Because we have the successor of Jefferson Davis in the Presidential chair, therefore Congress must stay.
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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If not a prophet, he has yet struck a mighty key-note in our history.
The asylum which they open to all the oppressed of all nations is to console the earth.
The facility thereby afforded for escape from a bad government will force the European governments to be just and enlightened.
The rest of the world, little by little, will open their eyes to the nothingness of the illusions in which politicians have indulged.
The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever European statesmen may think of them.
Let those who seek justice and liberty for themselves give that justice and liberty to their fellow-creatures.
What could happen better for France than to see the English and the Colonists destroy each other in a party warfare which could only augment her power and favor her interests?
The constant duel between the Nation and the States must cease.
Unity is written upon it by the Almighty hand.
If disloyalty cannot be shut out of this Chamber, how can we hope to overcome it elsewhere?
In face of this positive, peremptory requirement, it is impossible to see how loyalty can be other than a “qualification.” In denying it, you practically set aside this Amendment.
All this was treason,--plain, palpable, unquestionable, downright treason.
I cannot bring this survey to an end without an expression of deep regret that I find myself constrained to differ from the Chief Justice.
In faithful fellowship for long years, we have striven together for the establishment of Liberty and Equality as the fundamental law of this Republic.
Never has it been said that it is the part of a good presiding officer to amplify his power; and there is at least one obvious reason: a presiding officer is only an agent, acting always in presence of his principal.
Whatever the promptings of the present moment, such an amplification can find no sanction in the National Constitution, or in that Parliamentary Law from which there is no appeal.
The safety of the Republic requires action at once.
But this argument mistakes the Constitution, and also mistakes the whole theory of impeachment.
I would take notice that we are upon an impeachment, and not upon an indictment.
Anything short of this is to trifle with the Republic and its transcendent fortunes.
If this be the rule of courts, a fortiori it must be the rule of the Senate on impeachments; for we have seen, that, when sitting for this purpose, the Senate enjoys a latitude of its own.
Rebels were allowed to fill the antechambers of the Executive Mansion and to enter into the counsels.
The statute was passed over the veto of the President by two thirds of both Houses, who thus solemnly united in declaring its constitutionality.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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