Emancipation is now a war measure, to be sustained as you sustain an army in the field.
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 blood of thousands sacrificed to his ambition and personal revenge cries to Heaven against him, and if a Massachusetts Legislature can still support him by its vote, those who do so will deserve to lose their children at the altar of…
Had it not been for them and their coadjutors, the war would have been over and the Union restored on the Fourth of July instant.
This is his crime, his real offence, in the eyes of his leading opponents.
If they mean anything, if they are not mere words, they mean war, and this no common war, but war with a great and adventurous nation, powerful in fleets and armies, bound to us by treaties and manifold traditions, and still constant in…
The whole country is now paying with treasure and blood for that fatal surrender.
An enactment, authorizing the employment of the mercantile marine in the national service as part of the national navy, would be practical and reasonable.
Why, Sir, the Rebels, against whom you would cruise, are absolutely without commerce.
I do not say that such an act, even harshly exercised upon neutral commerce, will bring upon us further war, but I would not try the experiment.
Is it not better to follow this example, until positive, irresistible exigencies of war compel us to depart from it?
My simple object is to exhibit the spirit against which we are to guard.
Their cheers are for Freedom, and not for Slavery.
The Malay runs amuck, and such is the British diplomatic style in dealing with us.
It was accomplished by three powers, with the silent connivance of the rest, but not without pangs of remorse in one of the spoilers.
Trampler upon the Republic in France, trampler upon the Republic in Mexico, it remains to be seen if the French Emperor can prevail as trampler upon this Republic.
Nations are equal in the eye of International Law, so that what is right for one is right for all.
How much more unjustifiable the strange assistance now proposed to found a bad Government!
Slavery is wrong, therefore not to be employed.
Recognition accompanied by the breaking of the blockade would be war, impious war, against the United States, where Slavemongers would be the allies and Slavery the inspiration.
I know no different rule for a good nation than for a good man.
The Slavemongers may be a corporation in fact, but no such corporation can find place in that august Commonwealth.
The American people have nothing to fear from us, while they treat us justly.
But, notwithstanding these defects, Lord Russell’s speech at Blairgowrie is an immense advance upon his previous utterances on the American Question.
We may well hesitate to organize a single State under military government, when we see where such step leads.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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