Thus, while Nature is always the same, the power of Man is ever increasing.
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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Every discovery, every humane thought, every truth, when declared, is a conquest of which the whole Human Family are partakers, extending by so much their dominion, while it lessens by so much the sphere of future struggle and trial.
Every victory over evil redounds to the benefit of all.
The tokens of improvement may appear at a special period, in a limited circle only, among the people, favored of God, enjoying peculiar benefits of commerce and Christianity; but the happy influence cannot be narrowed to any time, place…
And who can doubt, that, in the lapse of time, as the Christian Law is gradually fulfilled, the elevation of the Briton will be shared by all his fellow-men?
The polished Briton, whose civilization we now admire, traces his long-descended lineage from one of those painted barbarians whose degradation still lives in the pages of Julius Cæsar.
The Feejee Islander, the Bushman, the Hottentot, the Congo negro, is not too low for its care.
Glancing at the cradle of nations and races risen to grandeur, and observing the wretchedness by which they were originally surrounded, we learn that no lot is removed from the influence of this law.
From statistics of life, as recorded by Science, we learn the capacity for progress in the Human Family; the testimony is authentic, as it is interesting.
It is immortal on earth, and will gather constantly new and richer fruits from the teeming generations, as they stretch through unknown time.
This capacity for indefinite improvement, which belongs to the individual, must belong also to society; for society does not die, and through the improvement of its individuals has the assurance of its own advance.
Circumstances alone are required to call this capacity into action; and in proportion as knowledge, virtue, and religion prevail in a community will that sacred atmosphere be diffused under whose genial influence the most forlorn may grow…
Even the idiot, so abject in condition, is found at last to be within the sphere of education.
Few will question that Man, as an individual, is capable of indefinite improvement, so long as he lives.
Admitting the Unity of Mankind, and an Indefinite Future on earth, it becomes easy to anticipate triumphs which else were impossible.
Nor is it any exaggeration to suppose that in the unborn ages, illumined by a truth now, alas! too dimly perceived, the class of warriors and conquerors, of which these are signal types, will become extinct,--like the gigantic land…
In the sight of our distant descendants, successive eras of the brief span which we call History will melt into one; and as to present vision stars far asunder seem near together, so Nimrod and Sesostris, Alexander and Cæsar, Tamerlane and…
In the contemplation of Man, what littleness! what grandeur! how diminutive in the creation! how brief his recorded history! and yet how vast in hopes! how majestic and transcendent in the Future!
In comparison with these untold spaces before and after, what, indeed, are the six thousand years of human history?
Thus we stand now between two infinities,--the infinity of the Past, and the infinity of the Future; and the infinity of the Future is equal to the infinity of the Past.
In the light of science and of religion, Humanity is an organism, complex, but still one,--throbbing with one life, animated by one soul, every part sympathizing with every other part, and the whole advancing in one indefinite career of…
The vexed question of modern science, whether these races proceeded originally from one stock, does not interfere with the sublime revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man.
So are we all knit together, that words of wisdom and truth, which first sway the hearts of the American people, may help to elevate benighted tribes of the most distant regions.
It is true, doubtless, that there are various races of men; but there is but one great Human Family, in which Caucasian, Ethiopian, Chinese, and Indian are all brothers, children of one Father, and heirs to one happiness.
We admire the genius of Demosthenes, Sophocles, Plato, and Phidias; but the printing-press is a higher gift to man than the eloquence, the drama, the philosophy, and the art of Greece.
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