Charles Sumner

Others there are, especially among the youthful and enthusiastic, who vainly sigh because they were not born in the age of Chivalry, or at least in the days of the Revolution, not thinking that in this Enterprise there is opportunity for…

President, it is not uncommon to hear persons among us at the North confess the wrong of Slavery, and then, folding the hands in absolute listlessness, ejaculate, “What can we do about it?” Such we encounter daily.

And now, Sir, I present to you the Antislavery Enterprise vindicated, in Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity, against all objection.

As the rights of man are at last recognized, the scoffers, now so heartless, will forget to scoff.

Strong in essential truth, it awaits the day, surely at hand, when all will flock to its support.

It is others in poorer condition who open hospitable hearts to the unattended stranger.

It is not the eminent in Church and State, the rich and powerful, the favorites of fortune and of place, who most promptly welcome Truth, when she heralds change in the existing order of things.

If this be so, the more is the pity on their account; for our cause is needful to them more than they are needful to our cause.

But the same impartial History will yet re-judge the impassioned judgments of this hour.

The hard words are manifold as the passions and prejudices of men; but they generally end in the imputation of “fanaticism.” In such a cause I am willing to be called “fanatic,” or what you will; I care not for aspersions, nor shall I…

For myself, Sir, I see among us at this time little else by which an honest man, wishing to leave the world better than he found it, can be tempted out upon the exposed steeps of public life.

In its presence the machinations of politicians, the aspirations of office-seekers, and the subterfuges of party, all sink below even their ordinary insignificance.

Who can doubt that our cause is nobler even than that of our fathers? for is it not more exalted to struggle for the freedom of others than for our own?

Unless Freedom be an illusion, and Benevolence an error, you cannot resist the appeal.

It concerns the cause of Human Freedom, which from earliest days has been the darling of History.

Scholarship, literature, jurisprudence, art, may wear their well-deserved honors; but an enterprise of goodness deserves, and will yet receive, a higher palm than these.

Its true rank is among works properly called philanthropic,--the title of highest honor on earth.

With unsurpassed and touching magnanimity, it seeks to benefit the lowly whom your eyes have not seen, and who are ignorant even of your labors, while it demands and receives a self-sacrifice calculated to ennoble an enterprise of even…

Its object is benevolent; nor is there in the dreary annals of the Past a single enterprise more clearly and indisputably entitled to this character.

It remains to show, in the third place, that the Antislavery Enterprise, which stands before you at once necessary and practicable, is commended by inherent DIGNITY.

Newspapers, even in the land of bondage, blush at the hunt of men by bloodhounds,--thus protesting against an unquestionable incident of Slavery.

In common speech, as well as in writing, among slave-masters, the bondman is no longer called slave, but servant,--thus, by soft substitution, concealing and condemning the true relation.

Thus it has created the irresistible influence which itself constitutes the beginning of success.

With the sympathies of all Christendom as allies, already it encompasses the slave-masters by a moral blockade, invisible to the eye, but more potent than navies, from which there can be no escape except in final capitulation.

There is a new aspiration for justice on earth, awakening not merely a sentiment against Slavery, such as prevailed with our fathers, but a deep, undying conviction of its wrong, and a determination to leave no effort unattempted for its…