I would propose to let Mason and Slidell go, and stipulate, at the same time, for a complete abandonment of the old code of Maritime Law as upheld by England and the European powers.
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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I would propose that private property at sea should be exempt from capture by armed Government ships.
I would propose that neutral merchant vessels, in time of war, as in time of peace, should be exempt from search, visitation, or detention, by armed Government vessels, when on the ocean or high seas,--I mean when beyond that distance from…
I would propose to abolish blockades of purely commercial ports, excepting for articles contraband of war.
I avail myself of this, the earliest opportunity yet presented, to express my utter and strong condemnation, as one of the Representatives of the people, of the act of the Administration surrendering Mr.
In the presence of great duties we have no time for the luxury of grief.
She has excited in the hearts of this people a deep and bitter sense of wrong, of injury inflicted at a moment when we could not respond.
Let England take them; if she has a mind to fête and toast them, let her do it,--it is none of our business; if England desires to make lions of Confederate Rebels, it is a mere matter of taste.
PRESIDENT,--Every principle of International Law, when justly and authoritatively settled, is a safeguard of peace and a landmark of civilization.
It constitutes part of that code which is the supreme law, above all municipal laws, binding the whole Commonwealth of Nations.
Arrogant, audacious, persistent, perfidious,--one was author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the other was chief author of the filibustering system which has disgraced our national name and disturbed our national peace.
Occupying places of trust and power in the service of the country, they conspired against it, and at last the secret traitors and conspirators became open rebels.
The present Rebellion, surpassing in proportions and in wickedness any rebellion in history, was from the beginning quickened and promoted by their untiring energies.
The expedition of my violent love Outran the pauser reason.… … Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make his love known?
Great Britain cannot complain, except by adopting those identical principles; and should we undertake to vindicate the act, it can be only by repudiating those identical principles.
Great Britain is armed with American principles, while to us are left only those British pretensions which throughout our history have been constantly, deliberately, and solemnly rejected.
It is not to the right of search that we object, but to the following seizure without process of law.
Therefore the Law of Nations has been violated, and the conduct of Captain Wilkes must be disavowed, while men who are traitors, conspirators, and rebels, all in one, are allowed to go free.
The irrational anachronism becomes more flagrant from the inconsistency of the party making it; for it cannot be forgotten, that, in times past, on this identical point of law, Great Britain persistently held an opposite ground from that…
If, in this discussion, I expose grievances which it were better to forget, be assured it is from no willingness to revive the buried animosities they once so justly aroused, but simply to exhibit the proud position which the United States…
In exchange for the prisoners set free, we receive from Great Britain a practical assent, too long deferred, to a principle early propounded by our country, and standing forth on every page of our history.
The same voice that asks for their liberation renounces in the same breath an odious pretension, for whole generations the scourge of peaceful commerce.
Great Britain, throughout her municipal history, has practically contributed to the establishment of freedom beyond all other nations.
But, while thus entitled to gratitude for glorious contributions to Municipal Law, we turn with dissent and sorrow from much which she has sought to fasten upon International Law.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
