Let that flag be the light to your footsteps.
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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The people are not ready to join with Rebels or submit to Rebel yoke.
They will stand by the flag at the ballot-box, as they stood by it on the bloody field.
History has recorded the triumphant election of Abraham Lincoln, as the representative of Loyalty against Rebellion.
Thank God, it will soon make the same joyful record with regard to Grant and Colfax, the present representatives of Loyalty against Rebellion.
Every man must do his duty, each in his way, according to his ability,--some by voice, and others by efforts of a different kind, but all must work and vote.
The cause is that of our country and its transcendent future, pictured in the flag.
There must be another five thousand majority; and let General Grant, like Abraham Lincoln, measure from our majority the majorities throughout the country, giving assurance that the Rebel Party is defeated and utterly routed in its last…
When shall this great question be settled, if not now?
All who vote against it only vote to continue the agitation, which will never end except with the establishment of the Equal Rights of All.
As long as men are excluded from the suffrage on account of color, it is gross impudence for any nation to say that they are equal in rights.
Of course, men are not equal in strength, size, or other endowments, physical or mental; but they are equal in rights, which is what our fathers declared.
They are equal before God, equal before the divine law; they should be made equal before human law.
There can be no conflict of races where there is no denial of rights.
It is only when rights are denied that conflict begins.
I was against it when it showed itself in the terrible pretensions of the slave-master; and now I am against it, as it shows itself in the most shameful oligarchy of which history has made mention,--an oligarchy of the skin.
Even if the whites are afraid that the blacks will become an oligarchy and rule their former masters, this is no reason for a continued denial of rights.
Such foolish fears and foolish arguments cannot prevail against the great cause of Equal Rights.
Spite of all obstacles and all prejudices, this truth must triumph.
What they declared is a promise perpetually binding on us, their children.
The cause is nothing less than our country redeemed from peril and dedicated to Human Rights, so as to become an example to mankind.
But I am unwilling that this contest shall close without my testimony, such as it is, and without mingling my voice with that general acclaim which is filling the land.
A venerable statesman, eminent in the profession, once rebuked me for the term Equality before the Law, which I had taken from the French, as expressing more precisely than the Declaration of Independence that equality in rights which is…
All this has happily ceased, except as an echo from Rebels and their allies, whose leading part is a protest against the power of Congress and the equal rights of the freedman.
The machine will not work; but if it does work, its first and most obvious operation will be to create a new currency, adding a third to the greenbacks and bank-notes already existing, besides creating a new class of banks.
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