Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[485] ships and the Ku-Klux outrages at the South, with an intimation that the time and effort applied to schemes of annexation would, if properly directed, have saved Southern Unionists from harm. The comparison was not just or pertinent. The President had gone as far as any Republican could ask in suppressing violence at the South. He might not have paid due respect to the limitations of international law in his support of a pretender in San Domingo; he might, consciously or unconsciously, through the navy have menaced the sovereignty of Hayti; but personal injury to any one, least of all the assassinations and midnight outrages practised by the Ku-Klux clan, were furthest from his thought. This reference to the President drew applause from the galleries; but Sumner's best friends, who were satisfied with the speech up to this point, withheld their approval of this passage, which he had without proper weighing inserted at the last.¹

While the audience in the galleries listened with profound interest, there was restlessness among a certain division of the senators. At first they affected to be busily occupied at their desks in correspondence, but later on they engaged in audible conversation. Sumner paused once when annoyed in this way by Conkling and Hamlin, and again when interrupted by a conference between Edmunds and Carpenter, saying at the second interruption that his voice was worn and lacked the strength it had once. A direction from the chair brought a forced apology and silence.²

The San Domingo senators arranged at first that the speech should be received without reply, but they did not adhere to this understanding. Morton commented on its untimeliness, coming on the very day that the commissioners were to arrive from San Domingo. Howe compared Sumner to statesmen, ancient and modern, who had fallen from their first estate;³ upbraided him for the injustice he had done to the President, the savior of his country, and strangely enough reproached him for not having promptly protested against the alleged wrongs. Frelinghuysen and Harlan followed in the same line, and justified the