On the contrary, I find in them a beautiful illustration of that Equality before the Law which is the promise of republican institutions.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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Can you justly exclude any good citizen from such participation?
If willing to reject such persons as allies, can you justly exclude them from participation in the Government?
There are freedmen unable to read or write who are excellent in all respects.
Nobody can place the value of education too high; but is it just to make it the prerequisite to any right of citizenship?
If there is to be exclusion, let it be of the disloyal, and not of the loyal.
Surely an unlettered Unionist is better than a Rebel, however learned or wise, and on all practical questions will vote more nearly right.
To enfranchise those only who could read and write or pay a certain tax was not enough.
I defend it in all respects,--not only as an act of essential justice, without which our Nation would be a deformity, but as an irresistible necessity, for the sake of that security without which peace is impossible.
Human Rights, when at last obtained, cannot be wrested back without a conflict in which God will rage against the oppressor.
The bloody horrors of San Domingo, where France undertook to cancel Emancipation, testify with a voice of wail that a race once lifted from Slavery cannot be again degraded.
As well attempt to undo the Declaration of Independence, or suspend the law of gravitation.
It has already taken its place in the immortal covenants of history, and become a part of the harmonies of the universe.
Congress has done this great act of justice, and, thank God, it cannot be undone.
Reconstruction is as political as the war, or as any of the means for its conduct.
It is political in every aspect, whether regarded as springing from the necessity of the case, from the rights of war, from the obligation to guaranty a republican government, or from the power to enforce the abolition of Slavery.
I have already exhibited the power of Congress in four different sources; but beyond these is the principle, that Congress, in the exercise of political powers, cannot be questioned.
When the Nation speaks, it is by Congress,--as the Roman Republic spoke by its Senate and people, Senatus Populusque Romanus, in whose name went forth those great decrees which ruled the world.
His usurpation has been overthrown, but his testimony to the power of the Nation remains.
As well say that the power over the Territories, the war power, the guaranty power, and the power to enforce the abolition of Slavery, do not exist; as well say that the Constitution itself does not exist.
Two questions are presented by the enemies of these Acts: first, on the Power of Congress; and, secondly, on the Equal Rights of the Freedman.
For the sake of the freedman, for the sake of his former master, for the sake of all, and for the sake of the Republic, this must not be.
It is only by outraging every principle of justice, stifling every sympathy with Human Rights, and discarding common sense, and, still further, by forgetting all the sacred obligations of country, that we can submit to see political power…
If they are harsh, then is beneficence harsh, then is charity harsh.
They are not harsh, unless it is harsh to give every man his due.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
