this beneficent prohibition once find a place in our statute-book, and it will be as lasting as the national constitution itself, to which it will be only a legitimate corollary. . . . Once adopted, it will go into instant operation, without waiting for the uncertain concurrence of State legislatures, and without provoking local strife, so wearisome to the country. The States will not be turned into political caldrons; and the Democratic party will have no pudding-stick with which to stir the bubbling mass.

The bill for the amendment, however, prevailed; and the African race was thus constitutionally restored to the political privileges of American citizenship. To the achievement of this grand result, no one contributed more of eloquence, statesmanship, or personal effort than Charles Sumner; and by the