Besides, what am I, what is any man among the living or among the dead, compared with the question before us?
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 is this alone which I shall discuss, and I begin the argument with that easy victory which is found in charity.
Search history, and you cannot find its parallel.
And yet the most important part of the argument was at that time left untouched: I mean that found in the Character of Slavery.
Motive is to Crime as soul to body; and it is only when we comprehend the motive that we can truly comprehend the Crime.
Here the motive is found in Slavery and the rage for its extension.
Therefore, by logical necessity, must Slavery be discussed,--not indirectly, timidly, and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly.
It must be exhibited as it is, alike in its influence and its animating character, so that not only outside, but inside, may be seen.
Senators sometimes announce that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing of the moral question.
Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral.
Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions, of White and Red Roses, of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong, between Good and Evil.
Such a battle cannot be fought with rosewater.
There is austere work to be done, and Freedom cannot consent to fling away any of her weapons.
The whole character of Slavery, as a pretended form of Civilization, is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all reserve on this side.
It is natural that Senators thus insensible to the true character of Slavery should evince an equal insensibility to the true character of the Constitution.
But, God be praised, this time has passed, and the debate is now lifted from details to principles.
Grander debate has not occurred in our history,--rarely in any history; nor can it close or subside, except with the triumph of Freedom.
Language is feeble to express all the enormity of an institution which is now exalted as in itself a form of civilization, “ennobling” at least to the master, if not to the slave.
Look at it as you will, and it is always the scab, the canker, the “barebones,” and the shame of the country,--wrong, not merely in the abstract, as is often admitted by its apologist, but wrong in the concrete also, and possessing no…
Look at it in the light of principle, and it is nothing less than a huge insurrection against the eternal law of God, involving in its pretensions the denial of all human rights, and also the denial of that Divine Law in which God himself…
Undertaking now to expose the BARBARISM OF SLAVERY, the whole broad field is open before me.
Two civilizations!” Sir, in this nineteenth century of Christian light there can be but one Civilization, and this is where Freedom prevails.
Between Slavery and Civilization there is essential incompatibility.
If you are for the one, you cannot be for the other; and just in proportion to the embrace of Slavery is the divorce from Civilization.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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