If any foreign-born citizen is disposed to hearken to the Senator from California impeaching me, I ask him to bear in mind how I stood for his rights at another time, when there were fewer ready to stand for them than now.
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.
gutenberg.org
But, Sir, those arrested happen to be of another color,--not a color which appeals to his sympathies, but a color that allows him to belittle their arrest and incarceration,--that enables him to say here in the Senate that our Government…
The honorable Senator would be very quick to demand the interference of all the powers of this Government in behalf of an arrested American citizen, if he were black.
Already it has the power to do everything permitted by the Law of Nations, and it ought not to do anything else.
Here are the documents on my table, the passages all marked, which would illustrate the conduct of the British Government and the British tribunals toward every one of these persons whose names have been brought in question.
There is no evidence that our Government has not been persistent and earnest for the protection of its citizens abroad, whether native-born or naturalized, and I alluded to Prussia only by way of illustration.
I have been over every one of these cases; and I must say, as I read them I felt a new gratification in the power of my country, which made itself felt for the protection of its citizens in those distant places, and also a new sense of the…
I have not said that things were placid or smooth; but I have said that our Government has been strenuous and steadfast in the maintenance of the rights of American citizens, whether native-born or naturalized; and the record will show the…
Why is it, if everything has been so smooth and so placid upon this subject, that both of the political parties of this country have seen proper to put in their platforms resolutions in reference to the rights of American citizens abroad?
But here are documents lying on my table containing all the facts of record with regard to every American citizen who has been taken into custody abroad.
My objection to the text of the bill which it is proposed to strike out is, that it is a proposal of unutterable barbarism, which, if adopted, would disgrace this country.
In the seizure which is now proposed there will be absurdity to make the world shake with laughter, if for a moment it can cease to see the flagrant cruelty and meanness of your conduct.
Surely, if anybody is to suffer, let it be the offending Government, or those who represent it and share its responsibilities, instead of private persons, who in no way represent their Government, and may condemn it.
The whole attempt is out of time; it is an anachronism, no better than the revival of the Prügel-knabe, who was kept at the German courts of former days to receive the stripes which the prince had merited for his misdeeds.
With all the granting of legislation, it is solemnly proposed that good men shall suffer for acts in which they had no part.
You will degrade the national name, and make it a byword of reproach.
You will be guilty of a barbarism kindred to that of the Abyssinian king Theodorus.
Permit me to say, Sir, that, the moment you do this, you will cover the country with shame, of which the present bill will be the painful prelude.
You will grieve that your country has been permitted through you to fall from the great example which it owes to mankind.
You, too, Senators, should you unhappily yield to those who now insist upon violent measures, will regret the surrender.
He was unwilling to have anything to do with such an infamy.
The other proposition is without example since the hateful act of the first Napoleon, condemned afterward by himself, when, at the breaking of the short-lived Peace of Amiens, he seized innocent Englishmen who happened to be in France, and…
Shall we do this outrage to the stranger within our gates?
Shall we at the same time violate the Public Faith and wreak a dishonorable vengeance on an innocent traveller or sojourner, making him the scapegoat of his country?
It is when we consider the modern rule with regard to persons, instead of property, that we are impressed still more by its benignity.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
