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

It was Sumner's earnest wish to meet his fellow-citizens once before the election in Faneuil Hall, the place where he had so often met them, and declare to them face to face his convictions as to their duty. He afterwards said to his physician that he was deterred from the effort, not by fear of death, but by fear of paralysis or mental disability as the consequence. Instead thereof he passed the manuscript of his intended speech to his friend Mr. Bird, who had it published in the newspapers on the morning after his departure.¹ In his proposed address he touched briefly on the objections to the President, growing out of his qualities and acts; but in this respect it was less highly wrought than his speech in the Senate. He reviewed his own record on the reconstruction of the South, maintaining that during his support of a thorough policy he had kept in view the time of reconciliation, which he now believed at hand; and he regarded any present outbreaks in that section against the colored people as ‘sporadic cases, . . . local incidents, . . . sallies of local disaffection or of personal brutality.’ He accepted the approval by the Democratic party of the Cincinnati candidate and platform as the promise of a new era, as the tender of an olive branch, which for the sake of the country should be accepted.

The third of September was his day of sailing, less than three weeks after his arrival in Massachusetts. Only a few friends knew of his proposed journey. At 11 A. M. he drove with his colored friend J. B. Smith to T. wharf, where a party of friends had gathered to bid him good-by, as he went on board the tender,—among whom were Hillard, Bird, E. P. Whipple, G. H. Monroe, Martin Milmore, and E. L. Pierce. Most of them parted with him at the wharf, but Hillard, Pierce, and one or two others accompanied him to the steamship Malta, then lying below the lower lighthouse. While the tender was on its way, Sumner and Hillard sat for an hour or more together in the pilot-house. The senator seemed to be in good spirits, and his talk was of the improved facilities for at Atlantic voyage, the galleries be intended to visit, the rest from work before him, and the expectation of meeting his physician, Dr. Brown-Sequard, in Paris. His first anxiety as he reached the ship was, as always in his voyages, to see if his berth was long enough, and the carpenter was sent for to make a new one. Mr. Smith handed him a large