. The great American book of biography . umner took a leading was strongly opposed to thethirteenth and fourteenth amend-ments to the Constitution, uponthe ground that they were un-necessary, though he finallychanged his position sufficientlyto give them a lukewarm sup-port. The fifteenth amendment,guaranteeing equal rights to allmen without distinction, might seem to be the consummation of his lifes work, but he opposed it upon thesame ground as the others, and finally voted against it. After the close of the war, Mr. Sumner turned his attention to the securingof civil rights to the f
. The great American book of biography . umner took a leading was strongly opposed to thethirteenth and fourteenth amend-ments to the Constitution, uponthe ground that they were un-necessary, though he finallychanged his position sufficientlyto give them a lukewarm sup-port. The fifteenth amendment,guaranteeing equal rights to allmen without distinction, might seem to be the consummation of his lifes work, but he opposed it upon thesame ground as the others, and finally voted against it. After the close of the war, Mr. Sumner turned his attention to the securingof civil rights to the freed and recently enfranchised negroes. Measures for thispurpose he advocated on all occasions, keeping the subject in mind until thevery last, when almost his dying speech was addressed to Judge Hoar: Donot let the Civil Rights Bill fail. Upon the opening of the Forty-second Con-gress, he offered a resolution directing that the names of battles with fellow-citizens shall not be continued in the Army Register or placed on the regimental. lAMES BUCHANAN. 274 CHARLES SUMNER. colors of the United States. This proposition oreatly offended a large numberof his friends, and called forth the formal censure of the Massachusetts Legis-lature, much to his mortification. The resolution was doubtless instigated, aswas suggested in the preamble, mainly by a desire to efface the memory of pastdifferences and to remove ev^ery occasion for harsh feeling. The action of theLegislature was, two years later, rescinded and annulled, and information ofthis fact reached Mr. Sumner just in time to soothe the last days of his died in Washington, of heart disease, March 11, 1874. It remains to add a few words as to some personal facts. Charles Sumnerunited to those qualities of mind and heart which made him so intensely lovedby his friends and so conspicuously useful as a public servant, a personal appear-ance and carriage which added materially to his attractiveness and gaveadditional force to
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