The practice of the law, while sharpening the intellect, is too apt to cramp the faculties within the narrow limits of form, and to restrain the genial currents of the soul.
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
Massachusetts has many arrows in her well-stocked quiver, but few could she so ill spare at this moment as the one now irrevocably sped.
Make such disposition of my resolution afterward as to you shall seem best; visit upon me any degree of criticism, censure, or displeasure; but do not refuse me a hearing.
Better be where Freedom is, though in a small minority or alone, than with Slavery, though surrounded by multitudes, whether Whigs or Democrats, contending merely for office and place.
But our duties increase with the occasion; nor will the generous soul be deterred by the greatness of the peril.
In upholding Freedom everywhere under the National Government, we oppose a pernicious sectionalism, which falsely calls itself national.
A National Whig is simply a Slavery Whig, and a National Democrat is simply a Slavery Democrat, in contradistinction to all who regard Slavery as a sectional institution, within the exclusive control of the States, and with which the…
Though this proposition commends itself at once, and is sustained by the history of the Constitution, yet both the great parties, under the influence of the Slave Power, have reversed the true application of its terms.
According to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the Fathers, Freedom, and not Slavery, is national, while Slavery, and not Freedom, is sectional.
In spite of the clamors of partisans and the assumptions of the Slave Power, there is one principle which must soon prevail.
But I rejoice to believe that in both parties there are large numbers of good men who will scorn these professions.
The two Conventions at Baltimore, by their recorded resolutions, have vied with each other in servility to Slavery.
Let no man expect from me any such surrender.
It is difficult to see how any person, loyal to Freedom, and desirous of guarding it by all constitutional means, can support the national candidates of either of these parties, without surrendering the cause he professes to have at heart.
Both the old parties, with apostasy greater than that which aroused our condemnation at that time, have trampled on the Declaration of Independence, and the most cherished sentiments of the Fathers of the Republic.
At Worcester, in 1848, commenced the first strong movement, which, gaining new force at Buffalo, and sweeping the Free States, enrolled three hundred thousand electors in constitutional opposition to a hateful wrong.
But I confidently look to them for trumpet words which shall again rally the country against the sectionalism of Slavery.
Wherever it floats, may it never fail to inspire the sentiments in which it had its origin!
Thus early was this emblem of Union consecrated to Freedom.
It is my happiness to believe, and my hope to be able to show, that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution, and according to the sentiments of the Fathers, FREEDOM, and not Slavery, is NATIONAL, while SLAVERY, and not Freedom…
President,--This memorial is commended by the character of the religious association from which it proceeds,--men who mingle rarely in public affairs, but with austere virtue seek to carry the Christian rule into life.
President,--I hold in my hand, and desire to present, a memorial from the representatives of the Society of Friends in New England, formally adopted at a public meeting, and authenticated by their clerk, in which they ask for the repeal of…
So far as all private parties are concerned, the imprisonment is a mere matter of remedy, which can be discharged without divesting the beneficiaries of any rights; and since imprisonment for debt has been abolished, it is reasonable…
But where the imprisonment, as in the present case, is not a specific part of the sentence, but simply an alternative in the nature of a remedy, to secure the payment of the fine, the power of the President cannot be less than in the…
Why should the President hesitate to exercise it?
Politicians like Charles Sumner
