Charles Sumner

Henceforward PROTECTION TO MAN will be the true AMERICAN SYSTEM.

No longer will banks and tariffs occupy the foremost place, and, sounding always with the chink of dollars and cents, give their tone to the policy of the country.

But these matters are all treated as subordinate to the primal principle of opposition to Slavery and the Slave Power.

They propose not only to guard the Territories against Slavery, but to relieve the National Government from all responsibility therefor everywhere within the sphere of its constitutional powers.

The principles which caused this union are already widely received, and will be proclaimed by this vast assembly.

In the strength and completeness of this union I am reminded of the Mississippi, Father of Rivers, where the commingling waters of the Missouri and Ohio are lost in a broad, united, irresistible current, descending in one channel to the…

It has presented to the country a platform of principles, and candidates who are the exponents of these principles.

In marked contrast was the recent Convention at Buffalo, where were represented the good men of all the parties,--Whigs, Democrats, and Liberty men,--forgetting alike all former differences, and uniting in common opposition to the Slave…

They are but leaders of the two contending factions into which the Slave Power is divided.

These two candidates, apparently representing opposite parties, both concur in being representatives of Slavery.

At Philadelphia, General Taylor, without any pledge on this all-important question, was forced upon the Convention by the Slave Power; nor were principles of any kind declared by this body of professing Whigs.

At Baltimore the delegation of the most important State in the Union, known to be in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, was refused admission to the Convention.

Whatever may be said of individuals belonging to these opposing combinations, it would be difficult to say whether Whigs or Democrats, in their recent conduct as national parties, had most succumbed to this malign influence.

I say factions; for what are factions, but combinations whose sole cement is selfish desire for place and power, in disregard of principles?

A body of men, whose principle of union was unknown to the authors of the Constitution, have seized the government, and caused it to be administered, not in the spirit of Freedom, but in the spirit of Slavery.

Our Constitution, which was the work of Freedom-loving men, which was watched by Freedom's champions, which, like the Ark of the Covenant, was upborne by the early patriarchs of our Israel, is now prostituted to the uses of Slavery.

The principles of our fathers, of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, nay, the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, are assailed.

And why, in this nineteenth century, are we assembled here in Faneuil Hall, to vow ourselves to Freedom?

It is the cause, the good old cause of Freedom, so familiar to early echoes of this hall, which justly awakens your regards, irrespective of men.

Grateful for this cordial welcome, I must consider it offered, not to myself, but to the cause, whose humble representative I am.

So may we open to our country new fields of peaceful victory, which shall not want the sympathies and gratulations of the good citizen or the praises of the just historian.

Let loyalty to one man be exchanged for Love to Man.

Let the sentiment of loyalty, earth-born, which once lavished itself on King or Emperor, give place to that other sentiment, heaven-born, of devotion to Humanity.

And, finally, let a confidence in the Progress of our race be, under God, a constant faith.

Blending these two in one, may we not seek to be, at the same time, Reforming Conservatives and Conservative Reformers?