Clad in the full panoply of citizenship, he will feel at last that he is a man.
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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At present he is only a recent chattel, awaiting your justice to be transmuted into manhood.
Would you have him respected in his rights, you must begin by respecting him in your laws.
Would you maintain him in freedom, you must begin by maintaining him in the equal rights of citizenship.
And now the national safety is staked on this act of justice.
You cannot sacrifice the freedman without endangering the peace of the country and the stability of our institutions.
The whole land will gape with volcanic fire, ready to burst forth in fatal flood.
But, under God, there is but one deliverance, and this is through justice.
I have said that the national credit will suffer; but this does not disclose the whole financial calamity.
It is idle to suppose that recent rebels, restored to privileges of citizenship, will vote cordially for the national debt incurred in the suppression of their rebellion, or that they will willingly tax themselves for interest on the…
As time advances, and their power is assured, in conjunction with Northern sympathizers, they will openly oppose it; or, if they consent to recognize it, they will impose the condition that the Rebel debt shall be recognized also.
All this is inevitable, if you give them the power; it is madness to tempt them.
But they will not have the power, if the promises to the freedman are performed.
Here again justice to the freedman becomes a necessity.
Sometimes it is said that we must not require justice to the freedman, because justice is still denied to the colored citizen in Connecticut and New York.
The denial of justice to the colored citizens in Connecticut and New York is wrong and mean; but it is on so small a scale that it is not perilous to the Republic, nor is it vital to the protection of the colored citizen and the protection…
To a good man, injustice, even on a small scale, is not tolerable; he feels the necessity of resisting it; but where the victims are counted by millions, this necessity becomes a transcendent duty, quickened and invigorated by all the…
Therefore, I say again, for the national safety, redeem these promises of the Fathers, and your own.
As well question Farragut in the maintop of his steamer, Sherman in his march across Georgia, or Grant in the field before Richmond, as question the authority of Congress in the present crisis.
It is expressly declared that “the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” These words, when properly understood, leave no alternative.
To this degrading assumption we must reply, not only for the national cause, but that republican governments may not suffer.
Even if it may satisfy some definition handed down from antiquity or invented in monarchical Europe, it cannot satisfy the solemn injunction of our Constitution.
Its correct determination will be an epoch for our country and for mankind.
Believe me, Sir, this is no question of theory or abstraction.
It is a practical question, which you are summoned to decide.
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