Senator Charles Sumner to John Bigelow, March 2, 1852

Congress and all the world have a vacation to-day to quaff fresh air, sunshine, and champagne on board the 'Baltic.'¹ I voted for the adjournment, but did not care to put myself in the great man-trap set especially for members of Congress. I see nothing certain in the Presidential horizon. In all my meditations I revert with new regret to the attempted reconciliation in '49 in your State. Without that we should now control the free States.

I read carefully and enjoyed much Mr. Bryant's address.² It was a truthful, simple, and delicate composition, and, much as I value sculpture and Greenough, I cannot but add will be a more durable monument to Cooper than any other. Webster's historical article was crude and trite enough.

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¹ Of the Collins line of steamships, whose owners were then seeking a subsidy.

²  On J. Fenimore Cooper, Feb. 25, 1852, at a meeting of which Mr. Webster was chairman, called to raise funds for a monument to the novelist. Sumner's reply to the invitation to attend the meeting is printed in his Works, vol. iii. p. 43.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 279