As States are a collection of individual men, which ought we to respect most,--the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition?
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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I protest against that pretension which would make the asserted Equality of States the cover for a denial of the Equality of Men.
I protest against that exaggeration of pretension which out of a power to make “regulations” and to determine “qualifications” can derive an unrepublican prerogative.
Meanwhile I protest against the false glosses originally fastened upon the Constitution by Slavery, and, now continued, often in unconsciousness of their origin, perverting it to the vilest uses of tyranny.
We have read of an effort to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers; but the present effort to extract a cruel prerogative out of the simple words of the Constitution is scarcely less absurd.
As well say, that, because a constable or policeman may keep order in a city, therefore he may inflict the penalty of death,--or, because a father may impose proper restraint upon a child, therefore he may sell him into slavery.
No such enormous prerogative can be wrung out of any such moderate power.
Therefore I dismiss the pretension founded on the power to make regulations, as I dismiss that other founded on the power to determine qualifications.
Madison is that other contemporary testimony which will be found in the “Federalist,” where the irrepealable rights of citizens are recognized without distinction of color.
Thus was it expressly understood, at the adoption of the Constitution, that Congress should have the power to prevent any State, under the pretence of regulating the suffrage, from depriving the people of this right, or from interfering…
Who will dare to say that under this formal power of regulation a whole race may be despoiled of equal rights and of all participation in the Government?
In these simple words no such power can be found, unless the seeker makes the Constitution a reflection of himself.
The power to regulate cannot involve any such conclusion of tyranny.
Surely it is one thing to regulate, and quite another thing to destroy.
Because a State may regulate the elective franchise, therefore it may destroy this franchise.
You would insist that a government sanctioning such a denial of rights, under whatever pretension, could not be republican.
Suppose South Carolina, where the blacks are numerous, should undertake to exclude the whites from the polls on account of “color”; would you hesitate to arrest this injustice?
Admit that a State may determine the “qualifications” of electors, it cannot, under this authority, arbitrarily exclude a whole race.
Age, education, residence, property,--all these are subject to change; but the Ethiopian cannot change his skin.
Color is a physical condition affixed by the God of Nature to a large portion of the human race, and insurmountable in its character.
The fountain is pure; it is only out of yourselves that the waters of bitterness proceed.
The Constitution gives no such title; you can only find it in yourselves.
There are none who must not obey it; there can be none who may not claim its advantages.
The Constitution, like the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, embraces all alike within its mandates and all alike within its promises.
The “qualifications” of different officers, as President, Vice-President, Senators, and Representatives, are named; but “color” is not among these.
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