But a righteous public opinion early and constantly set its face against Slavery.
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 Colony that could issue this noble decree was inconsistent with itself, when it permitted its rocky soil to be pressed by the footstep of a single slave.
There are, however, yet other things in the assault of the venerable Senator, which, for the sake of truth, in just defence of Massachusetts, and in honor of Freedom, shall not be left unanswered.
And yet the venerable Senator from South Carolina now presumes to denounce me, when, for the sake of Freedom, and in the honest interpretation of my constitutional obligations, I decline an offensive service.
We owe an obligation to the law, but a higher one to the communities in which we live; and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.
By no act or direction of mine, official or private, could I be induced to aid knowingly in giving circulation to papers of this description, directly or indirectly.
Surely the Senator from South Carolina, with his silver-white locks, would have hesitated to lead this assault upon me, had he not for the moment been entirely oblivious of the history of the State which he represents.
And, Sir, looking round upon this Senate, I might ask fearlessly, how many there are, even in this body,--if, indeed, there be a single Senator,--who would stoop to any such service?
In no respect by that oath can I be compelled to duties in other capacities, or as a simple citizen, especially when revolting to my conscience.
President, to oppose all enactments by Congress on the subject of fugitive slaves, as a flagrant violation of the Constitution; especially must I oppose the last act, as a tyrannical usurpation, kindred in character to the Stamp Act, which…
In short, he would exercise his own judgment: and this is precisely what I intend to do on the proposition to hunt slaves.
Even if the judiciary had settled the question, I should never hold myself bound by their decision....
I would treat with profound respect the arguments and opinions of judges and constitutional lawyers; but if after all they failed to convince me that the law was constitutional, I should be guilty of perjury before high Heaven, if I voted…
If all the judges and all the lawyers in Christendom had decided in the affirmative, when the question is thus brought home to me as a legislator, bound to vote for or against a new charter, upon my oath to support the Constitution, I must…
Statesmen before and since have declared it also,--nobody with more force and constancy than Jefferson, who was, indeed, the author of it, so far as anybody can be the author of what springs so obviously from common sense.
Each public officer, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.
But Senators who are so swift in misrepresentation, and in assault upon me as disloyal to the Constitution, deserve to be exposed, and it shall be done.
The Senator did not seem to bear in mind, through the heady currents of that moment, that, by the false interpretation he fastens upon the Constitution, he has helped to nurture there a whole kennel of Carolina bloodhounds, trained, with…
It was said by a philosopher of Antiquity that a blush is the sign of virtue; and permit me to add, that, in this violent sensibility, I recognize a blush mantling the cheek of the honorable Senator, which even his plantation manners…
But this very sensibility of the veteran Senator at a just term, truly depicting an odious character, shows a shame which pleases me.
And where a person degrades himself to the work of chasing a fellow-man, who, under the inspiration of Freedom and the guidance of the North Star, has sought a freeman's home far away from coffle and chain,--that person, whosoever he may…
In doing it, I desire to warn certain Senators, that, if, by any ardor of menace, or by any tyrannical frown, they expect to shake my fixed resolve, they expect a vain thing.
Bear witness that I do it only in just self-defence against the unprecedented assaults and provocations of this debate.
The child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it…
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal....
Politicians like Charles Sumner
