The other proposition, looking to the direct action of Congress under the National Constitution and existing Amendments, is obviously the simplest and most practical, inasmuch as it deals with the exigency promptly, frankly, and according…
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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It does not undertake to act by indirection; nor does it postpone to an indefinite future what cannot be postponed without detriment to the Republic.
Such a proposition is commended by every argument of reason, humanity, and patriotism.
To say that it is not constitutional is to say that the Constitution itself is not constitutional; for it is derived from the very heart of the Constitution, and is filled with all its best life-blood.
By this bill it is provided that all citizens in any State or Territory shall be protected in the full and equal enjoyment and exercise of civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage.
This is founded on the consideration that by the abolition of Slavery the slave became at once a citizen, subject only to such disabilities as are common to other citizens, and that by the second clause of the Constitutional Amendment…
On this foundation the Senator places his bill, assuming, that, to complete the abolition of Slavery, all restrictions, penalties, or deprivations of right, resulting from Slavery in any State or Territory, must be made to cease.
Objection, if valid at all, must be equally valid against the bill for enfranchisement in the District of Columbia, and against every other Congressional declaration without machinery or penalty.
If Congress has this beneficent power, then exercise it in such form as shall seem best, with machinery and penalty or without machinery and penalty; but, in God’s name, exercise it, for the sake of the country, which suffers from your…
If this question were less transcendent in its relations, or if it could be approached calmly and without prejudice, in the light of reason, I cannot doubt the judgment.
But you must bring to its determination the same simple desire for truth, undisturbed by external influences, which would control a judicial tribunal; for, in the determination of your powers under the Constitution, you are a judicial…
It will not be enough to deny the beneficent power, or to mock at those who find it in the Constitution.
Surely, out of this ample power Congress cannot hesitate in requiring justice to the wards and allies of the Republic through whom the Rebellion was crushed, especially when without justice to them security in the future is nothing but a…
From these sources of power I pass to that other found in the constitutional obligation to guaranty to every State of the Union a republican form of government.
Of course, in executing the guaranty, you must affix a meaning to the term “republican form of government.” To do this I have in this debate endeavored to show the essential principles our fathers had at heart when they founded the…
According to the Fathers, all men are equal in rights, and, as corollaries from this truth, all just government is founded on the consent of the governed, and taxation without representation is tyranny.
It is idle to allege against this definition, that there were property “qualifications” in most of the States, by which the number of voters was essentially limited.
According to the definition of a slave, he has no will of his own, and can give no “consent” to government.
Indeed, a careful examination of his relations to the government shows how completely in his case the rights of “the people” are left untouched.
He was not regarded as one of “the people,” and therefore was not under the safeguard of the rights of “the people.” But all this was changed when he became a freeman.
He was then one of “the people,” whose property could not be taken by taxation without representation, and whose consent was essential to government.
The difference was not between whites and blacks, but between slaves and freemen.
All freemen, without distinction of color, were citizens.
The laws have restored the rights which had been taken away, and it is now your duty to see that the people who have regained their rights are no longer refused an equal share of representation.
Proving, as I have, that colored persons are citizens, this very definition teaches that they cannot be refused participation in the governing power.
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