A woman, inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like another Joan of Arc, and with marvellous power sweeps the popular heart.
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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Now melting to tears, and now inspiring to rage, her work everywhere touches the conscience, and makes the Slave-Hunter more hateful.
Better far, it is the testimony of the people, by an unprecedented act, against the Fugitive Slave Bill.
These things I dwell upon as incentives and tokens of an existing public sentiment, rendering this Act practically inoperative, except as a tremendous engine of horror.
The fugitive was welcomed in the cities, and protected against pursuit.
Never, in any capacity, can I render voluntary aid in its execution.
I know of no man among us, in any sphere of life, so young as he was at his death, who has been able to perform services of such true, simple, and lasting beneficence.
By wide and active superintendence of rural improvements, by labors of the pen, and by the various exercise of his genius, he has contributed essentially to the sum of human happiness.
Against Freedom both the old parties are banded.
Both the old parties unite in upholding Slavery.
If the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on the powers of Congress are to prevail, then, it seems to me, any such assumption, in a case where the original power of Congress is clear, will be unconstitutional and void.
The distinct specification of certain powers, as reserved to the States, excludes the States from the exercise of all other powers not specified or clearly implied.
In every representative body, properly constituted, the people are practically present.
If these be Tory doctrines, I must think well of Toryism.
For this moment, at least, let us tread under foot all pride of empire, all exultation in our manifold triumphs of industry, science, literature, with all the crowding anticipations of the vast untold Future, that we may reverently bow…
Rarely have austere principles been expressed with more gentleness than from their lips.
And these outcasts, despised in their own day by the proud and great, are the men whom we have met in this goodly number to celebrate,--not for any victory of war,--not for any triumph of discovery, science, learning, or eloquence,--not…
The Missouri Compact, in its unperformed obligations to Freedom, stands at this day as impregnable as the Louisiana purchase.
The Proslavery interest was strictly personal and pecuniary, and had its source simply in the self-interest of individual slaveholders.
Our Republic has swollen in population and power, but it has shrunk in character.
With a kiss upon the brow of that fair Territory, you betray it to wretchedness and shame.
In this way you vainly think to withdraw the subject of Slavery from National Politics.
It is even now rejoicing, like a strong man, to run its race, and will yet send its beams into the most distant plantations, melting the chains of every slave.
The past furnishes a controlling example by which its true character may be determined.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
