So prone are they to suspicion, that, where a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor, and not merit, was the motive.
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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Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject, as General Washington had done himself the greatest honor.
The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they intrust to their…
Jefferson developed and explained the true principles in a manner worthy of republican institutions.
Through all the perils of a seven years’ war he had battled with that kingly rule which elevates a whole family without regard to merit, fastening all upon the nation, and he had learned that this royal system could find no place in a…
The nepotism of Rome was little known in our country, and I do not doubt that Washington, when declining to make the Presidential office a personal perquisite, was governed by that instinct of duty and patriotism which rendered him so…
In appointments to office, merit and not blood is the only just recommendation.
Not even a Pope can justly neglect his own blood; but help and charity must be at his own expense, and not at the expense of his country.
With him nepotism assumed its most brutal and barbarous development, reflecting the character of its pontifical author, who was without the smallest ray of good.
Conspicuous among nepotists was Alexander the Sixth, whose family name of Borgia is damned to fame.
These good Popes were short-lived,--their reigns for the most part counting by days only; but they opened happy glimpses of an administration where the powers of government were not treated as a personal perquisite.
The Presidential pretension is so important in every aspect, and the character of republican institutions is so absolutely compromised by its toleration, that it cannot be treated in any perfunctory way.
Pray, Sir, what words would Jefferson use, if he were here to speak on the open and multifarious nepotism of our President?
But the newspapers have placed enough beyond question for judgment on this extraordinary case, although thus far there has been no attempt to appreciate it, especially in the light of history.
In the mood which they have shown in this Chamber, it is evident that any resolution calling for it, moved by a Senator not known to be for his reëlection, would meet with opposition, and an effort to vindicate republican institutions…
If there is any exaggeration, the President is in fault,--since, knowing the discreditable allegations, he has not hastened to furnish the precise facts, or at least his partisans have failed in not calling for the official information.
But even if his pressure for reëlection did not menace the tranquillity of the country, it is important that the personal pretensions he has set up should be exposed, that no President hereafter may venture upon such ways, and no Senator…
Insisting upon reëlection, the President challenges inquiry and puts himself upon the country.
Pardon me, if I repeat that it is my duty to make this exposure, spreading before you the proofs of that personal government, which will only pass without censure when it passes without observation.
It is easy to see how some very moderate experience in civil life, involving of course the lesson of subordination to republican principles, would have prevented indefensible acts.
But can less be expected of that other pilot who is to steer the ship which contains us all?
The pilot is not accepted in his trust until he knows the signs of the storm, the secrets of navigation, the rocks of the coast,--all of which are learned only by careful study with charts and soundings, by coasting the land and watching…
His study is the nation and its welfare, turning always to history for example, to law for authority, and to the loftiest truth for rules of conduct.
The camp is peculiar in the influence it exercises; it is in itself an education; but it is not the education of the statesman.
One always a soldier cannot late in life become a statesman; one always a civilian cannot late in life become a soldier.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
