The provision which my friend would strike out is simply to carry into education the same principle which we have carried into the court-room, into the horse-car, and to the ballot-box: that is all.
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
Anything else would make this world a failure, and obedience to the laws of God impossible.
I insist that whatever is correct in principle is practical.
Now that it is proposed to apply the same principle to the schools, we are again assured, with equal seriousness and gravity, that, though correct in principle, it is not practical.
Then, again, when it was proposed to give the ballot to all, it was announced that it might be correct in principle, but that it was not practical; and I, Sir, was seriously assured by an eminent citizen that it would bring about massacre…
When the proposition for the abolition of Slavery in the District was brought forward, we were told that it was correct in principle, but that it would not work well,--that it was not practical!
And how often what was correct in principle triumphed over every obstacle!
How often have propositions been opposed in this Chamber as correct in principle, but not practical!
It is the teaching of all history; it is the teaching of human life; especially is it the teaching of our national experience during these latter eventful years.
By a higher law than any from human power, whatever is correct in principle must be correct in practice.
Nobody here makes this law,--not the Senate, not Congress.
But to my mind nothing is clearer than that where anything is correct in principle it must by inevitable law be correct in practice.
In my judgment it would be just as well for George Washington to defend himself against the charge of disloyalty to the American Colonies, for whom he was fighting, as for the honorable Senator to defend his record on this question.
I think, therefore, that he is justified in stating that he was the first to propose it in this body; and why should the Senator deem it necessary to spend one hour of our valuable time now to prove this fact?
My colleague did not use too strong language, when he said that then and there, in that small room, in that caucus, was decided the greatest pending question on the North American Continent.
Fifthly, There shall be no distinction among the inhabitants of this State founded on race, former condition, or color.
It is impartial suffrage that I claim, without distinction of color, so that there shall be one equal rule for all men.
Never neglect your work; but, meanwhile, prepare yourselves for the privileges of citizens.
They belong to you; they are yours; and whoever undertakes to rob you of them is a usurper and impostor.
The Louisiana Bill, though pressed by the Senator from Illinois, was defeated; and the equal rights of the colored race were happily vindicated.
It is a mere seven-months’ abortion, begotten by the bayonet in criminal conjunction with the spirit of Caste, and born before its time, rickety, unformed, unfinished, whose continued existence will be a burden, a reproach, and a wrong.
Here was the first motion in this Chamber for equality of suffrage as a measure of Reconstruction.
You know me in this Chamber; you know how I have devoted myself from the beginning to this idea, how constantly I have maintained it and urged it from the earliest date.
There is enough for all, provided we have been faithful.
God forbid that I should ever grudge to any of my associates in this great controversy any of the fame that belongs to them!
Politicians like Charles Sumner
