The grace of God is on you,--his special favor, in that you have had the will and the opportunity for so faithful, so noble an utterance.
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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Never for one instant mind the ‘cold-shoulderism’ of the Tribune, or the heartlessness around you; but rest assured that you have sent the truth into the inmost being of the Southern men who heard you.
They may affect contempt by their silence, or they may rail and foam like Chesnut, but they know that you have spoken the bitter and biting truth without bitterness and without fear, as became a Christian gentleman.
You cannot, no one can, begin to estimate the substantial work that you have done, both in regard to the essential truth, which you have demonstrated, and more to the perfect spirit and manner of the work.
Expressing my satisfaction and delight with your recent speech in the Senate, I do not know which most to be thankful for,--the complete restoration of your physical and mental power indicated by it, or the unabated courage it manifests…
It gives a conscience to legislation, and sets us all back upon the everlasting truth and rectitude.
Nobly you have dared to speak the truth, where to speak the truth, as you well knew, was to imperil life: I do not know in our day a nobler instance of moral bravery.
Sumner, that nothing on this great and fearful subject has ever so filled and satisfied my whole soul. ‘Too severe,’ say some; ‘not good policy to irritate the South.’ I tell them, Not an iota too strong.
I would not have a single sentence or word less pungent or forcible, if I could; because every sentence and every word are loaded deep with truth, such truth as I rejoice that somebody is found in our Congress to give utterance to.… You…
How pungent, and yet how Christian, your rebuke of this sore iniquity of our time!
How sharp and clear goes the sword of your spirit through all the sophistry of your opponents!
Such massive, enduring truth! uttered so clearly, definitely, fully!
I bless God, and thank you, for the deep-toned, comprehensive humanity which pervades, which consecrates and hallows your paragraphs.
I found myself, as I moved on step by step through your trains of thought, quickened and encouraged, inspired and refreshed.
I thought that the blow which struck you down in the Senate was destined, through the overrulings of Providence, to break the chains of the slave, and I think so still.
Allow me to congratulate you, in connection with multitudes of others, on your return to the country and the Senate, and on the utterance of great and true and kind words which will have an influence on the hearts of thinking men…
I cannot help feeling, my dear Sir, that you have made the most effective argument which the country has yet listened to on the general subject of the evils of that horrible system under which our nation is reeling like a giant poisoned by…
God bless you for your faithfulness, so calm, so dignified, so just, so overwhelming in its logical results, and grant that in ‘the good time coming’ your voice may often be lifted in that Senate House to more appreciative and coöperative…
My first duty as a Christian is to thank God that he has restored you to the Senate with physical and mental vigor equal to the great debate in which you have just borne so noble a part.
If the Republican party is to seek success by blinking the real issue of the right or wrong of Slavery, I am prepared to witness its defeat without regret.
May the words which have ennobled it go forth as thunders, arousing souls now deadened by the barbarisms of our country and our age!
I have read your last speech in the Senate on ‘The Barbarism of Slavery’ with admiration and gratitude.
You seem to have embraced in your speech the whole subject, in all its important departments, and with a plainness, directness, pith, force, and pungency worthy of the highest commendation.
It should be a permanent and standard document on that subject, and be perpetuated through all coming time, that other generations may look at it and learn to hate Slavery and love Liberty.… Mind not what some timid croakers may say about…
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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