8
11
“ Charles Sumner ,” The Daily Constitutionalist [ Atlanta , GA ], 17 March 1874 , 2 .
12
Thomas W . Laqueur , The Work of the Dead : A Cultural History of Mortal Remains ( 2015 ), 1 .
13
Sumner , “ Tribute of Friendship ,” 148 .
Supreme Court of the United States form an important part of no less than thirtyfour volumes more .” Story was , as Sumner put it , “ the Walter Scott of the Common Law ,” naming a notoriously prolific nineteenth-century novelist . Sumner ’ s eulogy veers without subtlety into a display of Sumner ’ s own erudition in legal history , dropping names such as Coke , Mansfield , and Stowell ( Lords all ) that probably meant little to the average reader of his time and even less now , but which staked the claim for Story ’ s membership in their exalted ranks . Latin verses and allusions to Greek philosophy are mixed in as well .
When Charles Sumner died of a heart attack in 1874 at the age of 63 , his funeral at Mount Auburn was attended by tens of thousands people anxious to have one last memory of a great man . Speeches , prayers , and encomia were printed in the Northern newspapers ; schools were closed . But in the former Confederacy , feelings were different . “ In the South ,” ran an editorial in the Atlanta Daily Constitutionalist newspaper shortly after Sumner ’ s death , “ there is an almost universal effort to speak as charitably as possible of one who inflicted upon this section [ the South ] the deadliest wrongs .” The editorial made other comments so offensive that I will not reprint them here , blaming Sumner personally for the changes wrought in the South after the Civil War ; it ended , “ peace to the living who have cause to regret the day that this idol of the moment ever was born into the breathing world .” 11 Words dedicated to the dead are not always kind .
What is the work of the dead ?
If they had no useful place in human society , we would not care where we laid their bones or where our own bones were laid . But we do care . As Joseph Story put it in his Consecration Address at the Cemetery in 1831 , “ Dust as we are , the frail tenements , which enclose our spirits but for a season , are … inexpressibly dear to us .” Death brings a terrible indignity to a human being : the “ disenchanted corpse ” becomes “ bereft , vulnerable , abject ,” in the words of historian Thomas W . Laqueur . 12 The dead need our protection , and we who give this protection not only rise in the esteem of others but feel quieter in ourselves .
And words matter as much as deeds . The simple — or verbose or poetic or clever — words that may be carved on someone ’ s memorial stone convey a message more durable that any book or speech . On Joseph Story ’ s handsome family monument , as Sumner noted , were the words “ Sorrow not as those without hope ,” taken from 1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 14 : an encouragement to look on death not as the end but the beginning of a new phase of existence . And our words to the dead , in interior monologue , in prayer , in song , in obituaries , and — yes — in letters , allow us to feel that the dead have not abandoned us and we have not abandoned them .
Mount Auburn gives us a garden in which we can continue our conversations with the dead . The Cemetery certainly functioned in that way for Joseph Story , who brought the remains of five of his children to Mount Auburn so that the family could be close together for eternity , and who may have walked the grounds silently sounding out his departed colleague Ashmun , interred on Harvard Hill , on some point of law . The Cemetery functioned that way for Charles Sumner , remembering Judge Story as teacher and friend : “ His words of familiar , household greeting still linger in my ears , like an enchanted melody .” 13 Finally , it did so for Isabelle , whose thoughtful celebration of Sumner ’ s civil-rights legacy keeps the conversation going , into the next generation and beyond .