And permit me to say, that the fact of his existence is not more entirely above doubt than the fact of this Usurpation.
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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As I listened to the Senator from Illinois, while he painfully strove to show that there is no Usurpation, I was reminded of the effort by a distinguished logician to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed.
And yet Senators here argue that this cannot be,--precisely as the conspiracy of Catiline was doubted in the Roman Senate.
On this cumulative, irresistible evidence, in concurrence with antecedent history, I rest.
It was, indeed, too true that Kansas had been invaded, conquered, subjugated, by an armed force from beyond her borders, led on by a fanatical spirit, trampling under foot the principles of the Kansas Bill and the right of suffrage.
Has this age anything to compare with these acts in audacity?
And they are trying to perpetuate their preposterous and infernal tyranny by appointing for a term of years creatures of their own, as commissioners in every county, to lay and collect taxes, and see that the laws they are passing are…
They are proposing to punish with imprisonment the utterance of views inconsistent with their own.
They are passing laws disfranchising all the citizens of Kansas who do not believe Negro Slavery to be a Christian institution and a national blessing.
But the Abolitionists, staking their all upon the Kansas issue, and hesitating at no means, fair or foul, are moving heaven and earth to render that beautiful Territory a Free State.
There is no denying that the Missourians have determined to control the elections, if possible; and I do not know that their measures would be justifiable, except upon the principle of self-preservation; and that, you know, is the first…
They were resolved, if a tyrant attempted to trample upon the rights of the sovereign people, to hang him.
But it is not to be denied that the fifteen hundred, apprehending that the Governor might attempt to play the tyrant,--since his conduct had already been insidious and unjust,--wore on their hats bunches of hemp.
Well, we beat them, and Governor Reeder gave certificates to a majority of all the members of both Houses, and then, after they were organized, as everybody will admit, they were the only competent persons to say who were and who were not…
It is enough that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there is no appeal.
In every place where Truth can freely travel it is asserted and understood that the Legislature was imposed upon Kansas by foreigners from Missouri; and this universal voice is now received as undeniable verity.
Philosophy always seeks a sufficient cause, and only in the One Idea already presented can a cause be found in any degree commensurate with the Crime; and this becomes so only when we consider the mad fanaticism of Slavery.
If their purposes were peaceful, as has been suggested, why cannons, arms, flags, numbers, and all this violence?
By the violence already portrayed at the election of the 30th of March, when the polls were occupied by armed hordes from Missouri, they imposed a Legislature upon the Territory, and thus, under the iron mask of law, established a…
On the contrary, the friends of Freedom there have become more fixed in resolve to stay and fight the battle which they never sought, but from which they disdain to retreat,--while the friends of Freedom elsewhere are more aroused to the…
To accomplish this result, three things are attempted: first, by outrage of all kinds, to drive the friends of Freedom out of the Territory; secondly, to deter others from coming; and, thirdly, to obtain complete control of the Government.
In all the manifold wickednesses that occur, and in every successive invasion, this One Idea, is ever present, as Satanic tempter, motive power, causing cause.
As every point in a wide-spread horizon radiates from a common centre, so everything said or done in this vast circle of Crime radiates from the One Idea, that Kansas, at all hazards, must be made a Slave State.
In this plain presentment, whether as regards security or as regards elections, there is enough, without proceeding further, to justify the intervention of Congress, promptly and completely, to throw over this oppressed people the…
In the outrage upon the ballot-box, even without the illicit fruits which I shall soon exhibit, there is a peculiar crime, of the deepest dye, though subordinate to the final Crime, which should be promptly avenged.
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