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The injuries of Mr. Sumner were of the most dangerous character and resulted in a long-continued disability. He sought quiet and repose in another visit to Europe, where at Paris he was under medi-treatment by Dr. Brown-Sequard, under whose care he was finally restored to health; but it was evident his nervous system had received a shock from which it never wholly recovered. Mr. Sumner had been in 1857 almost, unanimously re-elected to the Senate by the Massachusetts Legislature, and on his return from Paris he resumed his stat and delivered his well-known oration on "The Barbarism of Slavery, a complement to the one for which he had been assaulted, and not in any degree milder or more conciliatory, as his Southern hearers, discovered. In the Presidential canvass which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Sumner took an active part; and in the debates in the Senate which finally led to that last attempt of the South to perpetuate the system which their great opponent had spent his life in destroying, Mr. Sumner stood up as the uncompromising enemy of compromise or concession in any shape or form. He saw that the last grand act in the drama was approaching, and he was not the man to shrink from the scene which all saw must follow.
The long contest in which Mr. Sumner had borne the brunt of the fight, ended with the firing on Fort Sumter. The final decision was to be given not in the halls of legislation, but through "blood and iron" on the field of battle. Other men now took up the strife, and the military commander now occupied that place in the public eye which before had been filled by the legislator and the orator. All eyes were directed and all the energies of the nation were concentrated on its armies, until it became apparent, that the Southern power was falling. The war was not ended, but its close was near at hand, and the statesman of the North began the consideration of a reconstruction policy. In what manner should the conquered States be readmitted to the Union? What was their footing under the Constitution? This was a problem of which the solution was sought in a thousand different ways. Mr. Sumner appears to have watched every plan introduced in Congress for the restoration of the conquered States with jealous interest. Early in the war he had advocated the unconditional emancipation of the slaves as the speediest and most effectual means to end it, and when that emancipation was effected, he stood prepared to oppose any and everything which might seem, however remotely, to militate against the