The great unsolved problem of Pauperism will be solved at last.
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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There will be no paupers, when there are no soldiers.
The social struggles, so fearfully disturbing European nations, will die away in the happiness of unarmed Peace, no longer incumbered by the oppressive system of War; nor can there be well-founded hope that these struggles will permanently…
The people ought not to rest, they cannot rest, while this system endures.
Energies hitherto withdrawn from proper healthful action will then replenish it with unwonted life and vigor, giving new expansion to every human capacity, and new elevation to every human aim.
And society at last shall rejoice, like a strong man, to run its race.
As War with its deeds is infinitely evil and accursed, so will this triumph of Permanent Peace be infinitely beneficent and blessed.
Then, perhaps, through the universal spread of light, it might be permitted to anticipate for the great European Family the establishment of an American Congress, or an Amphictyonic Council; and what a perspective then of strength, of…
It is the comprehensive charity, enfolding all the charities of all.
None so vast as to be above its protection, none so lowly as not to feel its care.
Religion, Knowledge, Freedom, Virtue, Happiness, in all their manifold forms, depend upon Peace.
In the name of Religion profaned, of Knowledge misapplied and perverted, of Freedom crushed to earth, of Virtue dethroned, of human Happiness violated, in the name of Law, Order, and Government, I call upon you for union to establish the…
With the lips you confess the infinite evil of War.
All must unite to render the recurrence of this evil impossible.
Why not equal energy against an evil more fearful than cholera or pestilence?
The pulpit, the school, the college, and the public street must speak for it.
Preach it, minister of the Prince of Peace! let it never be forgotten in conversation, sermon, or prayer; nor any longer seek, by specious theory, to reconcile the monstrous War System with the precepts of Christ!
Instil it, teacher of childhood and youth! in the early thoughts of your precious charge; exhibit the wickedness of War and the beauty of Peace; let your warnings sink deep among those purifying and strengthening influences which ripen…
Scholar! write it in your books, so that all shall read it.
Let the interests of commerce, whose threads of golden tissue interknit the Nations, enlist the traffickers of the earth in its behalf.
And you, servant of the law! sharer of my own peculiar toils, mindful that the law is silent in the midst of arms, join to preserve, uphold, and extend its sway.
Remember, politician! that our cause is too universal to become the exclusive possession of any political party, or to be confined within any geographical limits.
Let the Abolition of War, and the Overthrow of the War System, with the Disarming of the Nations, be your guiding star.
If in this scheme there is a tendency to avert War,--if, through its agency, we may hope to prevent a single war,--and who can doubt that such may be its result?--we ought to adopt it.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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