Search, and you will confess that there is no word of “color” in its text; nor is there anything there on which to found any disfranchisement of a race.
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
The Constitution, where we find this word, follows the Declaration of Independence, and refuses to recognize any distinction of color.
And here, besides reason and humanity, two inexhaustible fountains, we have two other sources of authority: first, the Constitution, in which the word appears, and, secondly, the dictionaries of the English language, out of both of which…
If I use strong language, it is because such a proclamation of tyranny requires it.
But the argument is not merely preposterous, it is insulting to the human understanding, and a blow at human nature itself.
On the mere statement, the absurdity is so unspeakable as to recall the kindred pretension of Slavery, that, because commerce is lawful, therefore commerce in human flesh is lawful also.
Logically speaking, here are most narrow premises for the widest possible conclusion.
Here is the argument: Because a State may determine the qualifications of electors, therefore it may deprive a whole race of equal rights and of participation in the Government.
It is different, however, with that highest condition of all, that the State shall be republican.
All these are conditions in the text of the Constitution so plain and intelligible as to require no further elucidation.
Again it says, no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, or keep troops or ships of war in time of peace.
Positively it says, no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; no State shall grant letters of marque and reprisal; no State shall coin money; no State shall emit bills of credit.
The Constitution itself sets the example of imposing conditions upon the States.
Clearly, then, that is a republican government where all have equal rights and participate in the government.
Its truth is like the sun; blind is he who cannot see it.
There it stands in the very front of our Great Charter, embodied in two simple, self-evident truths,--first, that all men are equal in rights, and, secondly, that all just government is founded only on the consent of the governed,--the two…
Our fathers gave it to us, as amid the thunders of Sinai, when they put forth their Declaration of Independence.
By your oaths, by all the responsibilities of your position, you must say what in your judgment is a republican government, and you must so decide as not to discredit our fathers and not to give an unworthy example to mankind.
Kindred to the Preamble is this supreme obligation imposed on the United States to guaranty a republican government.
A fundamental condition in favor of Human Rights is of that essential character that it must be required.
For myself, I insist not only that Slavery shall be buried out of sight, but that all its wretched pretensions hostile to Human Rights shall be buried with it.
Again it stalks into this Chamber, like the majesty of buried Denmark,--“in the same figure, like the king that’s dead,”--and then, like this same ghost, it cries out, “Swear!” and then again, “Swear!”--and Senators pledged to Freedom take…
Alas that Slavery, which we thought had been slain, is not entirely dead!
Once more we hear the voice of Slavery crying out in familiar tones, that conditions cannot be imposed on new States.
Without any support in the Constitution, its partisans borrow one of the worst pretensions of Slavery, and utter it now as it was uttered by Slave-Masters.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
