sweet auburn | 2022 volume i
The Roberts case was just the beginning for Sumner , who would go on to become U . S . Senator from the Free Soil Party of Massachusetts . As our letter-writer Isabelle noted , Sumner was viciously beaten on the Senate floor after speaking forcefully and at length against the incipient introduction of slavery into the new state of Kansas in 1856 . ( This speech , too , was hastily printed and distributed as “ The Crime Against Kansas ”; it remains one of the most powerful condemnations of the slave system ever written .) The beating , inflicted with a gold-tipped cane by U . S . Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina , came close to killing Sumner and affected him for the rest of his life . 7
Isabelle ’ s letter reminded us that , much as she wrote to keep alive the memory of her hero Charles Sumner , so Sumner gave the funeral address of his friend and law mentor , Cemetery founder Joseph Story ( 1779 – 1845 ). Sumner ’ s words provide for posterity a sense of the love that Story inspired in his community and his importance for Sumner personally . He wrote : “[ I ] s he dead , I asked myself ,— whose face was never turned to me , except in affection ,— who has filled the civilized world with his name , and drawn to his country the homage of foreign nations ,— who was of activity and labor that knew no rest ,— who was connected with so many circles by duties of such various kinds , by official ties , by sympathy , by friendship and love ,— who , according to the beautiful expression of Wilberforce , ‘ touched life at so many points ,’— has he indeed , passed away ?” 8 Sumner then proceeds to give a tour of Mount Auburn Cemetery , noting the other Boston notables buried along a winding route from Joseph Story ’ s burial spot at Narcissus Path 9 to the Egyptian Gate . “ From the grave of the Judge I walked a few short steps to that of his classmate and friends , the beloved [ William ] Channing , who died less than three years ago , aged sixty-two . Thus these companions in early studies … again meet and lie down together in the same sweet earth , in the shadow of kindred trees , through which the same birds sing a perpetual requiem .” From Channing , Sumner sought the grave of another worthy , John Hooker Ashmun , Esq ., Royall Professor of Law in Harvard University , who died at the tender age of 33 just two years after the Cemetery ’ s founding in 1831 . Story himself had given “ a discourse at the funeral obsequies ” ( as they were then called ) for Ashmun , as Sumner noted : “ I remember listening , in 1833 , to the flowing discourse which Story pronounced … over the departed ; nor can I forget his deep emotion , as we stood together at the foot of the grave , while the earth fell , dust to dust , upon the coffin of his friend .” 10 His meditative tour of the Cemetery ends , appropriately , with a setting sun “ as the porter ’ s curfew was tolling to forgetful musers like myself the warning to leave .”
Sumner ’ s tribute to his mentor then veers into legal history , as he strove to situate Joseph Story in the history of American jurisprudence . We must remember how young the United States was when Story began his legal career , and how much remained to be determined about its laws . Any opinion that Story wrote in his capacity as associate justice of the U . S . Supreme Court , to which he was nominated by President James Madison in 1811 at the age of 32 , might be the very first to be written for the country on a particular point of law . Sumner notes with awe that “[ h ] is written judgments on his circuit , and his various commentaries , occupy twenty-seven volumes , while his judgments in the
8
Charles Sumner , “ Tribute of Friendship : The Late Joseph Story ,” The Works of Charles Sumner , vol . 1 ( Boston : Lee and Shepard , 1870 ), 133 – 48 .
9
Narcissus Path at that time still encircled a pool of water called Forest Pond , which was later drained and filled . See Blanche M . G . Linden , Silent City on a Hill ( 2007 ), 206 .
10
Sumner , “ Tribute of Friendship ,” 135 .
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