It was necessary that it should yield to the Equal Rights of All, promised by the Declaration of Independence.
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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That whole barbarous code of wrong and outrage, whose first article was the denial of all rights to an oppressed race, was grossly inconsistent with the new order of things.
Common prudence, to say nothing of common humanity, required this consummation, without which there would have been a short-lived truce only.
Foremost came the suppression of Slavery, in which the Rebellion had its origin.
Every greenback is red with the blood of fellow-citizens.
Our enormous taxation is only a prolongation of the Rebellion.
So long as Slavery continued in arms, each and all waxed in vastness; and now, so long as any of these remain, they testify to this same unnatural crime.
Rebel armies menaced the Capitol, and Slavery seemed about to vindicate its wicked supremacy.
Here was Slavery, barbarous, brutal, vindictive, warring for recognition.
The desperate means enlisted by such a cause could be encountered only by the most strenuous exertions in the name of Country and of Human Rights.
It sought nothing less than the dismemberment of our Nation and the establishment of a new power with Slavery as its quickening principle.
Our present responsibilities, whether political or financial, have a common origin in that vast Rebellion, when the people of eleven States, maddened by Slavery, rose against the Nation.
It is a part of the political question; and now that Reconstruction seems about to be accomplished, it is that enduring part which still remains.
The financial question, in all its branches, depends upon the political, and cannot be separated.
It is a mistake of too constant occurrence to treat the financial question by itself, without considering its dependence upon the abnormal condition through which the country has passed.
A colored Senator would be as good as a Constitutional Amendment, making all backward steps impossible.
Nothing could do so much to settle the question of Equal Rights forever in the United States.
Such a Senator, if competent, would be a powerful support to the cause of Equal Rights.
Our fathers established the National Independence; our recent heroes have made it perpetual through those vital principles which can never die.
I know of no ground on which he could be excluded from his seat, if duly elected; and I should welcome the election of a competent representative of the colored race to either House of Congress as a final triumph of the cause of Equal…
Then will the Constitution be filled and inspired by the Declaration of Independence, so that the two shall be one, with a common life, a common authority, and a common glory.
That unity for which the Nation longs, with peace and reconciliation in its train, can be assured only through the Equal Rights of All, proclaimed by the Nation everywhere within its limits, and maintained by the national arm.
Nor can we look for harmony in our country until these principles bear unquestioned sway, without any interdict from the States.
As man rises in the scale of being while walking in obedience to the Divine will, so is a State elevated by obedience to these everlasting truths.
High above States, as high above men, are those commanding principles which cannot be denied with impunity.
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