It is idle to expect any true peace while the freedman is robbed of this transcendent right, and left a prey to a vengeance too ready to wreak upon him the disappointment of defeat.
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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Only through him can you redress the balance of our political system and assure the safety of patriot citizens.
Only through him can you save the national debt from the inevitable repudiation awaiting it, when recent Rebels in conjunction with Northern allies once more bear sway.
If he was willing to die for the Republic, he is surely good enough to vote.
And now that he is ready to uphold the Republic, it is madness to reject him.
You owe this tragical war, and the debt now fastened upon the country, to the denial of this right.
Vacant chairs in once happy homes, innumerable graves, saddened hearts, mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, brothers, all mourning lost ones, the poor ground by taxation never known before, all testify against the injustice by which the…
Without this you must have a standing army, which is a sorry substitute for justice.
Before you is the plain alternative of the ballot-box or the cartridge-box: choose ye between them.
Nothing so impolitic as wrong; nothing so inexpedient as tyranny; nothing so little economical as the spirit of caste.
Justice is the highest policy, the truest expediency, and the most comprehensive economy.
Do you wish to save the national credit, still imperilled by fatal injustice, and to secure gold as the national currency?
Then sow the land with Human Rights, and encircle it round about with Justice.
The freedman will not, cannot work, while you deny his rights.
Cotton will not, cannot grow in such an atmosphere.
The infinite folly must be corrected, if for no higher reason than because it is unprofitable.
But it is contrary to Nature, and on this account renders the whole social system insecure.
Where Human Rights are set at nought, there can be no tranquillity except that of force, which is despotism.
The philosophy of history, speaking by one of its oracles, the great Italian Vico, confirms this lesson, when it says, most sententiously, that “nothing out of its natural state can either easily subsist or last long.” Truer words were…
Gratitude, in unison with necessity and reason, takes up the cry, insisting that we shall not fail in duty to benefactors.
As Freedom stamped her foot, black armies sprang from the ground.
To save the Republic they toiled, digging trenches and making of their bodies breastworks; for the Republic they bled.
Toiling and fighting, they became copartners in the government.
They aided the victories by which the Republic was assured in unity.
If the terrible crime of Slavery, for which the Republic suffered in strength and good name, is ended, and the Republic thereby exalted, it is through them.
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