I forget, for the moment, all the unutterable wrong of Slavery, and all the transcendent blessings of Freedom; for they do not belong to this argument.
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 think only of my country menaced by rebellion, and ask how it shall be saved.
But I have no policy, no theory, no resolutions to support,--nothing which I will not gladly abandon, if you will show me anything better.
Not to abolish Slavery or to establish Slavery, but simply to put down the Rebellion.
My aim is to bring the Administration and the people nearer together, by showing the ground on which they must meet, for the sake of the Republic, and that it may not perish beneath felon blows.
I start, of course, with the assumption, in which you will all unite, that this war must be brought to a close.
It must not be allowed to drag its slow length along, bloody, and fruitless except with death.
Lives enough have been sacrificed, graves enough have been filled, homes enough have been emptied, patriot soldiers enough have been sent back halt and maimed with one leg or one arm, tears enough have been shed.
It is common to think only of the national debt, now swelling to unnatural proportions; but this will be small by the side of the fearful sum-total of loss from destruction of property, derangement of business, and change of productive to…
Even if we do not accept the conclusions of an ingenious calculator who places this damage at ten thousand millions of dollars, we must confess that it is an immensity, which, like the numbers representing sidereal distances, the…
To stop this infinity of waste there must be peace; to stop this cruel slaughter there must be peace.
I start with the further assumption, that there can be no separation of these States.
But do not deceive yourselves into the idea that peace founded on separation can be anything but a delusion and a snare.
Separation is interminable war, “never ending, still beginning,”--worse than the forays which ravaged the Scottish border, or the Tartar invasions which harassed China until its famous wall was built, fifteen hundred miles long, and so…
War will be chronic, and we must all sleep on our arms.
Better that it be all at once, rather than diffused over a generation.
If blood must be shed, better for a year than for an age.
Nor can you recognize such separation without delivering over this cherished Union to chaos.
If the Rebel States are allowed to go, what can be retained?
It is true, there can be no constitutional right to break up the Constitution, but the precedent unhappily recognized would unsettle this whole fabric of States.
But how to prevent it,--in other words, how to hamstring the Rebellion and conquer a peace,--this is the question.
The Rebels are in arms, aroused, at home, on their own soil, and resolved never to yield.
Nothing less than independence will satisfy them: if the war continues, I know not that they will be content with this.
The first begins with conciliation in order to end with Rebel submission, which is cart before horse.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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