Especially at this moment, when, by common consent, Slavery is recognized as the origin and life of the Rebellion, must all its agencies be regarded with more than ordinary repugnance.
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 in time of peace all Fugitive Slave Acts were offensive, as requiring what humanity and religion both condemn, they must at this moment be still more offensive, when Slavery, in whose behalf they were made, has risen in arms against the…
It is bad enough, at any time, to thrust an escaped slave back into bondage: it is absurd to thrust him back at a moment when Slavery is rallying all its forces for the conflict it has madly challenged.
The crime of such a transaction is not diminished by its absurdity.
A slave with courage and address to escape from his master has the qualities needed for a soldier of Freedom; but existing statutes require his arrest and sentence to bondage.
In annulling these statutes, Congress simply withdraws an irrational support from Slavery.
It does nothing against Slavery, but merely refuses to do anything for it.
It is one of the felicities of our present position, that by repealing all acts for the restitution of slaves we may hasten the happy day of Freedom and of Peace.
Even if Congress be not ready to make an end of Slavery, it cannot hesitate to make an end of all Fugitive Slave Acts.
Against the latter there are cumulative arguments of Constitutional Law and of duty, beyond any to be arrayed against Slavery itself.
Foreign powers watch the scene with awe; saints and patriots from their home in the skies look down with delight; and Washington, who set free his own slaves, exults that the Republic, which revered him as Father, now follows his example.
John Quincy Adams has already remarked that in this much debated clause the laws of grammar are violated in order to assert the claim of property in man; for the verb “shall be delivered up” has for nominative “no person,” and thus the…
It is on this jumble and muddle of words that a superstructure of wrong is built.
Even bad grammar may be disregarded, especially in behalf of human rights; but it is worthy of remark, that, in this clause of the Constitution, an outrage on human rights was begun by an outrage on language.
On any common occasion, not involving a question of human rights, such secondary signification might be supplied by intendment; but it cannot be supplied to limit or deny human rights, especially to defeat Liberty, without a violation of…
This principle is common to every system of civilized jurisprudence; but it has been nowhere expressed with more force than in the maxims of the Common Law and the decisions of its courts.
Such words are not “positive.” And clearly, by the same rule, if the words are susceptible of two different significations, that must be adopted which is hostile to Slavery.
In a tract bearing date 1795, long before the heats engendered by the Fugitive Slave Act, he used language which, if applied to our Constitution, must defeat every interpretation favorable to Slavery.
Thus far in our history, under the malignant influence of Slavery, the odious construction or intendment has prevailed.
Les mortels sont égaux; leur masque est différent. … Avoir les mêmes droits à la félicité, C’est pour nous la parfaite et seule égalité.
To “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity”: such are the declared objects of the Constitution, which…
The extent of its degradation is seen in the frauds it has perpetrated to influence this election.
The Preamble would be powerless against any “positive” sanction of Slavery by unequivocal words; but, on the other hand, any attempted sanction of Slavery by words not “positive” and not unequivocal, must be powerless against the Preamble…
It does not contain the word “slave” or “slavery,” which singly and exclusively denotes the idea of property in man.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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