It is a question of expediency which I raise, for the sake of the system we are about to establish.
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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Every consideration urged against taxing the bank directly may be urged against taxing the shares.
If it be bad policy in one case, it must be in the other.
Now, Sir, every consideration, every argument, which goes to sustain this great judgment, may be employed against the proposed concession to the States of the power to tax this national institution in any particular, whether directly or…
The reason of the judgment is as strong against an indirect tax as against a direct tax.
The very measure under consideration seeks to create a new currency by a system of national banks which shall supersede the existing State banks as agents of currency.
But this impediment will be increased, if the national banks be exposed to local taxation.
It is an untried experiment upon which you are entering.
But all who are for the system, and wish to see it doing all the good it can, will take care that it is not compelled to carry weight.
Would you place the national credit on a sure foundation?
Are you for the national banks as a proper agency to this end?
If these two objects interest you, then, I say, do not allow them to be sacrificed in subserviency to State Rights.
Or, stating the case in a different way, it is a question between the national credit, involving the interests of all, on the one side, and certain local pretensions on the other side.
It is a question between the whole and a part,--between the life of the Republic and a small percentage of taxation which Senators claim for their States.
The enemy is at our gates,--gold is at 180,--and yet Senators hesitate.
All are watching, at this moment, the movement of our forces under General Grant, and are longing for victory.
There is another field, where the battle is bloodless, but scarcely less important: I mean the field of finance.
If our pecuniary resources fail, it is doubtful if the army and navy must not fail also.
But victory on this field would give triumphant strength and vigor to all the operations of Government.
There is no argument for the army and navy--ay, Sir, for the present support of the Lieutenant-General of the United States, in the field at the head of our military forces--which at this moment is not equally applicable to the support of…
Everything is given to the one, almost without debate; but little is given to the other without higgling at every stage.
A defeat in finance would be little less disastrous than a defeat in war.
But who will hesitate to give all that is needed, even all that is asked by the proper authorities, for an improved currency?
You may seem to give much, when you abandon sources of State taxation; but you can give nothing that will not be returned tenfold, a hundred-fold, when the currency at last becomes fixed and uniform.
Gold will assume its normal place, business will be sure, values will be fixed, fluctuations will cease, inflated prices will pass away.
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