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

“ [93] person of more ability, ‘ he says with sweet simplicity, ’ with my knowledge of facts, would have written better; but the object of my ambition was not the fame of an author. Hearing the cry of the miserable, I devoted my time to their relief. ‘ And, lastly, there is Clarkson, who while yet a pupil of the university commenced those life-long labors against slavery and the slave-trade, which have embalmed his memory. Writing an essay on the subject as a college-exercise, his soul warmed with the task; and at a period when even the horrors of the ’ middle passage ‘ had not excited condemnation, he entered the lists, the stripling champion of the right.--He has left a record of the moment when this duty seemed to flash upon him. He was on horseback, on his way from Cambridge to London. ’ Coming in sight of Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire, ‘ he says, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came over my mind, that, if the contents of my essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end.’ Pure and noble impulse to a beautiful career!”

After such exalted models Mr. Sumner formed the ideal for his own life. In the Whig State Convention at Springfield, Sept. 29, 1847, he made a stirring speech against supporting any pro-slavery man for the presidential chair, and urging uncompromising