If it should be passed, thus shorn,--I say it, Sir, because I must say it,--it will bring disgrace upon Congress.
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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We have seen this prejudice die out on the field of battle, where white and colored have fought together for the same flag.
Slavery had no sanctity for him, and he insisted upon striking it.
The eminence which John Covode reached attests the hospitality of our institutions, and shows how character triumphs over difficulties.
Are we not told by the proverb that the Devil has a long arm?
It is known as “the last reason of kings.” Alas, that it should ever be the reason of a Republic!
In other words, the usurper was maintained in power by our guns.
As in other days it was proclaimed that a black man had no rights which a white man was bound to respect, so this defence assumes the same thing of the Black Republic.
What other kingly prerogative may not be seized?
In self-defence and for the sake of truth do I now speak.
I do not doubt the power and the duty of the Court.
In the guise of privilege, it enters those penetralia and insists that the secrets shall be disclosed.
This is our duty, and it is all expressed in Charity.
A substitute can never take the place of equality.
Let me ask the Senator whether in this world personal respect is not an element of comfort.
This denial is memorable, not only from the rank, but the character of the victim.
Where is justice, if this ban of color is not promptly removed?
Separate hotels, separate conveyances, separate theatres, separate schools and institutions of learning and science, separate churches, and separate cemeteries,--these are the artificial substitutes.
All persons,” and not “all white persons,” born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are “citizens.” Such is the definition supplied by this Amendment.
There is also, antedating and interpreting the Constitution, the original Common Law, which knew no distinction of color.
There is true grandeur in an example of justice, making the rights of all the same as our own, and beating down prejudice, like Satan, under our feet.
Senators whom they helped elect show no zeal for their rights.
The Senator becomes here the representative of Caste; and where, Sir?
I call that a vindication of Caste, and Caste in one of its most offensive forms.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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