It was that hateful bargain by which Congress was restrained until 1808 from the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade, thus securing, down to that period, toleration for crime.
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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It is true that there were compromises at the formation of the Constitution, which were the subject of anxious debate; but this was not one of them.
I put aside, as equally fabulous, the common saying, that this provision was one of the original compromises of the Constitution, and an essential condition of Union.
No previous voice was heard to express desire for any provision on the subject.
But this is one of the myths or fables with which the supporters of Slavery have surrounded their false god.
Not in prejudice, but in the light of history and of reason, we must consider this subject.
It may linger in the States as a local institution; but it will no longer engender national animosities, when it no longer demands national support.
As Slavery is banished from the national jurisdiction, it will cease to vex our national politics.
For the Republic such a decree will be the way of peace and safety.
The time will yet come when the boast of our fathers will be made a practical verity also, and Court or Congress, in the spirit of this British judgment, will proudly declare that nowhere under the Constitution can man hold property in man.
More than fourteen thousand persons, at that time held as slaves, and breathing English air,--four times as many as are now found in this national metropolis,--stepped forth in the happiness and dignity of freemen.
This single fact reveals the extent to which the National Government has departed from its true course and its great examples.
Out of the convictions of their hearts and the utterances of their lips against Slavery they would be condemned.
Could these revered demigods of history once again descend upon earth and mingle in our affairs, not one of them could receive a nomination from the National Convention of either of the two old political parties!
A novel test for office is introduced, which would have excluded all the Fathers of the Republic,--even Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin!
And now an arrogant and unrelenting ostracism is applied, not only to all who express themselves against Slavery, but to every man unwilling to be its menial.
The slave-masters, few in number, amounting to not more than three hundred and fifty thousand, according to the recent census, have succeeded in dictating the policy of the National Government, and have written SLAVERY on its front.
The generous sentiments which filled the early patriots, and impressed upon the government they founded, as upon the coin they circulated, the image and superscription of LIBERTY, have lost their power.
And yet politicians of the hour undertake to place these convictions under formal ban.
Nowhere under the Constitution can the Nation, by legislation or otherwise, support Slavery, hunt slaves, or hold property in man.
Inspired by these principles, Congress can give no sanction to Slavery by the admission of new Slave States.
In the District of Columbia Slavery will instantly cease.
On the high seas, under the national flag, Slavery will be impossible.
In all national territories Slavery will be impossible.
Beneath its beneficent folds, wherever it is carried, on land or sea, Slavery will disappear, like darkness under the arrows of the ascending sun,--like the Spirit of Evil before the Angel of the Lord.
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