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in any way wanting in courtesy or duty.
Sumner had made up his mind, however, that until the secretary retracted the insult, his relations with him could be only official.
Two days after, he communicated to
Mr. Fish his views on the subject of their interview in writing.
Then as always he held himself ready to confer and co-operate officially with the secretary; but no man with any sense of honor could keep up friendly or personal relations with one who had imputed to him the baseness charged in the letter to
Moran.
After this meeting
Sumner declined to recognize
Mr. Fish at a dinner at
Mr. Schenck's house.
Sumner, in reply to a note from
Edward Eggleston of
Brooklyn, wrote from the
Senate chamber while
Schurz was speaking on his proposed removal, March 10, the following note:—
The President has such relations with me as he chooses.
I have never declined to see him or confer with him. If there is a quarrel, it is all on his side.
The Secretary of State sent to me through Senator Patterson to know if I would receive him if he came to my house on business.
I replied that I had a deep sense of wrong from him, but that I should receive him at any time, or confer with him, on public business.
Accordingly, he came to my house, and I received him kindly.
Afterwards, when meeting him socially, I gave him the cold shoulder. . . . Mr. Fish insulted me personally in his despatch to Motley.1
Sumner wrote afterwards:—
On careful reflection, it seemed to me plain that while meeting the secretary officially, it would not be consistent with self-respect for me to continue personal relations with one who had put his name to a document which, after protracted fury toward another [Motley], contained a studied insult to me, where the fury was intensified rather than tempered by too obvious premeditation.
Public business must not suffer, but in such a case personal relations naturally cease; and this rule I have followed since.
Is there any senator who would have done less?
Are there not many who would have done more?
I am at a loss to understand how the secretary could expect anything beyond those official relations which I declared my readiness at all titles to maintain, and which, even after his assault on me, he was willing to seek at my own house.
To expect more shows on his part grievous insensibility to the thing he had done.
Whatever one signs he makes his own; and the secretary, when he signed this document, adopted a libel upon his friend; and when he communicated it to the Senate he published the libel.
Nothing like it can be
