The Union Flag of the Republic will become once more the flag of Freedom, and at all points within the national jurisdiction will refuse to cover a slave.
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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But this Amendment is nothing less than an express guaranty of Personal Liberty, and an express prohibition of its invasion anywhere, at least within the national jurisdiction.
The natural meaning of the clause is clear, but a single fact of its history places it in the broad light of noon.
Show me a person within the national jurisdiction, and I confidently claim for him this protection, no matter what his condition or race or color.
Under this great ægis the liberty of every person within the national jurisdiction is unequivocally placed.
No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
This alone, if practically applied, would carry Freedom to all within its influence.
But if there be no such power, all national legislation upholding Slavery must be unconstitutional and void.
With similar reason it may be said, that it contains no power to make a slave, or to support a system of Slavery.
The Constitution contains no power to make a king, or to support kingly rule.
Especially is this clear with regard to an institution like Slavery.
Beyond all question, the National Government, ordained by the Constitution, is not general or universal, but special and particular.
Stronger words could not be employed to limit the power under the Constitution, and to protect the people from all assumptions of the National Government, particularly in derogation of Freedom.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In the face of this history, and in the absence of any positive sanction, it is absurd to suppose that Slavery, which under the Confederation had been merely sectional, was now constituted national.
Not encouragement, but discouragement of Slavery,--not its nationalization, but its denationalization, was their rule.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this act as a national landmark, especially when we consider that on the list of those who sanctioned it were men fresh from the National Convention, and therefore familiar with the…
One of its first acts was to accept the Ordinance of Freedom for the Northwestern Territory, thus ratifying the prohibition of Slavery in all existing territory.
The patriot, the Christian, the scholar, the writer, the poet, vied in loyalty to this cause.
Such, Sir, at the adoption of the Constitution and the first organization of the National Government, was the outspoken, unequivocal heart of the country.
Thus, at this time, the Church, in harmony with the Nation, by its leading denominations, Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, thundered against Slavery.
At the adoption of the Constitution, their whole body, under the early teaching of George Fox, and by the crowning exertions of Benezet and Woolman, had become an organized band of Abolitionists, penetrated by the conviction that it was…
In language now familiar to all, and which can never die, he perpetually denounced Slavery.
The convictions and earnest aspirations of the country were with them.
Washington was a slaveholder, but it would be unjust to his memory not to say that he was an Abolitionist also.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
