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BOOK REVIEWS161 nurture our literary heritage, especially that which is "fine and noble and enduring." John David Smith North Carolina State University The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, Volume One, 1830-1859; Volume Two, 1859-1874. Edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. Vol. 1, Pp. 538; Vol. 2, Pp. 708. $130.00.) During his adult life, beginning as Harvard student and European traveler and continuing as reformer and politician-statesman, Charles Sumner wrote approximately seven thousand letters. Of the many that have survived, Beverly Wilson Palmer has selected more than nine hundred to include in her superbly edited two-volume edition of Sumner letters. She has produced as useful a collection as those interested in the Massachusetts senator's career could possibly ask for. Previously the only collection of Sumner letters was Edward L. Pierce's four volumes, published shortly after Sumner's death. Pierce, a close friend of Sumner, primarily chose letters which were flattering to Sumner, and he occasionally edited or altered them to remove embarrassing or uncomplimentary material. While useful to the researcher, they were nonetheless of dubious value because of the liberties Pierce took. Thus, until now it has been necessary to supplement Pierce with a look at the original Sumner letters scattered throughout this country and in Europe in more than seventy repositories. Sumner's many public speeches and writings have long been available in the twelve-volume Works of Charles Sumner, but his private correspondence has been more elusive. Although Palmer has provided the reader with only a small fraction of Sumner's letters, she has made the researcher's task far simpler by including those which are most important and representative. They deal with many of the critical mid-nineteenth century issues of reform and antislavery as well as Civil War and Reconstruction politics and diplomacy . Included in the collection are Sumner's writings to some of the most prominent people of his period. His correspondents included such well-known Americans as Joseph Story, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Susan B. Anthony, Salmon P. Chase, Joshua Giddings, Abraham Lincoln, and Hamilton Fish. Englishmen John Bright and Richard Cobden are representative of the many Europeans who Sumner knew well and with whom he corresponded frequently. Most of the letters included by Palmer were written to such prominent political, literary, and business leaders, although there is an occasional inclusion of a letter to an obscure Massachusetts constituent or a freedman such as Charles N. Hunter of Raleigh, North Carolina. The paucity of such letters is not the result of Palmer's editing but rather 162CIVIL WAR HISTORY reflects the fact that Sumner wrote few letters to those not well-known, and most of those have not survived. Palmer has done a truly outstanding job of editing the Sumner letters. Her edition locates and corrects many of the errors and distortions of Pierce and provides a reliable transcription, retaining the integrity of the originals with most of their delightful spellings. For example, Sumner wrote "he shews some anxiety" (1:200) and "the chrystallization of parties" (1:180). More important, obscure words and works, especially foreign phrases, are defined. Sumner had a penchant for sprinkling his letters with Latin phrases and classical literary references. The reader who lacks the necessary background to understand these is thus told that "ex uno pectore" means "from my heart." Similarly, references from Shakespeare are identified and explained (e.g. "Our withers are unwrung" from Hamlet is interpreted for the unknowing to mean "we are innocent"; 1:282-83). Any mention by Sumner of an individual not widely known is carefully and expertly identified by the editor. Yet in her explanations, Palmer fortunately avoids long learned footnotes with which editors frequently clutter such collections. Instead, Palmer's notes give just the right amount of information, transforming letters that would otherwise be little more than disconnected fragments of a dusty past into a cohesive and useful whole. As a result we see Sumner in his diverse roles more accurately than otherwise possible. When the notes do become lengthy it is because brevity is inadequate to sort out the confusion a letter might otherwise produce. When Sumner...

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