They had before them the example of Senator Sumner, by which they should have profited.

Senator Sumner was greatly humiliated, when, through the influence of the administration, he was supplanted by Senator Cameron as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on account of a misunderstanding with President Grant, growing out of the effort on the part of the administration to bring about the annexation of Santo Domingo, to which Senator Sumner was bitterly opposed.

Yet he did not,--because he was thus, as he felt, unjustly humiliated,--resign his seat in the Senate.

He realized that while he was commissioned to speak for his own State, his great power and immense influence were not confined solely to that particular State.
He appreciated the fact that when he spoke and voted as a Senator, he did so, not merely as a Senator from the State of Massachusetts, but as a Senator of the United States.

He belonged to no one State, but to the United States.