SELECTED LETTERS OF SALMON P. CHASE

To Charles Sumner.

COLUMBUS, April 28, 1851.

MY DEAR SUMNER, Laus Deo! From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you - no, not you but all friends of freedom everywhere upon your election to the Senate. Now, I feel as if I had a brother - colleague - one with whom I shall sympathize and be able fully to act. Hale, glorious and noble fellow as he is, is yet too much an offhand man himself to be patient of consultation - while Seward, though meaning to maintain his own position as an Antislavery man, means to maintain it in the Whig Party and only in the Whig Party. Wade, who has been elected to be my colleague, is not known to me personally. I am told he denounced [?] Fillmore, Webster & the Compromise before election. Since, he has written a letter proclaiming himself a Whig & only a Whig, claiming only toleration of differences of opinion in the Whig Party on the slavery questions. I think he will generally go with Seward. He is one of the original abolitionists and I do not believe he will be derelict to the Antislavery faith. None of these are to me as you are. I feel that you have larger broader views, and that you are willing to labor more systematically for the accomplishment of greater purposes.
In this state a large body of the democracy is prepared to throw off the slaveholders yoke. I anticipate a movement before long, and I hope the best effects from it. If we can only have a Free Democracy - lndependent Democracy - in deed as well as in name the day of our country's redemption and the slave's deliverence will not be far off. But it must be made of sterner stuff than that portion of the New York Democracy which united with us at Buffalo and afterwards consented to the union with the Hunkers on the Baltimore Platform!
I hope we shall be inmates of the same house next winter. Last winter I had lodgings on the Northeast corner of C & 41 streets & took my meals at a boarding house. I found this a good arrangement. If the house is still open you can get as good rooms in it as anywhere in Washington. In order to obtain a seat at all eligible in the Chamber it will be well to ascertain at once what seats are vacant, and get the best of them. This can be done best, perhaps, by a letter from Hale or Davis, as either may be most convenient to you, to the Secretary of the Senate.
Write me soon.
Most sincerely yours

P. S. Do you know that you are in my debt for a letter or two?

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