Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

Never have I asked for punishment. Most anxiously I have looked for the time, which seems now at hand, when there shall be reconciliation, not only between North and South, but between the two races; so that the two races and the two sections may be lifted from the ruts and grooves in which they are now fastened, and, instead of irritating antagonism without end, there shall be sympathetic co-operation. The existing differences ought to be ended.

His health did not allow him to take an active part in the canvass; but returning to Boston, where he was branded by some of his old political companions as an “apostate,” and deserted by many of his former anti-slavery coadjutors,--especially by Mr. Garrison, who addressed to him a trenchant letter on his defection from his party,--he spent some days with H. W. Longfellow at Lynn, and on the 5th of September left for Europe. On his arrival in Liverpool, he received the news of his nomination by the Liberals and Democrats as governor of Massachusetts. This honor he declined. He met with a cordial reception both in England and in France, and had interviews with Thiers and Gambetta; but his health was so much impaired, that his time was mostly occupied in looking over engravings and other works of art, “I have not read an American ”