Yet how can any
personal account of such a man do him justice. It may be said of him
that he was a model husband, a kind father, and an exemplary citizen,
and that is all. During his lifetime there were people who did him great
injustice. His reserved life was looked upon as a morbid selfishness.
The rare publication of his writings was supposed to arise from
indolence. It was thought that he wrote the life of Franklin Pierce for
the sake of a government office, and when he was actually appointed
consul at Liverpool, the case was proved beyond a doubt. The
anti-slavery people looked upon him as a lamentable exception to the
other literary men of America, who were all on their side: they doubted
if he had been born with any sense of right and wrong. What answer can
be made to such accusations? When it is a question of motive, of moral
consciousness, how are such charges to be refuted?
So President Garfield has often been accused of appointing an efficient
and honest collector for the port of New York, in the interest of
mercenary politics. Charles Sumner for preventing the annexation of San
Domingo, was called a traitor to the negro race, and it was said that
his speech on the subject was delivered under the influence of brandy. A
college-professor informed his class that Sumner was a man of small
erudition, and Garrison spoke of him as one who had evidently joined the
anti-slavery cause from interested motives.
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