That country, risen from nothing, burns to figure in its turn upon the face of the globe and in the history of the world.
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.
gutenberg.org
The new hemisphere is to detach itself some day from the old.
Not without heartfelt emotion do I write this name, never to be mentioned by an American without a sentiment of gratitude and love.
It is impossible to read his writings without discovering the stamp of superiority, where accuracy and clearness go hand in hand with courage and truth.
May they not possibly be more successful than their mother country has been in preserving that reverence and authority which is due to the laws,--to those who make, and to those who execute them?
May not a method be invented of procuring some tolerable share of the comforts of life to those inferior useful ranks of men to whose industry we are indebted for the whole?
Forbid it, Patriotism, forbid it, Politics, that such a great and mighty Empire as this should be held in subjection by the paltry Kingdom of Great Britain!
Now, wild as such a scheme may appear, there are certainly some Americans who seriously embrace it; and the late prodigious swarms of emigrants encourage them to suppose that a time is approaching when the seat of empire must be changed.
As to the future grandeur of America, and its being a rising empire under one head, whether republican or monarchical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever was conceived, even by writers of romance.
He was a frequent speaker, and never missed an opportunity of pleading our cause.
Though I have so lately had the honor of a seat in this House, yet I have for many years turned my thoughts and attention to matters of public concern and national policy.
In that war too, Sir, they took Louisburg from the French, single-handed, without any European assistance: as mettled an enterprise as any in our history; an everlasting memorial of the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New…
The men themselves dragged the cannon over a morass which had always been thought impassable, where neither horses nor oxen could go; and they carried the shot upon their backs.
All the Amendments are “to be obeyed and maintained in good faith, without evasion, denial, or diminution, in favor of all classes of the people”; and this is the covenant of the Democratic party, countersigned by their Representative.
The act to be proposed to America, as an auspicious beginning to lay the first stone of universal liberty to mankind, should be what no American could hesitate an instant to comply with, namely, that every slave in North America should be…
Let us all be reunited in this, as a foundation to extirpate slavery from the face of the earth.
You may bruise its heel, but you cannot crush its head.
They have possession of a free government, their birthright and inheritance, derived to them from their parent state, which the hand of violence cannot wrest from them.
It is no small honor for one man to have come forward in Parliament as an avowed abolitionist, while at the same time a vindicator of our independence.
The European peasant, who toils for his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and industrious labor.
A very great proportion of men in all the countries of the world are without property, and generally are subject to governments of which they have no participation, and over whom they have no control.
Everything here is falling into rottenness,--religion, laws, arts, sciences,--and everything is going to be rebuilt anew in America.
This is no joke; nor is it an idea drawn from the English quarrels; I have said, announced, preached it, for more than twenty years, and I have always seen my prophecies fulfilled.
You will at this time have decided the greatest revolution of the globe,--namely, if it is America which is to reign over Europe, or if it is Europe which is to continue to reign over America.
None of them have answered our query, whether they would have considered General Grant the Democratic candidate, if he had been nominated at Baltimore; and if not, why do they make the difference between him and Greeley?
Politicians like Charles Sumner
