All these are within your power, if you now let it be known that you will stand by the Declaration to the end.
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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All our institutions will be assured in proportion as you respect these great principles.
Reconstruction will have new strength, when you show this homage to human nature.
And yet in the face of all this we are now asked to retreat,--to retrace the steps already taken,--to reconsider the vote that has been adopted,--and to confirm in the statutes those words which are there without any sanction in the…
But whatever may be the result, I give notice that I shall not cease my effort,--I shall continue it to the end.
I am a soldier for the war; and until I see this great Declaration a living letter, I shall never intermit my endeavors.
I shall go forward, and on every possible occasion I shall press the Senate to another vote.
But I trust the Senate will not reconsider what they have done, but that they will settle this great question so that it shall never again disturb our debates.
Now, Sir, which is the more practical,--to allow this word to remain, breeding debate, controversy, strife, or at once to strike it out and complete our great work of Reconstruction?
There are provisions, as I said this morning, for the safeguard of naturalization, which I value much; but how small in value, compared with the establishment of that great principle which fixes forevermore the fundamental idea of the…
Both are important; but the first belongs to the class of policies or expedients, and not of principles.
But strike out the word “white” from your statutes, and you will do an act of justice whose influence will be immeasurable.
The Republic will be exalted, and all our institutions will have new strength and security.
If Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by it, let them come up and amend it.
Let them make it read that all men are created equal except negroes.
Let us have it decided whether the Declaration of Independence in this blessed year of 1858 shall be thus amended.
I know that more than three years ago there were men who, finding this assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and perpetuation of Slavery, denied the truth of it.
Calhoun, and all the politicians of his school, denied the truth of the Declaration.
You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles.
You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death.
While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office.
I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success.
Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of American Independence.
I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis?
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