Charles Sumner

To maintain the Republic in its unity, and the people in their rights,--such is this transcendent duty.

The Republican party must do its work, which is nothing less than the regeneration of the Nation according to the promises of the Declaration of Independence.

Planted on a hill-top, with portals opening North and South, East and West, with spacious chambers, and with arching dome crowned by the image of Liberty,--such is our imperial Republic; but in nothing is it so truly imperial as in that…

And may this National Capitol, where we are now assembled, be the emblem of our Nation!

Here is a just centralism; here is a generous imperialism.

The Nation will not enter the State, except for the safeguard of rights national in character, and then only as the sunshine, with beneficent power, and, like the sunshine, for the equal good of all.

But no such tyranny is proposed among us,--nor any interference of any kind with matters local in character.

If each State is left to determine the protection of Equal Rights, then will protection vary according to the State, and Equal Rights will prevail only according to the accident of local law.

Equality implies universality; and what is universal must be national.

Nor can any State set up its local system against the universal law.

The principles of the Declaration, reinforced by the Constitutional Amendments, cannot be allowed to suffer.

Whatever is announced in the Declaration is essentially National, and so also is all that is assured.

But you cannot turn from either; and each establishes beyond question the boundaries of national power, making it coextensive with the National Unity and the Equal Rights of All, originally declared and subsequently assured.

And this is only according to the original promises of the Declaration of Independence, and the more recent promises of the Constitutional Amendments, the two concurring in the same national principles.

Let the humblest citizen in the remotest village be assailed in the enjoyment of Equal Rights, and the Nation must do for that humblest citizen what it would do for itself.

Let the National Unity be assailed, and the Nation will spring to its defence.

The national life of this Republic is found in the principle of Unity, and in the Equal Rights of all our people,--all of which, being national in character, are necessarily placed under the great safeguard of the Nation.

Once the Nation served Slavery, and in this service ministered to State Rights; now it must serve Liberty with kindred devotion, even to the denial of State Rights.

I never doubted that this interpretation was wrong,--not even in the days of Slavery; but it is doubly, triply wrong now that the Declaration of Independence is at last regarded, and that the Constitution not only makes Slavery impossible…

So long as Slavery endured a State was allowed to play the turtle, and, sheltered within its shell, to escape the application of those master principles which are truly national.

Believing that we are a nation, I cannot doubt the power and the duty of the National Government.

If such things can be without a remedy, applied, if need be, by the national arm, then are we little more than a bundle of sticks, but not a nation.

If the power to protect them fails, then is the National Constitution a failure.

To both of these classes is our nation bound by every obligation of public faith.

And this terror falls especially upon those who have stood by the Union in its bloody trial, and those others of different color who have just been admitted to the blessings of Freedom.