Less by genius or eminent service than by suffering are the fugitive slaves of our country now commended.
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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Princes and orators have lavished panegyric upon this fugitive slave, and, in homage to his extraordinary virtues, the Catholic Church has introduced him into the company of Saints.
Passing from master to master, after protracted servitude, he achieved his freedom, and, regaining France, commenced that resplendent career of charity by which he is placed among the great names of Christendom.
The endeavor, though unsuccessful, reveals courage, manhood, character.
Every escape from Slavery necessarily and instinctively awakens the regard of all who love Freedom.
The fugitive was welcomed in the cities, and protected against pursuit.
Even in the lands of Slavery, the slave-trader is loathed as an ignoble character, from whom the countenance is turned away; and can the Slave-Hunter be more regarded, while pursuing his prey in a land of Freedom?
These things I dwell upon as incentives and tokens of an existing public sentiment, rendering this Act practically inoperative, except as a tremendous engine of horror.
Better far, it is the testimony of the people, by an unprecedented act, against the Fugitive Slave Bill.
Now melting to tears, and now inspiring to rage, her work everywhere touches the conscience, and makes the Slave-Hunter more hateful.
A woman, inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like another Joan of Arc, and with marvellous power sweeps the popular heart.
They who make the permanent opinion of the country, who mould our youth, whose words, dropped into the soul, are the germs of character, supplicate for the Slave.
It palpitates for the fugitive, and rejoices in his escape.
But the great heart of the people recoils from this enactment.
Not a case occurs which does not harrow the souls of good men, bringing tears of sympathy to the eyes, and those other noble tears which "patriots shed o'er dying laws.
Clemency, grace, and justice die in its presence.
Now by indecent speed, now by harshness of manner, now by denial of evidence, now by crippling the defence, and now by open, glaring wrong, they make the odious Act yet more odious.
The spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils entered the swine.
Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of man.
With every attempt to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists.
As the sword takes the place of the shield, despair settles down like a cloud.
Hard and inscrutable, when the law, to which the citizen naturally looks for protection, becomes itself a standing peril.
Oppression by an individual is detestable; but oppression by law is worse.
Workmen are brutally dragged from employments to which they are wedded by years of successful labor; husbands are ravished from wives, and parents from children.
Grateful for this example, I am grateful also, that, while slaveholder, and seeking the return of a fugitive, he has left in permanent record a rule of conduct which, if adopted by his country, will make Slave-Hunting impossible.
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