By taking Mason & Co. we were acting on the English law; by giving them up, we act under our own view of what the law should be, and have brought England over to adopting our view.
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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You look down upon the matter, while others look at it.… The tables are completely turned upon England.
It is just the thing to create a correct public opinion upon the subject in the country.
I deem it entirely unanswerable, and that it ought to conclude the whole subject.
Whatever the claims of property, slaves are men; and I but repeat an unquestionable truth of morals, confirmed by the Declaration of Independence, when I say that there can be no property in men.
Considered in these aspects and with these qualifications, these bills are only an agency in the prosecution of the war, and the power to enact them is as clear as the power to raise armies or to levy taxes.
Pray, Sir, where in the Constitution is any limitation of the War Powers?
Let Senators who would limit them mention a single section, line, or phrase, which even hints at any limitation.
Nor can it be doubted on principle, that, if the latter be unconstitutional, then are all other acts of war unconstitutional.
You may condemn confiscation and liberation as impolitic, but you cannot condemn them as unconstitutional, unless, in the same breath, you condemn all other agencies of war, and resolve our present proceeding into the process of a criminal…
It is easy to say that Senators who insist upon the War Powers of Congress are indifferent to the Constitution; but I do not admit that any Senator is more anxious for the Constitution than myself.
The War Powers are derived from the Constitution, but, when once set in motion, are without any restraint from the Constitution; so that what is done in pursuance of them is at the same time under the Constitution and outside the…
It is under the Constitution in its beginning and origin; it is outside the Constitution in the latitude with which it is conducted; but, whether under the Constitution or outside the Constitution, all that is done in pursuance of the War…
It is easy to cry out against it; it is easy, by misapplication of the Constitution, to call it in question; but it is only by such misapplication, or by senseless cry, that its complete constitutionality can for a moment be drawn into…
Other parts of the Constitution may be open to question; but here is no room for question.
It is evident that the framers of the Constitution had the Articles of Confederation in mind, when they vested in Congress power to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.
The Senator must be very hardy who denies the power of Congress, in the exercise of belligerent rights, to pass such a bill; and he must be equally hardy, when he insists that belligerent rights are impaired by any limitations of the…
If the enemies against whom we now wage war were not our own fellow-citizens, if they were aliens unhappily fastened for the time on our territory, there would be no fine-spun question of constitutional immunity.
As a public enemy, he seeks to subvert our Government, its laws and its Constitution; and in this warfare he proceeds according to the Rights of War, indifferent to any mere local law.
But if the war on our part were in accordance with mere local law, and in subordination to provisions of the Constitution devised for peace, it is evident that the National Government would be unable to cope with its enemy.
But the Rights of War are fixed, whether against alien enemies or against enemies whose hostility is aggravated by the guilt of rebellion, with this single difference, that against rebel enemies these rights would seem to be more complete…
Show me any Right of War which may be employed against alien enemies, and now, in the name of the Constitution, I insist upon its employment against rebels arrayed as enemies.
The double character which they bear increases their liabilities, subjecting them to all the penalties of war enhanced by those personal responsibilities which every partaker in rebellion necessarily assumes.
And yet, Sir, the Constitution is cited as a limitation upon these rights.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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