Look at the question as you will, in the light of morals or of jurisprudence, and the answer is the same.
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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There is the promise of the Proclamation, by which the public faith of the country is irrevocably pledged that certain slaves “shall be henceforward free,” and their freedom shall be “recognized and maintained”; and this promise, according…
Every such court refusing to recognize the act of the President will stultify itself and shock the judicial conscience of mankind.
It is enough that the Proclamation has declared the slaves free.
The people once slaves in the Rebel States can never again be recognized as such by the United States.
This is noble doctrine; and it is none the less noble because from a member of the Cabinet sometimes supposed to hesitate where Freedom is in question.
See, then, into what denial of just principles, as well as inconsistencies, you are led, when you follow the Democratic candidate in rejecting Freedom as the corner-stone of Union.
A vote for McClellan will be, first and foremost, a vote for Slavery, at a time when this crime has plunged the country into the sorrow and waste of war.
It will be, also, a vote for the Rebellion, at a moment when the Rebellion is nigh to fall.
But disunion, when once started, cannot be stopped; so that a vote for McClellan will be a vote to break this Union in pieces, and to set each State spinning in space.
It will be a vote for chronic war among fellow-citizens, ever beginning and never ending, until the fate of Mexico will be ours.
On the other hand, a vote for Abraham Lincoln will be, first and foremost, a vote for Freedom, Union, and Peace, that political trinity under whose guardianship we place the Republic.
It will be a vote, also, to fix the influence and good name of our country, so that it shall become the pride of history.
It will be a vote, also, for civilization itself.
Forward, then,--in the name of Freedom, Union, and Peace!
FELLOW-CITIZENS,--In all the concerns of life, the first necessity is to see and comprehend the circumstances about us.
Without this knowledge the machine cannot be worked, the ground cannot be tilled, the ship cannot be navigated, war cannot be waged, government cannot be conducted.
The old Greek, suddenly enveloped in a cloud while battling with his enemies, exclaimed, “Give me to see!”--and this exclamation of the warrior is the exclamation, also, of every person in practical life, whether striving for country or…
Give me to see,” that I may comprehend my duty.
Give me to see,” that I may recognize my enemy.
Give me to see,” that I may know where to strike.
The wise physician, before any prescription for his patient, endeavors, by careful diagnosis, to ascertain the nature of the disease or injury, and when this is done, he proceeds with confidence.
Without such knowledge all medical skill must fail.
Nowhere is diagnosis more important than in national affairs.
They love their country with instinctive love, quickened at the mother’s knee, and nursed in the earliest teachings of the school.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
