Other Senators act with honor, when they refuse to be bound by the resolution in any of its terms.
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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If it is to be administered with such severity, let us know it in advance, its terms and its conditions,--what extent of dishonor is to be visited upon those who do not adopt the caucus conclusions, and what extent of honor upon those who…
It was no such debate; we were there with friends and brothers, each respecting the sensibilities and convictions of his associates, and, by interchange of opinions, seeking harmony, but not submitting to a yoke.
That is the true precedent in this body; and that is the precedent which, I submit, it would be better for the Senate to follow.
The resolution adopted by the Senate on Friday, while it remains, will only be of evil example.
Therefore do I say again, Down with the taxes!
If hereafter quoted as a precedent, it may be at last for some purpose of oppression, when Senators will not all be as just as those I now have the honor of addressing.
It may be seized then as an engine of tyranny.
For one, Sir, I would leave no such weapon in this Chamber to be grasped hereafter by any hand.
Nothing could be proposed which was not opposed, often with feeling, sometimes even with animosity.
To my mind nothing has been plainer from the beginning than the jurisdiction of Congress.
But he could not make States or constitutions, or determine how States or constitutions should be made.
All that he did to this end was gross usurpation, aggravated by motives and consequences.
Unquestionably the jurisdiction was in Congress; and I shall never cease to lament that it was not asserted promptly and courageously.
Our delay has postponed the establishment of peace and reconciliation.
Much as the President has erred, Congress has not been without error also.
The President erred from assuming powers which did not belong to him; Congress erred from declining to assume powers which belonged to it.
The sins of the President were of commission; the sins of Congress were of omission.
The President did the things he ought not to have done; Congress left undone the things it ought to have done.
In the exercise of unquestioned jurisdiction, Congress should at once have provided civil governments, through whose influence and agency the Rebel States might have been shaped into republican forms.
Such a proceeding would have been more constitutional and more according to the genius of our institutions than that which was adopted.
It is hard to reconcile a military government, or any government born of military power, with the true idea of a republic.
They are in the way of peace and reconciliation.
They increase the essential difficulties of forming new governments.
Through their influence a hostile spirit is engendered and sustained.
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