Learn to reconcile order with change, stability with progress.
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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As well attempt to make the sun stand still in his course, or restrain the sweet influences of the Pleiades, as arrest the incessant, irresistible movement which is the appointed destiny of man.
Though the goal is distant, and ever advancing, the march is none the less certain.
The daily increasing rapidity of discovery and improvement, and the daily multiplying efforts of beneficence, outstripping the imaginations of the most sanguine, furnish assurance that the advance of man will be with a constantly…
Nor should we be too impatient to witness the fulfilment of our aspirations.
The most distant are not without a present influence on our daily lives.
From one has come art; from another jurisprudence; from another the compass; from another the printing-press; from all have descended priceless lessons of truth and virtue.
Be it, then, our duty and our encouragement to live and to labor, ever mindful of the Future.
More precious far at that moment the consolation that he had labored for his fellow-men, and the joyous confidence that all his cares had helped the Progress of his race!
Look at the last days of Talleyrand, and learn the wretchedness of an old age enlightened by no memory of generous toil, by no cheerful hope for our fellow-men.
Though not ourselves partakers of these brighter days, ours may be the pleasure at least of foreseeing them, of enjoying them in happy vision, or the satisfaction, sweeter still, of hastening by some moments the too distant epoch.
It will give to all, young and old, a new appreciation of their existence, a new sentiment of their force, a new revelation of their destiny.
Let the old cherish this law; it shall be to them a staff for support.
Let the young embrace this law; it shall be to them an ever-living spring.
In such a faith there are motives to beneficent activity which will endure to the last syllable of life.
He will guide and sustain us--through pains and perils it may be--in the path of Progress.
With this faith, we place our hands, as those of little children, in the great hand of God.
At last we know the law of this movement; we fasten our eyes upon that star, unobserved in the earlier ages, which lights the way to the Future, opening into vistas of infinite variety and extension.
Humanity has ever advanced, urged by instincts and necessities implanted by God,--thwarted sometimes by obstacles, causing it for a time, a moment only in the immensity of ages, to deviate from its true line, or seem to retreat, but still…
He did not call upon Priest or Levite or Pharisee to follow him, but upon the humble fishermen by the Sea of Galilee.
Free from egotism and prejudice, whether of self-interest or of class, without cares and temptations, whether of wealth or power, dwelling in the mediocrity or obscurity of common life, they discern the new signal, and surrender…
Not the dwellers in the glare of the world, but the humble and lowly, most clearly perceive this truth,--as watchers placed in the depths of a well observe the stars which are obscured to those who live in the effulgence of noon.
Rejected by the rich and powerful, by the favorites of fortune and of place, she finds shelter with those who often have no shelter for themselves.
Thus ever has Truth moved on,--though opposed and reviled, still mighty and triumphant.
But gradually the heart of the nation was touched, until at last the people of England demanded the abolition of this Heaven-defying traffic.
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