Congress must, therefore, determine what is a republican form of government.
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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Here is one of the greatest questions of our history.
My opinions, deductions, and conclusions are derived from my own experience and observation among them, and, whether they shall be confirmed or denied by others, are, notwithstanding, my honest and sincere convictions.
While I am able to say that they have made up their minds that Emancipation is a fact, and not to be avoided, I am obliged to state my earnest opinion, that, so far as secession is concerned,--that is, the doctrine of State Rights,--it is…
They are perfectly united in the belief that the division of this country is both right from a moral stand-point and politic as a measure of expediency.
They have simply changed their base from the battle-field to the ballot-box, believing, as they very frankly admit, that greater triumphs await them there than they could ever hope for in the field.
So far from repenting of the stand they took, they glory in it.
They regret the result, and their non-success, it is true, but not one in a thousand will admit they were in the wrong.
Every boy at the South is being educated in the belief that the relations the South to-day sustains toward the North are the same as those of Hungary or Venetia toward Austria, or of Poland to Russia.
They have adopted for their motto, ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards.’ The snake, so far from being killed, is barely ‘scotched.’ Meantime they deem it better to rule in the Union than to serve in the Confederate army.
I repeat, that General Lee and Wade Hampton are the two most popular and best loved men in the South to-day.
You can depend upon it, that the Southern States in the future will present one solid, unanimous front; their leaders have them well in hand.
The Southerners are too smart not to see that Slavery is dead, but many of them hope as long as the black race exists here to be able to hold it in a condition of practical serfdom.
The policy of those who will eventually become the leaders here at the South is, for the present, to accept the best they can get, to acquiesce in anything and everything, but to strain every nerve to regain the political power and…
They will do all in their power to resist Negro Suffrage, to reduce taxation and expenditures, and would attack the national debt, if they saw any reason to believe repudiation possible.
They will continue to assert the inferiority of the African; and they would to-day, if possible, precipitate the United States into a foreign war, believing they could then reassert and obtain their independence.
In one word, this people have placed themselves in resolute antagonism to the North, and this generation, at least, will always hate the Northern people, while the boys are being educated to the same idea.
The former masters exhibit a most cruel, remorseless, and vindictive spirit toward the colored people.
The idea that the nation will pay the South for her slaves extensively prevails both in Georgia and South Carolina.
We who are here have a much better opportunity of knowing the feeling of the people than you at a distance, for they will not speak as freely before you as they will before us here and among themselves.
The feeling of disloyalty is as strong here now as it was during the war, but they cannot show it as they did then; and with regard to the freedmen there is every disposition on their part to make them odious.
They constantly talk of insurrection, insubordination, thieving, idleness, and every species of crime and vice; all of which I assure you is entirely false.
They are perfectly subordinate to every law, and, so far as thieving is concerned, such an assertion is gratuitous or false; for all cases of thieving, certainly, I am sorry to say, are done by the whites.
And why these denunciations and these prayers, if the oath of allegiance had been honestly taken, to be sacredly observed?
No, Gentlemen, the spirit of rebellion is not dead, and will never die while Democratic leaders in the South are relieved of their treachery and turned loose to stir up sedition and to incite rebellion.
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