Surely the people of Massachusetts will not be diverted from the true issue, involving Freedom for broad territories and Freedom for themselves, by holding up a tax-bill or by holding up the Pope.
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.
gutenberg.org
Forever sounding in our ears, it has a mood for every hour,--stirring us at times as with the blast of a trumpet, then visiting us in solemn tones, like the bell which calls to prayer, and then again awaking us to unmistakable duty, like…
Already it draws into its ranks good men from all sides, who, forgetting the things that are behind, press on to the things that are before.
No man can exert himself for Freedom without feeling better than before.
The cause is blessed alike in itself and in its influence on all who espouse it.
The infant Hercules strangled the serpents in his cradle, and the new party, just born, gives token of a like precocious strength.
The Pen of the Author,--Exposing error, defending truth, instructing the ignorant, cheering the unhappy, while charming and animating all, it can do better than the Sword, and will yet receive from the world a higher praise.
It is a privilege to suffer for truth; and I envy not the meanness of that soul which would hesitate to prefer your place within the stone walls of a prison to the cushioned bench of the magistrate by whose irrational and tyrannical edict…
Verily the day is at hand when returning justice will once more bear sway; then, among the triumphs of Freedom, will be a reckoning with unjust judges.
In all that they do--especially in the Fugitive Slave Bill and its cruel enforcement, the Nebraska Bill and its felonious administration, and now in the imprisonment of an unoffending citizen--I rejoice to believe that there is…
The Slave Oligarchy is mad, and their overflowing madness runs through every agent and tool.
There is an old saying, handed down from distant antiquity, that “whoso the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”; and I have often of late been impressed by its truth.
But there must be an end to these things; and as Shakespeare found a jewel in the toad’s head, so do I find a cheering omen even in the injustice which has made you its victim.
The blindness which makes him insensible to wrong so transcendent naturally makes him insensible to the lesser wrong by which it is maintained.
He may be just, humane, and decent in other things, but in the support of Slavery he becomes unjust, inhuman, and indecent,--often in obvious unconsciousness of his degradation.
Any person, whosoever he may be, whether simple citizen or magistrate, who undertakes to uphold this wrong, seems forthwith to lose his reason.
Strange and disgraceful as all this is, it must be considered the natural fruit of Slavery.
It was perpetrated through perversion of the great writ of Habeas Corpus.
It was this knowledge which filled them with confidence to regain their God-given liberty.
It is scouted by reason, and disowned by universal jurisprudence.
The new-fangled doctrine, that a slave-master can voluntarily import his alleged slave--of course with all the revolting incidents of Slavery--into the Free States, is not more odious than preposterous.
From beginning to end, from side to side, and in every aspect, this transaction can be regarded only as a clear, indubitable, and utterly unmitigated outrage.
Among us at last mutual criticism, crimination, and feud must give place to mutual sympathy, trust, and alliance.
It is right to be taught by the enemy; and with their example before us, and their power brandished in our very faces, we cannot hesitate.
I mean that Unity of Spirit--in itself a fountain of strength--which, filling the people of the North, shall make them tread under foot past antipathies, decayed dissensions, and those irritating names which now exist only as tattered…
Politicians like Charles Sumner
