My means for information are so limited that I do not express an opinion upon the question whether Mr. Sumner's ambitions in public life were or were not gratified. On one or two occasions he let fall remarks which indicated a willingness to be transferred to the Department of State. Major Ben. Perley Poore had received the impression that there was a time when Mr. Sumner looked to the Presidency as a possibility. At an accidental meeting with Major Poore, he said to me: "I have dined with Sumner, and he gave me an account of the conversation he had with you this morning, in which you consoled him for not gaining the Presidency."
I recalled the conversation. It was a Sunday-morning talk, and there was no special purpose on my part, however my remarks may have been received by Mr. Sumner. He spoke of the opportunity furnished to Mr. Jefferson for the exposition of his views in his first inaugural address. I then proceeded to say that, omitting the incumbent of the office, of whom nothing could then be said, not more than three or four men had gained in standing by their elevation to the Presidency, beyond the fact that their names were upon the roll. The exceptions were, first of all, Lincoln, who had gained most. Then Jackson, who had gained something--indeed, a good deal by his defence of the Union when compared with what he might have lost by neglect of duty in the days of nullification. Washington had gained much by demonstrating his capacity for civil affairs, by the legacy of his farewell address, and by the shaping of the new government under the Constitution in a manner calculated to strengthen the quality of perpetuity. At the end, I claimed that the other occupants of the Presidential office had not gained appreciably by their promotion.
In two important particulars, Samuel Adams and Charles Sumner are parallel characters in American history. Mr. Adams was a leader in the contest that the colonies carried on against Great Britain. Our legal standing in the controversy with the mother country has never elsewhere been presented as forcibly and logically as it was stated by Mr. Adams in his letters to the royal governors in the name of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, between the years 1764 and 1775. When the contest of words and of arms was over he was not only not an aid in the organization of the new Government, but he was an obstacle to its success. He accepted the Constitution with hesitation and under constraint. After the overthrow of slavery and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Mr. Sumner gave no wise aid to the work of reconstructing the government upon the basis of the new conditions that had been created by the war and by the abolition of slavery. As every guarantee for freedom contains some element of enslavement over or against some who are not within the guarantee, men sometimes hesitate as to the wisdom of accepting guarantees of rights in one direction which work a limitation of rights or privileges in other directions. The Constitution of the United States, while it gave power to the body of States and guaranteed security to each yet deprived the individual States of many of the privileges and powers that they had enjoyed as colonies. Every amendment to the Constitution, from the first to the last, has limited the application of the doctrine of home rule in government.