What especially denominates it a Republic is its dependence on the public or people at large, without any hereditary powers.
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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Thus was a “sense of the Equal Rights of mankind” one of the principles on which Republicanism rested.
The end of the guaranty is ‘a republican form of government.’ The meaning of this expression is not so unsettled here as in other countries, because we agree in one descriptive character as essential to the existence of a republican form…
Now, fellow-citizens, I will venture to state, in a few words, what I take these American political principles in substance to be.
Thus, at every stage, from the opening, when Otis announced the master principle, “Taxation without representation is Tyranny,” all along to Daniel Webster, we find “Representation” an essential element in the American definition of…
Looking at the States in their collective character, we find that at the adoption of the National Constitution they refused to recognize any exclusion from the elective franchise on account of race or color.
The Fathers knew too well the requirements of a republican government to sanction such exclusion.
Recognizing Slavery as a transitory condition, soon to cease, they threw over it a careful oblivion; but they were none the less jealous of the rights of all freemen.
But, becoming a freeman, the slave stepped at once within the pale of taxation, and therefore necessarily of representation, since the two are inseparable.
The Continental Congress refused point-blank to insert the word “white” in the Articles of Confederation.
Jefferson was Chairman, in April, 1784, recommended an Amendment of the Articles of Confederation, whereby the war expenses should be apportioned among the several States according to “the whole number of white and other free citizens and…
By the Constitution of New Hampshire, at the adoption of the National Constitution, the suffrage was vested in “every male inhabitant of each town and parish,” with certain qualifications, but without exclusion on account of color.
They spoke of “persons,” “inhabitants,” “freemen,” or, better still, “men,” without prefix of “white.” Color was not mentioned.
But even in South Carolina, which introduced the discreditable tyranny into her Constitution, this exclusion was more apparent than real.
On the other hand, its sufferance cannot be interpreted as a waiver of the principles for which the Revolution was fought.
Such are the public acts of the States, collectively and individually, at the adoption of the National Constitution, illustrating with rare harmony the American idea of a Republic, and testifying against any exclusion founded on color.
In vain do you cite philosophers or publicists, or the examples of former history.
As well reject the Decalogue in determining moral duties, or reject the multiplication-table in determining a question of arithmetic.
Such was the understanding, and such the promise, at the adoption of the Constitution.
Such was the declared meaning of our fathers, according to the concurrent contemporary testimony of Hamilton and Madison.
It is the early Vocabulary of James Otis, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin; it is the Dictionary of the Revolution; it is the Lexicon of our National History; it is the Thesaurus of Public Acts.
This new idea was the great discovery of our fathers.
Rob them of this, and you take their highest title to gratitude.
Columbus, venturing into an unknown sea, discovered a New World of Space; but our fathers, venturing likewise, discovered a New World of Public Duty.
For determining the meaning of our own Constitution in a momentous requirement without precedent, American authority and example are enough; but I would not have you forget that the conclusion on which I rest is grandly sustained by France.
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