Indeed, we are confident that his word will find a response in all that is best of the North,--and not only in all that is best in quality, but strongest in numbers.
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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Sumner has proved very conclusively, that, as a punishment to Rebels and bad citizens, the manumission of the slaves is fully recognized by those old Roman laws which the South-Carolinians have been so fond of quoting in their own behalf.
While statesmen, merchants, and bankers are laboring to carry on a suicidal war in a conservative spirit, and to spare the interests and prejudices of the foe, a more numerous class from the Atlantic to the Mississippi have no such…
Slavery, they are told by one of the most eloquent of the agitators, himself a martyr in the cause, is the original sin of the Union, the cause of every subsequent dissension, the occasion of this war, and, what is more, the strength of…
The whole American nation, with all its wealth and all its glory, is flung as a holocaust before the shrine of this hideous idol.
The remedy he proclaims is to give up the weak scruple which paralyzes a righteous arm.
Sumner sees in this war not merely a call to rally round a Constitution, to punish treason, and reinstate a mighty power; he sees a call to a higher level of humanity, and a sublimer doctrine.
The London Herald of Peace, in its opposition to the war, took pains to insist that it was not Antislavery,--forgetting that the North, even when failing to demand the abolition of Slavery, sought its limitation, and that the new…
His great abilities, his lofty spirit, his spotless public life, mark him as a man standing apart, not to be confounded with the crowd of selfish politicians that besiege the avenues of power in America.
He has stood forward in evil days to encounter with an undaunted mien the obloquy and the peril attaching to the avowal of thorough Antislavery principles, and has been not the champion merely, but the martyr of the cause.
After all this, we sincerely hope we shall hear no more of this war as a war for the liberation of the slave, as a ‘sublime uprising’ of the men of the North for the cause of Human Freedom.
It is the best answer which has been yet made on American ground to those who complain that hitherto the cause of the North has not met with the sympathy it deserved in Britain.
But passing this, it shows to the Northerners themselves what it is that paralyzes their arms, what it is that places them so generally on the defensive and prevents their success.
Sumner’s noble words--words worthy alike of the man and of his theme--is a cheering foretaste of the triumph which cannot be long deferred.
Charles Sumner has pronounced very energetically in favor of the Abolition of Slavery, and demanded, with great strength of expression and power of argument, the introduction of this question into the conflict.
Never fear but that the masses, the hearts, are all with you,--and you’ll see your enemies at your footstool, as you so often have already.
I could not take the hazard of advising you to make it, though I told you in your circumstances I should; but now you’ve done it, I can say it was wise and well,--your duty to the country, to the hour, yourself, the slave,--to your fame as…
We may have peace on other terms, but no union and peace.
The Free States must choose between peace, temporary peace, renewed war, and peace founded upon righteousness, justice, and equity.
You never made a nobler, braver, or more opportune utterance than at Worcester on the first instant.
If your positions are not sustained by the country, the great contest now going on will end in failure, and ought to end so.
The foes of justice and freedom accuse you of accelerating the crisis and precipitating civil war by that speech.
The revived victim of frustrate assassins, the calm and undaunted bearing, the inflexible purpose, the overwhelming force of facts, argument, and illustration, struck more terror to the soul of Richard than could the substance of ten…
Every escape from Slavery necessarily and instinctively awakens the regard of all who love Freedom.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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