Undertaking to acknowledge a new power, you proclaim its fitness for welcome and association in the Family of Nations.
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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Can England gazette such a proclamation, elevating the whippers of women and sellers of children?
Can France permit Louis Napoleon to do the same?
It is not whether old and existing relations shall be continued with a power permitting Slavery, but whether relations shall be commenced with a new power, not merely permitting Slavery, but building its whole intolerable pretension upon…
Duty is plain as the moral law or the multiplication table.
Look for a moment at the unprecedented character of this pretension.
But the apostolic Slavemongers saw that Slavery at home must suffer under the popular judgment against its extension; they saw that a vote against its extension was a vote for its condemnation; and they rebelled.
Under this wicked inspiration, State after State pretended to withdraw from the Union, and to construct a new Confederacy, whose “corner-stone” was Slavery.
Since Satan first declared the “corner-stone” of his new government, and openly denounced the Almighty Throne, there has been no blasphemy of equal audacity.
In human history nothing but itself can be its parallel.
The gauntlet is thrown down to heaven and earth, while a disgusting Barbarism is proclaimed as the new Civilization.
Would that all of us understood and laid to heart the true nature of that career and that destiny, and the responsibility it imposes.
The establishment of the Confederacy is, verily, a distinct reaction against the whole course of the mistaken civilization of the age.
For Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity we have deliberately substituted Slavery, Subordination, and Government.
We must speak thus boldly; but ‘whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear.’” This God-sent missionary to the nations it is now proposed to welcome at the household hearth of the civilized world.
Elsewhere Slavery has been an accident; here it is the principal.
Elsewhere it has been an instrument only; here it is the inspiration.
Elsewhere it has been kept back in becoming modesty; here it is pushed forward in all its brutish nakedness.
Elsewhere it has claimed nothing but liberty to live; here it claims license to rule, with unbounded empire at home and abroad.
Look at this candidate power in its whole continued existence, from Alpha to Omega, and it is nothing but Slavery.
Its origin is Slavery, its mainspring is Slavery, its object is Slavery.
The Rebellion is Slavery in arms, Slavery on horseback, Slavery on foot, Slavery raging on the battle-field, Slavery savage on the quarter-deck, robbing, destroying, burning, killing, to uphold this candidate power.
Its legislation is simply Slavery in statutes, Slavery in chapters, Slavery in sections, with an enacting clause.
Its diplomacy is Slavery in pretended ambassadors, Slavery in cunning letters, Slavery in cozening promises, Slavery in persistent negotiation,--all to secure for the candidate power its much desired welcome.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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