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the honor and admiration of our race forever, was in trying to secure the passage of the Civil Rights' Bill, and thus abolish all distinctions between races, colors and nationalities, as well as to give to his country what few, if any, upon the face of the globe can claim, a code of cosmopolitan laws. In this the great senator rises to a grandeur that will enshrine his name in the affections of men of every clime. Generations now sleeping in the womb of the future, will come forth with richer words and swifter pens to fringe his name with glittering gems.
When the kings and queens of earth shall be forgotten or remembered in contempt, and the heroes of the battle field shall no longer be admired, the name of Sumner shall still glow upon the pages of history; and the poet-muse shall weave it into song, while the reformers of all nations will quote his remarks as the preachers of the gospel quote from the sacred scriptures. The only shadow that fell over the dying couch of Mr. Sumner, was the black prejudiced, which had stayed the passage of that bill; for this he had labored for years and waited with patience. I have no doubt but his bludgeon-fractured head and worn-out frame Would have died a year sooner, had that bill been passed. It made the soul linger in the body and loth to quit its hold. He would rise up from a bed of prostration and crawl to the Senate Chamber, to watch his Civil Rights' Bill. The desire of seeing that bill become a law was a greater stimulant to his shattered constitution than all the medical excitives known to pharmacology, for he was the unquestionable father of civil rights; it was never thought of till he raised the question. He had even then to educate both colors to its importance and worth. Many colored people at first thought such a measure premature and useless, and, I am sorry to say, I was one.
For I never could understand the necessity and indispensability of such a measure being enacted, till I read it in Mr. Sumner's speeches. In this God made him the school-master of the nation. Thus he comprehended the wants of the negro better than thousands of them did for themselves, and the wants of the country better than any statesman, living or dead, nor did this knowledge or desire desert him even in his dying hour; the aim of his life became the charm of his death. There stood George T. Downing, the President of our Civil Eights Associations
