There was no jealousy, envy, or uncharitableness in him.
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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He knew that his own just position could not be disturbed by the success of another.
Whatever another may be, whether more or less, a man must always be himself.
A true man is a positive, and not a relative quantity.
Properly inspired, he will know that in a just sense nobody can stand in the way of another.
And here let me add, that, in proportion as this truth enters into practical life, we shall all become associates and coadjutors rather than rivals.
How plain, that, in the infinite diversity of character and talent, there is place for every one!
This world is wide enough for all its inhabitants; this republic is grand enough for all its people.
He was faithful in the defence of Kansas, menaced by Slavery; and when at last this barbarous rebel took up arms, he accepted the issue, and did all he could for his country.
If our departed friend is not to be named among those who have borne the burden of this great controversy, he cannot be forgotten among those whose sympathies with Liberty never failed.
The division of labor, which is the lesson of political economy, is also the lesson of public life.
No ordinary talent can guide and control a legislative assembly, especially if numerous or excited by party differences.
He carried into the chair the most marked individuality that has been seen there during this generation.
Accustomed as we have become to the rules which govern legislative proceedings, we are hardly aware of their importance in the development of liberal institutions.
But the rules are more even than a beautiful machine; they are the very temple of Constitutional Liberty.
He had always looked with delight upon this Capitol,--one of the most remarkable edifices of the world,--beautiful in itself, but more beautiful still as the emblem of that national unity he loved so well.
Looking back upon the day when that Act became a law by the signature of Abraham Lincoln, I feel how grandly it has been vindicated by the result.
Who so mad as to wish back the old system of wrong?
The freedman, despoiled of the elective franchise, is only half a man.
He must be made a whole man; and this can be only by investing him with all the rights of an American citizen.
We are told that you cannot bear enfranchisement, and that you will not know how to vote.
I know the contrary; and I am satisfied, further, that there can be no true repose in this country until all its people are admitted to that full equality before the law which is the essential principle of republican government.
This I ask, not only for your sake, but also for the sake of my country, imperilled by such a denial of justice.
Wherever it goes, it not only carries death and destruction, but derangement of business, change of pursuits, interference with the currency, and generally dislocation of the common relations of life.
You must not shut your eyes to its consequences, if you would do justice now.
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