Sumner has done, and no man can undo it. ‘What is written is written.’ Slaveholders may rave, Americans may ignore, Republicans may deplore, but the speech and the name of Charles Sumner will live and be praised when the death-pall of…
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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The world will one day acknowledge the debt of gratitude it owes to the author of this masterly analysis.
Nothing like it, in elevation of tone and width of scope, had ever before been heard in that Chamber.
No doubt it stirred the malignant passions of the Slave-Masters to the deepest depths; but the fault was theirs, not his.
His facts were unquestionable, his logic beyond the reach of cavil, and his rhetoric eminently becoming and self-respectful.
The man who can in personal irritability so forget the interests of a great cause is its worst enemy.
Slavery, with its roots thus deep in the soil, is not to be rooted up by any peevish effort of rhetoric; and we may predict that the man who first gains a victory for the cause of Abolition will be of very different temper to the Senator…
It remains to be seen, if, under the genial influence of such recognition, Hayti may not become, among all independent colonies, first in importance to us, as it was first in accepting our example.
He described the character of Slavery; he proved its operation upon the liberties of communities and the character of individuals; and he declared the resolution of the Free States to get rid of the evil of being implicated in such a…
It is not often that an orator’s enemies are in such a desperate hurry to prove his case for him.
It must be also needless for me to say that no unprejudiced man or woman here really supposes that any terms can be kept with Slavery and Slaveholders.
To speak gingerly of Barbarism, when his business was to set before his country the choice between Barbarism and Civilization, was, of course, impossible; and there could be no fidelity short of such a thorough exposure and denunciation as…
In acknowledging the independence of Hayti, we follow too tardily the lead of other nations.
Sumner’s own friends here regretted what they saw, simply because personal accusation and insult can never do any good, and must, in a crisis like that of your polity, render a complete rupture inevitable.
Instead of a piece of stimulating invective, we find the speech to be a chapter of history, and an exposition, calm and rational, of the workings of a social institution which is brought forward for discussion, and so placed on its trial…
To me it appears a production of altogether incalculable importance, apart from its merits in detail.
Till now, if we could have met with such a phenomenon in England as a person who was not convinced of the wickedness and folly of Slavery, we should not have known where to turn for a compact, reliable, serviceable statement of the modern…
It is a mighty effort towards wiping out the monstrous blot that disfigures your fair country.
I like well the way in which he takes head after head of the foul Hydra, and severs each as completely as ever Hercules did; yet his labor was child’s play in comparison.
But it is not too late for us to enter into a treaty, and to establish similar friendly relations.
I have thought for years that the independence of Liberia ought to be recognized by our Government, and I have frequently urged it upon persons connected with the Administration,--and I shall continue to do so, if I have suitable…
So I, being melted to my inmost soul By this thy noble plaint for Freedom’s sake, Do grieve that ocean-tides between us roll, And that I ne’er can see thee strive to break The shackles, e’en more harsh than those that bind The slave-born…
The Americans of the North, who calculate even to the beatings of the heart, have summed up this multifold crime in five axioms.
It is, say they, man become the property of his fellow-man, marriage abolished, paternity destroyed, intelligence systematically stifled, labor forced and unpaid,--in other terms, tyranny, confiscation, and robbery.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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