SUMNER TO LINCOLN. F ST.2, 12. Sunday. [December 28, 1862.] MY DEAR SIR, I enclose a note from Mr. Livermore, the author of the Historic Research on slavery in the early days of our Government, in which he expresses a desire for the pen with which you sign the immortal Proclamation. If nobody has yet spoken for it, let me. He also inquires about the MS. I hope you will be able to gratify him at least in part. CHARLES SUMNER. Annotation on envelope, in handwriting of President Lincoln: "The pen it is to be signed with.” Remarks were made during the meeting by the PRESIDENT, and Messrs. LONG, STANWOOD, HART, LORD, WOODS, W. R. LIVERMORE, and T. L. LIVERMORE. MAY MEETING HE stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 11th in THE stant, at three o'clock, P. M.; the PRESIDENT in the chair. The record of the Annual Meeting was read and approved; and in the absence of the Librarian the Recording Secretary read the usual list of donors to the Library. The Cabinet-Keeper reported the gift to the Society, by the President, of an etching of the Brattle Street Church in 1855, by Sidney Lawton Smith, and one of King's Chapel, by D. Y. Cameron, of Kippen, Stirlingshire, Scotland, issued by the Iconographic Society of Boston. The Editor announced the gift to the Society, by Samuel S. Shaw, of a number of manuscripts, among which were papers from the correspondences of the Rev. Gideon Hawley, Samuel Phillips Savage and Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. Among the last named were letters written to the Chief Justice during and after the trial of Prof. John W. Webster. George Hodges, of Cambridge, was elected a Resident Member of the Society, and William Milligan Sloane, of New York, a Corresponding Member. The PRESIDENT reported from the Council the appointment of the following committees: House Committee: Grenville H. Norcross, Samuel S. Shaw and Worthington C. Ford. Finance Committee: C. F. Adams, Grenville H. Norcross and Charles P. Greenough. The PRESIDENT then appointed as the Committee to publish the Proceedings of the Society: C. F. Adams, James Ford Rhodes and Edward Stanwood. It was voted that the income of the Massachusetts Historical Trust Fund for the past year be retained in the Treasury and expended in such objects as to the Council of the Society may seem desirable. The PRESIDENT then said: It is with more than the usual sense of regret that I have to announce the loss of one of our Resident Members, and a conspicuous one. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson died, at his home in Cambridge, at 11.30 of the night of Tuesday, the 9th instant. As Colonel Higginson was not only one of the oldest members of the Society, but a man of marked individuality, long associated in the public mind with literary work generally and historical investigation in particular, it is manifestly proper that some appreciative characterization, supplementary to the prescribed memoir, should find its place in our printed Proceedings. This, however, should come properly from some contemporary; if possible a life-long friend, in any event to a degree an associate, one who knew him well when young. But, graduating seventy years ago at the coming Harvard Commencement, Colonel Higginson had considerably outlived every member of this Society of his college days; for Mr. Thornton K. Lothrop entered Harvard four years after Colonel Higginson had left, and when the class of '41 had already ceased to be even a tradition among undergraduates. Colonel Higginson graduated in Quincy's time; Mr. Lothrop in that of Sparks. He having therefore outlived all his younger-day contemporaries, that which under certain circumstances could most appropriately here be said of Colonel Higginson as part of his funeral obsequies can as well be said at a future meeting. There has been no time for notice and preparation. In now announcing Colonel Higginson's death, I shall also confine myself strictly to usage, referring only to his connection with this Society. Though born in 1823, it was not until he was in his fifty-seventh year that Colonel Higginson was elected a Resident Member. This fact has a certain historical connection in itself not without interest; and a reference to it may, I think, very properly find a place in our records, as it throws light on conditions which have long since passed away, and which will in future be little understood, and accordingly subject to misconstruction of some sort. Though Colonel Higginson should manifestly have been made a member of the Society at a much earlier day, it was not until 1876 that he became a Corresponding Member, eleven years after the close of the War of Secession, and while he was himself a resident of Rhode Island. Later he returned to Massachusetts, and was then chosen a Resident Member, or rather his name. was transferred from the Corresponding roll to that of Resident membership. This occurred at the February meeting of 1880. He was, therefore, nearly fifty-three years of age before he was made a Corresponding Member, and fifty-six before he became a Resident Member. This fact, in connection with Colonel Higginson, is suggestive of two other not dissimilar cases, that of Charles Sumner and that of Edmund Quincy. Charles Sumner, in spite of his eminence and his turn for historical investigation, was, it will be remembered, not chosen a Resident Member of the Society until October, 1873, when he had reached the mature age of sixty-two. He died only five months later (March 11, 1874). It was much the same with Edmund Quincy. Though born in 1808, Mr. Quincy was not elected a Resident Member of the Society until December, 1869, when he was in his sixty-second year. Though the fact is now well-nigh forgotten, the same influence in all these cases prevented, or delayed, recognition. It is to be remembered, that for many years preceding, and for some years immediately following, the War of Secession, political feeling ran strong in Massachusetts, and especially in Boston; prejudices contracted during the earlier period were slow in dying away. This accounts for the delays referred to. All those I have named belonged to the extreme anti-slavery class. They also, it must be confessed, were men not without what may mildly be termed a certain incisiveness of speech. In this respect, it is true, they none of them, even Charles Sumner, equalled Wendell Phillips, who, again, never was elected into our Society. To those then living, and familiar at the time with facts and personal idiosyncrasies, this last case of omission is more easily explained. Mr. Phillips, though a philanthropist and a man intellectually gifted, noted as such for a freedom of speech rarely surpassed — whether as respects eloquence or denunciation - was yet a man of essentially inaccurate mind. To use the mildest form of appropriate expression, he was reckless in historical assertion, never caring to verify his facts, or hesitating to advance in very positive and detailed form his vague recollection, always prejudiced and often passionate, of something which had hereto fore occurred. His omission, therefore, from such a society as this of ours was not unnatural. Characteristically otherwiseminded, he was not historically minded; and it would have been quite impossible even to venture a prediction where, and how, and to what extent he might in any chance connection, so to speak, break loose, disburdening his mind quite irrespective of the sentiments or feelings of those participating in the occasion. His presence, for instance, and that of our late associate, Judge E. R. Hoar, in the same room, are not suggestive of a purely academic or indeed strictly historical atmosphere; acutely dynamitic would, perhaps, be more truly descriptive. Not so with the others I have named. And now, in connection with the last survivor of the three, to recall these facts is not, I think, without a certain permanent historical significance. At that Recurring to Colonel Higginson's connection with the Society, he was, as our rolls show, elected a Corresponding Member during his Newport residence and was transferred to the Resident list after resuming his Massachusetts citizenship, he then being, as I have said, in his fifty-seventh year. time I had been five years a member of the Society. Although in those earlier days not a very constant attendant at the meetings, I well remember that, when Colonel Higginson's name was under discussion, his election was advocated on the ground that he would introduce into the Society a much to be desired element of what may perhaps best be described as opposition; for, as then constituted, there was, the Society felt, too strong a tendency in it towards conservatism, and the preservation of traditions and modes of thought which, so to speak, were not in touch with the world which had come into existence since 1865. And it was as a recognized representative of this element of, so again to express it, general otherwise-mindedness that Colonel Higginson was introduced. As the result subsequently showed, the action justified itself. Colonel Higginson was a useful, active, courteous and, so to speak, considerate as well as progressive member of our Society. It was, perhaps, as representing this last element that, in 1891, when the Centennial of the Society was observed, he was selected to deliver the historical address at the Arlington Street Church. His address appears in full in our Proceedings.1 1 2 Proceedings, VI. 275. |