No one would go farther than I would, to put down, with a vigorous and resolute hand, this most accursed Rebellion.
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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But, in God’s name, Sir, let it be done in such a manner that those who live after us may be able to say, that, in all this time of trial, not one act was sanctioned or permitted by our Government which was not becoming us as a civilized…
My earnest prayer is, that He will endue our rulers with wisdom, and soon give peace and prosperity and happiness to our bleeding land.
We, as a nation, are not at liberty to follow the example of men who claim to owe allegiance to a Government not recognized among nations,--the self-assumed name of which will, by God’s blessing, soon sink into oblivion.
Of course, the admission of a colored lawyer to the bar of the Supreme Court would make it difficult for any restriction on account of color to be maintained anywhere.
The Slave Power, which received its constitutional death-blow yesterday in Congress, writhes this morning on account of the admission of a colored lawyer, John S.
O dead, wrapped in the cerements that the divine hand of Revolution folds its victims with, augustly exciting in your stormy birth, transcendently mischievous in your little life!--Senator Charles Sumner and Negro Lawyer John S.
Rock the pall-bearers,--the room of the Supreme Court of the United States the Potter’s Field,--the corpse the Dred Scott decision!
The grave to bury the Dred Scott decision was in that one sentence dug, and it yawned there, wide open, under the very eyes of some of the judges who had participated in the juridical crime against Democracy and Humanity.
The vote on the Amendment of the Constitution was a memorable and glorious event in your history.
Doubtless the admission of a colored lawyer to the Supreme Court helped prepare the way for admission of his race to the rights of citizenship, and especially the right to vote.
Without one of these measures the political power of the former slave-masters would be enlarged by Emancipation.
Sumner said: “There are two ways of killing a measure: one is by voting it down; the other is by postponing it until you lose an opportunity of voting on it; and the latter is the policy of certain Senators now.
Look at it in its political aspect, and you will recognize how vital it is to the integrity of the Union itself.
On one side we encounter a formidable Usurpation with all the pretensions of State Rights, hardly less flagrant and pernicious than those which ripened in bloody rebellion.
On the other side are the simple and legitimate claims of the Union under the Constitution of the United States.
Thus stands the question at the outset: public convenience and the Union itself in its beneficent powers on the one side; public inconvenience and all the discord of intolerable State pretensions on the other side.
The proposition on its face is applicable to all the States throughout the Union, and in its vital principle concerns every lover of his country.
If this monopoly is offensive on its face, it becomes still more offensive, when we consider the motive in which it had its origin.
By confession of its supporters, it was granted in order to raise a revenue for the State out of men and business not of the State.
Such, Sir, are the pretensions of New Jersey to interfere with commerce, passengers, mails, and troops from other States, on the way, it may be, to the National Capital, even with necessary succors at a moment of national peril.
Such pretensions, persistently maintained and vindicated, constitute a Usurpation, not only hostile to the public interests, but menacing to the Union itself.
Here is no question of local taxation or local immunity under State laws, but an open assumption by a State to tax the commerce of the United States on the way from State to State.
No usurping monopoly should be allowed to establish itself in any State across the national highway, and, like a baron of the Middle Ages perched in his rocky fastness, levy toll and tribute from the wayfarers of business, pleasure, or…
The entire and unimpeachable constitutionality of the present measure is apparent in certain familiar precepts of the Constitution, brought to view in the title and preamble of the measure as introduced by me, but omitted in the bill now…
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