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

[101] weak with new virtue, to arm the irresolute with proper energy, to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail when with their precious blood they sowed the seed of the Church? Did the discomfited champions of freedom fail, who have left those names in history which can never die? Did the three hundred Spartans fail when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the sun? No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an example which is greater far than any victory. And this is the least we can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter. It will not be the first time in history that the hosts of slavery have outnumbered the champions of freedom. But where is it written that slavery finally prevailed?

“Let Massachusetts, then,” he says,--“nurse of the men and principles which made our earliest revolution,--vow herself anew to her early faith. Let her elevate once more the torch which she first held aloft. Let us, if need be, pluck some fresh coals from the living altars of France. Let us, too, proclaim, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity!’ --liberty to the captive, equality between the master and his slave, fraternity with all men, the whole comprehended ”