Not an instance can be named in any country, where a personage in corresponding official position has done such a thing.
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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I have mentioned only one sally in this painful document; but the whole, besides its prevailing offensiveness, shows inconsistency with actual facts of my own knowledge, which is in entire harmony with the recklessness toward me, and…
Motley, it appears, was charged with agreeing too much with me: all of which shows how little this matter had to do with the removal, and how much the San Domingo business at the time was above any question of conformity on other things.
If this were crime, not the Minister, but the Secretary, should suffer; for it is the Secretary, and not the Minister, who appealed to me constantly for help, often desiring me to think for him, and more than once to hold the pen for him.
The crime of the Minister was dependence on me: so says the state-paper.
Here will be found the distinction on which I have always insisted,--that, while other powers conceded belligerent rights to our Rebels, it was in England only that the concession was supplemented by acts causing direct damage to the…
Tardily and most reluctantly I make this record, believing it more a duty to the Senate than to myself, but a plain duty, to be performed in all simplicity without reserve.
Having nothing to conceal, and willing always to be judged by the truth, I court the fullest inquiry, and shrink from no conclusion founded on an accurate knowledge of the case.
My present duty is performed when I set forth the simple facts, exhibiting those personal relations which have been drawn in question, without touching the questions of principle behind.
It is insisted on one side that a condition of things exists in certain States affecting life, liberty, property, and the enjoyment of Equal Rights, which can be corrected only by the national arm.
To my mind, outrages are proved, fearful in character; nor can I doubt the power under the Constitution to apply the remedy.
Ruffians in paint and in disguise seize the innocent, insult them, rob them, murder them.
And this terror falls especially upon those who have stood by the Union in its bloody trial, and those others of different color who have just been admitted to the blessings of Freedom.
To both of these classes is our nation bound by every obligation of public faith.
If the power to protect them fails, then is the National Constitution a failure.
If such things can be without a remedy, applied, if need be, by the national arm, then are we little more than a bundle of sticks, but not a nation.
Believing that we are a nation, I cannot doubt the power and the duty of the National Government.
So long as Slavery endured a State was allowed to play the turtle, and, sheltered within its shell, to escape the application of those master principles which are truly national.
I never doubted that this interpretation was wrong,--not even in the days of Slavery; but it is doubly, triply wrong now that the Declaration of Independence is at last regarded, and that the Constitution not only makes Slavery impossible…
Once the Nation served Slavery, and in this service ministered to State Rights; now it must serve Liberty with kindred devotion, even to the denial of State Rights.
The national life of this Republic is found in the principle of Unity, and in the Equal Rights of all our people,--all of which, being national in character, are necessarily placed under the great safeguard of the Nation.
Let the National Unity be assailed, and the Nation will spring to its defence.
Let the humblest citizen in the remotest village be assailed in the enjoyment of Equal Rights, and the Nation must do for that humblest citizen what it would do for itself.
And this is only according to the original promises of the Declaration of Independence, and the more recent promises of the Constitutional Amendments, the two concurring in the same national principles.
But you cannot turn from either; and each establishes beyond question the boundaries of national power, making it coextensive with the National Unity and the Equal Rights of All, originally declared and subsequently assured.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
