There is no reason, point, or argument once urged for Emancipation which may not be urged now for Enfranchisement.
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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I do not err, when I say that Emancipation itself will fail without Enfranchisement.
By Enfranchisement I mean the establishment of the Equal Rights of All, so that there shall be no exclusion of any kind, civil or political, founded on color, and the promises of the Fathers shall be fulfilled.
As an act of justice, Enfranchisement has a necessity of its own.
No individual and no people can afford to be unjust.
Such an offence carries a curse, which, sooner or later, must drag its perpetrator to ruin.
But here necessity from considerations of justice is completed and intensified by positive requirements of the national safety, plainly involved in the performance of these promises.
Look at the unhappy freedman blasted by the ban of exclusion.
He has always been loyal, and now it is he, and not the Rebel master, who pays the penalty.
From the nature of the case, he must be discontented, restless, anxious, smarting with sense of wrong and consciousness of rights denied.
Credit fails; nay, it dies before it is born.
And all this you sanction, when you leave the freedman despoiled of his rights.
But the freedman, though forbearing and slow to anger, will not always submit to outrage.
And here begins the terrible war of races foreseen by Jefferson, where God, in all His attributes, has none which can take part with the oppressor.
The tragedy of San Domingo will be renewed on a wider theatre, with bloodier incidents.
Be warned, I entreat you, by this historic example.
It was the denial of rights to colored people, upon successive promises, which caused that fearful insurrection.
All this dreary catalogue of murder, battle, sorrow, and woe began in denial of justice to the colored race.
Like causes produce like effects; therefore all this will be ours, if we madly persist in the same denial.
The freedmen among us are not unlike the freedmen of San Domingo or Jamaica; they have the same “organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,” and, above all, the same sense of wrong, and the same revenge.
To avoid insurrection and servile war, big with measureless calamity, and even to obtain the security essential to industry, agriculture, commerce, and the national credit, you must perform the promises of the Republic, originally made by…
But duty done will not only save you from calamity and give you security; it will also prepare the way for the great triumphs of the future, when through assured peace there shall be tranquillity, prosperity, and reconciliation, all of…
To this you are solemnly pledged by the Proclamation of President Lincoln, which, after declaring him “free,” promises to maintain this freedom, not for any limited period, but for all time.
But this cannot be, so long as you deny him the shield of impartial laws.
Beyond even the shield of impartial laws, he will then have the protection which comes from the consciousness of manhood.
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