Charles Sumner Centenary: Historical Address: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14

“These great men had no reciprocal appreciation the one for the other. Sumner was honest in the belief that Grant knew nothing but war, and quite as honest was Grant in supposing that Sumner had done nothing but talk. The breach, in consequence, widened between the latter and his party for it naturally enough espoused the cause of the President.””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“He was Anglo-Saxon enough, Puritan and student of history enough to be sensible of the efficacy of blood and iron, at times, in the cure of intolerable ills. But his was no vulgar war for the mere ascendancy of his section in the Union. It was rather a holy crusade against wrong and for the supremacy and perpetuity of liberty in America.””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“He was at last untrammelled by constitutional conditions and limitations, was free to carry the War into Africa. “Carthago est delenda” was thenceforth ever on his lips. Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party started out to save the Union with slavery. It is the rage now, I know, to extol his marvellous sagacity and statesmanship. And I too will join in the panegyric of his great qualities. But here he was not infallible. For when he issued his Emancipation Proclamation, the South too was weighing the military necessity of a similar measure. Justice was Sumner’s solitary expedient, right his unfailing sagacity. Of no other American statesman can they be so unqualifiedly affirmed. They are indeed his peculiar distinction and glory. Here he is the transcendent figure in our political history. And””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“Rebellion with him cancelled the slave covenants of the Constitution and discharged the North from their further observance.””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“He must needs stand erect, inflexible, uncompromising, an image of Puritan intolerance and Puritan grandeur. Against his granite-like character and convictions the insolence of the South flung itself in vain.””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“Like all of Mr. Sumner’s speeches, this speech was carefully written out and largely memorized. He was deficient in the qualities of the great debater, was not able usually and easily to think quickly and effectively on his feet, to give and take hard blows within the short range of extemporaneous and hand to hand encounters. Henry””

— Archibald Henry Grimké

“Sumner’s entrance into the Senate was into the midst of a hostile camp. On either side of the chamber enemies confronted him. Southern Whigs and southern Democrats hated him. Northern Whigs and northern democrats likewise hated him. He was without party affiliation, well nigh friendless. But””

— Archibald Henry Grimké