Sumner’s splendid oratory always attracts immense audiences, even when his speeches bear upon the unpopular subject of Slavery.
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 speech on the affair of the Trent is a masterpiece.
England would rejoice to-day to see our country divided.
Most heartily do I thank you for your great speech on Maritime Rights, which adds another to your many claims on the nation’s gratitude.
I cannot but think that the jurisprudence of other civilized countries, derived from the Roman Law, supplies a better rule.
Credit is volatile and sensitive, and will not yield to force.
Disloyalty must not find a seat in the Senate, even for a day; nor can any claimant charged with disloyalty complain that the Senate refuses welcome to its trusts.
But I am determined that this Chamber of high trust, so carefully guarded by the Constitution, shall not be opened to disloyalty, if any argument, any persuasion, or any effort of mine can prevent it.
If this be the case, if all these affidavits, verified by the certificate so numerously signed, are not put aside as baseless, then the Senate must inquire into the charge.
I never had more desire or more need of chances to earn money than now, and never were my opportunities so small.
The good work that our courts thus far decline remains to be done by Congress.
On one occasion, at a patriotic festival in New Hampshire, they were distinctly remembered in the toast: “Our brethren in slavery at Algiers.
The next attempt was to find a system of action, which should be effective against the Protean monster in the many metamorphoses it was able to assume, and here England nobly took the lead.
The slave-trade became almost impossible, so that practically it ceased to exist.
I confess that I find no good reason for delicacy towards persons so guilty.
Every victory adds something to that history; but such an order is worse for us than defeat.
RESOLVED, That the Select Committee on the confiscation of Rebel property be directed to consider the expediency of providing, that, in all judicial proceedings to confiscate the property and free the slaves of Rebels, there shall be no…
Even if paper were less permanent than parchment, the latter becomes entirely superfluous since the practice was established of printing the statutes under the supervision of the Government.
It is the invariable course of the Legislatures of the several States, as well as of the United States, to have the laws and resolutions of each session printed by authority.
To reject it for parchment is as if we imitated the early Arabs, and inscribed our statutes on the shoulder-blades of sheep.
I cannot consent to it, Sir; nor do I see any apology for hesitation.
It would enter into battle with hands tied behind the back.
Such a pretension would change the National Government from a government of law to that of a military dictator.
That this pretension should be put forward in the name of the Constitution is only another illustration of the effrontery with which the Constitution is made responsible for the ignorance, the conceit, and the passions of men.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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