In the reconstruction period following the war, he was inevitably
an ally of Thaddeus Stevens, though the latter far surpassed him in
vindictiveness toward the South.
Let us not forget that the South had shown itself blind to its own
interests when, as soon as reconstructed by Andrew Johnson, it had,
state by state, adopted laws virtually enslaving the black man again.
But for this fatuity, there would probably have been no such feeling of
vindictiveness at the North as soon developed there; certainly there
would have been no excuse for such severity as was afterwards exhibited.
So it is true in a sense that the South has itself to blame for the
horrors of the reconstruction period, and for the suspicion with which
its good faith toward the negro was for many years regarded. Sumner was
not a vindictive man, and in his last years, incurred a vote of censure
from his own State for offering a bill to remove the names of battles of
the Civil War from the Army Register and from the regimental colors of
the United States. He practically died in harness in 1874. Looking back
at him, one sees how much larger he looms than Stevens; one cannot but
admire his courage and honesty of purpose; his public life was a
continual struggle for the right, as he saw it, and, remembering that,
his faults need not trouble us.
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