I am sick at heart
when I observe the apostasies to freedom. There is one thing needful in our
public men—backbone.1 In this is comprised that moral firmness,
without which they yield to the pressure of interests of party, of fashion, of
public opinion. . . . In reading the life of Wilberforce, I was pleased to
follow the references to your grandfather, who seems to have seen much of the
great abolitionist.
_______________
1 Governor Briggs was without courage, and
took no public position against Webster.
SOURCE: Edward L.
Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 214
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