A ghastly cancer, which has grappled the very fibres of the human frame, and shot its poison through every vein, will not yield to lip-salve or rosewater.
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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It still existed, rankling, festering, burning to make itself manifest.
The conspiracy is unblushingly confessed by recent parties to it.
Through these eminent functionaries the treason was organized and directed, while their important posts were prostituted to its infamy.
Fifthly, the National Treasury, so recently prosperous beyond example, was disorganized and plundered even to the verge of bankruptcy.
But both occasion and pretext are determined by Slavery, and thus testify to the part it constantly performs.
A pretended right to set aside the Constitution, to the extent of breaking up the Government, is the natural companion of the pretended right to set aside human nature, making merchandise of men.
If we do not overflow toward the former with the same indignation which we feel for the latter, it is because its absurdity awakens our contempt.
Nothing is clearer than that this pretension, if acknowledged, leaves to every State the right to play the “mad horse,” with very little chance of saving anything.
It was Slavery which fired the conspirators, and Slavery also which entered into every proposition of compromise.
But, secondly, it is a phenomenon attested by the history of revolutions, that all such movements, at least in their early days, are controlled by minorities.
Audacity then counts more than numbers, and crime counts more than virtue.
It is Slavery that stamps its character alike upon officers and men.
It is Slavery that inspires all, from General to trumpeter.
It is Slavery that speaks in the word of command, and sounds in the morning drum-beat.
Does any community mourn gallant men, who, going forth joyous and proud beneath their country’s flag, have been brought home cold and stiff, with its folds wrapped about them for a shroud?
At last the time has come when their cause must prevail, and their name become an honor.
The region now contested by the Rebels belongs to the United States by every tie of government and of right.
These two pretensions, one so shocking to our reason and the other so shocking to our moral nature, will disappear forever.
And with their disappearance will date a new epoch, the beginning of a grander age.
Over its broad and open gate is written JUSTICE.
To see men like Bright and Powell sit still, when Charles Sumner charged Baker’s murder on Slavery, was worth at least ten years of Antislavery privations.
Slavery ought to fall, and Missouri be saved.
That country to which they owed love, honor, and obedience, they betrayed and gave over to violence and outrage.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
