He voted against the free coinage of silver in spite of the
fact that the people of his State earnestly favored it, and
against the express instructions of its Legislature. In 1874,
at a time when the passions of the Civil War seemed to blaze
higher, and the angry conflict between the sections seemed
to blaze higher even than during the war itself, he astonished
and shocked the people of the South by pronouncing a tender
and affectionate eulogy on Charles Sumner. He testified to
Sumner's high moral qualities, to his intense love of liberty,
to his magnanimity, and to his incapacity for a personal
animosity, and regretted that he had restrained the impulse
which had been strong on him to go to Mr. Sumner and offer
him his hand and his heart with it. It would have been almost
impossible for any other man who had done either of these
things to go back to Mississippi and live. But it never shook
for a moment the love for Lamar of a people who knew so well
his love for them.
Afterward Mr. Lamar was made an Associate Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States.
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