In each you legislate to the same end,--that the freedman may be maintained in that liberty so tardily accorded; and the legislation is just as appropriate in one case as in the other.
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 protection of colored persons in their civil rights by Act of Congress will be a great event.
It will be greater still because it establishes the power of Congress, without further Amendment of the Constitution, to protect colored persons in all their rights, including of course the elective franchise.
Take it all in all, that decision must always stand forth in bad eminence, as perhaps the most thoroughly perverse and reprehensible in judicial history.
Whether regarded in the light of morals or politics or jurisprudence, or of juridical history, it was simply shocking.
It was an insult to conscience, to reason, and to truth.
Bursting the cerements of the grave, it again stalks into this Chamber to fright us from our propriety.
Not now from the Supreme Court does it come, but from the President.
That public opinion which did not hesitate to condemn the Supreme Court cannot hesitate now to condemn the President.
You cannot adopt this veto without practically overturning the recent practice of the Government, and setting aside that opinion of Attorney-General Bates which is one of the most illustrious acts in the Administration of President Lincoln.
For myself, I have always regarded that production as of the first importance in our recent history.
The future historian, as he records the events by which the Republic has been elevated, must dwell with pride upon that simple act, where a single officer of the Government did so much to fix the liberties of a race.
I have said that this veto revives the Dred Scott decision.
It is bad to revive the worst decision in our history; but this veto practically sets aside one of the best decisions in our history.
But this veto pretends to despoil Congress of this discretion.
In the exercise of its discretion, Congress has undertaken to assure civil rights to colored persons.
The present bill is regarded as essential to enforce the prohibition of Slavery, and Congress, in the exercise of its discretion under the Constitution, has passed it.
So far as its influence goes, it will neutralize and nullify the great Amendment by which Slavery has been abolished.
It leaves the letter in the Constitution, but it takes away the powers by which that letter is made a living soul.
I have shown, first, that it revives a most odious judgment, and, secondly, that it subverts a received rule of interpretation, and degrades that Constitutional Amendment which is the glory of our recent history.
For these principles and these ideas I have labored, and I shall continue to labor so long as life lasts.
If at any moment I could hesitate, your words would be an encouragement to constancy.
Even through the present darkness it is plainly visible.
The question before us, even in its simplest form, is of incalculable importance; but it has added interest, as opening the whole vast subject of Reconstruction.
Treason must be made odious, and to this end power should be secured to loyal fellow-citizens.
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