The same principle of State Eights by which Slavery is protected in the Slave States throws an impenetrable shield over Freedom in the Free States.
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.
gutenberg.org
Now, if the slaveholder has a right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of Slavery, so also has the freeman of the North--and every person there is presumed to be a freeman--an equal right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of Freedom.
It subjects him to the wretched chance of false oaths, forged papers, and facile commissioners, and takes from him every safeguard.
But this Act despoils him of rights, and despoils his State of all power to protect him.
To his State the citizen, when oppressed, may appeal; nor should he find that appeal denied.
By Jury and Habeas Corpus to save the citizen harmless against all assault is among their duties and rights.
Everywhere within their borders the States are the peculiar guardians of personal liberty.
But this Act is not only an unwarrantable assumption of power by the Nation, it is also an infraction of rights reserved to the States.
Non-Intervention is the rule prescribed to the Nation.
It is impossible, without violence to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, to claim for Congress any power to legislate either for its abolition in the States or its support anywhere.
Slavery is a local institution, peculiar to the States, and under the guardianship of State Rights.
The Nation cannot exercise rights reserved to the States, nor can the States interfere with the powers of the Nation.
But, from the necessity of the case, the supremacy of each in its proper place excludes the other.
While the Nation within its wide orbit is supreme, the States move with equal supremacy in their own.
The integrity of our Political System depends upon harmony in the operations of the Nation and of the States.
They had known the perils of imbecility, discord, and confusion, protracted through the uncertain days of the Confederation, and they desired a government which should be a true bond of Union and an efficient organ of national interests at…
It was the purpose of our fathers to create a National Government, and to endow it with adequate powers.
In the face of these unequivocal judgments, it is absurd to suppose that these eminent citizens consented unanimously to any provision by which the National Government, the creature of their hands, dedicated to Freedom, could become the…
The fact that the provision on this subject was adopted unanimously, while showing the little importance attached to it in the shape it finally assumed, testifies also that it could not have been regarded as a source of National power for…
Thus the proceedings of the Convention show that the founders understood the necessity of powers in certain cases, and, on consideration, jealously granted them.
The second contains provisions, all of which are simple compacts, and two of which were confessedly simple compacts in the old Articles of Confederation, from which, unchanged in character, they were borrowed.
The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be…
The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any…
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the…
A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to…
Politicians like Charles Sumner
