Any seeming settlement founded in abandonment of principles will be but a miserable patchwork, which cannot succeed.
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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Propositions are brought forward by the Senator from Kentucky, and enforced by petition from my own State, calling upon the North to surrender its principles,--to surrender those impregnable principles of Human Rights which constitute our…
It is even proposed to surrender the principle of Freedom in the Territories,--the Fort Sumter of the North.
I trust, Sir, that all these principles will yet be saved; but plainly their safety depends upon the people, and not upon a President; therefore must the people be heard, as in that cry from the heart which only a few days ago saved the…
For myself, if I stand with many, with few, or alone, I have but one thing to say: “No surrender of the Fort Sumter of the North!
No surrender of any of our Northern forts,--no, Sir, not one of them!
Our Government stands on the aggregate virtue and intelligence of the people.
Not only the rich and fortunate, but the farmer, the mechanic, the laborer, every citizen truly loving his country, will contribute out of his daily life to uphold the Constitution and the flag.
There is but one thing now for the North to do: it is to stand firm.
I will answer the Senator: Because I thought there could be no basis of peace on the Senator’s propositions, which are wrong in every respect, in every line, in every word.
I was for the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of our fathers, as administered by George Washington.
Certainly,--the proposition which I have already made, that the Constitution, as administered by George Washington, should be preserved pure and free from any amendment for the sake of Slavery.
For one, I desire to thank you for declaring in the Senate that the petition from Boston, asking for any compromise to propitiate the South, did not represent the sentiment even of the city, but was signed by multitudes ignorantly and…
The so-called Union men assume the air and manner of slave-overseers.
And so men trifle with their rights, and are trifled with.
I thank you for it, and believe it speaks the sentiments of a vast majority of all parties in this and the other New England States.
Be assured the heart of the Commonwealth is with you, and that, if ever we were called upon for firmness in maintaining our Constitutional rights, it is now; and although I pray God no blood may be shed in the conflict, yet submission to…
Nothing can be truer than your statement, that multitudes of people do not know what they sign, when they indorse the Crittenden propositions.
When, the other day, the Boston papers undertook to print them formally, people were shocked.… The 4th March will come with a fatal suddenness for all the plotters and expecters and adjustment-mongers.
Sumner said, with much calmness and in the most courteous spirit, that he believed the signers had so high a regard for the name of Crittenden that they had put their signatures to a paper which they could not have fully understood in all…
It would never do to say that any Boston man or boy could sign a paper the whole of which he had not read and digested.
Thou and the stars, our Sumner, still shine on!
No dark will dim, no spending waste thy ray; And we as soon could doubt the Milky Way, Whether enduring were its silver zone, As question of thy truth.
Their light is gone Whose beam was borrowed: ever will Accident, Upon a day, the garment it hath lent Strip off,--make beggars of its kings anon.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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