As you would expect from a man who raised himself from the humblest to the loftiest place in the republic, he was a believer in pure manhood, without respect of persons or conditions.

But he knew what the farmer and the mechanic and the workman at his bench were thinking of, and addressed himself always to their best and highest thought.

But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night.

That was his rare and unequalled gift of gathering and uttering the sentiment of the people.

But it was a great thing for Massachusetts, a great thing for human liberty, and a great thing for Charles Sumner himself that he had Henry Wilson as a friend and ally, a disciple and a co-worker.

Wilson's hold upon the affection of the people everywhere was very strong indeed.

In conclusion, I said it did not become the political friends of the men who had burned our soldiers alive at Fort Pillow, or who burned orphan asylums in New York, and hung negroes on lamp posts, to talk of cruelties in a past age.

When he left office at the ripe age of seventy-five a public service ended surpassed in variety and usefulness by that of few citizens of Massachusetts since the days of John Adams.

He raised himself from a humble place, unaided, under the stimulant of a native and eager desire for excellence.

He was always regarded by the working people of Massachusetts as the type of what was best in themselves and as the example and representative of the great opportunity which the Republic holds out to its poorest citizens and their children.

But he was a man of large and comprehensive vision, of independence, and exerted his vast influence with the people for high ends.

His election as Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives was part of the first victory over the Whig Dynasty which had kept the State, contrary to its best traditions, in alliance with slavery.

General Banks's statue should stand by the State House as one of the foremost benefactors of the great educational institutions of the Commonwealth, and as an example of what a generous ambition can accomplish for the humblest child in the…

He is one of the best recent examples of a character whose external manifestations change somewhat with changing manners and fashions, but the substance of whose quality abides and I believe will abide through many succeeding generations.

He brought to the service of the people a purity of heart, a perfect integrity, an austerity of virtue which not so much rendered him superior to all temptation as made it impossible to conceive that any of the objects of personal desire…

His mind moved rapidly by a very simple and direct path to a sound and correct result in the most difficult and complicated cases.

Beneath his plain courtesy was a firmness which Cato never surpassed.

Upon a question of morality, or freedom or righteousness there was never a drop of compromise in his blood.

He could not be otherwise than the constant foe of slavery, and the constant friend of everything which went to emancipate and elevate the slave.

If there be any admirer of other forms of government who think unfavorably of our republican fashion of selecting our rulers, I would invite him to examine the list of men whom Massachusetts for a hundred years has chosen as her Senators…

She has sent men who were worthy to be peers of the men who have represented her sister States, and if that be true, they surely have been worthy to be peers in any Senate that was ever gathered upon earth.

The line begins with Tristram Dalton, save Washington the stateliest gentleman of his time, rich in every mental accomplishment, whose presence graced and ennobled every assembly that he entered.

He breasted the stormy waves of the House of Representatives at the age of eighty, and when he died in the Capitol, he left no purer or loftier fame behind him.

Next in the procession comes the majestic presence of Daniel Webster, whose matchless logic and splendid eloquence gave to the Constitution of the country an authority in the reason and in the hearts of his countrymen equal to anything in…

He has fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career, and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave.