Charles Sumner

Let it join with Jefferson in open, uncompromising hostility to Slavery.

It must not be uncertain, vacillating, or temporary, in this beneficent policy, but fixed and constant, so that hereafter it shall know no change.

It must be perpetually on the side of Freedom.

It must now exert itself for Freedom as zealously and effectively as for many years it has exerted itself for Slavery.

Within the constitutional sphere of its influence, it must be felt as the enemy of Slavery.

Let it never be forgotten, as the pole-star of our policy, that the National Government must be placed, openly, actively, and perpetually, on the side of Freedom.

The whole weight of the Government will then be taken from the side of Slavery, where it has been placed by the Slave Power, and put on the side of Freedom, according to the original purposes and aspirations of its founders.

The Slave Power will be broken, and Slavery driven from its present intrenchments under the National Government.

The National Government must be on the side of Freedom.--Accomplishing these specific changes, a new tone will be given to the Republic.

Let the word go forth, that the National Government shall be divorced from all support of Slavery, and shall never hereafter sanction it.

Divorce of the National Government from Slavery.--This must not be any longer.

Their chains, as they clank, seem to say, "Massachusetts does this outrage.

The fetters of every slave within these jurisdictions are bound and clasped by the votes of Massachusetts.

Nor will this responsibility cease, so long as Slavery continues to exist in the District of Columbia, in any Territories of the United States, or anywhere on the high seas, beneath the protecting flag of the Republic.

The freemen of the North are responsible for it equally with the traffickers in flesh who haunt the shambles of the South.

But Slavery everywhere under the Constitution of the United States, everywhere under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, everywhere under the national flag, is at our own particular doors.

Wherever we are responsible for Slavery, we oppose it.

Slavery, we repeat, is wrong, and therefore we cannot sanction it.

Slavery is wrong; nor can any human legislation elevate into any respectability the blasphemy of tyranny, that man can hold property in his fellow-man.

Not only from desire to bring the National Government back again to the spirit of the Fathers, but also from deep convictions of morals and religion, is our hostility to Slavery derived.

After these things, to which many more might be added, it will not be denied, that, in order to secure Freedom in the Territories, there must be direct and early prohibition of Slavery by Act of Congress.

And the distinct question is presented, whether the National Government shall carry into this imperial region the curse of Slavery, with its monstrous brood of ignorance, poverty, and degradation, or Freedom, with her attendant train of…

It is the immediate urgency of this question that has aroused the country to the successive aggressions of the Slave Power, and to its undue influence over the National Government.

Shall Slavery be extended?--Now, at last, the Slave Power threatens to carry Slavery into the vast regions of New Mexico and California, existing territories of the United States, already purged of this evil by express legislation of the…

The whole social fabric is disorganized; labor loses its dignity; industry sickens; education finds no schools; religion finds no churches; and all the land of Slavery is impoverished.