Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, Than whom a better Senator ne’er held The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled The fierce Epirot and the African bold.
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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The answer of such men is a precedent for us, especially should England, taking up the rejected policy of Mazarin, presumptuously send any ambassador to stay the Republic in its war with Slavery.
The same heart of oak, so strenuous to repel intervention of France between King and Parliament, was not less strenuous the other way, when intervention could serve the rights of England or the principles of religious liberty.
Such was England when ruled by the great Protector, called in his own day “chief of men.” No nation so powerful as to be exempt from that irresistible intercession, where, beneath the garb of peace, was a gleam of arms.
From Spain, on whose extended empire the sun did not cease to shine, he required that no Englishman should be subject to the Inquisition.
For their relief he contributed out of his own purse two thousand pounds, and authorized a general collection throughout England, which reached a large sum; but besides money, he set apart a day of humiliation and prayer for them.
This great instance, constituting an inseparable part of the Protector’s glory, is not the last where England intervened for Protestant liberties.
From that period down to the present moment, intervention in the internal affairs of other nations has been a prevailing practice, now cautiously and peaceably, now offensively and forcibly.
The Congress of Vienna, which undertook to settle the map of Europe, organized universal and perpetual intervention in the interest of monarchical institutions and existing dynasties.
Justly interpreted, they leave no apology for armed intervention, except in case of direct and imminent danger, when a nation, like an individual, may be thrown upon the great right of self-defence.
Next came the greater instance of Greece, when the Christian powers of Europe intervened to arrest a protracted struggle and to save this classic land from Turkish tyranny.
At last, under the continued mediation of these powers, the independence of Greece was recognized by the Ottoman Porte, and another commonwealth consecrated to Freedom took its place in the Family of Nations.
Civil war ensued; but the great powers promptly intervened, even to the extent of arresting a Dutch army on its march.
But, alas for human consistency! the French Emperor is now intervening in Mexico with armies and navies to build an imperial throne for an Austrian Archduke.
The abolition of the slave-trade by Act of Parliament, in 1807, was the signal for a change of history.
I have said too much with regard to an instance, which, though beautiful and important, is only a parenthesis in the grander and more extensive intervention against African Slavery, which was already organizing, destined at last to embrace…
Even before Wilberforce triumphed in Parliament, Great Britain intervened with Napoleon, in 1806, pressing him to join in the abolition of the slave-trade; but he flatly refused.
Not content with imposing her magnanimous system upon the civilized world, she carried it among the tribes and chiefs of Africa, who, by her omnipresent intervention, were summoned to renounce a barbarous and criminal custom.
Accordingly, Great Britain, by Act of Parliament, in 1834, enfranchised all the slaves in her own possessions, and thus again secured to herself the primacy of a lofty cause.
Every person holding office under the British Government at once set his face against Slavery, and the way was by having nothing to do with it, even in employing or hiring the slave of another,--nothing, “directly or indirectly”.
There can be no consolidation of Peace without the overthrow of Slavery.
Therefore is Great Britain still bound to her original faith; nor can she abandon the cause, of which she was the declared protectress, without betrayal of Peace, as well as betrayal of Liberty.
The honorable story of British intervention against Slavery is incomplete without showing how its generous ardor broke forth against our Republic, which was denounced as linked with Slavery.
Literature, eloquence, and poetry lent themselves to expose the terrible inconsistency.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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