Political Quotes

On the record
Not to speak of peonage, as it existed in Mexico, there is a denial of rights, with exclusion from all participation in the Government and subjection to oppressive restraints, which of itself is a most direful slavery, under which the wretched bondman smarts as beneath the lash.
Said by
Charles Sumner
Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Sumner describes the oppressive conditions faced by freedmen, equating them to slavery despite the formal abolition.

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