Confident in the justice of our cause, we will dedicate to it our best powers, careless of opposing factions or the misrepresentations of a mendacious press,--sustaining it with enthusiasm, and yet with candor, with firmness, and yet with…
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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The great law of Human Progress, the all-prevailing might of truth and of God, are on our side.
Nearly FORTY THOUSAND Freemen have, by their votes, borne testimony against the two old political organizations, and for the new party of FREEDOM.
Still further, she has declared, by the vote of nearly FORTY THOUSAND Freemen, that Slavery shall not be extended,--that Slavery shall not be allowed to continue under the National Government, wherever that Government is responsible for…
To support these paramount principles, without equivocation or compromise, at all times and in every way, she has now given her first earnest and determined pledge.
The principles which we have upheld in the Presidential election, as paramount to all others, let us continue to uphold and advance through the new organization now happily established.
Remember, then, to vote for no man who is not willing to unite with us in declaring opposition to Slavery and the Slave Power to be above all other questions, and who cannot be relied upon to sustain those men only who join in this…
Let our efforts in the next election show us to be FIRST.
First in principles we already are,--first in devotion to those truths which give dignity and security to our common country: let us be FIRST also in numbers and power.
Ours is the cause of truth, of morals, of religion, of God.
Charles Sumner is a man of large heart,--not of that class of politicians who calculate availability, and the numbers of the opposition, but a man who takes an enlarged view of a noble system of action, and places his shoulder to the wheel…
Here in Massachusetts our new party, while yet in its cradle, shows a giant's strength.
True to the principles which have led her by a majority of her votes to reject both Taylor and Cass, Massachusetts cannot uphold their supporters.
Her opposition to the old and vicious organizations can be made effectual only by opposing all who sustained these obnoxious candidates.
Our party is composed of persons from all the other parties,--drawn together by no consideration of mere expediency or personal advantage, but united by a common bond of principle to promote that great cause of Freedom with whose triumph…
It appeals to good men in the name of virtue and religion.
It appeals to the young by the best instincts of their nature.
It appeals to those who call themselves Whigs by all the professions of their party here in times past.
With such a cause, at the present moment, we cannot hesitate.
Thus shall we conquer that opposing power, which, through the agency of both the old political parties, now seeks to trample down the rising struggle for Freedom.
War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families.
Famine and pestilence become as nothing in comparison with it....
Cannons and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines.
I look upon the way of Treaties as a retiring from fighting like beasts to arguing like men, whose strength should be more in their understandings than in their limbs.--Eikon Basilike, XVIII.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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