Clearer than in the venerated napkin, better than in color or marble of choicest art, it appears in each virtuous deed, in every act of self-sacrifice, in all magnanimous toil, in any recognition of Human Brotherhood.
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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Far better, then, even in the judgment of this world, to have been a doorkeeper in the house of Peace than the proudest dweller in the tents of War.
There will be a new standard of excellence; and honor, divorced from blood, will become the inseparable attendant of good works alone.
Nobler aims, by nobler means, will fill the soul.
Thus must it be, as mankind ascend from the thrall of brutish passion.
They who strive after it, Ixion-like, embrace a cloud.
None can hesitate in answer, unless fatally imbued with the Heathen rage of nationality, that made the Venetians declare themselves Venetians first and Christians afterwards.
As all men are brothers, so, by irresistible consequence, ALL WAR MUST BE FRATRICIDAL.
As the Brotherhood of Man is practically recognized, it becomes impossible to restrict the feeling within any exclusive circle of country, and to set up an unchristian distinction of honor between civil war and international war.
Confessing the Fatherhood of God, and the consequent Brotherhood of Man, we find a divine standard of unquestionable accuracy.
In the midst of Judaism, which hated Gentiles, Christianity proclaimed love to all mankind, and distinctly declared that God had made of one blood all the nations of men.
By such profane devices men sought to establish that relation, whose beauty they perceived, though they failed to discern, that, by the ordinance of God, without any human stratagem, it justly comprehended all their fellow-men.
Augustine called the splendid vices, neglecting the simple virtues,--too long cultivated the flaunting and noxious weeds, careless of the golden corn,--too long been insensible to that commanding law and sacred example which rebuke all the…
It is the offspring of a deluded public sentiment, and will disappear, as we learn to analyze its elements and appreciate its character.
Whatever the usage of the world, whether during the long and dreary Past or in the yet barbarous Present, it must be clear to all who confront this question with candor, and do not turn away from the blaze of truth, that any glory from…
I refer to that greatest, most preposterous, and most irreligious of earthly vanities, the monstrous reflection of War,--Military Glory.
From the birth of this new order will spring not only international repose, but domestic quiet also; and Peace will become the permanent rule of civilization.
Through all these bloody mists the eye of Faith discerns the ascending sun, struggling to shoot its life-giving beams upon the outspread earth, teeming with the grander products of a new civilization.
So doing, they wage a battle where all our sympathies must be with Freedom, while, in sorrow at the unwelcome combat, we confess that victory is only less mournful than defeat.
In our aspirations, I would not be blind to the teachings of History, or to the actual condition of men, so long accustomed to brute force, that, to their imperfect natures, it seems the only means by which injustice can be crushed.
Can Freedom be born, can nations be regenerated, only through baptism of blood?
Let her offer to the world a Magna Charta of International Law, by which the crime of War shall be forever abolished.
Let our republic, powerful child of Freedom, go forth, the Evangelist of Peace.
Thus shall we inaugurate Permanent Peace in the diplomacy of the world.
If in this scheme there is a tendency to avert War,--if, through its agency, we may hope to prevent a single war,--and who can doubt that such may be its result?--we ought to adopt it.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
