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Everett, Choate, Winthrop, and Bigelow may be named.1 He found also solace and good cheer in the congenial fellowship of men and women, distinguished for antislavery activities or sympathies, who gathered almost daily in the home of Dr. Bailey of the ‘National Era.’
Hardly a foreigner of distinction ever came to Washington while Sumner was in the Senate without seeking him. At this session Jacob Bright came, commended by Harriet Martineau; Arthur h. Clough, by John Kenyon; Dr. Charles Eddy, fellow of Oxford, by Macready; but it was not till the next session that he welcomed Thackeray.
Among old English friends who visited Washington in 1852 were Lord and Lady Wharncliffe,2 accompanied by their daughter, since Lady Henry Scott. Lord Wharncliffe, after his return home in the spring of 1852, wrote Sumner long and friendly letters; and though highly conservative, was sympathetic with his friend's antislavery position.
J. J. Ampere, then a visitor in Washington, continued there the acquaintance with the senator which had begun in Boston.
Sumner's first speech was made on the tenth day of the session, on the resolution of welcome to Kossuth.
When the Hungarian patriot, after the subjugation of his country by the Austrians, aided by a Russian army, was in the friendly custody of Turkey, Congress by resolution, March 3, 1851, expressing the sympathy of the people, authorized the employment of a public vessel to convey him and his fellow exiles to the United States; and having been conveyed to England in one of our steam frigates, he proceeded, after a few weeks of sojourn in that country, to New York, where he arrived December 5.
He was greeted with extraordinary demonstrations of admiration and good-will; and the enthusiasm which swept over the city not only pervaded the populace, but extended in a large degree to the educated classes, lawyers, clergymen, and editors.3
Coming as he did with a national invitation, there was a propriety, it was thought, in according to Kossuth a national reception.
On the first day of the session, when he was still on the
1 Mr. Eames, Minister to Venezuela under Pierce, died in 1867, and Sumner was pallbearer at his funeral. Just before his death, he sent to the senator a message of personal affection and of admiration for his career in the Senate. Mrs. Eames (nee Campbell), living in Washington most of the time while Sumner was in the Senate, died in 1890.
2 John Stuart Wortley, the second Lord Wharncliffe.
3 Parke Godwin, of the New York Evening Post, was one of his most earnest advocates.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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