Charles Sumner

By his side is the master, who, in the debasing influences on his own soul, is compelled to share the degradation to which he dooms his fellow-men.

For all who bear the name of Slave there is nothing which they can call their own.

For the mother there is no assurance that her infant will not be torn from her breast.

And here language is inadequate to portray the infinite sum of wretchedness, degradation, injustice, legalized by this unholy relation.

That we may fully estimate this system of conduct in its enormity, we must call to mind the evils of Slavery, where it is allowed to exist.

Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel, While the same plumage that had warmed his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.

It is doubly pitiful, when she suffers from a government nursed by her into strength, and quickened by her into those activities which are the highest glory.

By such steps the National Government is perverted from its original purposes, its character changed, and its powers subjected to Slavery.

It puts forth the hideous effrontery, that Slavery can go to all newly acquired territories, and have the protection of the national flag.

It insulted and exiled from Charleston and New Orleans the honored representatives of Massachusetts, who were sent to those places with the commission of the Commonwealth, in order to throw the shield of the Constitution over her colored…

It has imprisoned and sold into slavery colored citizens of Massachusetts, entitled, under the Constitution of the United States, to all the privileges of citizens.

It has rejected for years petitions to Congress against Slavery,--thus, in order to shield Slavery, practically denying the right of petition.

It compelled the National Government to stoop ignobly, and in vain, before the British queen, to secure compensation for slaves, who, in the exercise of the natural rights of man, had asserted and achieved their freedom on the Atlantic…

With the meanness as well as insolence of tyranny, it compelled the National Government to abstain from acknowledging the neighbor Republic of Hayti, where slaves have become freemen, and established an independent nation.

It next plunged the country into unjust war with Mexico, to gain new lands for Slavery.

It wrested from Mexico the Province of Texas, in order to extend Slavery, and, triumphing over all opposition, finally secured its admission into the Union with a Constitution making Slavery perpetual.

It instigated and carried on a most expensive war in Florida, mainly to recover fugitive slaves,--thus degrading the army of the United States to slave-hunters.

Waxing powerful, it was able, after a severe struggle, to impose terms upon the National Government, compelling it to receive Missouri into the Union with a Slaveholding Constitution.

Early in this century, when the District of Columbia was finally occupied as the National Capital, the Slave Power succeeded, in defiance of the spirit of the Constitution, and even of the express letter of one of its Amendments, in…

But without pursuing this game of political sweepstakes, which the Slave Power has perpetually played, we present what is more important, as indicative of its spirit,--the aggressions and usurpations by which it has turned the National…

The Slave States are far inferior to the Free States in population, wealth, education, libraries, resources of all kinds, and yet they have taken to themselves the lion's share of honor and profit under the Constitution.

Here was a fundamental change in the character of the Government, to which may be referred much of the evil which has perplexed the country.

The blessings of Freedom being already secured to themselves, the freemen of the land grew indifferent to the freedom of others.

Change from Antislavery to Proslavery.--But the generous sentiments which filled the souls of the early patriots, and impressed upon the government they founded, as upon the very coin they circulated, the image and superscription of…