Charles Sumner

Diversity is the law of creation, unrestricted to race or color.

The primal truth of the Equality of Men, proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, is assailed, and this Great Charter of our country discredited.

India, the land of caste, and Turkey, the abode of polygamy, both fasten upon Slavery the stigma of reprobation.

Thus Russia speaks for Freedom, and disowns the slaveholding dogma of our country.

Historic instances show how such an act will make us solitary among the nations.

Here is a fresh case of actual transgression, which we cannot cast upon the shoulders of any progenitors, nor upon any mother country, distant in time or place.

It was entailed upon us, so we are instructed, by our ancestors; and the responsibility is often thrown, with exultation, upon the mother country.

This wrong, we are speciously told by those who seek to defend it, is not our original sin.

Such an act, at this time, is removed from all reach of that palliation often vouchsafed to Slavery.

And now, Sir, when the conscience of mankind is at last aroused to these things, when, throughout the civilized world, a slave-dealer is a by-word and a reproach, we, as a nation, are about to open a new market to the traffickers in flesh…

It would be contrary to that Rule of Right which is ordained by God, if such a system, though mitigated often by patriarchal kindness, and by plausible physical comfort, could be otherwise than pernicious.

Without a father, without a mother, almost without a God, the slave has nothing but a master.

In this simple statement is involved its whole injustice.

Slavery is the forcible subjection of one human being, in person, labor, and property, to the will of another.

Secondly, I arraign it in the name of Freedom, as an unjustifiable departure from the original Antislavery policy of our fathers.

Even if alone, my feeble arm should not be wanting as a bar against this outrage.

He is, indeed, no Abolitionist of Slavery; let him be called, Sir, Abolitionist of Freedom.

The term Abolitionist, so often applied in reproach, justly belongs, on this occasion, to him who would overthrow this well-established landmark.

No proposition to abolish Slavery anywhere is now before you, but, on the contrary, a proposition to abolish Freedom.

Here, Sir, let it be remembered that the friends of Freedom are not open to any charge of aggression.

It is clear, beyond contradiction, that the Prohibition of Slavery in this Territory was not superseded, or in any way contravened, by the Slavery Acts of 1850.

Thirdly: During all the discussion of these measures in Congress, and afterwards before the people, and through the public press, at the North and the South alike, no person was heard to intimate that the Prohibition of Slavery in the…

First: The Slavery enactments of 1850 did not pretend, in terms, to touch, much less to change, the condition of the Louisiana Territory, which was already fixed by Congressional enactment.

But at the present moment it justly excites peculiar interest, from the effort made--on pretences unsustained by facts, in violation of solemn covenant, and in disregard of the early principles of our fathers--to open this immense region…

As the twig is bent the tree inclines; and the influences impressed upon the early days of an empire, like those upon a child, are of inconceivable importance to its future weal or woe.