Let each people obey the law at home; its extension abroad will follow.
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 standard at home will become the standard everywhere.
The harmony at home will become the harmony of mankind.
Drive Caste from this Republic, and it will be, like Cain, “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.
Therefore do I now plead for our Common Humanity in all lands.
Especially do I plead for the African, not only among us, but in his own vast, mysterious home, where for unknown centuries he has been the prey of the spoiler.
He may be barbarous, perhaps savage; but so have others been, who are now in the full enjoyment of civilization.
If you are above him in any respect, then by your superiority are you bound to be his helper.
Where much is given much is required; and this is the law for a nation, as for an individual.
And thus is the condition of Africa explained without an insult to her people or any new apology for Caste.
The attempt to disparage the African as inferior to other men, except in present condition, shows that same ever-present sciolism.
Plainly, no differences can make one color superior to another.
Cadmus brought letters to Greece; and what is the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from Heaven, but an illustration of this law?
The African has not stolen fire; no Cadmus has brought letters to him; no Roman civilization has been extended over his continent.
Meanwhile left to savage life, he has been a perpetual victim, hunted down at home to feed the bloody maw of Slavery, and then transported to another hemisphere, always a slave.
No kindly influences have surrounded his home; no voice of encouragement has cheered his path; no prospect of trust or honor has awakened his ambition.
His life has been a Dead Sea, where apples of Sodom floated.
And yet his story is not without passages which quicken admiration and give assurance for the Future,--at times melting to tenderness, and at times inspiring to rage, that these children of God, with so much of His best gifts, should be so…
But among those transported to this hemisphere heroes have not been wanting.
Nowhere in history was the heroical character more conspicuous than in our fugitive slaves.
Their story, transferred to Greece or Rome, would be a much-admired chapter, from which youth would derive new passion for Liberty.
The story of the African in our late war would be another chapter, awakening kindred emotion.
But it is in a slave of the West Indies, whose parents were stolen from Africa, that we find an example of genius and wisdom, courage and character, with all the elements of general and ruler.
The name borne by this remarkable person as slave was Toussaint, but his success in forcing an opening everywhere secured for him the addition of “l’Ouverture,” making his name Toussaint l’Ouverture, Toussaint the Opening, by which he…
The height that he reached is the measure of his people.
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