Naturally, therefore, did the experienced general make his appeal to this most numerous and sympathetic class: he knew that so his strength would be best assured.
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.
gutenberg.org
Whatever may be the text of Plutarch, and supposing freemen among the recruits, nothing can prevent the conclusion, that emancipated slaves constituted the decisive force by which success was achieved.
It was a most lamentable failure, and should prove a lesson to men who are so entangled in one idea that they imagine the wealth of the country and the blood of its sons are being poured out to perpetuate a party, instead of securing the…
Sumner and other radical Antislavery men, dazzled by visions of Universal Freedom, entirely overlook the insurmountable difficulties which stand in the way of immediate emancipation.
The economic problem of supporting four millions of human beings who have never been self-dependent is not considered.
All practical considerations, in fact, are ignored by a miscalled philanthropy which is as impracticable as it is visionary, and which would lay waste the most prolific soil, and fill our land with vagrants and marauders.
We must limit the war to the purposes so distinctly avowed by the Administration, or the sun of our national prosperity will set in darkness and gloom, to rise again, if at all, only after years of bloodshed and anarchy.
All the loyal elements in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri will be alienated at once, and every prospect of awakening the dormant loyalty in the seceded States will have passed away.
The people of the South would defend their homes and their firesides to the last extremity, as we would do, should the chances of war favor them.
If such views as he advances governed the action of the Administration, not a brigade could be kept in the field, or money enough raised by the Secretary of the Treasury to buy breeches and gaiters for a demagogue Senator.
For such men as Sumner and his ilk do not fight nor pay; they only brawl, and deserve to be treated as were old scolds in days past,--ducked in a horse-pond.
The war can be fought upon no such grounds; and before it closes, we shall discover that fact.
If there were any lack of evidence to prove that Charles Sumner is really an enemy to our country, and desired only to destroy it, and immerse the people in the dreadful, crashing slavery of martial tyranny, this speech supplies the link…
He advocates a doctrine which is in direct violation of the spirit of the Constitution, and which tends only to weaken the hands of the Government, by dividing public sentiment at the North, and thus discouraging enlistments.
It is a bold, clear, and conclusive exposition of the policy which the United States Government should adopt, and make the vital principle of their action, in the present war.
Thou hast spoken the word God gave to thy safe keeping; thou hast set Life, Death, before the nation; thou hast hurled Thy single pebble, plucked from Truth’s pure stream, Into the forehead of a Giant Wrong, And it doth reel and tremble.
Men may doubt, But the keen sword of Right shall finish well Thy brave beginning.
Not vainly hast thou spoken; angels heard, And shook from their glad harps a gush of joy That the One Word was uttered in men’s ears, The ‘Open Sesame’ by which alone True Freedom and true Peace might enter in, Making earth like to heaven.
What thou hast spoken as ’t were in the ear Shall be proclaimed on housetops.
God locks up In His safe garner every seed of Truth, Until the time shall come to cast it forth, Saying, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill The broad earth, till it shouts its harvest-home.’ His purposes are sure; who works with Him Need…
God give thee of the fruit of thine own hands, And let thine own works praise thee in the gates Of the new city, whose foundation-stones Thy hands are laying, though men see it not!
Indeed, we venture to say that no other man holding high office in the government, or desiring to hold, will dare to second or in any way publicly approve of the vital suggestions of this address.
The fixed and earnest attention with which every word was received, and the hearty and repeated applause which greeted every allusion to the doctrine of Emancipation, proved conclusively that upon this question the people are far in…
Sumner will test the spirit of his constituents, and time will show whether they will sustain this great statesman, not as a partisan, but as a moral and philosophical force, in the evidently Heaven-appointed mission of keeping the public…
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
