From Washington on earth I appeal to Washington in heaven.
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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His last testament cancels his authority as a slaveholder.
However he may have appeared before man, he came into the presence of God only as liberator of his slaves.
Grateful for this example, I am grateful also, that, while slaveholder, and seeking the return of a fugitive, he has left in permanent record a rule of conduct which, if adopted by his country, will make Slave-Hunting impossible.
Workmen are brutally dragged from employments to which they are wedded by years of successful labor; husbands are ravished from wives, and parents from children.
Oppression by an individual is detestable; but oppression by law is worse.
Hard and inscrutable, when the law, to which the citizen naturally looks for protection, becomes itself a standing peril.
As the sword takes the place of the shield, despair settles down like a cloud.
With every attempt to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists.
Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of man.
The spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils entered the swine.
Now by indecent speed, now by harshness of manner, now by denial of evidence, now by crippling the defence, and now by open, glaring wrong, they make the odious Act yet more odious.
Clemency, grace, and justice die in its presence.
Not a case occurs which does not harrow the souls of good men, bringing tears of sympathy to the eyes, and those other noble tears which "patriots shed o'er dying laws.
But the great heart of the people recoils from this enactment.
It palpitates for the fugitive, and rejoices in his escape.
They who make the permanent opinion of the country, who mould our youth, whose words, dropped into the soul, are the germs of character, supplicate for the Slave.
Even in the lands of Slavery, the slave-trader is loathed as an ignoble character, from whom the countenance is turned away; and can the Slave-Hunter be more regarded, while pursuing his prey in a land of Freedom?
This, Sir, is the common ground on which our political fabric was reared; and I do not hesitate to say that it is the only ground on which it can stand in permanent peace.
It is not now what it was in the beginning, a Republic merely permitting, while it regretted Slavery,--tolerating it only where it could not be removed, and interdicting it where it did not exist,--but a mighty Propagandist, openly…
In 1787 all existing national domain was promptly and unanimously dedicated to Freedom, without opposition or criticism.
The interdict of Slavery then covered every inch of soil belonging to the National Government.
This arrangement, which, in its very terms, was exclusively applicable to a particular territory purchased from France, has been accepted as final down to the present session of Congress; but now, Sir, here in 1854, Freedom is suddenly…
Here are the three stages: at the first, all consecrated to Freedom; at the second, only half; at the third, all grasped by Slavery.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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