You are now coming in conflict with the Committee of Fifteen, who declare by their resolution that the States now have the power, and may yet exclude everybody of a particular race or color.
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 say that they propose to do what our fathers never did.
I believe that the founders of this Republic intended that all freemen should participate in the political and civil rights of the country.
I think the distinction which they made was not between white men and black men: that distinction is of modern origin: but the distinction which they made was between freemen and slaves.
Pass that law at this session, and it becomes an issue in the next political campaign; and those who sustain it and pass it here will be committed to its support, and those who oppose it will strive to elect men in favor of its repeal.
This Committee proposes in this Amendment to sell out four million (radical count) negroes to the bad people of those States forever and ever.
Has there ever been before, Sir, in the history of this or any other country, such a stupendous sale of negroes as that?
My heart, my conscience, and my judgment approve of this Amendment, and I support it without qualification or reservation.
No State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race.
And the elective franchise shall not be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color.
It is proposed, by a solemn provision of the Constitution, to declare that certain persons shall not be included in the basis of representation.
Does not the blood of Lincoln appease the vengeance and wrath of the opponents of this Government?
Charles Sumner, and say whether any nation was ever blessed with a public man intellectually more able and consistent, and morally more courageous, pure, and noble.
How much he has suffered in the cause of Freedom! and how calmly and heroically he suffered, never boasting or complaining!
What herculean labor he has performed, and every particle of that labor to sustain and advance those principles of justice and freedom which form the only sure basis of a republic!
I am glad to see that Boston has, at last, by the voice of its city government, shown due appreciation of the services rendered to the country by that truly great and good man.
No man living that Treason would so much rejoice to see struck down as yourself; and many there are who would strike, if they dared.
I know you think little of danger; but fear for your country, if not for yourself.
Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Common Law are so exact in definition, uses in that classic of the law the terms ‘civil liberty’ and ‘political liberty’ everywhere as synonymous.
As I understand it, this bill, which, as the Senator will see, actually annuls all State laws, everywhere throughout the United States, fixing any inequality in civil rights, is founded upon the second clause of the recent Amendment to the…
My argument is, that, if, to carry out the prohibition of Slavery, and to complete the duty of Abolition, it shall be regarded necessary to confer the franchise, it is within the power of Congress so to do.
If Congress, under the Constitutional Amendment, can secure equality of civil rights, may it not, a fortiori, secure equality in political rights, under the same clause?
Senators all about me assume that power; and now I ask the Senator, as a Constitutional lawyer to whom we refer daily, whether, if you can do the one, you cannot do the other?
If I were disposed to despair on other questions, I should take heart, when I see how Senators, once lukewarm, indifferent, or perhaps hostile, now generously unite in securing protection to the freedman by Act of Congress.
But I should fail in frankness, if I did not give notice that at the proper time I shall insist that every reason, every argument, every consideration, by which you assert the power of Congress for the protection of colored persons in…
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