Ruffians in paint and in disguise seize the innocent, insult them, rob them, murder them.
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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To my mind, outrages are proved, fearful in character; nor can I doubt the power under the Constitution to apply the remedy.
It is insisted on one side that a condition of things exists in certain States affecting life, liberty, property, and the enjoyment of Equal Rights, which can be corrected only by the national arm.
My present duty is performed when I set forth the simple facts, exhibiting those personal relations which have been drawn in question, without touching the questions of principle behind.
Having nothing to conceal, and willing always to be judged by the truth, I court the fullest inquiry, and shrink from no conclusion founded on an accurate knowledge of the case.
Tardily and most reluctantly I make this record, believing it more a duty to the Senate than to myself, but a plain duty, to be performed in all simplicity without reserve.
In self-defence and for the sake of truth do I now speak.
Here will be found the distinction on which I have always insisted,--that, while other powers conceded belligerent rights to our Rebels, it was in England only that the concession was supplemented by acts causing direct damage to the…
The crime of the Minister was dependence on me: so says the state-paper.
If this were crime, not the Minister, but the Secretary, should suffer; for it is the Secretary, and not the Minister, who appealed to me constantly for help, often desiring me to think for him, and more than once to hold the pen for him.
Motley, it appears, was charged with agreeing too much with me: all of which shows how little this matter had to do with the removal, and how much the San Domingo business at the time was above any question of conformity on other things.
I have mentioned only one sally in this painful document; but the whole, besides its prevailing offensiveness, shows inconsistency with actual facts of my own knowledge, which is in entire harmony with the recklessness toward me, and…
Not an instance can be named in any country, where a personage in corresponding official position has done such a thing.
As nothing like this state-paper can be shown in the history of our Government, so also nothing like it can be shown in the history of other Governments.
Never before did a Secretary of State sign a document libelling an associate in the public service, and publish it to the world.
Like Jean Paul in German literature, his just title will be “The Only One.” For years I have known Secretaries of State and often differed from them, but never before did I receive from one anything but kindness.
Whatever one signs he makes his own; and the Secretary, when he signed this document, adopted a libel upon his friend, and when he communicated it to the Senate he published the libel.
I replied, that, should the Secretary come to my house, he would be received as an old friend, and that at any time I should be at his service for consultation on public business, but that I could not conceal my deep sense of personal…
I have lived in vain, if such an attempt on me can fail to rebound on its author.
The eulogy of the President here is at least singular, when it is considered that every dispatch of the Secretary of State is by order of the President; but it is evident that the writer of this dispatch had made up his mind to set all…
Men are apt to attribute the causes of their own failures or their own misfortunes to others than themselves, and to claim association or seek a partnership with real or imaginary greatness with which to divide their sorrows or their…
The offer of the Secretary was in no respect a compliment or kindness, but in the strict line of his endeavor to silence my opposition to the San Domingo scheme, as is too apparent from the facts, while it was plain, positive, and…
I assured the Secretary firmly and simply, that, seeing the latter as I did with all its surroundings, my duty was plain, and that I must continue to oppose it so long as it appeared to me wrong.
This plain act of wrong required instant redress; but the Secretary astonished me again by his insensibility to my appeal for justice.
But,” said I, “you should resign rather than do this thing.” This I could not refrain from remarking, on discovery, from dispatches in the State Department, that the usurper Baez was maintained in power by our Navy.
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